Our Man in Abiko's Blog, page 16
December 15, 2012
TERMINAL ONE -- Japan Election Diary: Day 30
The front seat passenger had lost her voice. She is a Japanese teacher. In London she wears kimono. Today, she was in a trouser suit. "I feel more comfortable living in England. I will never leave," she'd told me the night before. I'd remarked to her how ironic that one who feels more comfortable abroad makes a living by selling her home culture. She didn't see the irony.
This morning, I realised I'd been talking about myself. I made a few stabs at conversation, but it was clear this would be a silent trip to Narita Airport, an hour away through the country lanes and back streets of Inzai that the pitch-perfect polite lady in my satellite navigation saw fit to direct me. But at least she was talking to me.
I occupied myself with focusing on the road ahead as the early morning mists rose from the asphalt disguising the lay of the land that my electric lady pointed out to me. I hadn't even realised it had rained the night before, but then we'd closed the storm shutters to keep the warmth and party noise to ourselves.
Now we headed east into the rising sun. Its light dazzled us. A car in front disappeared into the light. I could only keep on the left side of the road by focusing on the silhouettes of oncoming cars that shot past me. I squinted and pulled the sun visor down.
The teacher lifted her hand to do the same but there was no visor.
"Sorry, my daughter ripped it off in a temper tantrum when she was five or six."
"That's OK. Put the radio on. To something you like," she whispered.
I pressed the preset for Eagle 810, the station for US troops in Japan. They play good rock music sometimes, a fair trade for 60 years of occupation, I thought. It's Sunday, maybe Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion would be on...
"... the coroner reports the ages of the 20 children gunned down in Connecticut were all five and six..."
The ever-present faces of Japanese politicians on roadside posters looked different now. They were still smiling, still pumping fists, posing guts and staring longingly at the sky, but they had different faces from the ones I had seen minutes before in Abiko. This was Inzai. Or Narita. Or Connecticut?
The voice on the radio changed. He was talking about the Seventh Fleet whose job is to protect freedom all the way from Japan to the Indian Ocean. He was telling us about Operation Liberty, a curfew on sailors from drinking off-base. He didn't mention the latest rape and drunken brawl that had necessitated this operation.
I checked the rearview mirror. The 17-year-old girl was looking out the window, the eleven-year-old was asleep. I was glad she was able to rest. Both girls had lost relatives in the tsunami, but the 11-year-old had lost her mother and father, her grandparents and her little brother. Everyone. We wanted to get them away from Japan and tragedies for a week at least, show them that there is a world of opportunity for them.
On the way back from the airport, Jimi Hendrix was jamming. Then he was picking out The Star Spangled Banner between the feedback. The governor of Connecticut came on the radio and said he was shocked. He said after a tragedy was not the time to be thinking of causes and explanations, it was a time to bury the dead and hug loved ones. He said you couldn't explain tragedies like this. And suggested it was something to do with God.
I disagree. Tragedies are all too easy to explain. Finding solutions is the hard part, but then that's why we have politicians; to offer solutions. Not condolences.
The first voters were making their way back from the polls as I turned off the engine, at home in Abiko.
Click here to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
December 14, 2012
TAKE BACK JAPAN -- Japan Election Diary 2012: Day 29
Santa Claus doesn't think much of the Liberal Democratic Party's slogan.
"Take back Japan assumes it was theirs in the first place. A little presumptuous, don't you think?"If you're a foreign man of a certain age and girth you can presume that you will be asked to be Santa at this time of year.
"I want to know where you take Japan back to? If it's a shop can we get a refund?"
"You should read the story at the bottom of today's Japan Times about how old people hold the keys to the election," Santa said.
"In a nation of old people, that's not a very bold statement."
"Yes, but they have certain concerns that others don't."
"Like getting the maximum pensions with the least tax? Maybe. But is it possible that old folks might just as easily vote with their grandchildren's future in mind, rather than their own?"
"Maybe."
But Santa didn't sound convinced.
***
I had naively set out on this diary with the hope of reaching some greater understanding of what this election means from my vantage point, but with just one more day to go to polling day, armed only with a twitter stream and a newspaper subscription, I'm no closer to a satisfactory answer. Maybe it was just a stupid question, or my arsenal is lacking in firepower.
This being a diary and all, it is beyond my remit to offer meaning beyond reportage. Meaning is supposed to come later when we have time to let the dust settle from the result. But I don't know the result, and even if I did it shouldn't have any bearing on what went before. By all accounts the LDP looks all set to take back Japan with an outright majority and to decimate the current government. Maybe that's a sign of a healthy two-party democracy or if the DPJ fails to return to power in the election after next, maybe that means post-war Japan has reverted to its default state of one-party rule. Maybe. With half the electorate undecided, we can invent whatever meaning we like.
One thing that's becoming evident to me is the good guys and bad guys, or the left and right fit of policies is pretty meaningless. Perhaps those labels always were. There was a time when US Republicans championed black rights and the Democrats were the party of cotton, after all. For Japan, when you have a populist like Hashimoto being anti-nuclear and pro-global free trade, and an establishment business candidate like Abe promising more public works and an end to free trade talks, policies add up to little more than ideology-free whims or gambles for votes.
Maybe some good comes of all this politicking, but that's a sort of desirable by-product from a natural process, like yeast eating through sugar and crapping out the alcohol and CO2. It just does it's thing, we decide what benefit, if any it serves. It makes our bread or ferments our beer. But it would happily do that without us.
***
As you can maybe tell, I'm at the edge of my knowledge, so I should step back from the brink. Seems to me lots of guff has been written about the failure of politics or the disillusionment of the electorate like that's a new phenomenon. Happens every time you don't get what you want from Santa.
But I have one more day to get it right. Until tomorrow.
Click here to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
December 13, 2012
ROUNDTABLE DIPLOMACY -- Japan 2012 election diary: Day 28
Click here to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
Japan scrambled four F-15 fighters this morning after a Chinese civilian plane was spotted flying over the Senkaku Islands off the coast of China. These are the rocks that Beijing, Tokyo, Taipei and of course prime ministerial candidate Shintaro Ishihara claim as their own.
By the time the jets got there, the Chinese plane was nowhere to be seen, but the stylised diplomatic drama was over, having stuck to conventions to make its points. China was testing the waters, or sniffing the air, and Japan responded with a show of force. The US, which made the McDonnell-Douglas F-15 Eagle, said it was nothing to do with them.
It reminded me of one day a dozen years ago when my mother was still alive...
***
The round dining table had seen better days. It was a little chipped and worse, it was looking out of style, a remnant from an earlier age. I had been weaned from my mother's milk to eating solids off its once smooth surface. Later, I'd spread my books and notes over it to struggle through summer papers during university days. But on this day, it seemed smaller. I could barely fit my knees beneath it.
I was sitting next to my new wife. My mother was fetching wine glasses from the kitchen, her partner was turning down Roxy Music blasting "Love is the drug" from the living room. I held my wife's hand and we both shared a private smile.
My mother returned to the front room and counted out the cut roast potatoes (four pieces each) and her partner carved the chicken. I sipped the chilled white wine. Zinfandel. The first time I'd ever tasted it. I didn't pay attention as I put the glass down and it slipped off the coaster spilling a little on the tablecloth that my mother had spread that day in honour of our visit.
"Oops!"
"Oh, you're so clumsy! You're always doing that," my wife said.
"Heh, heh," I smiled and dabbed at the spill with my napkin.
Without a word, my mother got up from the table and disappeared upstairs. She came back and plonked something on the table next to the sprouts.
"Look at this."
It was a 1:72 model of Vickers Armstrong Wellington medium bomber flown by the RAF during the war for night bombing raids over Germany.
"My son made that when he was a child. A child. Tell me now that my son is clumsy. A clumsy person couldn't make that."
My wife sat in a heavy silence. All pretence of jollity gone. It was what you might call a pregnant pause, but this was years before we had any kids.
My wife was aware that she had made a terrible diplomatic blunder, but couldn't for the life of her think what it was. I shrugged apologetically to her but said nothing to my mother, caught as I was between a rock and a hard place.
I wanted to scream, "This has nothing to do with me!" But of course it had everything to do with me. It was about authority over me. My mother's was waning and my wife's was growing.
***
I hadn't the heart to tell my mother that actually I'd made the model as a young teen, as a farewell to childhood, one last attempt to make a decent Airfix, with all the parts painted before you glue it together, like you are supposed to do, not the plastic cement hell that squadrons of Spitfires, Meteors, Hurricanes and Lancaster bombers had been consigned to when I'd been a pre-teen, too eager to hurry the production line to assemble an air force for the bedroom than to follow the instructions.
And the modest deficiencies of the RAF planes were nothing to my USAF B-29 Superfortress whose Atomic bomb doors were so plastered with plastic cement that they'd turned to liquid before sealing shut, never to be pried open in anger again.
***
"I leant a valuable lesson from your mother that day, you know."
"Watch where you put your wine glass?"
"That was your lesson. No, in Japan you have to put yourself down. You don't boast about your husband, your kid or your family to others, you put them down. But in the West that won't work. You have to stick up for your children. You have to show pride in them.
"Are you going to start singing You Raise Me Up again?"
"No. Would you listen to me? You don't put yourself or your own people down."
"So?"
"So we were both doing the right thing, your mother and I."
Go to Day 29
Japan scrambled four F-15 fighters this morning after a Chinese civilian plane was spotted flying over the Senkaku Islands off the coast of China. These are the rocks that Beijing, Tokyo, Taipei and of course prime ministerial candidate Shintaro Ishihara claim as their own.
By the time the jets got there, the Chinese plane was nowhere to be seen, but the stylised diplomatic drama was over, having stuck to conventions to make its points. China was testing the waters, or sniffing the air, and Japan responded with a show of force. The US, which made the McDonnell-Douglas F-15 Eagle, said it was nothing to do with them.
It reminded me of one day a dozen years ago when my mother was still alive...
***
The round dining table had seen better days. It was a little chipped and worse, it was looking out of style, a remnant from an earlier age. I had been weaned from my mother's milk to eating solids off its once smooth surface. Later, I'd spread my books and notes over it to struggle through summer papers during university days. But on this day, it seemed smaller. I could barely fit my knees beneath it.
I was sitting next to my new wife. My mother was fetching wine glasses from the kitchen, her partner was turning down Roxy Music blasting "Love is the drug" from the living room. I held my wife's hand and we both shared a private smile.
My mother returned to the front room and counted out the cut roast potatoes (four pieces each) and her partner carved the chicken. I sipped the chilled white wine. Zinfandel. The first time I'd ever tasted it. I didn't pay attention as I put the glass down and it slipped off the coaster spilling a little on the tablecloth that my mother had spread that day in honour of our visit.
"Oops!"
"Oh, you're so clumsy! You're always doing that," my wife said.
"Heh, heh," I smiled and dabbed at the spill with my napkin.
Without a word, my mother got up from the table and disappeared upstairs. She came back and plonked something on the table next to the sprouts.
"Look at this."
It was a 1:72 model of Vickers Armstrong Wellington medium bomber flown by the RAF during the war for night bombing raids over Germany.
"My son made that when he was a child. A child. Tell me now that my son is clumsy. A clumsy person couldn't make that."
My wife sat in a heavy silence. All pretence of jollity gone. It was what you might call a pregnant pause, but this was years before we had any kids.
My wife was aware that she had made a terrible diplomatic blunder, but couldn't for the life of her think what it was. I shrugged apologetically to her but said nothing to my mother, caught as I was between a rock and a hard place.
I wanted to scream, "This has nothing to do with me!" But of course it had everything to do with me. It was about authority over me. My mother's was waning and my wife's was growing.
***
I hadn't the heart to tell my mother that actually I'd made the model as a young teen, as a farewell to childhood, one last attempt to make a decent Airfix, with all the parts painted before you glue it together, like you are supposed to do, not the plastic cement hell that squadrons of Spitfires, Meteors, Hurricanes and Lancaster bombers had been consigned to when I'd been a pre-teen, too eager to hurry the production line to assemble an air force for the bedroom than to follow the instructions.
And the modest deficiencies of the RAF planes were nothing to my USAF B-29 Superfortress whose Atomic bomb doors were so plastered with plastic cement that they'd turned to liquid before sealing shut, never to be pried open in anger again.
***
"I leant a valuable lesson from your mother that day, you know."
"Watch where you put your wine glass?"
"That was your lesson. No, in Japan you have to put yourself down. You don't boast about your husband, your kid or your family to others, you put them down. But in the West that won't work. You have to stick up for your children. You have to show pride in them.
"Are you going to start singing You Raise Me Up again?"
"No. Would you listen to me? You don't put yourself or your own people down."
"So?"
"So we were both doing the right thing, your mother and I."
Go to Day 29
December 12, 2012
GUTS POSE -- Japan Election Diary 2012: DAY 27
Another day, another nuclear scare in Abiko. I didn't know until after tucking in to tan-tan spicy ramen at lunch that the North Koreans had fired off a rocket that morning. I breathlessly (with a mouthful of noodles) went though my Twitter feed on my phone and learnt that our problem neighbours had launched a rocket (if you believe it has civilian purposes) or missile (if it's military) and it apparently flew over Japanese airspace in Okinawa on the way to its conquest of space.
The Japanese Defence Minister reckoned our neighbours hadn't put a satellite in orbit, the American NORAD folks said they had. Whatever the truth of the matter, I wouldn't advise cancelling cable for it anytime soon. Then my fried rice came and I lost track of the missile on Twitter. I perhaps shouldn't be so dismissive of the development that will no doubt be the splash in the Yomiuri Shimbun and my Japan Times tomorrow, not to mention the subject of some predictable op-eds in a few days arguing for some implausible solution while Japan plays helpless and the United States government claims the moral high ground. Their rockets are missiles and our missiles are rockets, remember? Anyway, I wanted to know: how would it affect the election? Would Abe and Ishihara's assertive policies play better to the electorate given the North Koreans' provocative act? Did this set meal come with fried rice and gyoza dumplings or just fried rice?
I remember my mother-in-law running to the window to see if she could glimpse the missile flying over the Lawson's convenience store after watching a TV news report about one of Kim Jong Il's rockets readying on the launch pad. That was some time back before the earthquake, but these days, given the choice of North Korean storyline of evil geniuses bent on world domination or bumbling despots who can't even feed or clothe their own people, I'm tempted to go with the latter. Besides, you don't have to be much of a betting man to know which is more likely: one of their missiles actually hitting Tokyo, or one of our nuke plants melting down. We know how that story ends.
Forget the fireworks. What about something real?
***
Our Man in Abiko: In your activities as head honcho of It's Not Just Mud , do you have much to do with politicians?
Jamie El Banna: As little as possible. I've met a few mayors and people from city hall etc, but that's about it. And even that is too much for my liking. There's just no real benefit for me to talk to or try and ask for help from such people, and I'm not fond of fruitless efforts, so why bother? I like people of action, and there're precious few politicians/people in authority who fit that bill. The mayor of Ofunato is nice though. The Ishinomaki mayor is pretty useless.
OMIA: That's odd. We get the image that these local pols are heroically battling against the odds to help their communities. This isn't the reality? Haven't any national pols visited Ishinomaki to survey damage etc?
JEB: Battling against the odds? What's that mean? You mean battling against the reality of life post disaster? Nothing heroic about that, everyone is having to do that. The reality is that there are only a handful of local politicians who have general approval from their respective communities. The usual election posters are up, but it's even more nauseating than usual. Imagine middle-aged men striking a fighting pose, with a messages akin to "I will lead us to the new tomorrow". Puke.
National politicians? I'm sure plenty have been to various areas for photo ops. Oh sorry, to "survey".
OMIA: In what ways are people still suffering? Is there any sense that the authorities will have things under control, or are they part of the problem?
JEB: Well for most people the future is a scary thing. People still feel like they don't know what's going on, or how long they will be in temporary housing for. Most of the suffering is emotional. While things are in control, they are, at the same time, not so much. That uncertain future makes things feel like no-one knows what's going on.
***
From Wikipedia:
The fist pump is a celebratory gesture in which a fist is raised before the torso and subsequently drawn down and nearer to the body in a vigorous, swift motion. The fist pump is sometimes carried out in parts of the Western Hemisphere, Europe, and Japan (where it is known as guts pose) to denote enthusiasm, exuberance, or success and may be accompanied by a similarly energetic exclamation or vociferation. The gesture may be executed once or in a rapid series.
Click here to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
December 11, 2012
KILLING TIME -- Japanese Election Diary 2012: Day 26
At this time of year the Japanese go a little crazy. The already obsessive (by Our Man's standards) cleaning routines go into overdrive and every surface inside and out of the house, every square centimetre of bug screen has to be doused in detergent, bleach or sandblasted to within a millimetre of its internal integrity. It's no doubt tied in to ancient rituals of purity and cleanliness.
In Our Man's household, this means it's time for nude bathroom cleaning.
"Do I have to do it in the nude?"
"It's the best way. Remember my favourite cat T-shirt?"
"Errr..."
"You don't because I haven't worn it for a while because the last time I cleaned the bathroom the mold-killer spray ruined it."
"Won't the spray ruin me, if I'm in the nude?"
"Don't be silly."
"I'm the one being silly?"
"The secret is to have a hot shower first, then you won't be cold when you open the bathroom window and door. And you won't ruin your clothing if you are naked."
"But..."
"You can wear a flu mask if it makes you feel better."
I wonder if Abe cleans the mold out of his bathroom in the nude? Does he wear a mask?
Granted, it's not a pleasant image, but after an hour of spraying and scraping mold in the nude before work this morning, the mold-killer vapours were getting to me. From this, I concluded that I must be made up of largely the same stuff as mold, and the same must surely be true of Japan's politicians.Between taking the vapours and warming my feet in the shower stream, I had another thought. (This, by the way, is not unusual as I do all my best thinking in the shower. Whether it's the blast of hot water or the sterile environment free of distractions, I have no idea, but there you are, it works for me.) I thought more about the press writing all about the foreign policy differences of the candidates and how Abe is a hawk and, I suppose, Ishihara is a buzzard, it kind of made sense: Keep everyone looking out the window, worrying about what the neighbours are up to and maybe no-one will notice the mold in the bathroom. If voters were given a chance to reflect on the mess 50 years of Liberal Democratic Party politics had left, the legacy of corruption that had allowed Fukushima to happen, they'd perhaps give the tenants of the Lower House a bit more time to clean up. But of course in Japan, all housecleaning has to be completed before the end of the year.
***
Michael Cucek has correlated some interesting numbers on the last opinion polls before the only ones that count in four days, and Our Man has taken the liberty to cut and paste the ones that made sense to him:
Democratic Party of Japan 14%
Liberal Democratic Party 22%
Nippon Ishin no kai 8%
Your Party 2%
Japanese Communist Party 4%
New Komeito 5%
Tomorrow Party 2%
Other parties 3%
Don't know/don't care 40%
"What is the issue you think most important?" from the latest NHK poll (December 7-9):
Economic measures 33%
Social welfare and pension reform 22%
Energy policy (including nuclear) 11%
Administrative reform 9%
Recovery from the Tohoku earthquake/tsunami 8%
Foreign policy 6%
Ordinarily Our Man doesn't believe in opinion polls, but if he suspends his instinctive distrust of experts' numbers, he can draw the following conclusions: The DPJ is unpopular, but so is everybody else. Sabre rattling with China, South Korea and even North Korea is always going to be on the lunatic fringes. Folk want to get their own house in order.
Conclusion? Japanese aren't nearly as crazy as their leaders.
***
"I've decided who I'm going to vote for."
"Well done, you've achieved the impossible."
"I just eliminated the people in order of who I can't vote for."
"OK, but that might not leave anybody. So who can't you vote for?"
"The Communists, I mean, that's just silly these days. And the Minna party. I can't vote for someone who has only been a professional bowler."
"What about the Mirai Tomorrow People, er Himei -- The Princess?"
"I don't know anything about them. I saw her name in hiragana and thought it was "scream" like that painting.
"Abe?"
"I don't understand how anyone can vote for the LDP. I mean, has everyone forgotten how they stopped the government from doing anything about Fukushima?"
"Guess so."
"I like Noda. He's not the son of a politician and he's from Chiba. He picked up the government and kept everything going when no-one else would."
"So you're voting DPJ?"
"They are anti-nuclear?"
"Pretty much."
"Then probably. I think I need to do some research on the internet on the Abiko candidates."
"Good decision, dear."
Click here to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
December 10, 2012
STRANGE FRUIT Japan Election 2012 Diary: Day 25
Click here to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
Ode to (a post-Fukushima) Autumn
Season of misinformation and mellow fruitlessness!
Close bosom-friend of the radioactive sum;
Conspiring with TEPCO's record to play on our fears
With Geiger counters round the thatch eaves run;
To bend with incompetence and doubt,
And fill all statements with suspicion to the core;
To swell the profit margin and plump the regulators
With sweet payoffs, to set budding more plants,
And still more, later poison for the generations
Until they think radioactive ash will never cease
For Fukushima fear has o'er-brimmed our clammy selves.
Putting up the outdoor Christmas lights was a wrench this year. It's not that I have so many, although every year we would buy one more string of lights so that come December the garden was a little brighter than the year before.
That was until 2011. With Fukushima so fresh in our memories it was an easy decision to make. How could we justify the wanton burning up of electricity on such frivolity when the nation had only just got through summer by rationing electricity to factories and encouraging all to avoid the instinctive urge to flip the switch on the air conditioner at the first beads of summer sweat? Sure, it was a silly argument practically speaking -- just as the starving of Ethiopia couldn't derive any benefit from my children finishing everything on their plate, how could the victims of the tsunami and Fukushima meltdown have their suffering eased by me not clambering around the persimmon tree with a stepladder? They couldn't, but there was a principle at stake: How could we flaunt it, while so many survivors had nothing? We couldn't, so the lights stayed in their cardboard box behind the sliding doors of the dusty top compartment of the futon cupboard.
That was until today.
"Are you putting the Christmas lights out this year or what?"
"I don't know if we should."
"Well, if you don't hurry up, Christmas will be over, so you should do it today."
"Yeah, but Fukushima and all..." I let my voice trail off, as if I knew of a wisdom better left unsaid.
"Well, the kids would like it."
Practically speaking, the bunker's Christmas lights can't burn up more Siberian liquid gas than the iPhones we recharge a couple of times a day, so where's the harm? OK, two wrongs don't make a right but why was I letting it bother me so? Ultimately, Our Woman was right. The joy the kids would get from the pretty lights outweighed any moral butterflies I was giving myself. Besides, I told myself, we'd limit the number of hours the lights were on and hey, ultimately the only moral thing to do was to do nothing at all, and what's the point in that? I don't know how valid these arguments are, but they were enough to short-circuit my spinning moral compass.
So, I found myself wrapping the bare persimmon branches this morning with multicoloured lights. And it was easy this year. We'd lopped off half the limbs after last year's bumper harvest went straight into the recycling bag. No matter how safe and marginal the level of elevated radioactivity of Abiko's persimmons last year, the prospect of them in our stomachs was not appetising to us or our neighbours, and why take the minuscule chance of radiation poisoning when it was completely avoidable?
The feeling was mutual from our tree. This year it bore us no fruit.
***
Martin Fackler wrote a good profile of Shintaro Ishihara, the 80-years-young firebrand, in The New York Times today. And the (London) Daily Telegraph, had a piece about how the right was propelling Abe to a landslide victory.
All true up to a point. But I take issue with the idea that Japan is simply swinging to the right. It may well do after December 16th through the policies imposed on it from above, but what we have here is a practical failure from the left more than a moral sea change. The Democratic Party of Japan promised to tackle Japan's problems with a head-on confrontation with the bureaucrats on behalf of We The People. Not only did they fail to win that battle, they didn't even die trying. They just gave up. And they shall die for this betrayal.
Nobody likes Abe or the Liberal Democratic Party much. Most sane folk know they represent a step backwards. Most sane folk think Ishihara is entertaining and a refreshing dose of forthrightness in an otherwise staid field, but not too many think much of his policies. Except he has a proven track record of sticking two fingers up at the bureaucrats and somehow getting things done. Crazy, stupid counterproductive things, but all the same. Given the options, what's a moral person to do?
***
"My mother's seriously thinking now of voting for Ishihara."
"What?"
"I told her that could mean war with China."
"Does she know that in Abiko that means she'll have to vote for a pro-bowler?"
"Yes, but she said she couldn't face seeing Abe on TV again. And said it was Ishihara's last chance."
"Last chance for what?"
"Last chance for anything."
Go to DAY 26
Ode to (a post-Fukushima) Autumn
Season of misinformation and mellow fruitlessness!
Close bosom-friend of the radioactive sum;
Conspiring with TEPCO's record to play on our fears
With Geiger counters round the thatch eaves run;
To bend with incompetence and doubt,
And fill all statements with suspicion to the core;
To swell the profit margin and plump the regulators
With sweet payoffs, to set budding more plants,
And still more, later poison for the generations
Until they think radioactive ash will never cease
For Fukushima fear has o'er-brimmed our clammy selves.
Putting up the outdoor Christmas lights was a wrench this year. It's not that I have so many, although every year we would buy one more string of lights so that come December the garden was a little brighter than the year before.
That was until 2011. With Fukushima so fresh in our memories it was an easy decision to make. How could we justify the wanton burning up of electricity on such frivolity when the nation had only just got through summer by rationing electricity to factories and encouraging all to avoid the instinctive urge to flip the switch on the air conditioner at the first beads of summer sweat? Sure, it was a silly argument practically speaking -- just as the starving of Ethiopia couldn't derive any benefit from my children finishing everything on their plate, how could the victims of the tsunami and Fukushima meltdown have their suffering eased by me not clambering around the persimmon tree with a stepladder? They couldn't, but there was a principle at stake: How could we flaunt it, while so many survivors had nothing? We couldn't, so the lights stayed in their cardboard box behind the sliding doors of the dusty top compartment of the futon cupboard.
That was until today.
"Are you putting the Christmas lights out this year or what?"
"I don't know if we should."
"Well, if you don't hurry up, Christmas will be over, so you should do it today."
"Yeah, but Fukushima and all..." I let my voice trail off, as if I knew of a wisdom better left unsaid.
"Well, the kids would like it."
Practically speaking, the bunker's Christmas lights can't burn up more Siberian liquid gas than the iPhones we recharge a couple of times a day, so where's the harm? OK, two wrongs don't make a right but why was I letting it bother me so? Ultimately, Our Woman was right. The joy the kids would get from the pretty lights outweighed any moral butterflies I was giving myself. Besides, I told myself, we'd limit the number of hours the lights were on and hey, ultimately the only moral thing to do was to do nothing at all, and what's the point in that? I don't know how valid these arguments are, but they were enough to short-circuit my spinning moral compass.
So, I found myself wrapping the bare persimmon branches this morning with multicoloured lights. And it was easy this year. We'd lopped off half the limbs after last year's bumper harvest went straight into the recycling bag. No matter how safe and marginal the level of elevated radioactivity of Abiko's persimmons last year, the prospect of them in our stomachs was not appetising to us or our neighbours, and why take the minuscule chance of radiation poisoning when it was completely avoidable?
The feeling was mutual from our tree. This year it bore us no fruit.
***
Martin Fackler wrote a good profile of Shintaro Ishihara, the 80-years-young firebrand, in The New York Times today. And the (London) Daily Telegraph, had a piece about how the right was propelling Abe to a landslide victory.
All true up to a point. But I take issue with the idea that Japan is simply swinging to the right. It may well do after December 16th through the policies imposed on it from above, but what we have here is a practical failure from the left more than a moral sea change. The Democratic Party of Japan promised to tackle Japan's problems with a head-on confrontation with the bureaucrats on behalf of We The People. Not only did they fail to win that battle, they didn't even die trying. They just gave up. And they shall die for this betrayal.
Nobody likes Abe or the Liberal Democratic Party much. Most sane folk know they represent a step backwards. Most sane folk think Ishihara is entertaining and a refreshing dose of forthrightness in an otherwise staid field, but not too many think much of his policies. Except he has a proven track record of sticking two fingers up at the bureaucrats and somehow getting things done. Crazy, stupid counterproductive things, but all the same. Given the options, what's a moral person to do?
***
"My mother's seriously thinking now of voting for Ishihara."
"What?"
"I told her that could mean war with China."
"Does she know that in Abiko that means she'll have to vote for a pro-bowler?"
"Yes, but she said she couldn't face seeing Abe on TV again. And said it was Ishihara's last chance."
"Last chance for what?"
"Last chance for anything."
Go to DAY 26
December 9, 2012
THE PRINCESS - Japan Election Diary 2012: Day 24
I'm a couple of Irish coffees short of a quorum, so please excuse me if I suddenly veer violently off the subject, but these are the perils of writing an entry every day as the Christmas season approaches.
Though strictly speaking, Christmas is little more than an excuse to torment shoppers with Muzak versions of Christmas carols and Wham's Last Christmas (how I wish it would be). In Japan, it's New Year that is important, Christmas is just the garnish to an already full plate of bonenkai and shinnenkai end and beginning of year parties that grace every salaryman's social menu.
And Our Man is no exception. He was honoured to have spent the afternoon at a Christmas party playing charades and getting pleasantly sozzled at the home of a Japan Times copy editor who between games of Chinese Whispers (Our Man learnt this is now called The Telephone Game in politically correct circles) made polite inquires about this humble diary of the election. He noted though that Our Man's occasional references to the Japan Party of the Future or Party of the Future Japan or whatever I have been translating Mirai (Future) no ('s) To (party) is not correct. Their official English name is the Tomorrow Party, if Our Man remembers the conversation correctly. It might possibly be the Party of Tomorrow too. Either way, it seems fitting given yesterday's sign off, "Tomorrow never knows," and Our Man could claim that as a deliberate reference, thus proving Our Man's political knowledge and qualification to write a book about Japanese politics...
But sadly it was just a happy coincidence.
Further evidence, should you require it, of Our Man's ignorance is the discovery that one of the Abiko candidates has a bit of name recognition. Yumiko Himei who is running for the Tomorrow folks won her Okayama constituency seat for the Democratic Party of Japan in 2009 defeating Liberal Democratic Party bigwig Toranosuke Katayama, to win her first election to the upper house. The “princess’ (“hime” in Japanese) defeat of the ‘tiger’ (“tora” the first character of Katayama’s first name) was a gift to Japanese headline writers. I'm not sure why, maybe there's a children's story of a princess defeating a tiger, I don't know.
Prepare yourself, we will briefly pause to hear the princess pontificate after her victory in 2009:
"I want to change politics starting with each individual. People took my hand and with tears in their eyes urged me to do something to change their current circumstances…I think that in this election campaign, people’s hopes and beliefs in this new kind of politics could be felt in each vote. I take my responsibility very seriously, and will aim to create a politics that can make everyone happy, a new kind of politics in which the majority of people can join together to create a wonderful nation, starting here in Okayama.”I wonder if the people of Okayama have stopped holding her hand, although they may have tears in their eyes now that she has abandoned them for the people of Abiko, whom I have found to be on the whole not very tearful at all. Certainly not about this new kind of "politics that can make everyone happy" that our princess transparently failed to deliver. Still, it was a tall order when folk can't even agree on what music makes them happy. And while I, for example, much prefer the Rolling Stones to Wham, I found it far more unbearable one late night in the Big A 24-hour supermarket to hear Start Me Up in Muzak form than Last Christmas in any form. I had the sudden urge to slam my trolly into the display of year end mochi bowls and throw together a mochi mountain so that I could clamber up to the polystyrene ceiling tiles and rip the speakers from their wires, lest anyone else should have to hear this sacrilege. See what happens when you try to make everyone happy?
Anyway, this "new politics" the princess hailed in 2009 sure sounds old-school now. Anyone would think she was becoming a career politician, seeking to run in any old seat and hope for enough votes that she got back in to parliament on proportional representation, rather than the local girl made good that she appeared to be back on her debut in her hometown constituency. But let's not look back, let's look to tomorrow, eh readers?
Speaking of yesterday, Our Man notes he read then that there is some concern that the level of interest in the election and the sheer number of parties running (12 at last count) could invalidate the results even more than normal in this illegal election. Apparently, if a candidate fails to muster 16 percent of the vote, the result is ruled invalid. Our Man can't find a link to the story that was the splash in the Japan Times a couple of days ago and can't remember what the penalty for failure to comply is. Our Man favours locking all candidates in Big A for a day with a selection of easy listening favourites on loop every 20 minutes or so.
With only five candidates running in the Abiko ward, it's mathematically impossible for every single candidate to get less than 16 percent of the vote, although given the lack of trust in the politicians, Our Man wouldn't bet against it happening anyway.
See you tomorrow.
Click here to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
December 8, 2012
SGT ABE'S LONELY HEARTS - 2012 Japan Election Diary: DAY 23
9:30pm (0 words)
Tonight Our Man has an upset stomach. This is literal, not figurative. Our Woman has threatened to kill him if he spends more than an hour at the computer. This may or may not be literal, but Our Man knows from bitter experience not to assume she is joking. So, dear reader, today's entry will by necessity be a rush job, even more than usual.
But look, this is a first draft and Our Man reserves the right to put out any old nonsense and you have the right to look elsewhere for your amusement, most people do. Our Man has no right to tell others how to read or write, but he will let you in on his own view, which you are free to ignore as the ravings of a man who usually can write no more than 350 words an hour.
And this post has to go at three times the normal speed to stand a chance. But here's the thing. I'm not sure if you think Sgt Pepper's is the ultimate Beatles album, but for argument's sake let's say it is. Should the Beatles have stood around twiddling their thumbs, waiting until 1967 before picking their paisley ties and saving us all from that Love Love Me Do kak of the early years?
No, of course not, because that's not how it works. If they hadn't spent the 50s in Hamburg they wouldn't have formed such a tight musical unit, if they hadn't broken through with those crappy teenie bopper songs they wouldn't have had an audience to give a crap when Revolver and Rubber Soul redefined their sound, without which Sgt Pepper's couldn't have even been conceived. But hey, what would I know, I prefer the Stones.
But the point is, you can't wait for the right moment, wait for that flash of inspiration and keep all your musings and near misses to yourself. Well, you could, but how would you know if you'd written anything worth a damn? How do you know that your near misses might not have been hits? Chances are you wouldn't have written anything worth a damn because the way we learn is by trial and error for the most part. But, you can't get to the second draft, the third draft, however many drafts it takes to get to the final draft, until you've written the first.
9:50pm (395 words)
Our Man doesn't believe in writer's block. Sure, people will tell you how they've struggled with it, stared at a blank screen and the words didn't come for hours, days, months, years... Well, I'd just say this: Don't be such a self-absorbed arse, what luxury it must be for the tinker, the tailor, the candlestick maker to say to his long-suffering Missus "Sorry luv, can't work today because I just can't visualise the finished candle, this has to be the best candle that has ever been made or else there's no point." Reject perfection, adopt instead "good enough" as your mantra. Perfect can wait for the next draft or better still, the next book. How else can we explain Frog Chorus?
And I wondered if the same isn't true of Japanese politics. Think of the Democratic Party of Japan not as the final draft, but the first or second. Back in 2009 they stormed up the charts with a thriller with a great villain -- the Liberal Democratic Party that had twisted modern Japan into this bureaucratic quagmire where dreams go to die. It was a pretty compelling story with plenty of realistic bits in it, there was just one hole -- the hero wasn't up to the task.
10:18pm (610 words)
Sure, you want your protagonists to battle against odds that are stacked against them. And the Democratic Party had to slay the Yomiuri Shimbun-led forces of reaction, who championed the bureaucrats, business as usual, build a bridge to nowhere types and keep all swearing fealty to their masters of the cement mixer. But Japan said no, and the party of the status quo, the Liberal Democratic Party was vanquished as the good guys swept 311 seats of the 480 of the House. They set about doing battle to the bureaucracy with televised show trials in which the pen-pushers had to justify their excesses, and they invariably couldn't.
So far, so good, the story arc is compelling with characters (we the people) we can really root for. But the Democrats' Achilles Heel was they had no hero. Prime Minister Hatoyama got mired in trying to move the Americans out of Okinawa instead of battling Japan's true enemy: its own demons.
10:31pm (768 words)
The one man with the political ability, Ichiro Ozawa, was too cowardly to lead, and the Japanese ship of state was already adrift (its default course) when catastrophe struck on March 11th, 2011. The Prime Minster Naoto Kan did his best and prevented TEPCO from running away from the mess they had created, but in the meantime the villains of the piece were let off the hook and the Democratic Party lost the plot.
And so here we are, with the story arc incomplete, with protagonists only able to deliver farce or tragedy. The next chapter looks to be a long and winding road through the middle parts of Moby Dick where nothing much happens. But in the never ending story of politics, we just may just have to wait for another, better thought-out instalment.
Tomorrow never knows.
10:44pm (908 words)
Click here to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
December 7, 2012
MEMORY LANES -- 2012 Japan election diary: Day 22
At 5:18pm today there was a nasty earthquake. If you want numbers, it was a 7.3 on the Richter scale and Shindo 5 in Iwate if that means anything to you. All I know is the house started rattling and swaying and didn't stop after a few seconds, as it usually does in the little quakes that grace our consciousness every week or couple of days if we are unlucky.
But this one was worth noting. We had six kindergarteners over and while they scrambled as my wife shouted "Under the table!" I held the front door open with one hand to secure our exit should the house subside, and with the other checked twitter on my phone.
I felt like I was surfing, the ground moved back and forth in waves, I felt drunk, but not a comforting tipsiness, instead the distressing feeling that things had slipped beyond my ability to control. Dejas vous.
Skyscrapers shaking in Tokyo. Trains delayed and workers evacuated from the Fukushima nuclear plant. Yes, they still haven't made that safe yet. What an unpleasant reminder. But we were safe here. Oh, but tsunami warnings from Chiba Prefecture, where Abiko is, all the way up along the length of the Pacific coast of Tohoku to the tip of Hokkaido.
Massive earthquake. Gonna run away to be safe.
It was a tweet from post-tsunami volunteer Jamie El-Banna who was up in Ishinomaki where thousands were washed out to sea on March 11th, 2011. He was still there. Seeking higher ground, while I just stood holding a door ajar. Social media at once connects and disconnects.
Later, my wife tweeted a teenage boy she knew up in Rikuzentkata who had lost his father to the tsunami. He was still stuck at high school at 7pm, a precaution against being caught in a tsunami, and he had no food. "Tweet him a sandwich!" I said, at least half seriously and my wife grabbed her Phone before realising the impossibility. Connected and disconnected.
I thought of a Churchill quote from 1916: "I think a curse should rest on me — because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment — and yet — I can't help it — I enjoy every second of it." And at once, I thought I felt how he must have felt. There is nothing like shared calamity to bring out the best in people. But it's not even that. The presence of disaster turns all things not directly pressing on life or death into mere frivolity. As tweeters elsewhere bemoaned the slights from rude commuters, late buses and overpriced coffees, Winston and I cared not. We were alive and if we are truthful to ourselves, we admitted a guilty pleasure of reflected glory from sharing in the perils of survival, even though the ugly truth was all we were doing was holding open a door with one hand and tweeting with the other.
I had one other clear feeling that I'd successfully suppressed in the absence of fear: how glad I was all the nuke plants had been shut down. Yes, yes, I know the bark of nuclear disasters is worse than their bite, and I can rationalise with the best of them why nuclear energy is a necessary evil in the fight against global warming and peak oil, and yes it is the tsunami victims who deserve our attention not the panic-mongers of the world... but still I was glad Japan was nuke free for now, I can't help what I feel. How could anyone feel pro-nuclear right now?
Connected and disconnected.
***
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Only, it wasn't JFK doing the asking today, it was Koji Yamamoto.
Koji is the Your Party candidate for Abiko and he saw fit to put JFK's quote on the policy page of his website . Stirring words from one so young (41, his election poster proclaims). But then like the young Kennedy, Koji is not averse to a little conflict in his life. Right after the Kobe Earthquake, the Todai graduate didn't hesitate to join the Pro-Bowling League in 1996, and never looked back.
In the year of the Tohoku earthquake, of which tonight's quake was merely an aftershock, he commentated on TV from the front line of the Ladies Open Bowling Tour. Like Churchill too, he is a published author with four titles to his name. And Churchill never wrote one --let alone four-- books on how to bowl. This justifies the guts pose he displays on all his campaign posters. But I don't feel like writing anymore about him on this day.
***
It was 71 years today since Pearl Harbor.
Click here to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
December 6, 2012
SPOILT FOR CHOICE -- Japan 2012 election diary: DAY 21
Click here to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
Now we know the five candidates facing off in Abiko-Kashiwa (Chiba 8 ward), and I have to say it's a microcosm of democracy, right here on my doorstep. We've got the centre right versus centre left, men versus women and communists versus nationalists. How spoilt for choice voters are, how spoilt.
Here's what Our Man learnt from the candidates' posters above:
Yumiko Himei (Japan Party of the Future) "Live with your heart and protecting your area." Not sure what area she has in mind, sounds suspiciously like a vague "insert local area here" slogan to me. She is not a man in a suit, however, so she gets bonus points from Our Man's bunker.Kimiaki Matsuzaki (Democratic Party of Japan) Maybe I should do some research on this chap, but on reflection I don't think I'll bother as he's got no chance being a member of the governing party that is about to disintegrate in an electoral defeat as stunning as their victory was three years ago, although I think he does actually have some local connection as I've seen his cheeky un-photoshopped grin from posters around the Abikohood since the big elections of 2009.Koji Yamamoto (Your Party supported by Japan Restoration Party) Tokyo University graduate, aged 41, and, er, a pro bowler. This deserves further scrutiny and I shall report back with further details. If nothing else, he could garner plenty of bowling-related puns, and he has taken the first, er, strike, proclaiming he will "strike into national politics." Off the top of my head I would say he is a spare in this race, though he may split the nationalist votes, unless he pulls his campaign from the gutter. (End this, now -- ed.) Hidenori Takeishi (Japan Communist Party) Policies: No nukes, stop the consumption tax increase and protect our kids from radiation. No mention of nationalising the means of production or whether he is a Trotskyist or Stalinist, if he favours a withering away of the state or what his five-year plan for tractor production is. I guess there's only so much room on a petit-bourgeois election poster. He has good teeth though.Yoshitaka Sakuda (Liberal Democratic Party) "I can't rely on you anymore, now it's my turn." Since I think he is the incumbent, this is an odd slogan to have, but maybe it's a criticism of the governing Democratic Party of Japan. Who can tell? It doesn't matter anyway because he is going to win.
***
"Oh, who to choose. It's really hard, I don't like any of them. Abe, I suppose?""But you are not keen?""I don't like the Liberal Democratic Party. I don't want to go back to that. I know what they are like. But the Democratic Party of Japan? What a joke.""What about the Party of the Future?""That's Ozawa's party. I don't like Ozawa. No, I can't vote for them. So that leaves Abe I suppose, oh, I don't like this."
***
"I don't think he is a real person, he just looks like one. I think he can move around with normal people.""Like magic?""I think he can go into shops and buy things with money. You know, I've seen the price tags so he doesn't make things himself.""He pays for them with his own money?""He has to pay for things, but with magic money maybe.""Yes, that sounds about right."
***
"I don't want Abe to get in.""Why not? He seems not crazy at least.""Are you joking? He wants to rebuild the Japanese military to be like other countries.""Is that so bad?""Yeah, it's bad. That means the Americans will go back home, take all their soldiers with them.""So?""So, that means Japan will be on its own and then that will mean say goodbye to Japan. We'll just be another province of China.""That's OK, I like Chinese food.""You might like Chinese food, but I don't want to eat all that used oil in the streets like they do. Really bad for you."
***
"I'm voting Communist."
"Is that a joke?"
"I might. I have to read everyone's manifesto before I decide."
"Good luck with the Communist Manifesto, I had to read it in college."
"Is that a joke?"
"Yes, I suppose it is."
"I should read everyone's manifestos."
"One of them's a professional bowler. He went to Todai."
"You'd think he could do better with that kind of education than be a bowler."
"He struck out?"
"Is that another joke?"
"Maybe."
"I think I'll vote for whoever does the most for women and children."
"That would be Nihon no Mirai no To - the Japan Future Party. They have a woman leader and want more child benefits. The local candidate is a woman. But it looks to me like Ozawa is really pulling the strings."
"You have been doing your homework."
"I'm writing a book, you know."
"Huh. Ozawa's a clever one. He has the aura of a leader even if nobody would vote for him. Sometimes you have to make tough decisions when you are in charge. He'd never win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, but he'd be the one making the decisions."
The preceding were four conversations Our Man had today with a seven year old girl, a 16-year-old boy, a woman in her 40s and a woman in her 60s, though not necessarily in that order. You decide!
Go to DAY 22
Now we know the five candidates facing off in Abiko-Kashiwa (Chiba 8 ward), and I have to say it's a microcosm of democracy, right here on my doorstep. We've got the centre right versus centre left, men versus women and communists versus nationalists. How spoilt for choice voters are, how spoilt.
Here's what Our Man learnt from the candidates' posters above:
Yumiko Himei (Japan Party of the Future) "Live with your heart and protecting your area." Not sure what area she has in mind, sounds suspiciously like a vague "insert local area here" slogan to me. She is not a man in a suit, however, so she gets bonus points from Our Man's bunker.Kimiaki Matsuzaki (Democratic Party of Japan) Maybe I should do some research on this chap, but on reflection I don't think I'll bother as he's got no chance being a member of the governing party that is about to disintegrate in an electoral defeat as stunning as their victory was three years ago, although I think he does actually have some local connection as I've seen his cheeky un-photoshopped grin from posters around the Abikohood since the big elections of 2009.Koji Yamamoto (Your Party supported by Japan Restoration Party) Tokyo University graduate, aged 41, and, er, a pro bowler. This deserves further scrutiny and I shall report back with further details. If nothing else, he could garner plenty of bowling-related puns, and he has taken the first, er, strike, proclaiming he will "strike into national politics." Off the top of my head I would say he is a spare in this race, though he may split the nationalist votes, unless he pulls his campaign from the gutter. (End this, now -- ed.) Hidenori Takeishi (Japan Communist Party) Policies: No nukes, stop the consumption tax increase and protect our kids from radiation. No mention of nationalising the means of production or whether he is a Trotskyist or Stalinist, if he favours a withering away of the state or what his five-year plan for tractor production is. I guess there's only so much room on a petit-bourgeois election poster. He has good teeth though.Yoshitaka Sakuda (Liberal Democratic Party) "I can't rely on you anymore, now it's my turn." Since I think he is the incumbent, this is an odd slogan to have, but maybe it's a criticism of the governing Democratic Party of Japan. Who can tell? It doesn't matter anyway because he is going to win.
***
"Oh, who to choose. It's really hard, I don't like any of them. Abe, I suppose?""But you are not keen?""I don't like the Liberal Democratic Party. I don't want to go back to that. I know what they are like. But the Democratic Party of Japan? What a joke.""What about the Party of the Future?""That's Ozawa's party. I don't like Ozawa. No, I can't vote for them. So that leaves Abe I suppose, oh, I don't like this."
***
"I don't think he is a real person, he just looks like one. I think he can move around with normal people.""Like magic?""I think he can go into shops and buy things with money. You know, I've seen the price tags so he doesn't make things himself.""He pays for them with his own money?""He has to pay for things, but with magic money maybe.""Yes, that sounds about right."
***
"I don't want Abe to get in.""Why not? He seems not crazy at least.""Are you joking? He wants to rebuild the Japanese military to be like other countries.""Is that so bad?""Yeah, it's bad. That means the Americans will go back home, take all their soldiers with them.""So?""So, that means Japan will be on its own and then that will mean say goodbye to Japan. We'll just be another province of China.""That's OK, I like Chinese food.""You might like Chinese food, but I don't want to eat all that used oil in the streets like they do. Really bad for you."
***
"I'm voting Communist."
"Is that a joke?"
"I might. I have to read everyone's manifesto before I decide."
"Good luck with the Communist Manifesto, I had to read it in college."
"Is that a joke?"
"Yes, I suppose it is."
"I should read everyone's manifestos."
"One of them's a professional bowler. He went to Todai."
"You'd think he could do better with that kind of education than be a bowler."
"He struck out?"
"Is that another joke?"
"Maybe."
"I think I'll vote for whoever does the most for women and children."
"That would be Nihon no Mirai no To - the Japan Future Party. They have a woman leader and want more child benefits. The local candidate is a woman. But it looks to me like Ozawa is really pulling the strings."
"You have been doing your homework."
"I'm writing a book, you know."
"Huh. Ozawa's a clever one. He has the aura of a leader even if nobody would vote for him. Sometimes you have to make tough decisions when you are in charge. He'd never win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, but he'd be the one making the decisions."
The preceding were four conversations Our Man had today with a seven year old girl, a 16-year-old boy, a woman in her 40s and a woman in her 60s, though not necessarily in that order. You decide!
Go to DAY 22
