In English-language news media, everyone is talking about this new word “Fly-jin”, a play on “Gaijin,” i.e. foreigners who have fled Japan in the wake of the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear holocaust [/sarcasm]. Take this article in the Wall Street Journal that everyone is talking about:
The flight of the foreigners—known as gaijin in Japanese—has polarized some offices in Tokyo. Last week, departures from Japan reached a fever pitch after the U.S. Embassy unveiled a voluntary evacuation notice and sent in planes to ferry Americans to safe havens. In the exodus, a new term was coined for foreigners fleeing Japan: flyjin.
The first part of that excerpt is true — foreigners really have fled, and lots of Japanese companies are really pissed about it. I just heard a story of a person fired from a (rather domestic, small-minded) Japanese company for fleeing the country and missing 8 days of work. (I think the biggest problem in this sitaution wast the backward employer and the failure of communication by the fleeing foreign employee.)
It is still very early into this tragedy, and a lot could change in the coming days/weeks/months. But I wanted to give some initial impressions. I have been going to the office as usual and basically heading directly home to keep updated and try and calm down my mother via Google Talk. Here are some of my observations so far based on my experiences and the reports I have been reading and watching in English and Japanese. To save time, I have not included links to some stories I did not feel like digging up:
Japan rocks – The reaction to the earthquake has been impressive, though sadly even the best response is unequal to adequately deal with the massive destruction in northeast Japan. The buildings were strong enough to stay standing through the quake, the streets were safe enough to walk home when no trains ran, and a full court press came to the rescue the next day. As far as planning and citizen preparedness goes, Japan has the whole world beat, hands down. It seems like in many ways the authorities learned from the failings of the Kobe earthquake. I feel very proud of my adopted home. Note that the emperor agrees with me. In his recent national address, he noted with admiration that foreign observers praised the Japanese people for their calm, helpful reaction to the quake.
Unfortunately, even the best plans cannot protect against one of the biggest earthquakes/tsunamis ever known. The damage is immense, and it will take a long time to recover. But I am confident that Japan has what it takes to get through the disaster and emerge as strong as ever.
As the days unfold, I notice that one advantage Japan seems to have on its side is a very adversarial media. From the outset, I think the Kan administration has done its best given the circumstances, and I don’t really agree with the assessment of some media outlets that it was too slow to set up shop inside Tepco. However, on top of that the mainstream media covering this story have (admirably) shown very little deference to the prime minister and Tepco. I think this has put the fear of God into these officials to disclose as much information as possible and be as cooperative as possible. Also, the US (among other countries) is offering very generous support and has been among the most supportive governments in backing up Japan’s response. It has issued statements saying they are “in agreement” with the Japanese assessment of the nuclear situation. Betraying US confidence at this point would not go down well. With all that pressure, attempting to hide things could easily turn Tepco into the next BP (and then some) and the Kan administration into the villain that Murayama is remembered as being during the 1995 Kobe earthquake.
Twitter has also been a big positive, in my opinion. It helps average people exchange trusted information (and lies to a much lesser extent), and there is a kind of wisdom-of-crowds quality in which certain proposals are retweeted by enough alpha-users that they grab the attention of the authorities. For instance, I saw some prominent Japanese Twitterers retweet a request to have sign language interpreters at press conferences, and a day later sure enough there they were. On the other end of the spectrum, there have been some chain letters spreading untrue rumors. I received one about “poison rain” due to the Chiba oil tanker fire, and I have heard about others. It is worth noting that the person who sent that one emailed me after she learned it was false.
Supply shortages in Tokyo should be resolved soon – At this point, it is hard to tell what is more to blame for the empty shelves – the hoarders or the reduced shipments? All the same, manufacturers are reporting sufficient capacity to supply the area, and any disruptions in deliveries should be relieved by next week’s release of emergency oil reserves. The reserves should alleviate the supply shortages and give time for availability even in Tokyo to get back to normal as early as next week. One big reason for the delay is that the worst affected regions got priority, which is only natural.
Unfortunately, this is one area where average people and the government were kind of a letdown. For one thing, people seemed to start panic buying very quickly. I took a trip to Tochigi on Sunday and already the gas station lines were long. At the same time, the government only started telling people to stop panic buying today! The media seemed to be doing its job, noting the activity and noting how problematic it was, at least as far as I read.
People are overreacting to the nuclear crisis, big time – The risk of radiation is, by all credible accounts, very small for almost everyone in the country. I am as glued to updates as anyone, but I am not panicking. In fact, I think focusing too much on the nuclear crisis runs the risk of de-emphasizing the massive toll the tsunami took on the region. The French chartering flights to evacuate expats and warnings based on nuclear fears are overdoing it, I think. I mean, I would understand some people without a deep connection to the country leaving, or at least moving or sending loved ones to stay somewhere safer. I have my wife and in-laws in the area, so I don’t want to leave unless it is truly necessary. In addition to the nuclear concerns, there are the transit problems and hoarding/logistics problems with daily necessities, not to mention the risk of aftershocks. This is scary for everyone, but people who don’t know the language or don’t have people to rely on have that added layer of difficulty. And if you can’t follow the mainstream Japanese media (and sensible Internet sources like Mutant Frog!), you are liable to read sensationalized reports from the overseas media.
This last bit is a sore point for me. Thanks to all the scary US media reports, my mother has been absolutely terrified. My relatives and family friends have been calling her nonstop to know if I’m OK. I know the media are in the misery business, but more than that it seems like the reporters are far too detached from the story. They focus so much on broader implications and potential scenarios that it ends up providing no practical information to people who actually want to have an even-handed idea of what’s going on.
The aftershocks are really scary – since the big earthquake it almost feels like there are small rumblings going on constantly. I especially feel this way at the office, where the building’s design makes it kind of easy to feel small tremors. The bigger ones fill me with dread. As they happen, I wonder if this one will build up slowly into a big quake like the one on Friday. Even when there are no quakes, for some reason I feel like the ground is shaking when I am walking down long hallways.
Many outside observers have failed a very easy test of decency – When reacting to a tragic event, the rules of etiquette are simple. Express sympathy for the victims and note the tragedy of the affair. This is not the time to make dumb jokes, call a natural disaster retribution for something some people from Japan did that you don’t like, or condescendingly generalize about Japanese culture. Too many people have failed miserably in this regard. If you need to react this way, keep it off the Internet at least!
I am a terrible investor – Last and most definitely least, what do you think is the only individual stock I own? Some hints: In the two months since I bought in, it has seen much of its generating capacity wiped out forever and been threatened with government-enforced annihilation for mishandling the disaster response. Oh and it has been limit-down for three days straight.
I say “ridiculous” because the donor in question is a zainichi Korean who has run a yakiniku restaurant in Kyoto for decades; there was likely no way for Maehara’s staff to know whether or not she was a Japanese national. In a sane world, he would simply return her money, apologize and get on with his work. Instead, he succumbed to a peanut gallery of opposition cranks who were simply looking for any line of attack on the Kan government and saw a prime opportunity to imply that Maehara was selling out the country — to a permanent resident, for $2,429. Are you kidding me?
Of course, NHK and most other media outlets are simply reporting that “Maehara accepted donations from foreigners” without mentioning any details of the donations or the foreigners — making it sound like Maehara was getting briefcases full of hundred-dollar bills from Rahm Emmanuel or the evil-looking Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman (at least, those were the first two scenes which I imagined).
I met Kaieda once at a festival not long after he was elected and before he joined the cabinet. We shook hands just like this, and it lasted just long enough to get awkward. His English was pretty good.
I finally got around to seeing The Karate Kid (i.e. last year’s remake starring Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan) last weekend.
Though not a revolutionary classic of filmmaking by any means, it was still pretty enjoyable and interesting from my perspective. One reason is that it is the only Hollywood film I have seen that captures the modern experience of being an American expat in Asia — particularly of being an American kid coming to Asia. The protagonist, 12-year-old Dre Parker, goes through the same stages of frustration and emergence in Beijing that I went through as a 15-year-old in Osaka. This balances to hilarious effect with the “overawed clueless expat” character of Dre’s mother Sherry, who spends most of the movie fawning on the wonderfulness of everything Chinese.
The other interesting facet of the film is its historical context in the industrial decay of America and simultaneous emergence of China. At the very beginning of the film, Sherry and Dre move from a middle-class existence in Detroit to a middle-class existence in Beijing, and a long portion of the opening credits consists of shots of the decaying metropolis of Detroit. The reason for their move, which is only briefly mentioned in the film, is that Sherry worked at a car factory which closed down, and the only way she could keep working was to transfer to a factory in China. When Dre gets exasperated and wants to go home, Sherry emphatically tells him that they cannot go home because there is nothing left for them.
In short, it’s a movie primarily about a kid overcoming his weaknesses through kung fu discipline, and secondarily about America, China and the expat experience in the 21st century. On the latter point, it does a much less groan-worthy job than the likes of Rising Sun and Gung Ho did during the Japanese emergence of the late 1980s.
The decay of Detroit is, of course, nothing new; there have been a few big movies made on the theme, such as the non-fictional Roger & Me in 1989 and the fictional 8 Mile in 2002. Now Chrysler is using the legacy and the decaying grit of Detroit as selling points for their high-end cars; on Sunday, they ran the following ad during the Super Bowl, which is the most-watched TV program in the US just about every year, and got Eminem to pop in as a spokesman. (Hat tip to James Fallows for the link.)
The ad conveniently ignores the fact that Chrysler will be owned by Italians as soon as it pays off its debts to the US federal government. But hey, image is everything.
When you see someone on TV, or read what they write on a blog or YouTube comment, you don’t know them. This sounds obvious, but judging from the volumes and volumes of discussions on the Internet, no one seems to take this to heart.
Even if you’ve watched someone’s show for years, you are only seeing the tip of the iceberg of what this person is all about. A talk show host might be an avid hunter, or a drinker, or a plastic model kit geek, and we would never, ever know.
But so many of us demand authenticity, or at least a standard of conduct, from people in the public eye, and reserve the harshest score if they don’t measure up.
In Japan, these impulses flare up into the endless stream of ginned-up scandals. Who are we to judge Ebizo for hanging out with the wrong people? None of us knows him. Hell, I had barely heard of him before the scandal.
No one really knows Sarah Palin despite all her exposure and all the journalist profiles and behind the scenes looks. Yet everyone has an opinion about her (I’ll concede it’s somewhat necessary to assess a potential presidential candidate).
The people with influence on what goes on the news and the rest of the media know all about this and exploit our nature ruthlessly for their own ends. Our affinity for an attractive actress gets us in the door of our local Mos Burger; a finely aged oyaji tells us it’s cool to drink a certain kind of beer; and news reports convince you in a matter of seconds that a stranger is a villain who deserves to die.
This concept applies in even the most mundane aspects of showmanship. On those Japanese shows with panels of commentators, the panelists are either competing for airtime or want to keep getting asked back. What that means for you is they stop acting like they would face-to-face and start making comments that will get the most reaction from a mass audience. There are endless ways to keep track of audience reaction these days, including Twitter and 2-channel in Japan. If you can entertain, you’re doing your job.
The same goes for blogs, in a way. I am not just talking to a friend at a bar, I am writing for the “masses” (my many dozens of readers). That means I am putting my best face forward and saying things to get a reaction. Hence, you don’t know me even if you’ve been reading me from the beginning.
I’ve met some readers offline in the past. As a rule they’ve been nothing like I would imagine from their blog comments. Only after putting the two together can I really connect their offline personality to what they write online. While they are connected and an extension of the person, it’s necessarily a cross section.
TV and essentially all media are stages where people put on shows to get a desired reaction from the audience. For better or worse, the Internet has turned everyone into a media personality, so it’s only healthy to keep this in mind when going through life, and especially when reacting to blogs and reader comments.
This post was inspired by a recent conversation with a friend who shall remain anonymous because, well, you don’t know him!
This week saw the birth of a new unit of governmental organization in Japan in the form of the Kansai regional league , consisting of the seven prefectures of Shiga, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyogo, Wakayama, Tottori and Tokushima. [ref]Or “alliance,” depending on the newspaper – the translation for 広域連合 does not yet seem to be standardized.[/ref] As population, wealth, and the cultural center of gravity have become increasingly concentrated in the Tokyo region, politicians and pundits have been discussing ways to decentralize administration and revitalize the country’s regions, with one widely discussed proposal from 2006 [ref]Similar proposals had been discussed as early as the 1950s, but the idea does not seem to have been taken very seriously until around 2004.[/ref] taking the form of a plan to reorganize Japan’s 47 prefecturesinto a number of states.
For legacy reasons, there are at present four different words for Japanese prefectures in Japanese, to, dō, fu, ken : 都道府県 (to is used only for Tokyo, dō is the last syllable in Hokkaidō, the two fu are Osaka and Kyoto, and the other prefectures are all ken) , but they are legally identical at present. Under the proposed state system, all states would be labeled as shū : 州, as for example, US States or provinces in various other countries are – except for Hokkaidō, which would keep its dō and avoid an embarrassing double classifier. This proposed system is therefore known in Japanese as the dōshūsei : 道州制, with the sei meaning “system.”The number of states varies depending on the exact proposal; for example a 2006 report commissioned by the Prime Minister’s office included variants for 9, 11, and 13 states, and a 2008 report from a group of interested LDP members suggested 9 and 11 state plans, which were slightly different from those of the earlier report. In all cases, the state borders would be largely based on those of the Japanese regions, which are currently only conventional, and not legal, geographic units. Despite the similar terminology, states under the Japanese proposal should not be overly confused with the US equivalent. Where US states are semi-sovereign entities in a federated alliance, Japanese states would still be administrative units granted a certain amount of delegated authority by a centralized state, much as the current prefectures are. However, since they would both be granted more authority, and would be able to coordinate regional operations and development over a much larger area, they would be able to realize grander and more suitably local plans then has been possible under the current system of an extremely centralized national bureaucracy and relatively weak collection of rather small prefectures. At least, that was the argument being made in favor of the system.
The dōshūsei plan never really went anywhere in the end, partly because the vast majority of the population was uncomfortable with such a massive reorganization of fundamental geographic units, and also because the LDP, the party which contained most of the plan’s supporters, lost control of the government. However, demand for increased regional autonomy remained particularly strong in the Kansai region – which trails the Tokyo (Kanto) region as Japan’s secondary locus of population, industry, and culture/media – not least by Osaka Governor Hashimoto Toru, and so regional politicians came up with a sort of backdoor approach to implementing a more limited form of higher-level regional government.
Business leaders in the region first began calling on the central government to introduce a larger regional administrative system in 1955–the model proposed was termed doshu-sei–but got little satisfaction from the government’s response.
Finally, the Kansai Economic Federation (Kankeiren) turned its attention to the regional league of administrative entities. Introduced by a 1994 revision to the Local Government Law, that system has mainly been utilized by municipal governments for the joint operation of firefighting and garbage disposal services.
Kankeiren came up with the idea of applying the system on a prefectural scale. Such an alliance is allowed under the law if prefectural governments concerned and their assemblies agree among themselves, and receive approval from the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry.
Unlike a theoretical dōshūsei state, which would have been delegated a certain, and significant, amount of authority by the central government, the Kansai Regional League is more of a bottom-up organization, and will have to negotiate both internally and with the central government to determine exactly how much authority it will be able to take on – both from above and below.
But it is uncertain how much authority the central government will agree to transfer to the regional league. Central government employees transferred to the regional league would likely see their employee status change from national public servant to local public servant, a condition they are likely to oppose.
Unlike the doshu-sei model, which proposed regional governments that would handle all administration of the area in its jurisdiction, the Kansai league will handle only certain matters.
The regional league will not be able to take any action without the unanimous agreement of the committee members.
Naosumi Atoda, vice president of Kaetsu University, said the Kansai regional league “will not provide leadership as efficiently as [would have been possible under] the doshu-sei system, in terms of how quickly it can implement policy measures.”
But despite the differences, the newly created Kansai Regional League (KRL) is an ideological relative of the dōshūsei plan. The geographical extent of the KRL largely, but not entirely, with the Kinki (近畿) region. To reiterate, the members of the KRL are Shiga, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyogo, Wakayama, Tottori and Tokushima. The Kinki region proper consists of Nara, Wakayama, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyōgo, and Shiga, but the definition of Kansai is looser, and depending on who you ask may include other nearby prefectures such as Mie, Fukui, Tokushima, Tottori, and in extreme cases, even Hiroshima. [ref]At least according to Tokyo-ites, never to Kansai residents.[/ref] Since it does not even include all of the core Kinki prefectures (although Nara, the lone Kinki holdout, is going to participate as an observer and see if they like how it goes), and includes two non-Kinki Kansai prefectures, it is obvious why the KRL is named for Kansai, rather than Kinki.
As for the organization and function of the KRL:
Representatives of five prefectures in the Kinki region, Tottori Prefecture and Tokushima Prefecture will participate in the Kansai league, forming a 20-member assembly.
Each prefecture will dispatch two to five members to the committee, according to their relative population.
Governors of the seven prefectures will set up a committee to decide how to manage the league, which will work on projects judged to be best administered across prefectural borders.
At first, the prefectures will cooperate on issues in seven fields, including tourism and cultural promotion.
The operation of medical helicopter services and storage of emergency food supplies have already been identified as projects to be administered by the league.
Funding for the association will be contributed by the prefectures, with a budget of about 500 million yen planned for fiscal 2011.
I have not been able to find any English language coverage that details what these “seven fields” are, but the Kyoto Shimbun article announcing the launch of the League has a handy list. Interestingly and significantly, the offices in charge of each of these seven fields (subdivided into 31 areas) will be distributed among the member prefectures as follows.
Disaster Prevention: Hyogo
Tourism and Cultural Promotion: Kyoto
Industrial Promotion: Osaka
Medical Treatment: Tokushima
Environmental Protection: Shiga
Testing and Licensing: Osaka Employee Training: Wakayama
The reasons for some of these choices are obvious. Hyogo, of course, was the site of the awful 1995 earthquake that devastated its main city of Kobe, so they’ve obviously been studying the topic since then. Kyoto is Japan’s center of tourism, and traditional arts and culture. Osaka is the region’s industrial center as well as the largest city with the most infrastructure. Then they get less obvious. I guess Shiga gets the environmental portfolio because they’ve kept Lake Biwa nice and clean? Is Wakayama in charge of employee training so they can go on nice isolated retreats up in Mt. Koya where they can study without distraction? Tokushima is in charge of emergency medical helicopters because… well they needed something! Tottori, for its part, is apparently not in fact a full member, only participating in the Tourism and Cultural Promotion and Medical Treatment fields, which I presume is why they don’t get any portfolio to handle. Maybe when they finally join 100% they can get the office for Desert Land Management, with responsibility and oversight for ALL of the desert in the ENTIRE Kansai region.
It’s unclear where, exactly, this experiment will go. Other regions throughout Japan are watching carefully, waiting to see if Kansai’s lead is worth following, but even much of Kansai is still somewhat unsure. Nara is still merely an observer, Tottori a half-member, and Kyoto – the prideful old capital – is concerned that “regionalism” is just a euphemism for “domination by Osaka.” While the KRL is trying to negotiate with the national government for both funds and additional delegated power, Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications Katayama Yoshihiro is reluctant to proceed as long as Nara, a core Kansai/Kinki prefecture, is not participating. At present, the national government is willing to hand over responsibility for just 20% of the roughly 500 administrative tasks requested by the KRL. Kyoto Prefecture Governor Yamada Keiji, an unaffiliated politician who was amazingly supported by the LDP, DPJ, and Komeito for his third term criticized the DPJ sharply for not living up to their promises to promote local autonomy, while Shiga Governor Kada Yukiko [ref]Unaffiliated, ran for governor in opposition to LDP, DPJ, JCP, Komeito, with SDP support on a platform of ending wasteful public works spending.[/ref] snarked that “The DPJ is retreating quite a bit lately.”
Just over a year ago, I visited the Yamba Dam (together with MF blogger Ben) to see with my own eyes the mega-dam project in the mountain valleys of western Gunma. The DPJ immediately halted the project when they came into power in September 2009 due primarily to the project cost. But the dam construction had burned through more than 70% of its US$4 billion budget by mid-2009. The trip was interesting, and it reinforced my view that stopping construction at this late stage was a mistake. Indeed, my exact words on this blog were:
Frankly, no matter how hard Transportation Minister Maehara and the DPJ hold out on refusing to construct the dam, I can’t possibly see how the project cannot be finished. At best the DPJ can delay the plan a year or two.
That prediction is on track to be correct. Minister for Land, Infrastructure, Transport (and Tourism!) Sumio Mabuchi has announced that the government is reexamining the project to see if it is viable. While not an express reversal of policy, the announcement has been widely interpreted in the press (and not denied by the administration) as a soft way of announcing that the DPJ administration is withdrawing the pledge to scrap construction of the dam.
Tokyo Governor Ishihara, who along with many other regional local leaders was outraged by the cancellation of the project, had a somewhat predictable reaction, which can best be translated into English as, “Well, duh!”
Via Andrew Sullivan, a terrible, terrible example of punditry asking if the US is on the verge of a Japan style “lost generation,” which includes the following particularly wretched paragraph, in which John B. Judis of The New Republic shows he knows nothing about Japan:
If you want to imagine what American politics will be like, think about Japan…. Japan had a remarkably stable leadership from the end of World War II until their bubble burst in the 1990s. As the country has stumbled over the last two decades, unable finally to extricate from its slump, it has suffered through a rapid of succession of leaders, several of whom, like Obama, have stirred hopes of renewal and reform, only to create disillusionment and despair within the electorate…. That kind of political instability is both cause and effect of Japan’s inability to transform its economy and international relations to meet the challenges of a new century.
Judis here is making a fundamental mistake of confusing Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party majority rule, which began in 1955 and was nearly continuous until last year, with the longevity of Prime Ministers. Needless to say, anybody with even a passing familiarity with post-war Japan is well aware that despite the LDP’s “remarkably stable” monopoly on power, there was far less than “remarkably stable leadership” in the office of the Prime Minister.
Taking a look at the list of PM’s and how many days each of them served, it is obvious that not only were extremely short lived administrations far more common than longer ones throughout the entire postwar period, but that the Junichiro Koizuimi term of 2001-2006 (a total of 1,979 days) was the third longest since WW2, and the longest since Eisaku Satō, who was PM between 1964 and 1972.
Since his factual premise is so obviously false (and I have to run to campus soon) I will not even bother to get into analyzing his equally spurious claim that this “rapid of succession of leaders […] like Obama, have stirred hopes of renewal and reform, only to create disillusionment and despair within the electorate,” much less looking at how crappy his analysis of US politics probably is, but please do fire away in the comments!
I have not been able to find any English language coverage that details what these “seven fields” are, but the 
