GlobalTalk 21

I have been “mistaken,” “misled,” “misrepresented,” and been “unaccountably in error,”
and am sorry if you have been offended

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Ian Bremmer's Outlook on Political Risk

My thoughts are not coalescing properly these last few days. So I give you this link , where the Washington Realist gives away expensive pro...

Sunday, December 31, 2006

Some Thoughts on Saddam Hussein's Snuff Video

It took less than a day for what looks like a genuine video Saddam Hussein's execution in more or less its entirety to show up on the In...

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Talk about Them Old Times: the New Administrative Reforms Minister and His Father

Much has been made of Shinzo Abe's desire, or need, to complete the unfulfilled legacy of his father Shintaro Abe, who came this close t...

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Good News and Bad News (or Bad News and Good News): The Abe Administration Is Getting Better at Damage Control.

In a news conference late this afternoon, Genichiro Sada expressed his intent to resign as Administrative Reforms Minister. What the adminis...

Crime Continues to Pay Dividends

Zange-banashi , or tales of remorse, used to be a popular genre in Japanese carnival sideshows. Notorious criminals with the gift of the gab...

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Unless I've Missed Something, This Is the First Scandal to Hit a Cabinet Member

Genichiro Sata, the cabinet minster in charge of administrative reforms, is under the gun for filing a false report on his political finance...

Quickie for Slow Foreign Correspondents

This must be where your colleagues go when they desperately need a byline and are just sick and tired of writing one more piece about the r...

My Nukes for My Money, Sez North Korea? If you Believe This, I Know a Son of a Nigerian General…

According to the Dec. 26 Asahi Shinbun (too bad, Japanese version only) : According to Lower House member Gaku Hashimoto and others [who joi...

Saturday, December 23, 2006

The King and Us: Alternate Realities in the Yomiuri World

If you subscribe to Yomiuri Shinbun, you got this very brief page 4 article, which I translate for your reading pleasure: Jordanian King Hol...

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Piling on Re FY 2007 Budget Plans

It's easy to say that we (Abe) will cut new issues of government bonds in FY 2007 by more than the 4.4 trillion yen we (Koizumi) cut in ...

Gakkyu Houkai(Disintigrating Classroom) in the LDP?

I once argued that the precipitous drop in public support for Prime Minister. Abe was media-driven and implied (stated explicitly? Too lazy ...

The News: Yushukan Revisited, "Paris Syndrome", and Lessons Learned during the Lost Decade

A nice counterpoint to this story about Little Nakagawa: Shrine in Japan to Its War Dead Plans to ‘Soften’ Section on China Do you think th...

readers:

Over lunch the other day, a friend of mine who inhabits a lucrative and leisurely ecological niche of the media alerted to me to Lucy Kellaw...

Blogger, in Iran: by Way of a Thank You to GD for a Free Lunch

Political Interest has frowned on my habit of picking on old men. (Nag nag nag.) Perhaps then I should insult this young man instead, and gi...

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

What Mr. Abe Will Have to Be Thankful for When (Not If) the Six-Party Talks Stall

One of the five other working groups that China proposed is the WG for normalization of Japan-North-Korea relations. We are allowed to presu...

Governors Galore in Graduates Gallery at METI

As Yoshinobu Nisaka, METI Class of '73, coasted to victory over the Communist candidate in the Wakayama gubernatorial election, Tetsuji ...

Monday, December 18, 2006

Mr. Nakagawa Keeps Talking Nuclear, in Nagasaki of All Places

Chairman Nakagawa: The US Dropping the A-Bomb Is Unforgivable Crime Mr. Nakagawa, Chairman of the LDP Policy Research Council, made a speech...

Sunday, December 17, 2006

An Aging Japanese Arabist Talks about the Taliban, and Enchants

Chatting away is a small group of mostly distinguished Orientalists in their sixties, seventies. Being neither, I listen attentively, merely...

Seasoned Pro Says Insiders think Abe Is Doing a Good Job, But Isn't Getting Credit for It. But Can the Opposition Take Advantage?

It is early in the week, the deals have been cut, and a seasoned pro is holding forth on the Abe administration. Though an insider, it is a ...

Saturday, December 16, 2006

A JCP/JSP Editorial Masquerading as News Makes Its Way on to the BBC Website

Kidding. But the headline " Japan Rolls Back Pacifist Pillars " is alarming without illuminating.. And the text does not do much t...

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About Me

Jun Okumura: After graduation, Jun Okumura promptly entered what is now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and stayed in in its ecosystem most of his “adult” life. Along the way, he had pleasant stops in an assortment of Japanese quangos (Japangos?), overseas assignments and government agencies. After thirty years, though, it dawned on him that he had no aptitude whatsoever for administration and/or management. Armed with this epiphany, he went to the authorities and arranged an amicable separation; to come out, as it were. He is completely on his own IYKWIAS, but he and the METI folks remain “good friends.” He currently holds the titles of “visiting researcher” at the Meiji Institute for Global Affairs (no, that MIGA) and counselor at a risk analysis firm that dares not speak its name. This gives him plenty of time to blog or make money on his own. His bank account says that he does too much of the first, and insists that he do more of what he calls “intellectual odd jobs”. He wants to be paid to write fulltime, or better, talk—where the easy money is—but that distinction has largely escaped him. He really should not be referring to himself in the third person; he is not that famous.

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