Responding to Comments

Sorry, I inadvertently posted one of the responses instead of the links to the threads. The following is the intended post.

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I’ve responded to some weeks-old comments if you are interested. Some are quite cursory, particularly when I am in agreement. Sorry, but I just couldn’t tend to my blog for a while.

Will Domino Tiles Fall and If So When?
Why Losing July Election Can Be a Blessing in Disguise to the DPJ
I Would Be Happy to Be a (Paid) Pundit and/or a (Professional) Journalist; That Said…
Stand-Up Guys

My Thanks Go to You

To those of you who have inquired, I thank you for your concern. Family matters have kept me preoccupied. I hope to resume soon, if possible, tomorrow.

Thanks again.

Jun Okumura

“Japan's new government and its first tough call”

This Foreign Policy post* grew out of a memo that I wrote in anticipation of the DPJ victory. One part of the memo will be incorporated in a document that goes to Eurasia Group clients and another became the seeds of what you see there, on the call, which is basically a Eurasia Group blog. (The rest lies undead, in a hard disk here, hard disk there; such is the fate of the unwanted children of our feverish imaginings.)

You won’t see much of me there; I rarely offer my opinions unless asked. Besides, Ross Schaap knows and understands far more than I do the arcana of Japanese politics and—crucial to the Eurasia business—its interaction with the economy. Also, there’s the little matter that Japanese politics did not have much of an effect on the economy. To put it another way, Japan was not a significant source of political risk for investors and more broadly the markets. Until now. You can actually see the side effects of the lack of interest in the quality of the hastily cobbled together post-election coverage in the English-language media.

In any case, the call*, as the subtitle “political futures from Ian Bremmer and Eurasia Group*” suggests, the posts are about the likely, not the should be.

* Ian skipped so many grades he’s known as the Doogie Howser of political science. The side effect of that is that he never learned to use capital letters properly.

Did I Tell You I Don’t Twitter?

Money quote:

[Kristen Nagy, an 18-year-old from Sparta, N.J.’s] reluctance to use Twitter, a feeling shared by others in her age group, has not doomed the microblogging service. Just 11 percent of its users are aged 12 to 17, according to comScore. Instead, Twitter’s unparalleled explosion in popularity has been driven by a decidedly older group.

Actually, Roland was a dead giveaway.

Notice Regarding My Response to One of Mark’s Comments

Here, five days later, on race in America. I’ll respond to the other one as soon as I can.

Rambling on about the Economy, More Mean Words about an Academic, etc., etc.

I couldn’t post the following as comment here since it was too long. Please read through the original post and comments if you want to make sense out of it.


My point is we should not criticize the person, but the idea. I think you’re missing out if you automatically discount ideas via their source.

There are only so many hours in a day, so many years in my life. I have no time to give voluntarily to people who have only wasted my time in return for my past attention. So the deal is this: I’m willing to read anything written in the English language about Japan by any idiot as long as it appears in a major media or other influential outlets (say, WaPo or Foreign Affairs) and is not overly long. It is, like a murder case, significant in its own right. To give an example that you would understand, liberal commentators regularly read and watch the likes of Rush Limbaugh, but won’t visit some raving right-wing blogger getting five hits a day. I also respond to any non-spam comments on my blog. I invite people to a dialog; it would be wrong for me to turn around and refuse it.

"The Japanese monetary base has taken similar leaps in past years while money supply remained stubbornly stable. ... You’ll have to turn to a real economist to have a meaningful discussion about the long-term implications if any of future exchange rates and short-term fluctuations in the US monetary base."

Don't we have an obligation to try and figure out this stuff for ourselves? How are we suppose to vote if we have to turn to various economists to determine long-range implications?

No, no more than we have the obligation to solve the Four Color Theorem—both of which BTW I have tried my hands at, unsuccessfully, at various moments in my life. Otherwise, 100% (give or take a few nano-percentage points) of the voting public would be disqualified from voting. In any case, fluctuations in the monetary base are a short-term phenomenon.

i.) The increase in the US monetary base dwarves that of Japan's during the BOJ quantitative easing period (especially if you allow for the time factor).

I think this highlights the point that fluctuations in the monetary base are a bad point to launch an argument on the long-term consequences of Obama/Bernanke’s economic policies.

I think it very unlikely the Fed will be able to reduce these holdings any time in the near future.

Okay, let’s see what happens.

iii.) The BOJ's quantitative easing was made easier by Japan's trade surplus and a high amount of savings within Japan.
iv.) America's will be made all that much harder by the exact opposite, a high level of borrowing and a trade deficit

You could also make the argument that the Fed has carried out a far more massive expansion of the money supply without creating hyperinflation or an asset bubble. In any case, since I don’t have the economic and financial expertise, I’ll just have to wait to see the long-term outcome.

v.) Japan's debt is mostly to Japanese savers, America's debt is to a large extent to foreign holders. Of course, the "foreigners" don't want to dump their bonds for obvious reasons, but other than blatant self-interest, there's nothing to stop them from doing this. They've no sense of duty to America.

By implication, I assume that it is the “sense of duty to Japan” that will keep Japanese pension fund managers buying those low-yield government bonds and holding on to them in the face of rising inflationary expectations in the future. Okay, let’s see what happens if and when the time comes.

Having spent more time on this issue over the last week, I will say that at this point, the Fed could still find some way to avoid future inflation. However, I see absolutely no political will to do so. When push comes to shove, my expectation is the Fed will keep on printing. We'll have to wait and see. (I predict very serious inflation in six months to three years.)

I have to confess that the lack of inflation (and the disappearance of hyperinflation in all but the most god-forsaken locations of this planet) since, say, the nineties, has mystified me. So let’s see if you prediction of “serious inflation” (would you care to put a number to that? 6% in US dollars? 7? 10%? 20%?) comes true.

By decoupling I mean I fail to understand why China needs America as much as America needs China…. Why can't China just make goods for themselves?

I hope I’m not misquoting you here by way of abridgement. The Chinese government obviously saw the value of keeping the export and related sectors booming in order to generate income and wealth. If it sees a serious threat of dollar inflation coming and stop buying up the foreign exchange generated by Chinese exports, this will push up the yuan, which in turn will cause Chinese trade surplus to fall and external investments to rise. The U.S. trade balance will depend to a great extent on how exchange rates and inflation rates balance out. I don’t see this in terms of one “needing” the other more than the other way around. BTW, it’s really the Chinese government’s decision to make (if it wants to) in the short-run, since it is the one that is buying up the foreign exchange generated by the Chinese trade surplus (and net inbound foreign investment) to maintain exchange rates at the desired levels.

Of course Chinese economic actors can and do make lots of stuff, some of it for the Chinese market, others for exports. They might, or might not, be able to satisfy the entire domestic demand for manufactured goods and tradable services. But I don’t think even the USSR tried that during the height of the Cold War.

A Couple of Reponses

I just can’t seem to get back to regular blogging, but I’ve responded to a couple of comments, here on Japan, its Northeast Asia neighbors and the United States; and here, on Japan and Ukraine of all things. I’ll try to resume in a couple of days. In the meantime, if you have any questions, I’ll do my best to take them on. That’s actually easier.

Back to Blogging

Back to blogging after a hard week’s work. First, some long past due responses to comments on this post.

Advice for a Mass Media Blogger and His Firm

If I were advising your firm, I would call for a dual-identity system that superficially resembles the TIME blogs. You firm should establish franchises into which the lot of you will be drafted according to your current assignments. You will switch franchises as you are reassigned on your day job. Alternatively, your firm could adopt the pro tour system and allow you to play the various events (Asia, Environment, Technology, Finance, etc. etc.) as you see fit. Either way, you avoid the professional journalist’s dilemma: How do you maintain a steady stream of content against the demands of your day job? Asian Exile has resolved that by basically giving up on his blog. I suggest a collective solution that nevertheless allows you to maintain your individual identities. You could even get fans of individual bloggers to open themselves up to new areas of interest as they follow you around the corporate blogosphere.

My Latest Thoughts on the DPJ Election

Woke up in the middle of the night (do not ask why), couldn’t resist looking at my email. Which led to an online look at the media’s reaction to the DPJ election. Basically, it boils down to: What the heck is Hatoyama going to do with Ozawa? My immediate reaction to that goes here, in my response to Ross’ comment.

I think I need a life. And sleep. Good night. If you like me, pray for the Celtics. And if you hate me, well, you know what to do.

I’ve Responded to (Most of) Your Comments

Helped by a nice hot bath that has done wonders for my sprained hand (and a liberal dose of adulterated water), I have now responded to all the comments that I have received in the last two days. Except one.

I do my best to respond to all comments, but this latest one is beyond the pale even for me. So I leave it to you to decide who’s the grown-up. Hey, maybe I’ll think differently about this when I’m sober. Then again, probably not.

Online NYT Edit Trips Up Saletan on Japanese Response to Swine Flu

The usually reliable William Saletan writes in “First They Came for Mexicans” Slate (5 May 2009):

…Japan began denying visas to Mexicans on arrival.

“Denying visas…on arrival” doesn’t make sense; you’re supposed to obtain visas before you come. In fact, what happened was that Japan temporarily suspended the waiver of visa requirements. Given the disproportionately high incidence of reported cases in Mexico—just imagine the likely extent of unreported cases—it is not unreasonable to resume visa requirements; air flights between Mexico and Japan continue.

I think this was an honest mistake on Saletan’s part, not carelessness. Note that the NYT report that he links to in order to back up his claim makes no mention of Japan at all. The writers of the NYT must have excised the (likely slightly incorrect) reference to Japanese action after they found out that they were wrong. Even newspapers sometimes alter their online articles without any notice; this must have been one of such cases.

Online sources are tricky, and there’s not too much the sources themselves can do about it.

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As of this post, Saletan has not corrected his report, though that is not my point here.

Biting the Hand that Feeds Me? Yep, Sounds Like Me Alright…and a Public Announcement on Behalf of PBS

I have been asked to add my voice to Perspectives, a feature on the World Focus website. I consider it an honor, and have gladly accepted. But:

Perspectives highlights the best of the blogosphere by cross-posting columns culled from a network of contributors. We cut through the noise of tens of millions of bloggers worldwide and bring you commentary from experts and voices on the ground.

?

So I guess my question is: Should I consider myself fortunate no longer to be considered noise, or should I show some compassion for the riff-raff, the clamorous multitude from whose cacophonous midst I have so recently emerged?

How about:

We sift through the voices of the tens of millions of bloggers worldwide

I think I could have lived with that.

Seriously, Perspectives must be following hundreds of blogs every day, so don’t expect my posts to show up there any time soon. Of more interest to me is the fact that this is part of the move the mainstream media have been making in the blogosphere for some time now, pushing forth their own journalists and columnists professional writers and journalists, and roping in solitary bloggers like wild horses—I was asked to suggest some blogs, which I did, reminding myself of yet another equine parallel. I am far from going professional—one of hundreds, one of hundreds, but am I being domesticated nonetheless? What will the lure of a broader readership do to my content? My choice and interpretation of events? This is going to have me thinking for a while.

In the meantime, Perspectives has asked me to plug Talk to Us, a “World Focus Citizens Initiative”. There’s always a quid pro quo, it seems. Kidding. They want you to give advice to President Obama. Take a look.

Extra! Read All about It! And It! And It! And…

I interrupt my work to inform you that a blogger friend—I’m sure he/she won’t mind being identified, but just in case— Gen Kanai has just come across the Wikileaks website. Wikileaks is exactly what its names says it is and has apparently been known to the public for while—there’s a citation from TIME magazine—but it’s news to me. Yes, there’s much Japan-related stuff too.

Have fun. Now, back to our regular programming…

Why Norimitsu Onishi’s Report Japan’s Outcasts Still Wait for Acceptance Is Wrong, and Why It Matters: Coda without a Finale

I’d had the final part in the can days even before I’d written the previous installment, but had decided that I’d put up maybe a couple of more before I went there. Unfortunately, real life intervened and, somewhere along the way, I seem to have lost the appetite to continue. Perhaps the exchange of comments at a number of points along the way drew out so much out of me on the subject that there no longer was any there there… which, come to think about it, is not a bad thing at all. So let me thank the people who took the trouble to comment for giving me a good intellectual workout.

However, having I’ve looked again at the final piece, I see that it’s not well written and certainly needs more work. Who knows, one of these days, I might edit it and put it up. In the meantime, I’ll be happy to email it to anyone who wants to see it—I actually sent it to Roy Berman because, if I remember correctly, I thought that he deserved an explanation of why I was doing this after I read his take on the affair and I wasn’t ready to put it out there just yet. You know where to find me; my email address is: okumurajun@gmail.com (also accessible from my profile). In any case, I think that the justifications for my attack—what else was it?—were more appropriately expressed in a paragraph from one of my counter-comments here. I’ll repeat it below for your convenience.

I think that the data, facts and opinions that I cite regarding the buraku issue are at least as good as the facts and opinions that Onishi raises in his article. I also think that my version of Nonaka’s political circumstances when he gave up running for LDP President is superior to Onishi’s. I leave it up to you the readers of this blog to decide who has a better case. However, that’s not the real issue at stake here. What I find disturbing is the fact that one of the few reports on Japan in the “newspaper of record” that appears to probe beneath the surface of events turns out to be a collage of anecdotes and opinions that ignores the substantial amount of material that do not support a personal take on Japan that appears to drive the reporter’s work. I have some guesses as to where that personal take—more temperament than ideology—comes from, and I’ve gained a little sympathy for Onishi as I progressed because of this. But that does not provide an excuse; this is a news report, not a short story that we are talking about.

And that is as good a place as any to end this coda without a finale. Thanks for coming, you all.

Thank You, Ken, for the Bloggerrific Evening

Ken Worsley at Japan Economy News & Blog put together a great event for us bloggers, friends, significant others, and the readers who make our efforts worthwhile. I also got to move several bloggers to my “I’ve met” list. I take this opportunity to note that two of them were featured in Andrew Leonard’s fine Salon column. Congrats. Japan-heavy, English-language blogs rarely receive notice in the mainstream media. It couldn’t have happened to two nicer people.

Questions (Only) about the Future of the Liberal Democratic Party; and an Unrelated Notice

With little happening on the domestic front by way of headline-grabbing events and there being only so many ways to say that the economy is tanking, the media have turned its attention to pre-mortems of the LDP as we know it. There’s so much chatter from potential instigators—old-guard liberals Koichi Kato and Taku Yamazaki; pro-market reformists Hidenao Nakagawa, Yuriko Koike, Yasuhisa Shiozaki and Yoshimi Watanabe; and even conservative camel-nose Takeo Hiranuma come to mind—that it’s hard to shake the impression that it’s a matter of when, not whether, it will happen and what form it will take. Specifically, will the beginning of the end come before the Lower House election or after? Will it come as a series of small-bore defections, or one big bang? Will the process annihilate the LDP, or will it leave a smaller but more coherent political force in its wake? Will the realignment bug infect the DPJ, with its even greater potential for fractiousness held in bay only by prospects of the spoils of victory, as well as the rest of the opposition? Most important, What policy decisions will be made in the course of these events—or the lack thereof in the unlikely event that little of import happens—and how will they affect the course of the Japanese economy and its components as well as Japan’s relations with its allies, neighbors and the rest of the world?

So many questions, but no answers and few meaningful thoughts, at least from me. I hope to the find the coming months more informative for this blog. In the meantime, the kind people at Trans-Pacific Radio requests that I post the following message regarding an upcoming real-world blogfest. (Blog-con? Blorgy?) I have some scheduling problems for the Saturday event, but I’ll do my best to be there myself. For those of you who will not be in the Kanto area, wish you could be there. Happy holidays.

A gathering for bloggers and blog enthusiasts is being planned in Tokyo for the evening of January 17, and we would like to extend the invitation to any and all visitors who may wish to come. Bloggers from Observing Japan, Shisaku, Global Talk 21, Mutant Frog, Coming Anarchy, Trans-Pacific Radio and more will be amongst the crowd.

All of us are hoping to meet with other bloggers and readers for an evening of food an drink. If you would like to attend, please send an email to transpacificradio@gmail.com before January 8th. Please let us know how many folks you would like to bring along with you. Although we have a place in mind for the get-together, we will wait to see what the final numbers are like before confirming. We expect that the gathering will be held in either Shibuya or Shinjuku. After we have confirmed the numbers and location, we will send you an email letting you know exactly where and when (probably about 6pm) we will be meeting up on the 17th.

We hope to see you all on the 17th of January!

Some Thoughts on Patrick Smith’s Takedown of Malcolm Gladwell

You’ve already heard me complain about articles in the general-purpose media that dress up unfounded, sometimes downright false, assertions with one-sided vignettes and quotes, expert and non- to sell a story. In fact, the media both good and bad always rely heavily on the anecdotal approach to reach the general public. This is not an ideal situation, but there is no way to get around this, short of rendering the news on any given subject inaccessible to all but the truly initiated. Thus, we rely on the journalists to get the underlying story correct even as they entertain, and on experts both pro and amateur to call them to task when they don’t.

In the past, the general public only became aware of the lie when the clamor from the experts became loud enough to past through the filter of the mass media. The Internet has changed this, as it unleashes, unites, massive hordes of online Mavens—to use a term popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his bestseller The Tipping Point—who gleefully expose the lie. Much of this activity takes place on blogs and in chat rooms, filtered by online debates and by what I’ll call super-Mavens, experts who play the role of arbitrators in the cyberspace market of ideas. From the consumer’s perspective, online magazines can be seen as filters that save the general public the time and effort of identifying these super-Mavens. From the experts’ point of view, they may not pay much, but keep plugging away, and more munificent deals for deadwood publications and personal appearances will (hopefully) come their way, analogous to what is happening in the indie music world with open-sourced outlets and gigs and recording deals.

And that is a long way of coming to my main point, which is the latest from Patrick Smith, an airline pilot by trade and most entertaining and informative writer of Ask the Pilot, as he takes down—politely, unlike this blog—that same Malcolm Gladwell for his claim that “[t]he single most important variable in determining whether a plane crashes is not the plane, it's not the maintenance, it's not the weather, it's the culture the pilot comes from”. I gather from what Smith says in his essay (I have to take it on faith that he’s not playing with the facts as well) that when Gladwell talks about “culture” as the cause of more accidents, he is talking about “hierarchical” cultures that he see in places like Columbia/Latin America and South Korea/Asia.

Gladwell’s mistake was that he did not bother to check the facts. He created a nice story involving culture, found some cases to fit the facts or labeled the facts to fit the story—does anyone have an operative definition of “hierarchical” cultures and a scale to measure them?—and just winged it the rest of the way. But a quick check of the facts by Smith shows that he was in essence just making it up.

Smith is careful not to knock Gladwell’s work entirely; he dispassionately stays within his competence; that is another measure of his particular value as a super-Maven. I myself am reading The Tipping Point now, for the second time. Galdwell clearly the knack of taking good, innovative thinking and making it easily accessible to the general public. Thomas Friedman is another such, if far less skilled, writer. But at the end of the day, they are journalists; it is hard for them sometimes to let such simple things as facts get in the way of the story. This is where super-Mavens such as Patrick Smith and the intellectual filters such as Salon (as long as you stay aware of its liberal leanings where political issues are concerned) come in for people e like me, who find more specialized publications such as Nature often above my head.

Responding to Recent Comments

Re Norimitsu Onishi’s Obsession with Japanese Revisionism Continues:

James: As you must already be aware, I took that up in a subsequent post.

Anonymi: Are you aware that the Japanese MSM media, Sankei being the notable exception, post only a fraction of its content on its website?

Re The Meaning of Komeito as a Coalition Partner:

Mark: I am not familiar with the teachings and history of the mainstream Nichiren sect (or more appropriately the specific Nichiren school of thought that Sokagakkai sprouted from) and its laic offshoot Sokagakkai, but my guess is that the schism came about the other way around, with Sokagakkai evolving into a heresy, instead of using the Lotus Sutra to dress up ia homespun creed. As for Mormonism (and Scientology) and its relationship with mainstream Christianity, see this Slate article.

Re: The Latest, Troubling Twist in the Tamogami Incident:

Princess (or you-know-who): The video clip is not that funny as political satire goes. Liberals have set high standards as far as political humor goes. Which reminds me, take away the Buckleys, Rush Limbaugh, Evelyn Waugh and Aristophanes, and you don’t have very many, really funny conservatives left. I don’t know if—as a financial strategist-turned-academics once told me—Democrats have more fun, but they are more fun, that’s for sure.

True Tales: AIG Blog Relations Builds Cyberbridge to Nowhere

Somehow, GlobalTalk 21 found its way onto the AIG Blog Relations mailing list a little over a week ago. Since then, I’ve been getting messages like the following:

We apologize for sending this to you as a mass e-mail distribution, but we thought you would want to receive this as soon as it came out, since you and your readers have been following this story closely.

Below is an announcement that AIG released minutes ago at 7 a.m. EDT. For more information, you can listen to AIG Chairman and CEO Edward M. Liddy's investment community conference call today, October 3, at 8:30 a.m. EDT at www.aigwebcast.com.

Contact: Charlene Hamrah (Investment Community)
212-770-7074
Nicholas Ashooh (News Media)

Now dangnabbit, wouldn’t you know when I click the link, I need a “User Name” and a “Password” to get through? For what it’s worth, Ali Baba and Open Sesame won’t work.

Blog relations, of course, is the least of AIG’s worries.