My blog has always been in the public domain. I have made it my practice to let all incoming comments by posted unfiltered, delete spam, and do my best to respond to them. (I also keep a copy of all comments, my own included, so no one pulls an Aldo DeVito on me so to speak.) Unfortunately, one individual, having been banned from at least one public forum, has chosen my blog to post comments that are unrelated to my posts and are substantively counterproductive to public discourse. I feel no personal animosity towards the individual since he appears to be mentally ill. Nevertheless, the selfish being that I am, I cannot let my blog be used for whatever therapeutic purposes it may be serving to the detriment of my experience and that of my small but (hopefully) faithful readership; I am not a professional caregiver, nor his brother nor keeper.
To make what could be an even longer story short, I am now moderating comments, but only to make sure that the comments of said individual will no longer appear on my blog. All other non-spam comments continue to be welcome. A warning to said individual: I reserve the right to delete all your comments retroactively at any time, and I will certainly do so if you post on my blog again if and when I revert to unfiltered mode at some point in the future.
That’s it. Now, back to work.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
USD 57 Billion Supplementary Tranche Will Be Extended…If South Korea Wants
The following grows out of my end of a conversation that I had with Mark Manyin after his Hitachi-CFR Fellow talk today. (It was a useful talk, and the gist of it should show up on the CFR website and elsewhere.) A bit of advocacy crept in, but I like to think that it’s mostly analytical, descriptive and even predictive, not prescriptive.
There’s some media chatter around the possibility of Japan refusing to extend the one-year expansion of the Japan-South Korea swap arrangement from USD 13 billion to USD 70 billion in retaliation for President Lee Myung-bak making landfall at Takeshima and his subsequent statement about the Japanese Emperor having to go visit graves and apologize from the heart if he wants to visit South Korea.
Don’t even think about it. It’s bigger than Japan and South Korea. The Ching Mai Initiative was essentially about China and Japan bringing their foreign currency reserves to the service of the rest of the East Asian states.* Try to imagine what kind of message the Japanese Government would be sending to the rest of the world, the Southeast Asian members of the Chiang Mai initiative in particular, if it decided to use it for unrelated political purposes. Try to imagine how Beijing could use that for propaganda purposes against Japan, or, worse, dabble in the dark arts themselves.
Not that it’s sure to happen. The South Korean Government might decide to discontinue for political show. I can see the logic; its political leaders might not want to be seen by their domestic constituency in a supplicating position when the bilateral political relationship is at a historical low. I hope they do; the global community needs the message that Japan and South Korea can put the interests of the global financial system above the political demands of a dispute over the Liancourt Rocks. Japan and South Korea also benefit by establishing a baseline where administrative needs will be met even as political exigencies evoke verbal fuselage. If the trilateral FTA talks can go on, so can the USD 57 extension. And everyone will be enriched, at no immediate cost to any of the players.
There’s some media chatter around the possibility of Japan refusing to extend the one-year expansion of the Japan-South Korea swap arrangement from USD 13 billion to USD 70 billion in retaliation for President Lee Myung-bak making landfall at Takeshima and his subsequent statement about the Japanese Emperor having to go visit graves and apologize from the heart if he wants to visit South Korea.
Don’t even think about it. It’s bigger than Japan and South Korea. The Ching Mai Initiative was essentially about China and Japan bringing their foreign currency reserves to the service of the rest of the East Asian states.* Try to imagine what kind of message the Japanese Government would be sending to the rest of the world, the Southeast Asian members of the Chiang Mai initiative in particular, if it decided to use it for unrelated political purposes. Try to imagine how Beijing could use that for propaganda purposes against Japan, or, worse, dabble in the dark arts themselves.
Not that it’s sure to happen. The South Korean Government might decide to discontinue for political show. I can see the logic; its political leaders might not want to be seen by their domestic constituency in a supplicating position when the bilateral political relationship is at a historical low. I hope they do; the global community needs the message that Japan and South Korea can put the interests of the global financial system above the political demands of a dispute over the Liancourt Rocks. Japan and South Korea also benefit by establishing a baseline where administrative needs will be met even as political exigencies evoke verbal fuselage. If the trilateral FTA talks can go on, so can the USD 57 extension. And everyone will be enriched, at no immediate cost to any of the players.
* South Korea also has a meaningful role as a supplier, but its potential is inherently limited. It has only one-third as many residents as Japan does and has an eerily similar demographics (its surfeit of males excepted) and has one fairly recent currency meltdown in its records.ADD: Whoa! I don’t think that they’re going to ask for an extension IYKWIM.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Assassin for Kikawada? Is Ozawa Crazy? But Will the DPJ Miss a Golden Opportunity?
As a long-time observer of the US political scene, where no opportunity to slam the enemy is missed by highly paid professionals of political warfare, I cannot but see a golden opportunity for the DPJ to cash in on this report about Ozawa plotting to send assassins for two Diet members in his Iwate fiefdom who failed to obey his orders to leave the DPJ with him.
It seems that Ozawa himself has lost track of where his one-time disciple is coming from, so it’s no shame if you happen to know little about Mr. Kikawada. This obscure backbencher’s initial fifteen minutes of national [fame] came at unfathomable personal cost. Mr. Kikawada became the political face of the 3.11 tragedy when he lost [his wife, oldest son and parents as well as one of his political assistants] to the tsunami. (And you thought the Fukushima victims had it bad.) He has subsequently used it to champion the cause of the tsunami victims in the political sphere. He reluctantly left a subcabinet post at the nexus of the reconstruction efforts at Ozawa’s bidding only after pleading, successfully, to Ozawa to come back to Iwate for the first time in over a year to address Kikawada’s constituency. In case you are not overly familiar with the Japanese political scene, Ozawa’s ex-wife sent out a scathing letter to key Ozawa supporters that he had cowered indoors with fear after the Fukushima disaster and that it had been his fear of radiation exposure had kept him away from his Iwate home for so long.
Now imagine what Karl Rove or David Axelrod could do with this kind of situation. Of course it [could] have been a red herring; the Japanese media, as is often their wont, reading something sinister into a seemingly innocuous statement. But it doesn’t matter. It’s in the Yomiuri, so it must be true, right? Ozawa could deny it, but the damage will have been done. Oh, well, guess what the odds are against the DPJ just sitting on its hands and do[ing] nothing?
It seems that Ozawa himself has lost track of where his one-time disciple is coming from, so it’s no shame if you happen to know little about Mr. Kikawada. This obscure backbencher’s initial fifteen minutes of national [fame] came at unfathomable personal cost. Mr. Kikawada became the political face of the 3.11 tragedy when he lost [his wife, oldest son and parents as well as one of his political assistants] to the tsunami. (And you thought the Fukushima victims had it bad.) He has subsequently used it to champion the cause of the tsunami victims in the political sphere. He reluctantly left a subcabinet post at the nexus of the reconstruction efforts at Ozawa’s bidding only after pleading, successfully, to Ozawa to come back to Iwate for the first time in over a year to address Kikawada’s constituency. In case you are not overly familiar with the Japanese political scene, Ozawa’s ex-wife sent out a scathing letter to key Ozawa supporters that he had cowered indoors with fear after the Fukushima disaster and that it had been his fear of radiation exposure had kept him away from his Iwate home for so long.
Now imagine what Karl Rove or David Axelrod could do with this kind of situation. Of course it [could] have been a red herring; the Japanese media, as is often their wont, reading something sinister into a seemingly innocuous statement. But it doesn’t matter. It’s in the Yomiuri, so it must be true, right? Ozawa could deny it, but the damage will have been done. Oh, well, guess what the odds are against the DPJ just sitting on its hands and do[ing] nothing?
Accept Their “Dokto” Claim? I Think That I Have a Better Idea
Several thoughtful academics in communication and in conversation insist that giving up Japanese claims to the economically and militarily near-useless islands would be (to use the words of one of them) “a foreign policy coup” for Japan. One of them even believes that it would improve Japan’s position vis-à-vis the other two territorial issues with South Korea and China. Actually, I agree with another party to that particular exchange in that it “would be exploited by the South Koreans as a victory over a weakened Japan, while the Russians and the Chinese would be emboldened.” Specifically, the South Koreans would see it as confirmation of their stand on all “history” issues and dig in deeper concerning their demands for a “heartfelt” apology from the Emperor, acceptance of the South Korean take on the “comfort women” issue, renaming the Japan Sea, etc., etc., while the takeaway for the Russians and the Chinese will be that Japan is a pushover when it comes to sovereignty issues. In other words, a foreign policy “debacle,” not “coup.”
Do I have a good answer though? Not really, nothing except the wings-for-pigs/wheels-for-aunts kind. And I’m not really the prescribing kind. But for what it’s worth, I did tell a gentleman from a Chinese think tank last week that I’d like to see the Japanese government issue a statement to the effect that Japan a) is willing to take all three territorial disputes, including the Senkaku Islands to the Hague under the condition that China, Russia, and South Korea all agree to submit to adjudication, and until such time as they do b) engage in the maintenance and upkeep of the disputed territory in its possession. The Japanese Government would admit that there is a territorial issue regarding the Senkaku Islands in the hopes that this would render a measure of sanity to the Chinese public’s response (and hence the government’s) when the Japanese government got rid of the goats and took stock of the indigenous wildlife. This is a minimalist position in that it essentially recognizes the physical status quo without prejudice to the legal claims of each party. It’s essentially a unilateral quarantine that is aimed at keeping the noise down to a minimum while the de facto occupants of all three sets of disputed territory go about minding their business there in the hopes that there will be enough subsequent benign history behind us so that we can settle matters once and for all in the manner that, say, the United States and Canada settled theirs, a bid for provisional peace during my lifetime and, heaven forbid, my children’s.
Do I have a good answer though? Not really, nothing except the wings-for-pigs/wheels-for-aunts kind. And I’m not really the prescribing kind. But for what it’s worth, I did tell a gentleman from a Chinese think tank last week that I’d like to see the Japanese government issue a statement to the effect that Japan a) is willing to take all three territorial disputes, including the Senkaku Islands to the Hague under the condition that China, Russia, and South Korea all agree to submit to adjudication, and until such time as they do b) engage in the maintenance and upkeep of the disputed territory in its possession. The Japanese Government would admit that there is a territorial issue regarding the Senkaku Islands in the hopes that this would render a measure of sanity to the Chinese public’s response (and hence the government’s) when the Japanese government got rid of the goats and took stock of the indigenous wildlife. This is a minimalist position in that it essentially recognizes the physical status quo without prejudice to the legal claims of each party. It’s essentially a unilateral quarantine that is aimed at keeping the noise down to a minimum while the de facto occupants of all three sets of disputed territory go about minding their business there in the hopes that there will be enough subsequent benign history behind us so that we can settle matters once and for all in the manner that, say, the United States and Canada settled theirs, a bid for provisional peace during my lifetime and, heaven forbid, my children’s.
Monday, August 20, 2012
More on Bimbos
…more interruption…
Good friend MTC, proprietor of the Shisaku blog mentions in his comment on a previous post that Japan has its own share of “diminutive dimmer bulbs of the chandelier,” gives the names of celebrities (BTW is Suzanne diminutive?) and wonders what they should be called. My answer turned into a somewhat more general consideration of bimbohood. Anyone who read the post before the comments appeared and is still interested in the subject is invited to go back and take a look. And yes, my friends who happen to be reading this blog, Jersey boy PS is exactly who you think he is. I always use initials to protect the guilty.
Incidentally, the title of this post is homonymous with “Moron Bimbos.” I’ve noticed that many professional writers would follow this with “(pun intended)” or “(pun unintended).” Now, few things are lamer than that—except perhaps taking the time to draw attention to it and skewer it?—don’t you think?
Good friend MTC, proprietor of the Shisaku blog mentions in his comment on a previous post that Japan has its own share of “diminutive dimmer bulbs of the chandelier,” gives the names of celebrities (BTW is Suzanne diminutive?) and wonders what they should be called. My answer turned into a somewhat more general consideration of bimbohood. Anyone who read the post before the comments appeared and is still interested in the subject is invited to go back and take a look. And yes, my friends who happen to be reading this blog, Jersey boy PS is exactly who you think he is. I always use initials to protect the guilty.
Incidentally, the title of this post is homonymous with “Moron Bimbos.” I’ve noticed that many professional writers would follow this with “(pun intended)” or “(pun unintended).” Now, few things are lamer than that—except perhaps taking the time to draw attention to it and skewer it?—don’t you think?
No More BRICs/S!
I interrupt my work to bring you the following message.
It’s time that we stopped using the word BRICs/S.
BRICs appears to have been no more than a sales gimmick created by an analyst in an investment bank, who drew an arbitrary line between the countries with the four largest economies (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and the rest of the Cold War socialist and third world countries. The funny part of this is that BRICs leaders themselves believed the hype around the idea and turned it into a political concept by inviting South Africa into the fold, no doubt leaving Nigeria with wounded pride. Capitalizing the “s” (one also wonders if an invitation would have been extended to a “Meridional” Africa) and making it BRICS also destroyed any sense of coherence, since Mexico, Turkey and Indonesia, to name three, have significantly larger GDPs than South Africa and the first two have significantly higher GDP per capita.
The economies of the original four BRICs had nothing in common to distinguish them from the others in the first place; the intellectually barren notion is well past its consume-by date even as a sales gimmick.
It’s time that we stopped using the word BRICs/S.
BRICs appears to have been no more than a sales gimmick created by an analyst in an investment bank, who drew an arbitrary line between the countries with the four largest economies (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and the rest of the Cold War socialist and third world countries. The funny part of this is that BRICs leaders themselves believed the hype around the idea and turned it into a political concept by inviting South Africa into the fold, no doubt leaving Nigeria with wounded pride. Capitalizing the “s” (one also wonders if an invitation would have been extended to a “Meridional” Africa) and making it BRICS also destroyed any sense of coherence, since Mexico, Turkey and Indonesia, to name three, have significantly larger GDPs than South Africa and the first two have significantly higher GDP per capita.
The economies of the original four BRICs had nothing in common to distinguish them from the others in the first place; the intellectually barren notion is well past its consume-by date even as a sales gimmick.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
So This [Is] Why They Didn’t Place TEPCO into Receivership?
The Sunday front-page headline for Nikkei reads “[General] Security for Electricity Bonds to Be Abolished.”
Wait, I missed that one. I didn’t realize that the holders of uncollateralized bonds that the regional electric power monopolies (EPCOs) issued had priority over general creditors. And by general creditors, I mean the evacuees, businesses, and other people collectively claiming trillions of yen in damages against TEPCO. In other words, once the legal bankruptcy (as broadly defined) started, it would have been very difficult to make bondholders take a haircut. Add to this the plausible argument that the TEPCO pensioners also had a significant claim for priority (if you’re a lawyer and can read Japanese, you’ll want to read this document as a starting point for this discussion; thank God I don’t have to), and there’s a good chance that the main stakeholders as well as other priority creditors would have left little in TEPCO coffers for the victims of the nuclear disaster to pick over. The article also raises the need to level the playing field for IPPs in raising long-term funds through bond issues.
I expect it to become law, since it makes so much sense. Until it happens, though, I’ll be careful the next time an EPCO comes asking for a loan.
Wait, I missed that one. I didn’t realize that the holders of uncollateralized bonds that the regional electric power monopolies (EPCOs) issued had priority over general creditors. And by general creditors, I mean the evacuees, businesses, and other people collectively claiming trillions of yen in damages against TEPCO. In other words, once the legal bankruptcy (as broadly defined) started, it would have been very difficult to make bondholders take a haircut. Add to this the plausible argument that the TEPCO pensioners also had a significant claim for priority (if you’re a lawyer and can read Japanese, you’ll want to read this document as a starting point for this discussion; thank God I don’t have to), and there’s a good chance that the main stakeholders as well as other priority creditors would have left little in TEPCO coffers for the victims of the nuclear disaster to pick over. The article also raises the need to level the playing field for IPPs in raising long-term funds through bond issues.
I expect it to become law, since it makes so much sense. Until it happens, though, I’ll be careful the next time an EPCO comes asking for a loan.
Things People Don’t Talk about (6): What’s the Japanese Term for “Bimbo”?
What’s the Japanese term for “bimbo,” asks good friend RD. Beats me. Let me guess. Bimbos are not only stupid, they are also loud, which makes their stupidity obvious to everyone. There are plenty of stupid Japanese women too, but they act more demurely, which masks their stupidity (and intelligence in the opposite case).
What do you think?
What do you think?
We Know So Little about Each Other When It comes to the Territorial Issues
Last week, I was engaged in an online dialog with a few friends and acquaintances in academia around the most recent contretemps between Japan and its two nearest, if not quite dearest, neighbors. I’m putting my end of the discussions on my blog, edited as stand-alone commentary including some explanatory words on the other side of the discussion. The footnotes have been concocted solely for the purpose of this blog.
My academic friends point out the Japanese public and the Chinese and South Korean publics are largely kept ignorant of the view from the other side. I think that this is largely true with regard not only to the historical facts, but also the details of the national myths that the three nations have woven around them. I say that with some confidence that this is true in Japan. With regard to how the other side “feels,” though, I think that the Japanese people get more than enough information on that. In fact, I would argue that the information on how the other side feels as expressed in the continuous susurration of anger punctuated by periodic outbursts of rage as conveyed through the domestic media has raised the temperature of non-right wing public opinion, which in turn generates a looping feedback mechanism of ill-will between the Japanese public on one side and the Chinese and South Korean two sides.
Now, I can understand the South Korean media and professional narrators on Korea toeing the locally dominant storyline*, but it’s not easy to see at first glance why, say, Asahi and Mainichi can’t put both side of the story into play. After all, there are Japanese scholars in Japan who have taken up the other side of the argument without harm to tenure, life, or limb, in descending order of importance, and what’s a few more vans in front of your media group HQs? It’s an interesting question, one which I’d like to hear about from a media expert.
In fact, both sides of the Meiji-and-after story, the glory and the gore of the imperialist era, were featured in the history text books when I was growing up, and this presumably remains unchanged today. My two cents worth says that the Socialist Party, which should have been the standard-bearer for the dark half, never reached post-1955 maturity as social democrats capable of capturing and maintaining the regime. Instead, we had to wait until the DPJ became the only somewhat more diversified alternative. However, the DPJ turned out to be a major receptacle for non-hereditary, largely (though by no means exclusively) conservative politicians with no personal recollection of the war, who assumed the bulk of the policymaking role through their drive and talent. So we have the two major parties subscribing more or less to the same preferred narrative, with the DPJ only mildly tempered by the small minority of former Socialists. Thus, there is no significant advocate around to remind the Japanese public that the Chinese and South Korean sides also have certain facts to buttress their claims to the disputed territory**.
* A respected Korea scholar from the native English-speaking world once gave a not-for-attribution talk where he candidly admitted that there were issues where his colleagues traced the accepted narrative scholars or did not go at all. I’ve seen this phenomenon, what I will call constituency capture, at work firsthand in Bruce Cuming’s literate and generally compelling Korea’s Place in the Sun. He inserts a side story extolling his Korean in-laws for the power conferred in the household to his grandfather-in-law’s “second wife,” a curious digression on the virtues of Korean concubinage for a left-the revisionist scholar unless I have vastly misinterpreted his writing. He also provides without provenance a photo purported to be a group sitting of Korean comfort women and their military overseer (I’m writing from memory so Cuming’s actual words are not reproduced here), when it is obvious from details in the photo that it is almost certainly a gathering of female high school students (at a time when only tiny fraction of girls went to high schools, which was only desegregated after the war) “volunteering to work, most likely at an aircraft factory in the Aichi neighborhood). I actually have a pretty good idea as to how the photo came to be misinterpreted by the Korean side; the fact that Cuming gives no provenance for the photo raises the suspicion that he was aware of this.
** I’ve refrained from discussing the legal merits of the cases here, since they were not relevant to the points that I make here, nor were they a part of the dialog. There was a meaningful exchange on the disposition of Takeshima/Dokto/Liancourt Rocks, though, which I will introduce as a separate post.
My academic friends point out the Japanese public and the Chinese and South Korean publics are largely kept ignorant of the view from the other side. I think that this is largely true with regard not only to the historical facts, but also the details of the national myths that the three nations have woven around them. I say that with some confidence that this is true in Japan. With regard to how the other side “feels,” though, I think that the Japanese people get more than enough information on that. In fact, I would argue that the information on how the other side feels as expressed in the continuous susurration of anger punctuated by periodic outbursts of rage as conveyed through the domestic media has raised the temperature of non-right wing public opinion, which in turn generates a looping feedback mechanism of ill-will between the Japanese public on one side and the Chinese and South Korean two sides.
Now, I can understand the South Korean media and professional narrators on Korea toeing the locally dominant storyline*, but it’s not easy to see at first glance why, say, Asahi and Mainichi can’t put both side of the story into play. After all, there are Japanese scholars in Japan who have taken up the other side of the argument without harm to tenure, life, or limb, in descending order of importance, and what’s a few more vans in front of your media group HQs? It’s an interesting question, one which I’d like to hear about from a media expert.
In fact, both sides of the Meiji-and-after story, the glory and the gore of the imperialist era, were featured in the history text books when I was growing up, and this presumably remains unchanged today. My two cents worth says that the Socialist Party, which should have been the standard-bearer for the dark half, never reached post-1955 maturity as social democrats capable of capturing and maintaining the regime. Instead, we had to wait until the DPJ became the only somewhat more diversified alternative. However, the DPJ turned out to be a major receptacle for non-hereditary, largely (though by no means exclusively) conservative politicians with no personal recollection of the war, who assumed the bulk of the policymaking role through their drive and talent. So we have the two major parties subscribing more or less to the same preferred narrative, with the DPJ only mildly tempered by the small minority of former Socialists. Thus, there is no significant advocate around to remind the Japanese public that the Chinese and South Korean sides also have certain facts to buttress their claims to the disputed territory**.
* A respected Korea scholar from the native English-speaking world once gave a not-for-attribution talk where he candidly admitted that there were issues where his colleagues traced the accepted narrative scholars or did not go at all. I’ve seen this phenomenon, what I will call constituency capture, at work firsthand in Bruce Cuming’s literate and generally compelling Korea’s Place in the Sun. He inserts a side story extolling his Korean in-laws for the power conferred in the household to his grandfather-in-law’s “second wife,” a curious digression on the virtues of Korean concubinage for a left-the revisionist scholar unless I have vastly misinterpreted his writing. He also provides without provenance a photo purported to be a group sitting of Korean comfort women and their military overseer (I’m writing from memory so Cuming’s actual words are not reproduced here), when it is obvious from details in the photo that it is almost certainly a gathering of female high school students (at a time when only tiny fraction of girls went to high schools, which was only desegregated after the war) “volunteering to work, most likely at an aircraft factory in the Aichi neighborhood). I actually have a pretty good idea as to how the photo came to be misinterpreted by the Korean side; the fact that Cuming gives no provenance for the photo raises the suspicion that he was aware of this.
** I’ve refrained from discussing the legal merits of the cases here, since they were not relevant to the points that I make here, nor were they a part of the dialog. There was a meaningful exchange on the disposition of Takeshima/Dokto/Liancourt Rocks, though, which I will introduce as a separate post.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Is There a Chance of Party Breakup in the Near Future?
More defectors here and there, sure; but wholesale DPJ and/or LDP breakup around the looming lower house election? I’m not ready to say that it can’t happen before the election when everyone is worried about his/her reelection. But where would they go? Your Party and Hashimoto’s prospective Ishin-no-Kai will be inhospitable for anti-TPP figures, the most likely next batch of defectors. Ozawa’s People’s Life First will let you vote as you see fit, but joining that franchise comes with a serious reputation risk, particularly in a late-in-the-game, desperation flight. Can you take the local party machines with them, much less the party money? And if you decide to go solo, who will be there to sustain you through to the next nationwide election at if you bail out and lose anyway? These are questions that must come to mind as fence-sitters ponder their next move.
What about after the election? Let’s say that you’re on the losing team. At least you’ve made it back under dire straits. Do you want to be a turncoat living among your former enemies in exchange for a one-, two-year hold on a subcabinet post, or would you prefer to stay with your allies and plot your party’s return to power? Remember, also, that an administration that does not have support from an upper house majority or a lower house supermajority is likely to face debilitating attacks from the opposition. This means that the administration is likely to need a large number of members from both the DPJ and LDP as currently configured. So the mostly like post-election configuration remains for me the DPJ-LDP-Komeito coalition.
It is possible that hammering out a common policy position will cause some Diet members to drop out and join the opposition. But most of the recalcitrant DPJ parliamentarians will have already been weeded out, while LDP malcontents will have had their dissatisfaction tempered by their three years in the wilderness. So post-election defections, if any, should be on the fringes.
All this not bode well for governance on critical issues beginning with social safety net reform, TPP, and long-term energy policy...which should suit the folks at Ishin-no-Kai just fine.
What about after the election? Let’s say that you’re on the losing team. At least you’ve made it back under dire straits. Do you want to be a turncoat living among your former enemies in exchange for a one-, two-year hold on a subcabinet post, or would you prefer to stay with your allies and plot your party’s return to power? Remember, also, that an administration that does not have support from an upper house majority or a lower house supermajority is likely to face debilitating attacks from the opposition. This means that the administration is likely to need a large number of members from both the DPJ and LDP as currently configured. So the mostly like post-election configuration remains for me the DPJ-LDP-Komeito coalition.
It is possible that hammering out a common policy position will cause some Diet members to drop out and join the opposition. But most of the recalcitrant DPJ parliamentarians will have already been weeded out, while LDP malcontents will have had their dissatisfaction tempered by their three years in the wilderness. So post-election defections, if any, should be on the fringes.
All this not bode well for governance on critical issues beginning with social safety net reform, TPP, and long-term energy policy...which should suit the folks at Ishin-no-Kai just fine.
The Show Must Go on for the Japan-China-ROK FTA
I read this morning that the next round of talks for the three-party FTA talks will go on as scheduled on August 21 in Beijing, already upgraded to the vice-ministers level at Chinese insistence. Yes, they would like that, wouldn’t they? My money is still on South Korean foot-dragging, so I wouldn’t drop the idea of a Japan-China bilateral FTA yet, but it’s intriguing to see the Chinese authorities playing the role of the conciliator, if you will, at this juncture.
Friday, August 17, 2012
The Illegal Aliens Do Appear to Have Violated the Criminal Code as Well
According to this Sankei report, the Hong Kong activists threw bricks and bolts from their vessel at the Coast Guard vessels, causing some damage. However, the damage was slight and most of the damage to the Coast Guard vessels was caused by maneuvers intended to force the Hong Kong vessel to change course, so a senior Coast Guard official does not think that this constitutes the crime of “Obstructing or Compelling Performance of Public Duty” or “Damage to Property.”
I don’t know about that. If I were speeding in a car and I threw bricks and bolts at a police car that tried to force me to the side of the road, I’m pretty sure that I would be prosecuted for “Obstructing…Performance of Public Duty” even if all my missiles failed to hit the target. It’s hard not to think that the fix is in, and the LDP are of course bitching and moaning and saying that the Noda administration should have done a better job of repelling the intruders and will no doubt demand that the intruders be prosecuted with the full force of the law. So there will be some domestic fallout, but not nearly as serious as the 2010 incident, when the Kan administration threatened prosecution only to cave when China roared. But the Japanese possession and control over the Islands remains intact, and it is hard to see the Chinese authorities gaining anything from this incident other than giving its domestic constituency an opportunity to blow off some steam.
I don’t know about that. If I were speeding in a car and I threw bricks and bolts at a police car that tried to force me to the side of the road, I’m pretty sure that I would be prosecuted for “Obstructing…Performance of Public Duty” even if all my missiles failed to hit the target. It’s hard not to think that the fix is in, and the LDP are of course bitching and moaning and saying that the Noda administration should have done a better job of repelling the intruders and will no doubt demand that the intruders be prosecuted with the full force of the law. So there will be some domestic fallout, but not nearly as serious as the 2010 incident, when the Kan administration threatened prosecution only to cave when China roared. But the Japanese possession and control over the Islands remains intact, and it is hard to see the Chinese authorities gaining anything from this incident other than giving its domestic constituency an opportunity to blow off some steam.
Fun Fact: Two Ministers Out to Lunch as Hong Kong Activists Make Landfall
On Wednesday morning, August 15, the Hong Kong activists showed up at the Senkaku Islands as expected and were duly apprehended, together with their ship, by the Coast Guard and the Okinawa Police. The same day, the two cabinet ministers responsible for the two policing authorities—Jin Matsubara, Chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, Minister of State for Consumer Affairs and Food Safety, and Minister for the Abduction Issue, and Yuichiro Hata, Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and Minister for Ocean Policy—visited the Yasukuni Shrine to honor the soldiers who lost their lives in service of the motherland. The two cabinet ministers must have suffered heatstroke, though, because they never showed up at the office.
It is never good for a cabinet minister to be AWOL when something major breaks. It is significantly worse when everyone already knows what’s coming. The information was apparently leaked to the LDP, where a censure motion may now be in the works. Mssrs. Matsubara and Hata can compound their error by going on what would almost certainly be a futile internal witch-hunt, as politicians embarrassed by their civil servant underlings sometimes do.
It is never good for a cabinet minister to be AWOL when something major breaks. It is significantly worse when everyone already knows what’s coming. The information was apparently leaked to the LDP, where a censure motion may now be in the works. Mssrs. Matsubara and Hata can compound their error by going on what would almost certainly be a futile internal witch-hunt, as politicians embarrassed by their civil servant underlings sometimes do.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Say What Do Barack Obama and Mitch McConnell Have in Common?
It’s often noted that all the Supreme Court Justices are all Catholic or Jewish. But when I learned that Mitt Romney, a Mormon, picked Ron Paul Paul Ryan, a Roman Catholic, as his running mate, I got to wondering, and took a look.
Surprise (to me, at least)!
2. Is it a tough call for the Klu Klux Klan or what?
Surprise (to me, at least)!
President: Barack Obama, Protestant1. If Barack Obama is the Jackie Robinson of presidential politics, does that make Mitch McConnell the Congressional version of Kevin Love?
Speaker of the House: John Boehner, Catholic
House Majority Leader: Eric Cantor, Jewish
House Minority Leader: Nancy Pelosi
Senate Majority Leader: Harry Reid, Mormon
Senate Minority Leader: Mitch McConnell, Protestant
2. Is it a tough call for the Klu Klux Klan or what?
Some Interim Conclusions on the Hong Kong Landing on the Senkaku Islands
The Chinese authorities would be speaking out on anything that happens to their (Hong Kong) citizens on “Chinese territory,” wouldn’t they? The Hong Long Government, though, subsequently demanded the activists’ release and dispatched immigration officials to Japan to support them. I think that they’re playing into Japanese hands. Or the Chinese Government wants to play down the incident. Either way, if the Japanese Government keeps putting the latter front and center of its response going forward, my argument holds. Anyway:
First, there seems to be significant criticism in Japan over the fact that the authorities let the Hong Kong activists land on the Islands. I don’t understand this; are the critics suggesting that the authorities should have exercised deadly force if need be rather than let the activists land, then arrest them for illegal entry? After all, they were posing no known physical threat to any persons or assets under Japanese jurisdiction. If this had been a helicopter and not a boat, would these critics have insisted that the Coast Guard shoot it down?
Second, the usual procedure in Japan for illegal entry is catch-and-release. These are obviously not your usual stowaways, but they do not appear to have used force to make their entry or resist arrest. This would preclude the charge of “Obstructing or Compelling Performance of Public Duty” as an “an act of assault or intimidation against a public officer in the performance of public duty” under Article 95 of the Japanese Criminal Code. And the Hong Kong vessel cannot be retained for potential forfeiture unless it has been used in a alleged crime that the authorities intend to indict the Hong Kong for.
Third—and this is the part of the process of the process that is of greatest immediate interest—will the Noda administration make the preceding two points crystal-clear to the Japanese public and convince it that this is a routine exercise of Japanese policing powers and that it is treating these Hong Kong Activists like any other illegal alien under Japanese jurisdiction? From what I’ve seen over the years, the Japanese powers-that-be have generally done poorly in proactively framing the story so that the narrative would accrue to their advantage; I see no specific reason to believe that it would be otherwise on this occasion.
Fourth, finally, and most important in the long run to the overall narrative, the Japanese Coast Guard (on sea) and the Okinawa Prefectural Police (on land) have confirmed in the eyes of the world that, whatever the politic calculations that determine the Noda administration’s actions, it is the Japanese Government that exercises the powers of sovereignty over the Islands and does so in a rational manner befitting a state observant of universal human rights and the rule of law. And that should count for something. And expect the Japanese government to reinforce the means to do so in the FY 2013 budget.
First, there seems to be significant criticism in Japan over the fact that the authorities let the Hong Kong activists land on the Islands. I don’t understand this; are the critics suggesting that the authorities should have exercised deadly force if need be rather than let the activists land, then arrest them for illegal entry? After all, they were posing no known physical threat to any persons or assets under Japanese jurisdiction. If this had been a helicopter and not a boat, would these critics have insisted that the Coast Guard shoot it down?
Second, the usual procedure in Japan for illegal entry is catch-and-release. These are obviously not your usual stowaways, but they do not appear to have used force to make their entry or resist arrest. This would preclude the charge of “Obstructing or Compelling Performance of Public Duty” as an “an act of assault or intimidation against a public officer in the performance of public duty” under Article 95 of the Japanese Criminal Code. And the Hong Kong vessel cannot be retained for potential forfeiture unless it has been used in a alleged crime that the authorities intend to indict the Hong Kong for.
Third—and this is the part of the process of the process that is of greatest immediate interest—will the Noda administration make the preceding two points crystal-clear to the Japanese public and convince it that this is a routine exercise of Japanese policing powers and that it is treating these Hong Kong Activists like any other illegal alien under Japanese jurisdiction? From what I’ve seen over the years, the Japanese powers-that-be have generally done poorly in proactively framing the story so that the narrative would accrue to their advantage; I see no specific reason to believe that it would be otherwise on this occasion.
Fourth, finally, and most important in the long run to the overall narrative, the Japanese Coast Guard (on sea) and the Okinawa Prefectural Police (on land) have confirmed in the eyes of the world that, whatever the politic calculations that determine the Noda administration’s actions, it is the Japanese Government that exercises the powers of sovereignty over the Islands and does so in a rational manner befitting a state observant of universal human rights and the rule of law. And that should count for something. And expect the Japanese government to reinforce the means to do so in the FY 2013 budget.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Why Did the Chinese Authorities Let the Hong Kong Authorities…
…let the Hong Kong boat set out for the Senkaku Islands?
The most likely scenario in my view is one where the Hong Kong vessel plays a cat-and-mouse with the Japanese Coast Guard around the territorial limits of the Islands, then goes back unharmed but without actually making a landing. This is unfortunate for the Chinese authorities because it gives the Japanese authorities a chance to effectively exercise sovereign powers over the Islands. Under another, less likely scenario, the Hong Kong vessel makes an improbable landing, whereupon the vessel and its proprietors are immediately apprehended—we assume that they really are political activists and not Chinese fishermen, who will not hesitate to kill if need be—transported to the Naha Coast Guard office as per the usual catch-and-release program for simple illegal entry violators. This is unfortunate for the Chinese authorities because it also gives the Japanese authorities a chance to effectively exercise sovereign powers over the Islands.
A problem arises when there is an incident involving a physical altercation. We assume that they really are political activists and not Chinese fishermen, who will not hesitate to kill if need be, but accidents happen. It’s simple when only the Hong Kong vessel or its occupants are harmed, because the result is merely a variant of one of the first two scenarios, depending on whether or not they actually make landfall. It is when harm befalls the Japanese Coast Guard, its ship or personnel, that things become interesting. In the September 2010 incident involving a Chinese fishing boat, the Kan administration wound up losing significant political face when it delivered the captain and the boat to the Chinese side before the public prosecutors pressed charges. But this time, the Japanese authorities will be up against, if I’m not mistaken, the Hong Kong Government, an administration with priorities and leverage that are very much unlike those of the Beijing Government. The Noda administration will find it much easier to face down its opponent than the Kan administration did two years ago. Again, this is also unfortunate for the Chinese authorities because it also gives the Japanese authorities a chance to effectively exercise sovereign powers over the Islands.
I think that it boils down to this: If you have possession, you don’t want to give the other side reason to contest it (think South Korea and its Dokto); if you don’t, then you don’t want to give the other side the opportunity to exercise sovereign powers. I think that the Chinese authorities miscalculated.
ADD: Arrested! Okay, let’s see how this plays out. Remember, the cost of backing down is huge for the Noda administration, and the cost of standing firm is much less than it was for the KanADD: Arrested! Okay, let’s see how this plays out. Remember, the cost of backing down is huge for the Noda administration, and the cost of standing firm is much less than it was for the Kan administration in the 2010 incident. Moreover, Noda is ideologically less inclined to bend over.
ADD 2.0: It was the Okinawa Police (nice touch), most surely riding on the Coast Guard vessels, who made the arrests. And in retrospect, it made much more sense to let them land, then make the arrest, since that was much safer than trying to repel the Hong Kong vessel offshore. In any case, the protest only reinforced the sense of Japanese control over the Islands. When you think about it, that’s almost always the case. Sea Shepherd, Anonymous, they all reinforce the notion of sovereignty even as they challenge it. If I were the Chinese authorities, I would certainly discourage these private protests against Japan’s exercise of its sovereign powers over these islands.administration in the 2010 incident. Moreover, Noda is ideologically less inclined to bend over.
The most likely scenario in my view is one where the Hong Kong vessel plays a cat-and-mouse with the Japanese Coast Guard around the territorial limits of the Islands, then goes back unharmed but without actually making a landing. This is unfortunate for the Chinese authorities because it gives the Japanese authorities a chance to effectively exercise sovereign powers over the Islands. Under another, less likely scenario, the Hong Kong vessel makes an improbable landing, whereupon the vessel and its proprietors are immediately apprehended—we assume that they really are political activists and not Chinese fishermen, who will not hesitate to kill if need be—transported to the Naha Coast Guard office as per the usual catch-and-release program for simple illegal entry violators. This is unfortunate for the Chinese authorities because it also gives the Japanese authorities a chance to effectively exercise sovereign powers over the Islands.
A problem arises when there is an incident involving a physical altercation. We assume that they really are political activists and not Chinese fishermen, who will not hesitate to kill if need be, but accidents happen. It’s simple when only the Hong Kong vessel or its occupants are harmed, because the result is merely a variant of one of the first two scenarios, depending on whether or not they actually make landfall. It is when harm befalls the Japanese Coast Guard, its ship or personnel, that things become interesting. In the September 2010 incident involving a Chinese fishing boat, the Kan administration wound up losing significant political face when it delivered the captain and the boat to the Chinese side before the public prosecutors pressed charges. But this time, the Japanese authorities will be up against, if I’m not mistaken, the Hong Kong Government, an administration with priorities and leverage that are very much unlike those of the Beijing Government. The Noda administration will find it much easier to face down its opponent than the Kan administration did two years ago. Again, this is also unfortunate for the Chinese authorities because it also gives the Japanese authorities a chance to effectively exercise sovereign powers over the Islands.
I think that it boils down to this: If you have possession, you don’t want to give the other side reason to contest it (think South Korea and its Dokto); if you don’t, then you don’t want to give the other side the opportunity to exercise sovereign powers. I think that the Chinese authorities miscalculated.
ADD 2.0: It was the Okinawa Police (nice touch), most surely riding on the Coast Guard vessels, who made the arrests. And in retrospect, it made much more sense to let them land, then make the arrest, since that was much safer than trying to repel the Hong Kong vessel offshore. In any case, the protest only reinforced the sense of Japanese control over the Islands. When you think about it, that’s almost always the case. Sea Shepherd, Anonymous, they all reinforce the notion of sovereignty even as they challenge it. If I were the Chinese authorities, I would certainly discourage these private protests against Japan’s exercise of its sovereign powers over these islands.
Matsubara to Yasukuni? I Should Have Seen This Coming
After all, Jin Matsubara, Chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, Minister of State for Consumer Affairs and Food Safety, and Minister for the Abduction Issue, is about as far to the right of the Japanese political spectrum as you can go without actually jumping on a khaki-colored van and parading back and forth in front of the South Korean embassy, loud enough to annoy the occupants but not so loud that the Metropolitan Police Department, nested in the broader jurisdiction of the National Public Safety Commission, would have to take action, so I should have expected that he would be the one to disregard the Prime Minister’s (Chief Cabinet Secretary’s) request and pay his respects to the fallen soldiers on August 15, the day of unconditional surrender, at the Yasukuni Shrine. But I didn’t, because…I guess because I did not think that this sort of thing was going to be a big deal. After all, cabinet members had been visiting Yasukuni on August 15 up until the end of the Aso administration without incident.
Here is something useful to remember. The deal with the Chinese authorities is that the Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs, The Minister of Defense, and the Chief Cabinet Secretary have to stay away from Yasukuni as long as the Class A war criminals remain enshrined there, but anything else would not cause a diplomatic contretemps. This has been a workable compromise, one that even Abe Shinzo respected when he became prime minister (though he now reportedly says that he should have. Yeah, sure). And of course there was no way that South Korea could have negotiated anything more, so there things stand, even today.
The Chinese leadership, in a delicate period of transition amid economic concerns that, if managed poorly, will significantly erode the political legitimacy of the Communist Party, has an overarching interest in avoiding immediate trouble with its neighbors (and of course the United Sates), although there is likely to be intermittent outbursts of provocative rhetoric and possibly action from quarters—PLA, notably—jockeying for power, resources, and prestige throughout the drawn-out transitory process. By contrast, South Korea’s highly pluralist political leadership, also approaching transition, has an inherent interest in competing with each other to appeal to an electorate, highly invested in imposing national myths on the Japanese body politic. This is a recipe for escalation. Sure enough, the initial response, according to this Kyodo wire, has been fast and furious. More will follow if Yuichiro Hata, Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and Minister for Ocean Policy, makes good on his words and pays a visit later in the day.
Thus, another small nail in the coffin or, rather, time capsule—hopefully of short (by which I mean a couple of years’) duration—of the bilateral political relationship.
Here is something useful to remember. The deal with the Chinese authorities is that the Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs, The Minister of Defense, and the Chief Cabinet Secretary have to stay away from Yasukuni as long as the Class A war criminals remain enshrined there, but anything else would not cause a diplomatic contretemps. This has been a workable compromise, one that even Abe Shinzo respected when he became prime minister (though he now reportedly says that he should have. Yeah, sure). And of course there was no way that South Korea could have negotiated anything more, so there things stand, even today.
The Chinese leadership, in a delicate period of transition amid economic concerns that, if managed poorly, will significantly erode the political legitimacy of the Communist Party, has an overarching interest in avoiding immediate trouble with its neighbors (and of course the United Sates), although there is likely to be intermittent outbursts of provocative rhetoric and possibly action from quarters—PLA, notably—jockeying for power, resources, and prestige throughout the drawn-out transitory process. By contrast, South Korea’s highly pluralist political leadership, also approaching transition, has an inherent interest in competing with each other to appeal to an electorate, highly invested in imposing national myths on the Japanese body politic. This is a recipe for escalation. Sure enough, the initial response, according to this Kyodo wire, has been fast and furious. More will follow if Yuichiro Hata, Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and Minister for Ocean Policy, makes good on his words and pays a visit later in the day.
Thus, another small nail in the coffin or, rather, time capsule—hopefully of short (by which I mean a couple of years’) duration—of the bilateral political relationship.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
The Latest on the Super-region Gathering and the Prospective New Party Crystallizing around Hashimoto
To follow up on the meeting between Mayor Hashimoto and five members of a nonpartisan super-region study group, Yasutoshi Nishimura, as I’d expected, and another LDP member of that group emphatically denied any intention of leaving the LDP. The Yomiuri predictably uses the occasion to remind us that Yorihisa Matsuno is wondering if he should use the study group to join hands with the Ishin-no-kai.
Keepin’ the story alive, it seems. Well, at a minimum, it’s highly plausible.
Keepin’ the story alive, it seems. Well, at a minimum, it’s highly plausible.
The Consequences of the Growing Rift between Japan and South Korea
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took it to another level today (August 14, on the eve of Japan’s unconditional surrender in 1945) when he told a gathering of educators that “(the Emperor) wants to visit Japan, but I said (to the Japanese side) to come if he would visit the people who died in the independence movement and apologize from his heart.” He specifically cast disdain on the phrase that the Emperor used when he met then President Roh Tae-woo. Lest anyone think that Lee was somehow unaware that there was no chance that the Japanese side would meet his very public demand, he appears to have foregone the use of respectful language if the wording common to all the Japanese media translations is to be trusted, a startling breech of protocol and show of disrespect towards a quasi-head of state. It’s not quite KNCA, not even Hugo Chaves, but it’s still pretty rude.
The markers keep moving from the South Korean side, and this is unlikely to stop until its national myths are adopted wholesale on the other side of the “Japan” Sea. The typical Japanese response has been to make the minimum concession necessary to paper over the incident until the next incident flared up, raising demands for yet another round of verbal ransom.
I don’t think that it’s going to work this way anymore. Lee has jumped the shark this time, and there is no way that the domestically embattled Noda administration could do anything by way of meeting him even half-way. More important, Japan has changed as well. The mixture of collective guilt and sense of shared victimhood and older brother benevolence is about to all but vanish with the passing of the guard. The under-sixty leadership of the DPJ, LDP, and regional movements and their subalterns by and large (though not exclusively) share an assertive outlook. If still milquetoast in comparison to that of their regional counterparts, it should be more than sufficient to compel them to project and/or support responses that will at a minimum ensure that the bilateral political relationship will remain at a new low for a considerable period of time.
So what will be the consequences? First, expect all efforts to enhance the formal relationship will be put on hold for the indefinite future. No Japan-South Korea FTA. No Japan-China-South Korea FTA. No Japan-South Korea General Security of Military Information Agreement. But these weren’t moving before the latest Takeshima/Dokto flare-up, only the Japanese side was reluctant to admit it. No more. Which brings me to the second point: the Japanese response.
Look to Japan to give a serious push to a Japan-China FTA. I suspect that the Chinese authorities will be inclined to oblige, if only to encourage Japan to take up a greater stake in the bilateral relationship. And a gain for China is perforce a loss for the United States. Look to Japan to edge ever so cautiously towards North Korea—or rather, North Korea to attempt to play off Japan against South Korea, while a divided Korea looks increasingly to be in their mutual interests.
All this is not in the best interests of the Japanese and Korean people, or so I think. But that appears to be the baseline scenario.
The markers keep moving from the South Korean side, and this is unlikely to stop until its national myths are adopted wholesale on the other side of the “Japan” Sea. The typical Japanese response has been to make the minimum concession necessary to paper over the incident until the next incident flared up, raising demands for yet another round of verbal ransom.
I don’t think that it’s going to work this way anymore. Lee has jumped the shark this time, and there is no way that the domestically embattled Noda administration could do anything by way of meeting him even half-way. More important, Japan has changed as well. The mixture of collective guilt and sense of shared victimhood and older brother benevolence is about to all but vanish with the passing of the guard. The under-sixty leadership of the DPJ, LDP, and regional movements and their subalterns by and large (though not exclusively) share an assertive outlook. If still milquetoast in comparison to that of their regional counterparts, it should be more than sufficient to compel them to project and/or support responses that will at a minimum ensure that the bilateral political relationship will remain at a new low for a considerable period of time.
So what will be the consequences? First, expect all efforts to enhance the formal relationship will be put on hold for the indefinite future. No Japan-South Korea FTA. No Japan-China-South Korea FTA. No Japan-South Korea General Security of Military Information Agreement. But these weren’t moving before the latest Takeshima/Dokto flare-up, only the Japanese side was reluctant to admit it. No more. Which brings me to the second point: the Japanese response.
Look to Japan to give a serious push to a Japan-China FTA. I suspect that the Chinese authorities will be inclined to oblige, if only to encourage Japan to take up a greater stake in the bilateral relationship. And a gain for China is perforce a loss for the United States. Look to Japan to edge ever so cautiously towards North Korea—or rather, North Korea to attempt to play off Japan against South Korea, while a divided Korea looks increasingly to be in their mutual interests.
All this is not in the best interests of the Japanese and Korean people, or so I think. But that appears to be the baseline scenario.
Session with Hashimoto a Red Herring? Probably. Still…
I may have made a red herring out of the five-Diet member gathering with Hashimoto. Turns out they are members of a pluripartisan group of Diet members, including Yasutoshi Nishimura (LDP, lower house), who is likely to one of the last to jump ship if it comes to that, who are pushing the doshusei concept, which merges prefectures into a small number of super-regions. They made the trip to seek Mayor Hashimoto’s views, not to plot a third-party breakout with him.
Highly plausible, and probably true. But there was the shared background against the three-party compromise—why these guys, and not Nishimura, for instance—and this wouldn’t be the first time in human history that cabals were hatched under the guise of a innocuous gathering of people with a shared interest. I’d keep an eye on these guys.
That’s it for now. Very busy day ahead.
Highly plausible, and probably true. But there was the shared background against the three-party compromise—why these guys, and not Nishimura, for instance—and this wouldn’t be the first time in human history that cabals were hatched under the guise of a innocuous gathering of people with a shared interest. I’d keep an eye on these guys.
That’s it for now. Very busy day ahead.
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