You know how sometimes you intend to blog about shit and then by the time you get round to it everything's changed and you realise that, actually, you can't be arsed? Well watching the last two weeks of the LDP imploding has been like that. But with more alcohol. And less being arsed.
So. The LDP lost the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly elections two weeks ago by almost as much as I like to tell people they lost by. Which is shitloads. They no longer hold the majority, that now goes to DPJ, Tokyo Network and assorted cronies. Unfortunately hardly anyone voted for the SDP, but then that's no surprise. There are still people who don't wash their hands after they use the toilet, so I guess some people just refuse to be civilised.
Obviously Aso tried to limit the damage by telling people that the Tokyo Assembly elections weren't indicative of how the party would do in the general election because they deal with entirely different issues. Naturally, everyone knows that's horseshit. They're going to lose spectacularly in the general election. Not spectacularly because they'll lose by much, but spectacularly because they've only been out of power for nine months out of the last 54 years.
Aso needs re-inflating again.
That's not to say that they've had a solid monopoly over Japan for all of those years. Since Koizumi they've had a litany of popular failures and private disasters. The best way to imagine the LDP's situation is to picture a man falling down an up-escalator for three pathetic, bone-splitting years. Like the LDP's approval rating the man seems to be constantly falling, with all the associated pain and embarrassment, but always miraculously stays in the same place. We have to wait for him to finally hit rock-bottom to see whether he'll lie there and bleed out with the remains of his dignity or whether he'll lurch like Frankenstein's monster back to the escalator of government.
Aso has dissolved the Lower House in preparation for a general election on the 30th of August. This obviously means that there is effectively no government in Japan at the moment. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Cos I'm pretty sure this means Japan is ripe for a coup d'etat. If we can barricade ourselves in Aso's office so we've got the Prime Minister's Throne on the 30th of August then it's legal, right? Isn't that how it works?
"Yes, unemployment rates are increasing. And yes, the rate at which the unemployment rate is increasing is increasing. But! The rate at which the rate of unemployment rate increases are increasing is DEcreasing! So it's all going to be ok! Vote LDP! Vote LDP!"
The unemployment rate in May was up to 5.2%. I'm waiting for an update on June's figures, which I expect to see at Japan Economy News any day now. I'm also preparing my face to adopt the appropriate expression of concern to mask the fact I have no idea what any of this really means.
Well, hasn't Aso Taro been busy? (No.) He turned up at the Vatican yesterday for a meeting with the Pope ahead of the G8 Summit in Italy that's just started. Every time the G8 meet it seems like all their members go on press-junket style tours, meeting local luminaries and being interviewed, like weary actors promoting their latest movie but with a radiant sense of glee and self-importance. They smile for the cameras and answer questions like, "What was it like working with Silvio Berlusconi?" and "Can you confirm or deny rumours of a romance between you and Chancellor Merkel?" Then everyone forgets they exist for six months or so before they're off again.
So yesterday Aso (68 years old, Catholic) went to meet his Overlord, the Pope. But he wasn't just there to take Pope Benedict's each-way bet on Obama to use the word "reform" at least three times in a single sentence, oh no. He also wanted to present him with a Sony digital camcorder. Because if there's one thing the Pope likes more than gambling on dead-certainties it's home-videos. Oh, and God.
Awkward gifts are something of a staple in the political world. When Obama met the Queen for the first time, he gave her an iPod loaded with songs from The King And I (true fact). In turn, the Queen gave him a framed, signed photo of herself, which quite frankly is fucking hilarious. And when Gordon Brown visited America, Obama gave him a box-set of 25 DVDs (another true fact). Of course, Region 1 DVDs can't actually be played in Britain, but how was the President to know that?
Here's the Aso-Pope meeting, with the Sony camcorder being presented on a silver platter:
You'll notice the camcorder doesn't actually have a charger though. So the Pope will be lucky to get even one match of the All-Italia Nuns Volleyball Championship out of it. Better luck next time.
I said a week ago that I'd do a post on the DPJ leader election when they announce who's running for office, but they already elected Hatoyama Yukio this weekend when I wasn't looking. Sorry. That's what happens in politics when you're not paying attention: nothing.
Somehow the DPJ decided that instead of giving Japan something different from the failing LDP, trying to win an election by being better than the other candidate, they'd give Japan something exactly the same and hope that people confuse the two enough to elect the DPJ. Shisaku points out that both Hatoyama and Aso are bad communicators who are recent descendants of former conservative party Prime Ministers. (We can also add the other two leaders of the LDP since Koizumi to that list - Fukuda's father was Prime Minister and so was Abe's grandfather.) So what's making the DPJ more electable now? They might have had something under Ozawa, but that's been scuppered.
The Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, Konoike Yoshitada, resigned a few days ago due to "health issues". Not having a formal education in politics it took me a while to realise that "health issues" is actually a euphemism for "being caught using government money to pay for a golf trip as part of a poorly-concealed extramarital affair with a young lady". Don't you just hate jargon?
And you know when Aso said to reporters that he shouldn't be held responsible for the appointment of someone who later had to resign for being a cheat and a crook? That was a euphemism he cleared up in yesterday's speech. It's apparently a more poetic way of saying that he's "responsible for appointing all those who ended up resigning" and that "This time is no exception". I guess we should have known that. Silly us. Who knew we were actually supposed to trust politicians less?
So now Konoike is "entirely to blame", and Aso is also "fully responsible". Once Japanese scientists invent an engine powered by Japan's surplus guilt we're all gonna be driving hovercars.
The DPJ fund-raising scandal that had nothing to do with Ozawa himself has still affected his image, and that's what's prompted his decision. It's a shame, because his approval ratings were far higher than Aso, and if the scandal hadn't dragged its sagging, irrelevant ass onto the scene then he'd be almost guaranteed to win the election this year. Now we don't know who we're going to get.
I just can't agree with this Japanese culture of offering resignations as a form of apology. Resigning is a one-hit-deal; if someone's screwed up and they're really sorry then they should be prepared to stay on and work like a dog to make things right again. I guess it's gratifying to see someone who screwed up making a sacrifice as penance, or just suffering, so people are very keen to demand resignations. Hey, I do it all the time. But of course Ozawa hasn't actually done anything wrong.
Anyway, when they announce who's taking over or running for office I'll do a proper post on this, the most tedious and boring scandal-resignation-leadership-race in history.
Fresh from kicking the ass of a bad case of flu, only to have it kick back, and then completing all my university coursework in record and hysteria-inducing time, I now have some kind of stomach bug. It's entrenched in my stomach and it really hates me. This month has started as badly as last month. At least it hasn't dampened my joie de vivre, eh? OH WAIT.
Anyway. Let's see what's happening in Japan.
The papers say something about a Pacific Islands Summit and the leaders of Fiji not being invited, and how that's making some people unhappy. But hey, people are always unhappy. At least they haven't got stomach bugs. Three cases of swine flu have been confirmed. They were from America and had been travelling in Canada, so expect all Americans and Canadians to be put under house arrest for the next ten years.
In politics, Aso Taro wants to host a nuclear disarmament conference in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, to get world leaders talking about possibly planning to do something which might marginally reduce the pace of Armageddon. And Aso is also going to "face-off" against Ozawa in the Diet on Wednesday. Unfortunately the "face-off" is a public debate and not a "Face/Off", with Aso playing the part of John Travolta and Ozawa playing Nicholas Cage. Aso has also inadvertently said something that insults most of the population, again, but this time had the sense to retract it afterwards. Who gives a shit? I certainly can't because all my food is coming out the other way.
In business news, all car companies are going down the drain. Fuck them. It's not like they have stomach bugs or something.
That's the news. Take two pills and pass the bottle to the left.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is visiting Japan on the 11th of May. A lot of people are excited because he's going to discuss the sovereignty of the islands off Hokkaido, that's Kunashiri, Etorofu, Shikotan and Habomai, which Japan and Russia have been fighting over for decades. The Japanese call them the "Northern Territories" and the Russians call them the "Southern Kurils".
Personally, I'm excited because this visit will bring us one step closer to the Legend Of Koizumi. All we need to get now are the two Bushes and Kim Jong-Il. And how hard can that be?
On the 6th of August 1945, Yamaguchi Tsutomu was on a business trip to Hiroshima. That day he sustained serious burns during the atomic blast, and the next day he was evacuated back home. Evacuated back to Nagasaki. On the 9th of August 1945, Yamaguchi Tsutomu saw his home city nuked.
In some ways he's a very unlucky man, having been present at the only two times in history that atomic bombs were used against another country. But in a way he's incredibly lucky. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, but Yamaguchi survived them both. He also survived the subsequent two decades when a large proportion of the bomb survivors died of cancer or leukaemia from the radiation, and this despite having been exposed to large amounts when he was searching for his relatives in Ground Zero.
This week Yamaguchi officially had his ID updated to show that he survived two atomic bombs. "My double radiation exposure is now an official government record. It can tell the younger generation the horrifying history of the atomic bombings even after I die." So. If you think you're having a bad week, at least you haven't been nuked twice. And if Yamaguchi can find a positive side to his experience then you can too.
This would never have happened if The Great Sasuke was Governor.
The Governor of Iwate, the prefecture that failed to re-elect former wrestler and deranged showman The Great Sasuke to their Assembly in 2006, had to literally get on his knees and beg that same Assembly to reverse their revisions to his budget last week.
Governor Tasso Takuya planned for Iwate to purchase buses that could transport patients to prefectures that don't have doctor shortages, but the Assembly cut the buses from the budget. Now, I'm not saying that Iwate prefecture definitely hate sick people, but they haven't released any statements saying they don't hate sick people, have they? Just something to think about.
It's like every week is the worst week of Aso Taro's life. All news reported yesterday has been, without exception, utterly horrific. As Gwen Stefani would say, "This shit is bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S!" So let's look as some of the stories!
One story (that even the BBC was covering) is the shrinking of Japan's GDP - it's contracted by 3.3%, annualized at 12.7%, in the fourth quarter. Now, if you're like me then you won't have any idea what that means. Luckily, I've done the research for you and the upshot is: the economy really sucks. Apparently this is the largest GDP contraction since the "1974 Oil Shock", and that has the word 'shock' in it so it must have been pretty bad. And this is almost as bad as that. Which actually still doesn't tell you how bad this is... Hmmm. Well it doesn't even matter! Because as long as they've got a diligent and incisive Finance Minister they've got nothing to worry ab- oh wait.
You can kind of understand why he might be drunk - not only is he faced with these huge, glaring negative figures, he also has to understand what they mean and then pretend to the public that he has some idea of how to fix things. And also he's an alcoholic. Still, he'd have done far less damage to his and the cabinet's reputation if he'd called in sick or something rather than going ahead with the press conference.
Finally, an NTV survey has shown that Aso's approval rating has fallen yet again! It's a veritable approval-rating-limbo he's dancing over there - he's now bending backwards to the vertebrae-crunching tune of 9.7%. Presumably to piss-off the remaining fraction of the country who isn't sick to the teeth of him already he'd have to literally take a shit on the national flag. But don't think he won't do it. I have total faith. Dream the impossible dream, Aso.
Aso's "riding-high-on-a-tenth-of-the-electorate" face
I'm not really a big fan of manga, just like I'm not a big fan of anime. Of course, there's some manga and some anime that I love, but people who watch every new release, or who can even get excited by the new releases, kind of baffle me. The vast majority of manga and anime are complete trash, just like the majority of books written in the world are worth less than the paper soiled in the printing process, just like the majority of music released is mind-crushingly boring, just like most films made are spirit-breakingly stupid. So it's not that I don't like manga or anime, it's just that if you look at the titles released every month, you don't need to have read or seen them to know they're almost definitely crap.
Mudazumo Naki Kaikaku: The Legend Of Koizumi is different though. I cannot wait for this to come out in England. It looks like the most epic manga ever. I literally can't wait to get my hands on it.
The premise is this: various world-leaders battle each other in games of Super Mahjong to determine the fate of their countries. Oh yes. The world leaders involved are:
Koizumi Junichiro
Aso Taro
George W. Bush
George Bush Snr.
Kim Jong-Il
Vladimir Putin
The manga describes itself as "real, legendary, hardcore action". That's right: not just action. Hardcore action. Legendary, hardcore action. Real, legendary, hardcore action. Hold on, how can something be both 'real' and 'legendary'? It doesn't matter! If anything can, The Legend Of Koizumi can.
Apparently the story continues in Kindai Mahjong Original, where the Pope enters the battle! The freaking POPE! It simply doesn't get better than that.
I've just been asked whether I think Aso Taro is going to call an election to secure a mandate any time soon. I'm by no means an expert on these things, but the answer is 'absolutely not'.
Aso's approval rating is at 19% - less than half what is was four months ago. In September it looked like he could do no wrong. Apparently he then decided that he should therefore take this opportunity to do lots and lots of wrong, and by the sheer density of mistakes people started noticing. Unemployment has hit 4.4%, which, as Shisaku points out, is disastrous. And he's also getting a spanking in the Diet over his economic stimulus package. If he calls an election now he has no chance of winning.
What I think he'll do (and this is speaking from an ill-informed and politically ignorant perspective) is wait for something to happen. Something he can take credit for. If the economic slow-down slows down, he can try to take credit for that; if Korea does something about the abductee non-issue that the Japanese populace are so obsessed about, he can pretend he had some hand in it. Aso's chances can't really get any worse than they would be if there was an election now, so there's absolutely nothing to lose by waiting.
So if anyone wants to know what I think about that, there you go. But seriously, don't quote me on any of this shit.
On Tuesday, Barack Obama was sworn in as the latest King of America (that's what he actually is, don't believe the lies). And Japan loves Obama. I'm not entirely sure why, but they've taken him to heart more than most public figures. As with all things it probably has something to do with the media portrayal - if the American media are going to continually show him as a cross between Martin Luther King, Elvis and Jesus, then people are going to start believing it.
He's been particularly taken to heart by the people of Obama-shi in Fukui. (Incidentally, there are also two Obama Castles and an Obama Onsen in Japan.) The Obama-shi residents have had some coverage in the international media, and quite a lot back home, mainly for their shameless milking of the fact that the name of their city is coincidentally the name of the new US President. They knew about him when he was still a Senator though, and the Mayor sent him gifts - a letter of introduction, a set of chopsticks, and a home-made DVD about the city. Obama then sent a letter back thanking them. That's how excited they were when he was a Senator, so now that he's the President they've pretty much gone batshit insane.
Obviously they produced novelty Obama Sweets - everything seems to get a line of novelty confectionery these days. But the Mayor has also declared that the 4th of November, the day Obama was elected, will be an annual holiday for the town. And he's also insisted on commissioning a statue of the President that he intends to erect at the entrance to the Town Hall. On the actual Inauguration Day, they partied throughout the day and night. They had hula-girls dancing at the local temple, fireworks, and no doubt anything available to buy would have had "OBAMA '09!" stamped on it.
The second of these t-shirts isn't just about Obama, it reads "Obama and Ozawa are the new leaders", referring to Ozawa Ichiro, the leader of the DPJ and the person who stands to replace Aso as Prime Minister this year. A bit political for an Obama t-shirt, right?
The rest of Japan haven't been slacking off on merchandising either. Ogawa Studios are based in Saitama, and they specialise in hand-made rubber masks of politicians. Rather a limited market for those, right? Your customers are either going to be bank-robbers who want to get rich quick and simultaneously hilariously satirise the Lower House of the Diet, or they're going to be junior politicians who want to cause vaudevillian havoc at the next interplenary session. Well not any more! They sold 2,500 Obama masks since December, and are now having to work round the clock churning out 300 masks a day to meet the demand.
A website called Obamicon allow you to use your own images to create posters like the iconic Obama poster used in the election campaign. (I know this doesn't look Japan-related, but just wait, I'm going to link it in, just wait it'll be awesome.) Some of the funnier ones people have uploaded include:
Japanator have uploaded some anime-themed pictures too, as is their particular wont. (Boom! There you go, I told you I'd link Japan in! See? See?! Yeh.) The best two they've done so far are these:
Obama's speeches are being used as learning-aids for school students. In two months The Speeches Of Barack Obama have sold 400,000 copies. It's a really good idea - I'm sure speeches must be really useful for learning a language. The book is on sale at Amazon.jp for £6 (direct link here), and it comes with a CD of all the speeches included, so students can follow along with Obama. It sounds like a great deal for Obama fans even if they're not students.
Nocchi, the hero of a man who dressed up as Obama and flew to America to try and randomly accost him, went to Obama-shi recently and was given a sample tour, a kind of what-you-might-expect-if-you-were-actually-the-President tour. It was shown on TV, and I've posted it below. The clip ends with Nocchi meeting the Mayor, and pledging to do his bit to welcome the real Obama if/when he comes to Japan. Like everything Nocchi does, it's kind of awesome.
There have also been quite a few groups of people speaking out in Japan, hoping that Obama will do something to change their lives. At the end of last year students in Hiroshima asked him to visit and show his support for nuclear disarmament. There hasn't been a US Presidential visit there since before World War 2, so it would be a significant gesture. The letters were backed up by bomb-survivors and school students in the following weeks.
The people of Okinawa have called for Obama to visit them too, and experience the life of those living next to an army base. They cite such problems as the noise of jet fighters taking off throughout the day and night, and grenades going off. Perhaps a stronger complaint would be against the US servicemen who every few months rape a random under-age local Japanese girl and when arrested are merely sent back to America with a dishonourable discharge and no further punishment, despite having ruined someone's life, because they're not subject to actual criminal courts but to the military courts who couldn't care less about crimes that occur half the world away, even if they did ruin someone's life. But if those complaints were voiced (and I'm fairly sure they must have been - there are quite a few ruined lives in Okinawa thanks to the US Forces), the Associated Press sure didn't report them.
I didn't actually want to conclude on a sour note, but it seems to have turned out that way. Hmmm. Well, normal service will resume tomorrow, probably.
Aso's done it again. He's added to the now novel-length list of things he shouldn't have done but did anyway. The newest addenda include:
Thinking that 'the world religions can learn from Japanese work ethic'.
Then not dismissing that thought out of hand.
Then deciding to voice that thought.
Then not changing his mind about voicing it.
Then actually voicing it.
Then not immediately retracting it.
This happened at a press conference on Thursday, just two days after he'd basically laughed off calls for his resignation. Granted the calls for his resignation were due to a perceived inability to handle the economic crisis that he was voted into a mere three months ago, but my point is this is no time for him to feed his addiction to stunned silence.
Aso's "telling-it-like-it-is face"
The AFP reports that,
"Our values in Japan regard hard work as important," Aso said during a discussion on the global economic crisis.
"To work is good. It's completely different thinking from the Old Testament," Aso said.
Which does sound a bit iffy, right? But it sounds less iffy if you compare it to what the Nikkei Shimbun reported of a speech of his in December:
"In the Old Testament, God gave Adam punishment: labour. The Old Testament, Christianity, Islam - if you add them up, what percentage of the world is that? About 70% of religions hold a philosophy that work is a punishment."
He then referred to Japan's oldest known book, the Kojiki, which features Japan's creation myths. In the text, an important sun goddess saw many other deities working.
Still slightly iffy though. And probably not something that he should just say. And you'll also notice that he didn't mention about the Kojiki stories in which Ame-no-Uzume dances naked in front of all the other gods to lure out Amaterasu, or how the Emperor Jimmu conquered Japan with the help of a three-legged bird called Yatagarasu. Surely the world religions could learn just as much from those stories.
The soundtrack of Battle Royale. The imagery of Evangelion. Spliced with the legendary figure of Aso Taro.
Holy Fukuda, it just doesn't get better than this.
If you're an Evangelion fan then I'd very strongly recommend watching the whole thing, but if you are especially impatient then the compulsory viewing is from 2.00 to 2.45. But seriously, watch the whole thing.
Giorgio has blogged about North Korea's decision to pointedly not recognise Japan at the International Nuke-Talks (as they're officially known) held in Beijing, in the geo-political equivalent of putting your hands over your ears and singing "la la la I can't hear you". And Reuters has run the story too, so we know he's not making it up.
This act of drama-student level petulance has given us the clear-cut Quote Of The Week! The North Korean Foreign Ministry's statement said:
We will neither treat Japan as a party to the talks nor deal with it even if it impudently appears in the conference room, lost to shame
Oh look, Aso's cabinet is sinking faster than a granite sand-castle, who could have forseen that? (Answer: almost anyone.) In the last month, his cabinet's approval rating has halved, falling from 40.5% to 20.9%, and his disapproval rate has increased by half, from 42.2% to 61.3%.
By contrast, the DPJ's support in the next election now outweighs the LDP's, 40% (a ten point increase) to 24% (an eight point drop). As for the role of Prime Minister, Ozawa's support is now at 36% (a fourteen point increase) to Aso's 29% (a twenty-one point drop). So, not only are the public losing faith in Aso, but they're actually warming to Ozawa. Incredibly. All these figures are from the Yomiuri poll, but the Asahi poll shows similar figures.
Obviously this is all very bad news for the LDP. I mean, obviously. I wrote before about how the approval rating spike with the change of leadership would wear off, but it's only taken around two months. It all seems to be down to Aso's decision to not call a general election, and his economic shenanigans, like postponing the submission of a second extra budget (a decision which got a 55.7% disapproval rating). Silly, silly Aso.
Aso's "why does everyone hate me? face"
So where to now? Well apparently some LDP politicans are thinking of rebellion. But it looks like that's not going to happen before a general election. We'll have to wait for a probable January election, and if the LDP manage to scrape through that then the party will most likely grudgingly hold together, complaining all the while. If the DPJ scrape a win, however, it might be curtains for the LDP.
Apparently, a few days ago Aso told Obuchi Yuko point blank to her face "you were included in this cabinet for electoral reasons".
Everyone knew that she was given her position as a gesture, nothing more, already. For a start, she was the youngest person appointed to a cabinet position post-war, becoming Minister of State in Charge of the Declining Birth Rate at the age of 34. She's very popular, not only because she's young and female, but because of her previous newscasting career, and because her father, Keizo, was prime minister for two years.
Also, her position is a bit of a joke. Minister in Charge of Declining Birth Rate? You'll probably be aware that Japan has a huge problem with their aging population. Their birth rate is one of the lowest out of all developed nations - 7.8 per 1000, compared to the UK's 10.6, or the US with 14.2. Plus they have the longest-living population in the world, with the male life expectancy at 79 and female at 85. And that's not the average lifespan, it's the life expectancy. If you don't live at least that long then you've failed.
So in ten years time about 30% of the population will have retired, and the pension-tension will destroy the country. That's ostensibly why Obuchi was appointed to this new cabinet position. Interestingly, she herself only has one child. Pretty weak, right? She's going to have to really start churning them out if she wants to make any difference.
My point is, it's just spiteful for Aso to tell her that to her face. Maybe he hadn't made his quota for pissing people off, or maybe he was just feeling particularly bastardous. Either way, I can't help but wonder whether such a person is really fit to be Prime Minister.
Aso literally can't help insulting everyone. It's looking increasingly like he's the Japanese Prince Phillip, except he was elected by a staggering majority, and his 'gaffes' aren't single-sentence slips of the tongue so much as 30-minute speeches in front of the entirety of the media.
He's only just recently apologised for his latest pearl of wisdom, a week after he rammed it down Japan's throat. On the 20th of November he was in a meeting with ministers to talk about economic policy, and whilst he was "trying to comment on the need for preventative medicine and healthy lifestyles", he started talking about the elderly and how it is their own fault they get ill because they don't exercise enough.
They're hobbling around and constantly going to the doctor. I am paying taxes. Why should I pay money for those who lazily eat and drink and do nothing?
Why indeed.
Aso's "apologetic face"
What's more disturbing is the response to this. Obviously people like Hatoyama, Secretary General of the DPJ have been sniping him in newspapers with remarks like, "I can't help but wonder whether such a person is really fit to be Prime Minister". Hey, just tell it to us straight, Hatoyama! Don't sit on the fence. But get this: Kawamura, Chief Cabinet Secretary, has "played down Aso's latest remark", according to the Associated Press. Not quite. What he actually said was "There are likely to be more such remarks. That is part of his charm."
In case you didn't catch that, he said "There are likely to be more such remarks. That is part of his charm."
...is a British writer and stand-up comedian. He has performed in Tokyo, London and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to wildly varying receptions. This blog is one of the places where he'll pretend to know what's going on in the world.
