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by KeenInsight » Sun Nov 24, 2013 4:07 pm
by cptmarginal » Sun Nov 24, 2013 10:44 pm
Jeez, and Japan has such wonderful, hospitable people - very friendly, and like everywhere, their government is betraying their sense of peace.
by norton ash » Tue Nov 26, 2013 2:15 pm
On Tuesday morning Beijing time, two US B-52 bombers flew over the disputed Senkaku/Daiyou islands, "in a direct challenge" to China's new air defense zone, US officials have told the Wall Street Journal.
by parel » Wed Nov 27, 2013 6:00 pm
Withdrawal of US Marines Blocked by Japan in the 1970s
Yara Tomohiro
This is the fourth in a five part series: Again Okinawa: Japan-Okinawa-US Relations in a Time of Turmoil
The other articles are:
•Gavan McCormack, Introduction: The Continued Saga of the Henoko Base and Japan-US-Okinawa Relations
•Urashima Etsuko, A Nago Citizens' Opinion on the Henoko Marine Base Construction
•Sakurai Kunitoshi, If the Law is Observed, There Can be No Reclamation: A Mayoral Opinion Endorsed by Citizens of Nago and Okinawans
•Sakura Kunitosh, Environmental Restoration of Former US Military Bases in Okinawa
In addition, we publish today a sixth important article on Okinawa:
•Jon Mitchell, Okinawa - The Pentagon’s Toxic Junk Heap of the Pacific
After the Vietnam War, the US Department of Defence considered withdrawing the Marine Corps from Okinawa to the mainland US. However, the Japanese government, unable to stand alone in terms of defence policy, intervened to stop it. Observing this, the US State Department thought that it could use the Marine Corps as a lever in its policy towards Japan.
These historical facts become clear from documents in the Australian Archives discovered by Nozoe Fumiaki, lecturer at Okinawa International University.1 Preserved in the Australian Archives are reports from Australian diplomats on what they had heard from State Department officials.
“Withdrawal of Marines blocked by Japan,”
Okinawa taimusu report of the Nozoe discoveries, November 8 2013.
It was October 1972 when a report on this matter was sent from Washington to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs [in Canberra]. 2 Five months earlier, administrative authority over Okinawa had been returned to Japan after 27 years under direct US military rule. Opposition to the US at the time was growing. American military vehicles had been burned as an expression of popular anger at the injustice of US rule in the Koza Riots in December 1970.
The strengthening of popular feeling was one factor in the consideration of withdrawing the Marines, but the most important factor was the worsening US fiscal situation resulting from pouring vast amounts of money into the war in Vietnam. The United States had itself in effect abandoned its leading role in the world economy by President Nixon suspending the convertibility of the dollar to gold and moving the dollar to a variable exchange system. For an age of military reductions, Pentagon analysts had come to the conclusion that it would be “considerably cheaper and probably more effective” to withdraw all Marines throughout the Pacific, including Okinawa and Hawaii, to Camp Pendleton in San Diego, California.
For Australia, the US forces forward troop deployment in the Asia-Pacific was directly related to its own security policy and Australian diplomats kept reporting information on the US Marine relocation. In May 1973, one reported that transfer to Korea was under consideration, because suitable places for relocation were not available in Hawaii or the Micronesian Federation. In June, “serious consideration” was reported to be continuing on Marine relocation.
MacCullum mentioned that the systems analysis experts in the Pentagon had drawn up a study which showed that it would be considerably cheaper, and porbably more effective, to concentrate all the Marine assets in the Pacific at San Diego in California; i.e. by returning to San Diego the two Marine brigades from Okinawa and the one from Hawaii and the Marine Air Squadrons from Japan and Hawaii. Althought there were persuasive economic and military arguments in favour of this, the State Department was concerned about the political aspects of such a move. Our source expected that it could become the subject of lively debate in the future.3
Whether these moves were known there or not, Japan took steps to retain the Marines. At a meeting of the Japan-US Security Treaty Consultative Group Committee in July of that same year, Kubo Takaya, head of Japan’s Defence Agency, proposed that, “Given the need for a mobile force in Asia, the US Marines should be retained.”4
Seeing this response from the Japanese side, Thomas P. Shoesmith, chief minister at the US Embassy, reported to Washington, “Our negotiating position is improved” because the Japanese side see the US Marine presence in Okinawa as “most tangible evidence of US willingness to respond promptly to a direct threat against Japan.”5 Lecturer Nozoe, who dug up and analysed these diplomatic records, says that it is far from clear that the Japanese side correctly understood the functions and role of the Marine Corps. Despite the conclusion of the analysts that the Marines could be withdrawn to California, the US government explained the role of the Marines in the following terms: “They are a “strategic reserve force” ready “to respond immediately, and appropriately, to incidents wherever they may occur;” Okinawa is the best location, geographically, for the Marines;” in the event of a major war breaking out “the location might be the Middle East or Europe but the Okinawan Marines would be counted as US military assets.”6
Subsequently, the Japanese government came to refer to the need to retain the Marine Corps permanently in Japan as “a unit that constituted positive proof of readiness to act at any time in the defence of Japan.” It means that “positive proof of readiness” is more important than substance. What is the basis for that?
The US side’s explanation is that the Marine Corps is “a strategic reserve force” that has the possibility of being engaged in action in the Middle East or in Europe. Why must “a reserve force” for global action be stationed in Okinawa? Furthermore, the scope of the US-Japan Security Treaty is supposed to be geographically limited and the launch of operations under it in the Middle East or elsewhere was hardly envisaged.
A “Reserve Force” amounts to two or three “arrows,” just an auxiliary to a main strength force. The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines all have reserves, but they are held in the US. There is no rational explanation as to why a reserve force of Marines must be stationed in Okinawa. And though the geographical superiority of Okinawa is stressed, the ships and planes to carry the Marines would have to come to get them. A “reserve force” does not really need to be an instant response force. If what Japan wants is “positive proof of readiness,” a mock (“papier mache”) tiger should suffice.
Since the Marine Corps was deployed in Iraq in the same way as an army, it became known as a “second army.” The last time the Marines were used to storm ashore in the way they boast as their specialty was the time of the Incheon landings in Korea in 1950. The Marines spend much effort justifying their own importance.
In the military restructuring that followed the Civil War, the Pacific War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam war, it was the Marines for whom large-scale cuts were proposed, for the reason that there were always doubts as to the need for a force to be able to launch attack from the sea. It was only shortly after their moment of glory in planting the Stars and Stripes on Mt Suribachi at the end of the Battle of Iojima (Iwojima) that the White House decided the Marine Corps should be absorbed into the army as part of the Department of Defense’s planned reorganization.
Thereafter, there has been no end to arguments about the need for the Marines, seeing them as no more than a “guard unit for the Navy,” or asking “is there a need in this day and age for a force designed for attack from the coast?” It is ironic that the Government of the US should be using the Marine Corps, that has survived by dint of its political influence, as a lever in diplomacy towards Japan. In recent years, just in the matter of the transfer of Futenma Airport, used by such Marines, Japan’s top leader, Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio, was sacked. It really has been an effective “lever” for deploying towards Japan.
The Marine Corps occupies 70 per cent of Okinawan bases. Had Japan not stopped the process of their withdrawal to the mainland United States it seems most unlikely that the Okinawan base problem would have become such a big political issue. It is likely that the US-Japan relationship, described as one of vassalage, would have taken a different shape.
The Obama administration is now taking a scalpel to defense spending because of its fiscal difficulties. It is possible that the Marines will be cut from around 200,000 to 150,000 at minimum and presumably the Marines themselves are watching the progress of these reductions with deep anxiety. I wish we could expect some cunning from the Government of Japan in its use of the lever in negotiations with the US towards solution of the Okinawa problem, instead of just sticking to the status quo and doing whatever it can simply to retain them.
The Marines, who occupy 70 per cent of bases in Okinawa and constitute roughly half of all US forces in Japan, are the very kernel of the Okinawa base problem that now destabilizes the Japan-US relationship. The 1970s argument over the retention of the Marines, on which Nozoe has been conducting his research, offers a fine vantage point for analysing the Japan-US alliance.
Yara Tomohiro is a free-lance journalist based in Naha, Okinawa, a former editorial writer for the Okinawa taimusu, a specialist in the Japan-US security relationship, and author, inter alia, of Sajo no domei – Beikoku saihen ga akasu uso, Okinawa taimusu, 2008, and Gokai darake no Okinawa Beigun kichi, Junposha, 2012. This article is taken from Yara’s blog entry for 11 November 2013.
Translated by Gavan McCormack.
Recommended citation: Yara Tomohiro, "Withdrawal of US Marines Blocked by Japan in the 1970s," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 47, No. 4, November 25, 2013.
Notes
1 For the Nozoe text, see: Nozoe Fumiaki, “Okinawa Beigun kichi no seiri shukusho o meguru Nichibei kyogi, 1970-1974 nen” (US-Japan talks over reduction of US Bases in Okinawa, 1970-1974), Kokusai anzen hosho, vol. 41, No. 2, 2013, pp. 99-115. Nozoe elaborated on his argument in the following paper delivered on 9 November 2013 to Okinawa Hosei gakkai, “”Okinawa Beigun kichi no seiri shukusho mondai – rekishi teki shiten kara.” (copy provided by author)
2 Robert MacCallum, Asian desk officer in the Office of International Security Operations of the State Department’s Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs, discussion on 6 October 1972, Embassy of Australia, “United States Force Deployments in Asia,” Secret, Memorandum 2652/72, 9 October 1972.
3 Memorandum Number 4840, Embassy of Australia, Washington, to Department of Foreign Affairs, May 1973, in Nozoe.
4 US National Security Archive, ed., Japan and the United States: diplomatic, security, and economic relations, 1960-1976, Bell and Howell Information and Learning, 2000, quoted in Nozoe.
5 [Thomas P.] Shoesmith to [Richard L.] Sneider, deputy Assistant Secretary of State, in US National Archives (quoted in Nozoe).
6 Sources in Nozoe, November 2013 paper, cited in Note 1 above.
- See more at: http://japanfocus.org/-Yara-Tomohiro/40 ... MeU0D.dpuf
by cptmarginal » Sat Nov 30, 2013 12:16 pm
Each year Jiyū Kokumin Sha, publisher of the popular annual reference Gendai yōgo no kiso chishiki (Basic Knowledge on Contemporary Terminology), selects its “most popular word of the year” along with a top-ten list. The terms are those that have captured the popular imagination that year—the words on everyone’s lips. Today the company announced its long list of 50 nominees; the finalists and champion will be announced on Monday, December 2.
Below we walk you through the nominated terms. They provide an interesting window on the events and ideas that impacted the Japanese people over the past year.
[...]
- ＮＳＣ — Japan’s version of America’s National Security Council will be headed by special cabinet advisor Yachi Shōtarō once its establishment is approved by the Diet.
- アベノミクス — Abenomikusu, or “Abenomics,” is one of the stronger contenders on this list.
- ３本の矢 — Sanbon no ya. The “three arrows” of Abenomics: bold monetary relaxation, flexible application of fiscal stimulus, and a growth strategy aimed at boosting private investment.
- 集団的自衛権 — Shūdanteki jieiken. The right to collective self-defense refers to Japan’s ability to engage in combat operations in support of its allies should they come under attack. The traditional interpretation of Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution places this off limits, and the current government’s efforts to revisit this interpretation are being met with praise from US defense and security officials and unease from Japan’s Asian neighbors and domestic pacifists.
- 特定秘密 — Tokutei himitsu. “Specified secrets,” or intelligence marked as not for public release. The Abe government is moving to enact a new secrecy law that would expand the scope of the secrecy definition, as well as the government’s ability to extend the blackout period. Government claims that this is needed to tighten up Japan’s information security are being met by anger from journalists who fear they will not be able to do their jobs as effectively.
[...]
- ナチスの手口に学んだら — Nachisu no teguchi ni manandara. In a July 29 speech, Asō Tarō spoke of the way in which the Nazis subverted the Weimar Constitution almost without being noticed and took power. His comment on “learning from the methods of the Nazis” was interpreted by LDP opponents to mean that he thought their approach was one to emulate. This may not have been his intended meaning, but the statement was ill-advised in any case.
by cptmarginal » Mon Dec 09, 2013 2:21 am
Similar to Germany, the dangers of modernity as well as the threat of war stimulated Japan’s völkisch power and the implementation of political structures in keeping with the Japanese spirit:
"Japan today is just beginning to unfold its völkisch power. And this is because Japan’s traditional faith, far away from being ‘replaced’ by a modern one, progresses from the stage of a religious basis of völkisch life and a binding force for specific classes to the political self-confidence of the whole Volk."
This passage reveals the core of his view of Japan’s “hidden force” and the specific function of religion that interested him. For Dürckheim the successful politics of the future world was to be inseparably linked to the awakening of völkisch identities based on a religious attitude that unconditionally supports the world’s leading totalitarian states. Accordingly, the primal source of Japan’s power was the politicizing of its original faith. He recognized the rise of a völkisch religion consisting of a politicized mixture of Shinto and Buddhism that unites the whole nation and functions as a basis of legitimation for the Japanese state and its policies. In August 1941 he noted in his diary: “My research work continues and recently in particular has turned towards the religious foundations of Japanese power, that is to Shinto and Buddhism.”
Dürckheim sees the divine völkisch spirit and its will to live as connecting Germany and Japan. “In spite of all differences regarding the contents of faith and the forms this faith creates, through its iron will to self-realisation this spirit is related to ours.”
[...]
Dürckheim underlines the affinities between both cultures to such an extent that one sometimes gets the impression he thinks the Japanese would be the better Nazis. He was but one among many (academics as well as journalists) in the German-Japan discourse who praised Japan as one if not the exemplary Volk. This tendency was seen in the August 1942 Situation Report of the SS’s Security Service as a problem. The report states that the many comparisons between the successful non-Christian religious worldview attitude towards life, politics and warfare in Japan and the religious worldview situation in Germany have caused certain developments that make it necessary to gradually correct the image of Japan:
"The former view, that the German soldier is the best in the world has been confused by descriptions of the Japanese swimmers who removed mines laid before Hongkong, or the Japanese pilots who, with contempt for death, pounce with their bombs on enemy ships. This has partially caused something like an inferiority complex. The Japanese look like a kind of ‘Super-Teuton’ [Germane im Quadrat]."
by cptmarginal » Mon Dec 09, 2013 2:29 am
Japan: Even The Secrecy Bill Briefing Is Secret; Abe-gumi Pushes Ominous Secrecy Bill Towards Law
Friday, December 6, 2013
We’re late, We’re late for a very important date
We have no time for reasoned debate
We’re late, We’re late…
The Japanese government came very close to passing the ominous new Designated Secrets Bill today, when the Upper House Committee cut off debate around 4pm and forced a vote. The law punishes journalists and whistleblowers who divulge government secrets with up to ten years in prison, and up to five years for those who “instigate leaks.”
The tally yesterday came amongst cries of “This government has no conscience”, “Don’t make fools of the Japanese people” in a shouting match that was very close to a brawl. Meanwhile outside the Diet building over 1,000 protestors chanted opposition. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (Liberal Democrat Party) is pushing the bill forward, despite a sudden dip in his support rates to below 50%. Earlier this week, the LDP Secretary General, Shigeru Ishiba, labeled the growing protests “tantamount to terrorism” which prompted more public outcry.
The ruling parties had planned to hold an emergency vote on the bill in the middle of the night the same day, and make it law. They were forced to back down for another day by time stalling motions from the opposing Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).
As the bill meets increasing opposition at home and abroad, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s coalition government moved earlier this week to do damage control with the foreign media, by holding a “secret” meeting on the Secrecy Bill. JSRC and the FCCJ (Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Japan) were not formally notified of the briefing, which was sent out to select members of the press by the Prime Minister’s Office of Global Communications.*
Prime Minister Abe’s Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office held the “background briefing on Special Intelligence Protection Bill” at 3pm Wednesday at the Central Government Offices in Tokyo.
The press who were invited and attended were told in advance: “Ground rules: Comments from the briefing can be attributed to a Japanese Government Official. The briefing will in principle be in English. The briefing is for pen reporters only (no still or movie cameras allowed). Journalists are required to observe relevant rules, ethics and standards of propriety.”
It is slightly unusual for the Abe administration to pay much attention to the views of the foreign press, yet the hard-hitting criticism of the foreign media has become hard for them to ignore. However, like Ishiba’s comments equating protestors with terrorists, the slightly menacing tone of the briefing announcement echoes the problems with the bill.
Ironically, according to Japanese legal experts, under the current draft of the legislation, “impropriety” in newsgathering techniques involving state secrets can result in jail time. In theory, under the secrecy law, if the briefing had been declared a state secret, any unauthorized journalist writing about it could be found guilty of violations and sentenced up to ten years in prison. Any journalist who asked pointed and repeated questions about such a secret briefing, could also be arrested and tried for “instigating leaks” and sentenced up to five years in prison.
Tsutomu Shimizu, a criminal defense lawyer and representative of the Japan Federation of Bar Association, explains the problems with the bill as follows. “If as part of their information gathering, a reporter or individual asks the wrong question about a designated secret to a public official, the police could call them in for voluntary questioning, and seize their laptop or smart phone. If they arrested him or her, the suspect could be held in detention for more than twenty days. It wouldn’t matter whether the individual knew they were asking about a secret or not. Eventually, a judge would decided whether the information gathering was ‘grossly inappropriate’…The judge would not have the right to know what ‘secret’ was leaked and the same might also be true for the defendant. This would make a legal defense difficult.”
Shimizu noticed that simply having their laptop seized or being called in for voluntary questioning would greatly intimidate most journalists. Cabinet officials have also stated that police raids on media outlets suspected to be involved in the leaking of secrets would be possible.
It is not hard to see why the Abe cabinet is rushing to get the bill into law, even under the cover of night. The opposition continues to grow within Japan and overseas. Even the director of classics like Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki—the Walt Disney of Japan—came forward to express his concerns. The list of organizations and individuals expressing concern over the bill is far-reaching. They include Gakusha-no-kai, which is led by Nobel Prize laureate Hideki Shirakawa and Toshihide Masukawa plus 2000 scholars. There are also Japan’s: Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association, Commercial Broadcasters Association, Magazine Publishers Association, Book Publishers Association, Federation of Bar Associations. Even Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed her fears.
Abe when questioned about Ms. Pillay’s concerns retorted, “The law says we have to give sufficient consideration to freedom of the press. There is nothing to worry about.” It was very similar to a statement he made concerning the state of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, in which he famously declared that everything was “completely under control.”
The bill is expected to be voted into law as early as tomorrow (December 6th). Over 50% of the Japanese population opposes the legislation and only 25% support it, according to the latest opinion polls.
Japan’s Secrecy Bill: Designed by Kafka & Inspired by Hitler?!!
Friday, December 6, 2013
The first rule of the pending Japan’s Special Secrets Bill is that what will be a secret is secret. The second rule is that anyone who leaks a secret and a reporter who writes it up can face up to ten years in jail. The third rule is that there are no rules at to what government agency can declare state secrets and no checks on them to determine they don’t misuse the privilege; even of no longer existent agencies may have the power to declare their information secret. The fourth rule is that anything pertaining to nuclear energy is of course a state secret so there will not longer be any problem with nuclear power in this country because we won’t know anything about it. And what we don’t know can’t hurt us.
The right to know has now been officially superseded by the right of the government to make sure you don’t know what they don’t want you to know.
Legal experts note that even asking pointed questions about a state secret, whether you know or don’t know it’s a secret, could be treated as “instigating leaks” and the result in an arrest and a possible jail term up to five years. Of course, the trial would be complicated since the judge would not be allowed to know what secret the accused was suspected of trying to obtain.
And of course, trials about state secrets, would by the nature of the law, also be secret trials and closed to the public.
At this point in time, no one has really claimed authorship of the secrecy bill. The author is a secret. Kafka would seem the most likely scrivener for this perplexing legislation, if he was still alive, but ruling coalition members acknowledge that another famous white man from the past may have provided the real inspiration for the bill and its implementation.
An Upper House member of the Diet said on background to JSRC, “Deputy Prime Minister Aso Taro sort of telegraphed the punches of the administration by expressing his admiration for how the Nazi Party forcefully changed the German constitution this summer. Obviously, we’re not Nazis in Japan–because we hardly have any Jews, but we are like the defeated post World War I Germany in that we do not have the right to wage war to defend ourselves from our enemies. Just as Germany needed a strong man like Hitler to revive defeated Germany, Japan needs people like Abe to dynamically induce change.”
In August this year, Aso Taro, who is also the Finance Minister stated at a seminar, “Germany’s Weimar Constitution was changed into the Nazi Constitution before anyone knew. It was changed before anyone else noticed. Why don’t we learn from that method?”
It’s obvious that the Abe administration which pushed this bill into the Diet without public hearings and even the standard deliberations with Japan’s legal establishment has been an apt pupil of their German predecessors. They even attempted to pass the bill in the middle of the night yesterday while most of Japan was sleeping. The administration hasn’t been able to set a fire to the Diet building to justify a harsher crackdown but the LDP Secretary General was kind enough to say that those noisily protesting the bill were committing “terrorist acts.”
The hawkish Prime Minister Abe has publicly stated his ambition to revise Japan’s constitution to rid it of Article 9, which forbids Japan from waging war. Upper house Diet member, Taro Yamamoto and others have publicly stated they believe the current bill is a stepping-stone to recreate a fascist Japan, as it existed prior to the Second World War.
It might all seems like a bad joke, except for the Orwellian nature of the bill being proposed and a key Cabinet member expressing his admiration for the Nazis.
If you have any idea who’s responsible for the drafting of this legislation and how it came into being, please let us know. The JSRC welcomes any contributions on the subject.
by cptmarginal » Fri Dec 13, 2013 7:41 am
Two men hanged by government in Japan in latest ‘secret executions’
Human rights groups slam practice in which inmates are told they will die just hours beforehand
Thursday 12 December 2013
Two men have been hanged in Japan as part of a campaign of “secret executions” carried out by the government, media reports say.
Eight prisoners have now been rushed through the country’s capital punishment system since the right-wing nationalist Shinzo Abe became prime minister a year ago.
Japan is the only major democratic country other than the US to execute its people. International human rights groups say the practice is particularly cruel because inmates are held for years and then only told about their impending death a few hours beforehand.
Amnesty International Japan was quoted as saying that “the high-paced executions under the Abe administration stand squarely against repeated international calls for abolition of death penalty”.
Despite this, capital punishment continues to attract widespread public support in the country. Though no one was executed in the whole of 2011 – the first time this had happened in two decade – hangings resumed in March 2012, and seven people were killed.
Announcing the latest round of executions, which happened today, Justice Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki said: “There are various criticisms of the death penalty... but Japanese law allows for it and I believe we have people's support in principle.”
According to reports from the AFP news agency, one of those killed was Ryoji Kagayama, 63, who stabbed to death a student from China after robbing her in 2000 and was also convicted of knifing a man to death in 2008 in a failed robbery attempt.
The other prisoner was Akira Morinaga, 55, who drowned a relative of his former wife in a bath in 1986 and murdered one of her acquaintances days later.
by cptmarginal » Thu Dec 19, 2013 3:02 am
On December 7th, the ruling bloc of the Japanese government passed into law a Secrecy bill which many feel threatens freedom of the speech and the freedom of the press.
For those who are interested in finding more about Japan’s Designated Secrets Law, here are source materials that you may find useful. These are material distributed to the foreign press by the Cabinet Office last week before the bill became law. The Abe cabinet promised to set up an oversight committee to oversee the use of the ability to classify information a “specially designated secret” but the law itself does not mandate such restraints. The proposed oversight agency or oversight office will have no independence from the government.
When we have a complete Japanese draft of the law, we will post it. Any comments on the materials or suggestions for other reference materials that should be posted are welcome.
- This a summary of the secrecy law. Although the categories for which secrets can be designated are limited to four areas, there is no oversight to determine whether or not the designation is properly applies. Note the + “Requires special need for secrecy” which is a clause so wide that conceivably anything could be fit into that heading.
- The actual text of the law defines terrorism as also “forcing one’s opinions on others.” This is the basis of Shigeru Ishiba, Secretary General of the LDP (ruling party) stating that those noisily protesting the bill were committing acts tantamount to terrorism.
- The Lawyer’s Federation of Japan points out that if a journalist or citizen were to stubbornly ask about SDS (specially designated secrets) to a government official that this could be construed as “instigation of leakage” and result in him/her being called in for questioning, their laptops and phones seized, possible arrest and conviction. Even when acting in the public interest, and without knowing they were seeking information about a “specially designated secret” an individual would still face up a year in prison or a fine under 300,000 yen.
by seemslikeadream » Tue Dec 31, 2013 5:04 pm
Japan’s New ‘Fukushima Fascism’
Harvey Wasserman | December 11, 2013 7:57 am | Comments
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Fukushima continues to spew out radiation. The quantities seem to be rising, as do the impacts.
The site has been infiltrated by organized crime. There are horrifying signs of ecological disaster in the Pacific and human health impacts in the U.S.
But within Japan, a new State Secrets Act makes such talk punishable by up to ten years in prison.
mon_amour
Taro Yamamoto, a Japanese legislator, says the law “represents a coup d’etat” leading to “the recreation of a fascist state.” The powerful Asahi Shimbun newspaper compares it to “conspiracy” laws passed by totalitarian Japan in the lead-up to Pearl Harbor, and warns it could end independent reporting on Fukushima.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been leading Japan in an increasingly militaristic direction. Tensions have increased with China. Massive demonstrations have been renounced with talk of “treason.”
But it’s Fukushima that hangs most heavily over the nation and the world.
Tokyo Electric Power has begun the bring-down of hot fuel rods suspended high in the air over the heavily damaged Unit Four. The first assemblies it removed may have contained unused rods. The second may have been extremely radioactive.
But Tepco has clamped down on media coverage and complains about news helicopters filming the fuel rod removal.
Under the new State Secrets Act, the government could ban—and arrest—all independent media under any conditions at Fukushima, throwing a shroud of darkness over a disaster that threatens us all.
By all accounts, whatever clean-up is possible will span decades. The town of Fairfax, CA, has now called for a global takeover at Fukushima. More than 150,000 signees have asked the UN for such intervention.
As a private corporation, Tepco is geared to cut corners, slash wages and turn the clean-up into a private profit center.
It will have ample opportunity. The fuel pool at Unit Four poses huge dangers that could take years to sort out. But so do the ones at Units One, Two and Three. The site overall is littered with thousands of intensely radioactive rods and other materials whose potential fallout is thousands of times greater than what hit Hiroshima in 1945.
Soon after the accident, Tepco slashed the Fukushima workforce. It has since restored some of it, but has cut wages. Shady contractors shuttle in hundreds of untrained laborers to work in horrific conditions. Reuters says the site is heaving infiltrated by organized crime, raising the specter of stolen radioactive materials for dirty bombs and more.
Thousands of tons of radioactive water now sit in leaky tanks built by temporary workers who warn of their shoddy construction. They are sure to collapse with a strong earthquake.
Tepco says it may just dump the excess water into the Pacific anyway. Nuclear expert Arjun Makhijani has advocated the water be stored in supertankers until it can be treated, but the suggestion has been ignored.
Hundreds of tons of water also flow daily from the mountains through the contaminated site and into the Pacific. Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen long ago asked Tepco to dig a trench filled with absorbents to divert that flow. But he was told that would cost too much money.
Now Tepco wants to install a wall of ice. But that can’t be built for at least two years. It’s unclear where the energy to keep the wall frozen will come from, or if it would work at all.
Meanwhile, radiation is now reaching record levels in both the air and water.
The fallout has been already been detected off the coast of Alaska. It will cycle down along the west coast of Canada and the U.S. to northern Mexico by the end of 2014. Massive disappearances of sea lion pups, sardines, salmon, killer whales and other marine life are being reported, along with a terrifying mass disintegration of star fish. One sailor has documented a massive “dead zone” out 2,000 miles from Fukushima. Impacts on humans have already been documented in California and elsewhere.
Without global intervention, long-lived isotopes from Fukushima will continue to pour into the biosphere for decades to come.
The only power now being produced at Fukushima comes from a massive new windmill just recently installed offshore.
Amidst a disaster it can’t handle, the Japanese government is still pushing to re-open the 50 reactors forced shut since the melt-downs. It wants to avoid public fallout amidst a terrified population, and on the 2020 Olympics, scheduled for a Tokyo region now laced with radioactive hot spots. At least one on-site camera has stopped functioning. The government has also apparently stopped helicopter-based radiation monitoring.
A year ago a Japanese professor was detained 20 days without trial for speaking out against the open-air incineration of radioactive waste.
Now Prime Minister Abe can do far worse. The Times of India reports that the State Secrets Act is unpopular, and that Abe’s approval ratings have dropped with its passage.
But the new law may make Japan’s democracy a relic of its pre-Fukushima past.
It’s the cancerous mark of a nuclear regime bound to control all knowledge of a lethal global catastrophe now ceaselessly escalating.
Visit EcoWatch’s NUCLEAR page for more related news on this topic.
by cptmarginal » Wed Jan 22, 2014 10:23 pm
The State Secrets Act, Independent Film and the Kidnapping of Kim Dae-jung
Jan. 20, 2014
Sakamoto Junji with an introduction by Linda Hoaglund
Introduction
When Sakamoto Junji, the veteran film director, wrote in Asahi about the recently passed state secrets act, he referred to KT, his film invited to compete in the Berlin Film Festival in 2002. KT is a political thriller based on the 1973 kidnapping of Kim Dae-jung from a Tokyo hotel. At the time Kim was a South Korean legislator, dissident, and an outspoken critic of South Korea's military dictatorship and the abduction caused an international furor at the upper reaches of the Japanese, South Korean and U.S. governments. Five days later, Kim mysteriously reappeared in Seoul; blindfolded, wounded and dazed.
Twenty-five years later, Kim was elected President of a democratic South Korea and on the eve of his inauguration the Korean government finally disclosed the Korean CIA's role in the kidnapping. In his fictionalized account, Sakamoto speculated that the Japanese Self Defense Forces had also been covertly involved. The gripping film, featuring a sizzling score by Hotei Tomoyasu (Japan's most famous guitarist), is now available for streaming on Netflix and finally eligible for the international audience it deserves outside of Japan. The creative courage that drove Sakamoto to peer into the dark side of Japan's relationship with Korea a decade ago compels him today to speak out about the perils of the state secrets act.
Sakamoto's article from the Asahi Newspaper 12/24/13
"A secret unit of Japan's Self Defense Forces was involved in the kidnapping of Kim Dae-jung (now deceased), former president of South Korea, from his hotel in Tokyo in 1973... That was the fictional premise of KT, the film released in 2002 that I directed.
I researched still classified documents and approached people who knew the secrets to interview them. I used fiction to close in on the facts of that kidnapping, whose investigation had been politically terminated in order to shroud them in darkness. Even before we rolled the camera, a stranger began staking out my home and my producer received phone calls from someone demanding to read the script. My guts told me we were encroaching on areas that those in power did not want touched.
As filmmakers, it's our job to shed light on buried facts, drag them out into public view and burn them onto film. But from now on, those involved will refuse to speak for fear of being judged by the law and we will no longer be able to give birth to films whose themes are classified. I myself might be arrested.
When a nation determines its policies, it must study the historical record. If the mistakes of those in power are made secret, we can no longer even investigate them. The State Secrets Act should be abolished and we the people should start over from scratch and debate the issue.
The ruling party repeatedly forced votes on the "Secrets" act. Ironically, I think this was good. Their strong-arm tactics sparked rage in people's hearts. We the people will not allow the government or the ruling party to run amuck on the issues of "exercising the right to collective self defense" and revising the constitution. We the people also have the right to dismiss the ruling party."
Because I had subtitled KT into English, I was asked to accompany Sakamoto to Berlin to interpret for him. One question he was frequently asked by international journalists was, "Why a film about this subject, now?" I remember him responding, "Since 2000, Korean television dramas have become the darlings of Japanese TV audiences and later this year, Japan and Korea will jointly host the World Cup soccer games. My Korean-Japanese producer and I agree that now is the time to depict the historical causes of the tensions that still fester beneath the amity between the two countries." Reviewing my computer files about KT, I came across the Director's statement Sakamoto had written for the international press kit. I quote from it here as it feels all too relevant a decade later.
From the director's statement for the Berlin Film Festival 2002
"... In 1972, as I watched tanks take control of Seoul under Martial Law, I concluded, “Thank God I wasn’t born in Korea. That country’s in greater peril than even Japan.” Although it was not taught in school, I instinctively grasped that Japan was somehow complicit in Korea’s peril. The Kim Dae-jung kidnapping incident in 1973 only heightened my acute anxiety. Even as a teenager I saw right through the official resolution of the case, and knew that it had been enforced by those who maneuver behind the scenes, in the shadows of Japan and Korea.
I decided to make a film in which I would approach a nation’s history as if it belonged to a character, setting my sites on Korea, our closest neighbor. There, I discovered the dark void I had always sensed, but purposefully ignored. Staring into that void took courage, but I had come too far."
A South Korean Political Thriller Recounts an Odd Assassination
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: October 14, 2005
We Americans may be fond of conspiracy theories, but on screen they tend to seem overdone and implausible. The elaborate webs of intrigue that sustain most political thrillers usually offer too much speculation and too little insight, and are in any case diversions from reality rather than attempts to engage it. "The President's Last Bang," a tight, sober and strangely comical new film from South Korea, tells a tale that may sound far-fetched, but that is all the more crazy for being true.
On the night of Oct. 26, 1979, President Park Chung Hee, whose authoritarian rule had lasted for most of two decades, was shot to death by the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. Though the assassination came in the wake of student protests and pro-democracy agitation, the killer's political motives have remained a bit opaque. Im Sangsoo, who wrote and directed the film, declines to illuminate them, presenting the events of the night in a detached, procedural manner that leaves ample room for psychological rumination. Baik Yoonshik who plays Kim Jae Kyu, the K.C.I.A. director, has a haggard, melancholy face that suggests a weary stoicism. His main fellow conspirator, a young, gum-chewing agent named Ju (Han Sukgyu) seems to be motivated by a mixture of loyalty to his boss and restless ambition, though for what is not entirely clear.
The film moves deliberately, taking in various points of view, including those of two young women, a student and a folk singer (Cho Eunji and Kim Yoonah), who have been recruited to spend the evening with the president, whose womanizing habits are established in a very funny early scene. He seems more like a mob boss than a head of state, which is probably Mr. Im's point. "The President's Last Bang" depicts a closed, secretive world of power and protocol, at once elaborately punctilious and floridly corrupt.
The concentric, competing inner circles of power - the intelligence establishment, the military, the president's bodyguard - seem to exist in an environment hermetically sealed off from the country they are supposed to lead. Nearly all the film's action takes place at night, in a cordoned-off safe house, and the final scenes lead us on a surreal tour of Seoul's huge, empty government buildings, which resemble nothing so much as remote space stations in a science-fiction movie.
It is hard for an outsider to parse Mr. Im's intentions in revisiting this traumatic moment in his nation's authoritarian past. The mood of his film, which provoked some controversy when it was released in Korea (where it was nonetheless a hit) is neither angry nor nostalgic, but clinical and perhaps also a bit cynical. Nobody wins in this bloody game, and heroism and villainy coexist along a narrow spectrum of behavior. And yet this kind of cynicism also feels like the prerogative of a democratic sensibility, which can peer into the highest sanctum of power and see the same messy, ignoble human behavior that exists everywhere else.
by cptmarginal » Wed Jan 22, 2014 10:37 pm
- ナチスの手口に学んだら — Nachisu no teguchi ni manandara. In a July 29 speech, Asō Tarō spoke of the way in which the Nazis subverted the Weimar Constitution almost without being noticed and took power. His comment on “learning from the methods of the Nazis” was interpreted by LDP opponents to mean that he thought their approach was one to emulate. This may not have been his intended meaning, but the statement was ill-advised in any case.
An Upper House member of the Diet said on background to JSRC, “Deputy Prime Minister Aso Taro sort of telegraphed the punches of the administration by expressing his admiration for how the Nazi Party forcefully changed the German constitution this summer. Obviously, we’re not Nazis in Japan–because we hardly have any Jews, but we are like the defeated post World War I Germany in that we do not have the right to wage war to defend ourselves from our enemies. Just as Germany needed a strong man like Hitler to revive defeated Germany, Japan needs people like Abe to dynamically induce change.”
by cptmarginal » Thu Feb 06, 2014 2:37 am
The 14-member panel, headed by former ambassador to the US Shunji Yanai, says the revision is possible if the government alters its current interpretation of the war-renouncing constitution. Formal constitutional change involves high hurdles, though Abe eventually hopes to achieve that.
[...]
The draft report is also expected to urge Japan to relax its restrictions on arms exports, participate more actively in UN-led security operations, and prepare a legal framework for its military to counter intrusions on remote Japanese-held islands, apparently including territory in the East China Sea also claimed by China. It would also urge Japan to strengthen its defence ties with its allies, most importantly the United States.
by cptmarginal » Thu Feb 06, 2014 2:42 am
Naoki Hyakuta made his comments as he campaigned for a right-wing candidate in the Tokyo gubernatorial election.
Mr Hyakuta, a prominent novelist, is one of 12 members of the NHK board of governors.
He was picked by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for the role late last year.
"In 1938, Chiang Kai-shek tried to publicise Japan's responsibility for the Nanking Massacre, but the nations of the world ignored him. Why? Because it never happened," the Asahi newspaper quoted Mr Hyakuta as saying.
Atrocities were committed by all sides in wars and that there was no need to teach such things to Japanese children, he said.
by cptmarginal » Sat Feb 08, 2014 5:42 am
Tokyo will hold a gubernatorial election on February 9, 2014 to replace outgoing Governor Naoki Inose, who resigned effective December 24, 2013.[1]
Tokyo governor Naoki Inose abruptly resigned in December 2013 following a month-long investigation into a political funds scandal. His resignation came in the midst of various preparations for the 2020 Summer Olympics, which had been awarded to Tokyo earlier in the year, including the formation of an organization committee (due by February 2014), the allocation of 10.3 billion yen in Olympics-related funding, and negotiation with the national government over the construction of the new National Olympic Stadium.[2]
The election campaign is set to officially begin on January 23, 2014.[1] It will be one of three critical electoral tests for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in early 2014, along with the January 19 mayoral election in Nago, Okinawa (widely viewed as a referendum on the relocation plan of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma), in which the incumbent mayor, who is against the plan, has been re-elected, and the late February gubernatorial election in Yamaguchi Prefecture.[3]
As earliest as January 10, 2014, Toshio Tamogami, former Chief of JASDF, announced his intention to run for the race, backed up by Shintaro Ishihara, former governor of Tokyo for 13 years until 2012, and current co-leader of Japan Restoration Party, although the party itself did not officially support Tamogami as some of members are against Tamogami's policy.
Toshio Tamogami, retired General and former Chief of Staff of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, entered the race as an independent with the support of former Governor Shintaro Ishihara and several other members of the Japan Restoration Party (although not the party itself.)[35] He was previously approached by the Liberal Democratic Party to run in the 2010 House of Councillors election but turned down their request. His platform calls for strengthening disaster countermeasures in Tokyo through cooperation with the SDF.[36] He is known as a nationalist figure, arguing that Japan was not an aggressor during World War II and supporting official visits to Yasukuni Shrine; his views led to his removal as JASDF Chief of Staff in 2008.[37]
According to politician Kōichi Hamada, Ishihara gave financial and political support to Aum Shinrikyo, a religious cult that was involved in several murders and assassination attempts during the early 1990s.[13] Immediately after the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, Ishihara dropped out of national politics, suddenly ending a 25-year career in the Diet.
In 1999, he ran on an independent platform and was elected as Governor of Tokyo.
On October 25, 2012, Ishihara announced he would resign as Governor of Tokyo in order to form a new political party, in preparation for upcoming national elections.[14]
Ishihara is generally described as one of Japan's most prominent "far right" politicians.[18] In Australia's ABC, he was called "Japan's Le Pen".[19]
[...]
In 1990, Ishihara said in a Playboy interview that the Rape of Nanking was a fiction, claiming, ”People say that the Japanese made a holocaust but that is not true. It is a story made up by the Chinese. It has tarnished the image of Japan, but it is a lie.”[34] He continued to defend this statement in the uproar that ensued.[35] He has also backed the film The Truth about Nanjing, which argues that the Nanking Massacre was propaganda.[36]
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