Note: On a nearly daily basis, the Shingetsu News Agency delivers by email Dateline Tokyo, our series of short reports on major news developments in Japan, to SNA Patrons of the Samurai Tier or higher. Some days later, we make these reports publicly available.

August 31, 2020

Suga Already On Path To Become Japan’s Next Leader

SNA (Tokyo) — Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga is already well along the path toward securing victory in the Liberal Democratic Party presidential elections and to become the next prime minister of Japan.

Even before he has openly announced his candidacy, Suga locked up the endorsements of the Nikai Faction (47 lawmakers) and the Aso Faction (54 lawmakers), making his victory nearly inevitable.

This is not because Suga already has a voting majority in his pocket, but because the Nikai and Aso factions have now given the other mainstream factions, including the massive Hosoda Faction, the choice of either falling in behind Suga or else creating a split that could provide an opening to the insurgent candidacy of Shigeru Ishiba.

The Aso Faction’s decision to back Suga was especially crucial, as it essentially dooms any prospect that Fumio Kishida, Toshimitsu Motegi, or Taro Kono might have had of emerging victorious.

Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Taro Aso had in earlier months agreed with Abe that Kishida should be the successor, but more recently became disenchanted with Kishida’s lack of dynamism and ability to communicate with the public. Aso mulled shifting his support to Motegi, but in the end concluded that Suga was the only one with guaranteed ability to be able to head off the threat of an Ishiba victory.

While it had been Abe’s disapproval of the prospect of Suga becoming his successor that had deeply divided and weakened the Abe administration since last autumn, it seems that even Abe himself is now willing to back Suga in order to keep Ishiba out of office.

Ishiba’s last hope to avoid yet another second place finish in a Liberal Democratic Party leadership race is to sufficiently intimidate the mainstream lawmakers factions with his popular support that they agree to open up the electoral process more fully to include dues-paying party members across the nation.

A new Kyodo News poll shows that Ishiba is indeed the people’s choice for the next prime minister, gaining 34% of the public’s support to Suga’s 14%.

However, with the election rules firmly in the hands of Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai, who was the first to declare support for Suga, it is highly unlikely that there will be a notably open election process, and the mainstream factions can be expected to exercise their institutional power ruthlessly to maintain their leading status.

The qualifying candidates are expected to be announced on September 8, with voting scheduled to take place on September 14. An extraordinary Diet session will then be called, and on September 17, it is quite likely that Yoshihide Suga will become Japan’s next prime minister.

August 29, 2020

Abe Resignation Leaves Wide Open Leadership Race

SNA (Tokyo) — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s sudden resignation announcement made clear that he had failed during his historically long tenure to groom a successor to carry on his legacy.

For years Abe had sent out signals that he was preparing proteges to lead the ruling Liberal Democratic Party after his departure as prime minister, but one by one they either failed to measure up or grew more distant from Abe as scandals piled up and his clout slipped away.

Perhaps Abe’s most serious effort at grooming a successor was his connection with Tomomi Inada.

As former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi had once done for Abe himself, Inada was promoted to a series of positions much higher than her resume would seem to justify.

Inada is a rightwing ideologue who shares much of Abe’s nationalist political base, and the fact they she is woman might have been a point in her favor as well, since she might also come to personify the more “modernizing” face of Abe rule.

However, when Abe appointed Inada to become the nation’s defense minister, it developed into an unmitigated disaster for her political career. She badly mismanaged a scandal regarding an illegal coverup of information within the ministry, and it was revealed that she did not have effective control of her subordinates, who seemed not the respect her. Ultimately, she was forced to resign in disgrace in July 2017, just six days before she was scheduled to be replaced in a Cabinet reshuffle in any case.

Abe apparently felt that none of his close aides such as Koichi Hagiuda or Hiroshige Seko were leadership material, and his friend Akira Amari was too tarnished by scandal to be realistic prospect.

In more recent years, Abe came to the conclusion that one-time Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida should become his successor. It was an odd choice, as Kishida comes very much from the moderate wing of the ruling party, cut from a very different ideological cloth than Abe or Inada.

By last autumn, the succession issue began to rip apart the Abe administration from within. It emerged that Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga had developed his own ambitions to succeed Abe, a prospect which the prime minister did not approve of. The Abe government’s internal coherence began to break apart as its top two leaders, who had worked for years as an inseparable team, now became the heads of two rival factions at the heart of power.

By yesterday’s resignation announcement, nothing had been resolved, leaving the leadership race wide open.

Suga is expected to declare his candidacy, and will be a formidable presence. Kishida has already announced that he will be running, and there may also be other strong entries from Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and Defense Minister Taro Kono.

The dynamics of the leadership race, however, are most likely to be determined by the anti-Abe candidacy of Shigeru Ishiba.

While Ishiba will likely struggle to gather enough support to win, the most likely victor will be the candidate who can consolidate the pro-Abe mainstream of the party to head off Ishiba’s threat.

At this moment, it’s entirely unclear who that will be.

August 27, 2020

Yuichiro Tamaki to Lead Small Centrist Political Party

SNA (Tokyo) — Yuichiro Tamaki may have lost control of the Democratic Party For the People, but he has announced success in gathering enough lawmakers to launch a much smaller centrist political party.

Tamaki has served as either co-leader or leader of the Democratic Party For the People since it was launched in May 2018, managing to hold together a fractious group of ideologically diverse of lawmakers within a political party with minimal public support for more than two years.

However, what little solidarity this notably unsuccessful opposition party possessed broke down earlier this month, with most of its lawmakers deciding to bolt and join a new merged party with the larger and somewhat more liberal Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan.

Tamaki opposed the merger plan, and announced that he would not take part in it.

On the 26th, Tamaki clarified that he had managed to gather at least four other lawmakers to his banner, meeting the minimum legal requirement of five lawmakers to launch a new political party. Tamaki made clear that this new party would be identical to the Democratic Party For the People in terms of its policy stances and centrist ideological orientation. It was not clear if it would retain the Democratic Party For the People name.

In a related development, Japan Innovation Party (Osaka Ishin) Secretary-General Nobuyuki Baba told a press conference that his party would welcome some form of tie-up with conservative and centrist lawmakers left out of the opposition party merger, including former Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara as well as Yuichiro Tamaki.

With the large leading opposition party likely to be distinctly center-left in its ideological orientation, it would be natural for what remains of the opposition conservative forces to orbit around the much stronger Osaka leaders.

August 24, 2020

Clearer Indications of Shinzo Abe Health Problems

SNA (Tokyo) — Indications that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is suffering serious health problems have now become clear, in spite of his aides’ continuing insistence that nothing is amiss.

On the very day in which he captured the record to become the Japanese prime minister with the longest tenure in history, instead of celebrating, Abe returned to the hospital for the second time in two weeks.

His more than seven hour visit to the hospital last week for what was then described as a routine checkup had already stretched credibility since the prime minister customarily receives two checkups per year and the most recent one was in June.

Today, the prime minister’s aides again insisted that his hospital visit was routine, only for the purpose of learning the results of last week’s tests.

It was not explained why the nation’s leader would be required to personally visit the hospital to receive his test results, when that has not been his past practice. It was also not explained why he would choose such a historic day in his own political career to conduct such a mundane task.

Naturally, with the official explanations straining credibility, speculation has intensified about Abe’s true physical condition, and many commentators pointed out that a sudden resignation caused by ulcerative colitis, an incurable medical condition, was what put an end to his first premiership in 2007.

The hospital visits also come on top of comments by some ruling party lawmakers, most notably Abe’s close ally Akira Amari, that the prime minister has appeared exhausted in recent weeks and should take more time for rest.

Whatever the nature and seriousness of his health difficulties, Abe is now clearly in political jeopardy with falling public approval rates, an uncontrolled Covid-19 pandemic, an unparalleled postwar economic crisis, and a ruling party filled with lawmakers maneuvering toward the anticipated leadership succession.

August 22, 2020

Akimoto Bribery Scandal Another Blow to Abe

SNA (Tokyo) — The latest turn in the bribery case against former Senior Vice-Minister of the Cabinet Office Tsukasa Akimoto represents not only another political headache for an already tottering administration, but it includes for the first time a direct personal link to Akie and Shinzo Abe.

This link comes through the person of Tokyo businessman Akihito Awaji. According to the information leaked by prosecutors to the Japanese media, Awaji has told investigators that Akimoto personally instructed him to tamper with witnesses in the lawmaker’s upcoming bribery trial, using monetary inducements to try to convince these witnesses to lie to the court.

Awaji and two other men were arrested on August 4 on charges of witness tampering, allegedly offering up to ¥20 million for false testimonies on behalf of Akimoto.

The original case against Tsukasa Akimoto relates to charges that he received bribes, beginning in 2017, from a Shenzhen-based firm called 500 Dot Com that wanted Akimoto, then serving as a senior vice-minister of the Cabinet Office in charge of policies on the development of Integrated Resorts, to use his influence to steer one of the forthcoming casino licenses to their company.

On December 25 of last year, Akimoto became the first sitting lawmaker in over a decade to be arrested and held in detention by prosecutors.

Finally released from detention on February 12, Akimoto gradually resumed his duties as a national lawmaker and, according to the latest allegations of the prosecutors, set about efforts to tamper with witnesses in his upcoming trial, with the assistance of Awaji and two others.

While the Akimoto case is already politically damaging to the Abe administration and the ruling party on account of the fact that they had earlier appointed Akimoto to a senior position in the Cabinet Office, and because their casino legalization policy gained greater disrepute, the latest twist touches the Abes personally.

Aside from allegedly being Akimoto’s agent for witness tampering, Akihito Awaji had also maintained close personal ties with First Lady Akie Abe in particular.

It emerged in the course of another Abe scandal, the cherry blossom viewing party controversy, that Awaji had invested some his money in 2016 to open and run the guesthouse in Shimonoseki city, Yamaguchi Prefecture, at the direct urging of the First Lady.

It was alleged in early March of this year by the Japan Communist Party that, in return for such a financial favor, Awaji was corruptly provided an invitation to join the annual cherry blossom viewing party at Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. Photographs of Awaji with both Akie and Shinzo Abe have also made it into public circulation.

Under Diet questioning on March 4 in connection with that earlier scandal, the prime minister declared, “I myself am not acquainted with him at all.”

August 19, 2020

Foreign Businesses Lobby for End of Entry Ban

SNA (Tokyo) — Four major foreign business organizations have renewed their call for Japan to end its ban on most permanent and long-term foreign residents trapped abroad from returning to their families and jobs as part of the nation’s Covid-19 countermeasures.

In a statement issued on August 17, the joint declaration observed, “This policy is contrary to the treatment Japan receives from other G7 and other leading countries who treat long-term foreign residents equally to citizens on health matters. We know of no evidence that suggests that foreign long-term residents of Japan entering from abroad pose any greater health risk locally than Japanese nationals who do the same.”

It added, “We believe that such long-term foreign residents, who have shown a supportive long-term relationship, and represent investment in Japan, are essential to rebuilding and growing Japan’s economy moving forward. This is not only through the payment of taxes and consumption of goods, but also by providing the economic and international infrastructure necessary to help fuel the Japanese economy to greater heights.”

In a note of warning, the statement continued, “To prevent these same people from being able to leave and return to Japan, can only discourage foreign nationals, and the companies they work for, from investing in Japan. It can only negatively reflect on Japan’s efforts to encourage investment by businesses from the US, the EU, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, and other nations whose citizens can be instrumental in helping Japan’s economy grow as it deserves.”

The four organizations that issued the statement were the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ACCJ), the Australian and New Zealand Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ANZCCJ), the British Chamber of Commerce in Japan (BCCJ), and the European Business Council in Japan (EBC).

Koichi Nakano, dean of Sophia University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts, recently explained at an SNA Speakeasy that, in his view, the re-entry ban “really shows the extent of embedded institutional racism in Japan.”

“I guess that the Japanese government ‘naturally’ looks at this disease as foreign-born and foreign imported,” he added.

August 17, 2020

Achievements of Abenomics Nullified

SNA (Tokyo) — The historically bad economic growth rates published today for the April-June 2020 quarter not only were grim, they also effectively represented the nullification of the last remaining achievements of Abenomics.

Indeed, the -7.8% figure, if it is maintained in future revisions, means that the Japanese economy has grown little since Shinzo Abe returned to power in December 2012.

When launched over seven years ago, Abenomics famously presented its “three arrows” policy in which loose monetary policy from the Bank of Japan and stimulus spending by the central government was supposed to dramatically boost economic growth and to create inflationary pressures, thus giving space for much-needed structural reforms.

At first, the policy seemed to be working as the country began to record steady, if not necessarily overwhelming, growth, and most of the economic indicators headed in the predicted direction.

Over the course of several years, however, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s attention seemed to wander toward his more natural interests in national security issues, and the so-called “third arrow of Abenomics,” the structural reforms needed for long-term economic transformation, were never presented and thus were not achieved within the period in which Abe had the political clout to push them through.

The failure of Abenomics to be a transformational policy for the Japanese economy has been apparent for several years, but there were, until recently, at least a handful of areas in which the momentum of the loose monetary policy and the fiscal spending did create some positive results.

The most significant of these was that, by the middle of last year, the GDP of Japan was about 9% larger than it was when Abe reassumed power in 2012.

The last three quarters, however, have wiped out almost all of these gains. The recession began last October with the hike of the national consumption tax from 8% to 10%, combined with the growing impact of US-China trade tensions. Any hopes of a recovery were smashed by the arrival of the Covid-19 coronavirus.

While almost every nation is suffering economically from Covid-19, the structural reforms needed by the Japanese economy, which Abe had long forsook, including key investments in digitization, came back to bite the nation as it proved woefully unprepared to deal with teleworking and other flexible measures required by the new era.

Furthermore, the one sector of the Japanese economy that had most clearly benefitted from Abenomics was the tourism industry, and it became one of the first casualties of Covid-19.

August 15, 2020

Reemergence of the Yasukuni Issue

SNA (Tokyo) — After several years of laying dormant, the divisive issue of Yasukuni Shrine reemerged today, with four Cabinet ministers using the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in the Pacific War to pay visits.

While in some respects it is a memorial to war dead like most countries possess, Yasukuni gained a special significance in 1978 when its priests opted to enshrine the spirits of Class A War Criminals. Since that time, Yasukuni has become closely associated with rightwing nationalism, in particular the notion that Japan’s wartime behavior involved nothing that the nation should be ashamed of.

The Cabinet ministers who visited the shrine today were Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, Okinawa and Northern Territories Minister Seiichi Eto, Education Minister Koichi Hagiuda, and Internal Affairs Minister Sanae Takaichi. It was the first time in four years for Cabinet-level officials to visit Yasukuni.

As has become his custom in recent years, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe refrained from personally visiting the shrine, instead sending a ritual offering. Today, that offering was delivered by Conservative Solidarity Association caretaker leader Shuichi Takatori, who recently appealed for the government to be ready to impose economic sanctions on South Korea.

Although Abe is very much part of the Yasukuni nationalist wing of the ruling party, he has apparently calculated that the diplomatic damage that would be done by senior level visits to the shrine outweighed the domestic political benefits of further appealing to the hard right.

It is likely, therefore, that the prime minister would have preferred his Cabinet members to stay away from the shrine this year as they have for the previous three years. This is especially true because Abe has not yet given up on his ambition to have Chinese President Xi Jinping visit Japan before the end of the year.

In that sense, these visits might be interpreted as demonstrating Shinzo Abe’s inability to control his own Cabinet and a further indication that his personal political power is rapidly slipping away.

In Shinjiro Koizumi’s case, in particular, today’s Yasukuni visit is very much part of his bid to eventually become the leader of the conservative ruling party and the nation, though he is unlikely to run for several more years due to his youth.

August 13, 2020

Opposition Parties Move Toward Consolidation

SNA (Tokyo) — Japan’s center-left opposition parties appear to be moving toward their most significant realignment since the autumn of 2017, reconsolidating in a fashion that will create a political party that dominates the opposition benches.

Merger talks between the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ) and the Democratic Party For the People (DPFP) have been stalled for months under a series of disagreements, but this week the blockage appears to have been removed with the decision of the DPFP executives to divide their party in two between those who favor joining the new, merged party and those, including leader Yuichiro Tamaki, who wish to remain aloof from the new alliance.

All eyes are now focused on how many of the 62 DPFP lawmakers will join each division.

The initial indications are that those intending to join the new merged party will greatly outnumber those that remain outside. For example, the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo) has put on notice those DPFP lawmakers who have been fielded by its member labor unions that they are required to join the new party.

Reporting from Jiji Press indicates that up to 150 lawmakers may join the new party, which would create a parliamentary force that would stand alone among the opposition parties.

The next largest opposition parties, the Japan Innovation Party and the Japan Communist Party, would lag far behind with their respective 26 and 25 incumbent lawmakers.

However, the new opposition party would still far trail the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its 395 lawmakers.

The tiny Social Democratic Party, with 4 lawmakers, is also debating the merits of joining in the merged party.

Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan leader Yukio Edano, expected to become leader of the new party, stated today that the merger is likely to occur in early September.

August 12, 2020

Abe Government Clashes with Atomic Bomb Survivors

SNA (Tokyo) — The 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have witnessed a clash between the government of Shinzo Abe and the representatives of the hibakusha, the atomic bomb survivors, on three different issues.

Today, Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Katsunobu Kato announced that the government would appeal a court ruling that awarded state healthcare benefits to 84 plaintiffs in their 70s to 90s who are believed to have been exposed to radioactive “black rain.”

While in some cases the government does recognize those subjected to black rain as victims of the atomic bombing, this designation is limited to those who were within a certain geographical area, established by the authorities, at the time when the bomb fell.

In the July 29 Hiroshima District Court ruling, Judge Yoshiyuki Takashima stated, “It is possible that black rain fell outside the designated zone and it is reasonable to conclude that they were affected by radiation if they were exposed.”

Today, Health Minister Kato responded that, in the government’s view, the ruling was “not based on sufficient scientific evidence.” At the same time, he indicated that the government would conduct a review of the currently designated zone.

A joint statement issued today by three opposition parties responded to the government’s decision to appeal: “This act tramples upon years of hard work conducted by the plaintiffs, their families, and their supporters,” they declared.

There is concern that many of the plaintiffs may pass away before the appeals process is concluded, and thus they might die not knowing if their suffering as atomic bomb victims has been officially recognized.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was already under fire from hibakusha on two other issues.

The more substantial of the two is his government’s continuing unwillingness to support the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

The other point of contention is that Abe’s speeches at the 75th anniversary atomic bombing memorials were widely felt to be perfunctory and lacking in sincerity. It has been pointed out that his August 6 speech in Hiroshima and his August 9 speech in Nagasaki were nearly identical, with more than 90% of the text being the same.

August 11, 2020

Agnes Chow Arrest Resonates in Japan

SNA (Tokyo) — The arrest of 23-year-old pro-democracy activist Agnes Chow has had a cultural and political impact in Japan unlike the previous, indifferent public responses to the struggles in Hong Kong.

Japan Communist Party Chair Kazuo Shii, for example, tweeted in response to news of Chow’s arrest, “The world must not allow the Chinese leadership to violently oppress Hong Kong! Agnes Chow must be immediately released and the oppression ended! Let us raise our voices from all around the world!”

“I strongly protest against Agnes Chow’s arrest,” added Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan lawmaker Akiko Kamei, “It cannot be called a law-abiding country which applies new legislation retroactively to past actions. Let’s join together in helping people in Hong Kong to regain their freedom.”

Agnes Chow is probably the most important figure among the young Hong Kong activists for the Japanese people, having long been described in the Japanese media as “the goddess of democracy.” Chow speaks fluent Japanese, which she learned from watching TV shows, and has the kind of fresh-faced, innocent image that many Japanese find appealing in their own young celebrities.

On Japanese-language Twitter, hashtags with meanings such as “I protest against the arrest of Agnes Chow” and “Free Agnes” took the top rankings.

“She has done nothing wrong,” appealed one typical Japanese commenter, “They were all just looking for freedom.” Many others expressed concern about Chow’s physical safety while under arrest, and they hoped that she would have a bright future.

Chow was among ten pro-democracy figures arrested in Hong Kong yesterday for alleged breaches of the new national security law.

The arrest of billionaire media mogul Jimmy Lai also hit the international headlines, increasing fears about Hong Kong’s ability to continue to function as an open society, but in Japan it was Chow’s arrest that had the greatest impact.

Chow was arrested at her home last night and is expected to face charges related to “inciting secession.”

August 9, 2020

Japanese Ship Leaks Fuel into Pristine Waters of Mauritius

SNA (Tokyo) — The Japanese freight ship MV Wakashio ran aground off the coast of Mauritius and spilled more than 1,000 tons of oil into the pristine turquoise waters of the island nation.

The 300-meter-long MV Wakashio, owned by Nagashiki Shipping and chartered by Mitsui OSK Lines, originally ran aground on July 25. It began leaking its heavy oil fuel from a tank at the rear area of the ship from August 6. It remains to be explained why there was such a lack of urgency in the period between the original accident and the time when the leakage occurred.

Mauritius has declared a “state of environmental emergency” and appealed for international assistance to try to protect its natural heritage. Local volunteers have also been engaged in frantic efforts to try to save the nation’s coastline as the heavy oil washes ashore.

French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted in response, “When biodiversity is in peril, there is urgency to act.”

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made no similar comment about the issue, but a six-person Japanese disaster relief team is to be sent to Mauritius on August 10, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Japanese company executives have vowed to do what they can to minimize the environmental impact.

The MV Wakashio was carrying no cargo at the time of the accident and has a crew of about twenty people, all of them unharmed.

August 8, 2020

Mageshima Military Base Plans Take Shape

SNA (Tokyo) — The Ministry of Defense has released some details of its base development plans for Mageshima, an unacknowledged major expansion of US military training facilities in Japan.

This eight square kilometer uninhabited island, under the jurisdiction of Kagoshima Prefecture, has been earmarked by the Shinzo Abe government to become the venue for Field Carrier Landing Practices (FCLP), which simulate the conditions of landing on aircraft carriers for pilot training purposes.

Once the new base has been opened, US Navy and US Marine Corps personnel are expected to be hosted at Mageshima for about a month per training session.

In the past, the US military’s FCLP were conducted at Naval Air Facility Atsugi in Kanagawa Prefecture, near the nation’s capital, but in 1991 they were transferred to distant Iwoto (Iwo Jima) due to fierce complaints from local residents over noise pollution. The US military has never been entirely pleased with this arrangement, however, because of the remoteness of Iwoto and local conditions that are regarded as dangerous.

Since the formal creation of a new US military base in Japan is politically infeasible, the project was hatched to create a new Self-Defense Forces base at Mageshima that will be used primarily by US forces for its training exercises.

About 150-200 SDF personnel are expected to be permanently based at Mageshima, and it might also be used for FCLP for Japanese forces now that the Izumo-class aircraft carriers have come into existence.

The base will have two paved runways (one about 2,400 meters in length and the other about 1,800 meters), a hangar, and a refueling facility.

Environmental impact studies are expected to be launched this autumn and the construction period is envisioned to take about four years.

Mageshima has been owned by a Tokyo-based land development firm called Tasuton Airport. An agreement was announced last November whereby the government will purchase the island for about ¥16 billion (US$150 million). The company had previously declared in May 2019 that it had broken off negotiations with the government and had decided not to sell the island, but six months later Tasuton Airport had somehow been induced by the Abe government to reverse its decision and agreed to the sale.

Nishioomote city, a municipality which encompasses both northern Tanegashima and all of Mageshima (thus theoretically having jurisdiction over the land which is to become the military base), has not agreed to the construction of the base, and in fact incumbent Mayor Shunsuke Yaita was elected in 2017 on a platform of opposing the government’s plan.

It appears, however, that the Abe government intends to simply roll over the opposition of this remote island community of about 15,000 people, many of whom are concerned about noise levels that will be produced by the military aircraft.

August 7, 2020

Okinawa’s Covid-19 Crisis Intensifies

SNA (Tokyo) — Okinawa has reported one hundred Covid-19 cases today, a new record for the prefecture, solidifying its status of having the most intense outbreak in Japan on a per capita basis.

Governor Denny Tamaki declared a state of emergency in his prefecture a week ago, scheduled to last until August 15, but the numbers of newly confirmed cases have continued to rise.

The Matsuyama entertainment district of Naha city has been one key focus of concern, having produced some of the early clusters. The prefectural government remains worried that the infection may affect some of the sparsely populated, outlying islands where the medical system is particularly weak.

Some of the patients are elderly, with at least one of the infected residents older than a hundred years.

In addition to the new cases among the civilian population, the US military also confirmed today four more cases spread between Camp Courtney and Kadena Air Base.

The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Okinawa has now exceeded 880, though the nearly three hundred US military cases are counted separately and not included in these official figures.

Aside from having the most intense Covid-19 outbreak in Japan, and hosting the overwhelming majority of the infected US military personnel and their dependents, Okinawa is among Japan’s poorest prefectures with a childhood poverty rate at about 30%, or about twice the national average.

August 6, 2020

Abe Government Brushes Off Covid-19 Rebel Governors

SNA (Tokyo) — The Abe government has reacted with outward indifference as a second prefectural leader, Aichi Governor Hideaki Omura, declared a state of emergency over the spread of the Covid-19 infection.

At this morning’s Hiroshima atomic bombing anniversary press conference, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe repeated the now familiar refrain, “We are not in a situation that requires an immediate declaration of a state of emergency.” He also indicated that the public should feel free to travel to their ancestral homes during the upcoming Obon holiday, so long as they maintain basic Covid-19 precautions.

The Abe government has steadfastly refrained from setting any benchmarks that would trigger a new national state of emergency, only asserting that it isn’t necessary at this time, and that they are in constant communication with medical professionals.

Aichi Governor Hideaki Omura announced that his prefectural government was declaring a local state of emergency to last from August 6 to 24.

In contrast to the national government, Omura has asked residents not to travel during this period, including the Obon holiday, and to stay indoors as much as possible. He also wants local businesses to shorten their evening hours.

Aichi Prefecture has recorded more than a hundred new Covid-19 cases for nine consecutive days, triggering the governor’s action.

Omura is the second of Japan’s 47 governors to break with the central government’s relative inaction in the face of Japan’s Covid-19 second wave. Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki previously declared a state of emergency in his prefecture for the period from August 1 to 15.

Asked directly about the matter in his morning press conference, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga offered no direct answer, but he implied that the small number of critically ill patients at this time indicated that the nation was not facing an immediate emergency.

August 5, 2020

Ruling Party Conservatives Ready for Sanctions on South Korea

SNA (Tokyo) — The Conservative Solidarity Association, a grouping of dozens of rightwing Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers, visited the Prime Minister’s Official Residence on August 4 and requested that Shinzo Abe immediately impose sanctions on South Korea in the event that assets of Nippon Steel are seized by the local courts.

Shuichi Takatori, the caretaker leader of the association, declared that an asset seizure “would overturn the basis of Japan-South Korea treaties and economic cooperation and would create a severe situation.”

This conservatives’ message appears to be resonating with the Abe government as well. An unnamed senior Foreign Ministry official told Jiji Press that, “If the assets are converted into cash, that will spell the definitive end of Japan-South Korea relations.”

Concretely, it is reported that the Abe government is preparing a menu of possible retaliatory actions, such as recalling Ambassador Koji Tomita from Seoul, making it more difficult for South Korean nationals to visit Japan (aside from the current Covid-19 restrictions), and imposing punitive tariffs on South Korean goods entering the Japanese market.

However, it is expected that the South Korean judicial appeals process over the potential seizure of Nippon Steel assets will take at least several months to run its course, so it is believed that the diplomatic rupture, if it takes place, will come later in the year.

The Conservative Solidarity Association was established by dozens of ruling party lawmakers in June, mainly by rightwing ideologues displeased with former Defense Minister Tomomi Inada’s leadership of a much older ruling party grouping called the Tradition and Creation Association.

August 4, 2020

Korea Court Moves Toward Seizure of Nippon Steel Assets

SNA (Tokyo) — The Daegu District Court in South Korea has initiated procedures for the seizure of local assets held by the Nippon Steel Corporation as compensation for the firm’s use of forced labor during the Pacific War.

The assets subject to seizure are the 30% stake held by Nippon Steel in PNR, a joint venture with South Korea’s leading steel company POSCO, which is worth an estimated US$335,000.

Nippon Steel quickly indicated that it will appeal the court’s move, meaning that no enforcement action is likely to take place in the near future.

The asset seizure process follows an October 2018 South Korean Supreme Court ruling that ordered Nippon Steel to pay four forced labor victims compensation for their wartime suffering.

The court case is a major point of diplomatic contention between Tokyo and Seoul, with the Abe administration arguing that all such claims were settled by the June 1965 treaty that normalized relations between the countries, but with Korean courts gradually coming to the conclusion that individual citizens can still make claims regarding Japanese companies’ actions during the colonial and wartime periods.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry issued the following response: “We are open to an ongoing discussion about reasonable ways to resolve this issue while respecting the judicial decision and realizing the rights of the actual victims, along with taking into account our two countries’ bilateral relations.”

For its part, the Shinzo Abe government has indicated that it is preparing to retaliate in the event that Nippon Steel assets are actually seized, and throughout the judicial process it has urged the company not to compromise with the South Korean legal arguments.

August 3, 2020

Communists Hit Government on Incoherent Covid Messaging

SNA (Tokyo) — Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Akira Koike unleashed his famously sharp tongue on the Abe government’s inconsistent Covid-19 messaging, particularly the question of what the public should or should not do during the upcoming four-day Obon summer holiday.

“They change again and again,” Koike complained, “They’re utterly incoherent. It’s like they are writhing in agony. What should the Japanese people understand the policy of their own government to be? I can’t help but say that they lack the ability to govern.”

Koike was reacting to differences in the public messages coming from Economic Revitalization Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, who has been fronting the government’s coronavirus response policies, and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga.

Yesterday, Nishimura declared at a press conference that members of the public should consider carefully about whether or not they should return to their hometowns for Obon this year, noting that “infection may spread from asymptomatic young people” and that people needed to “think about the health and the lives of grandpas and grandmas” before making a decision to return home.

This morning, however, Suga appeared to contradict the thrust of Nishimura’s message, stating, “We are not asking people to refrain from traveling home entirely; we are just asking them to be very cautious.”

“As for the precautions for those returning home, we will listen to the views of experts,” Suga added.

August 2, 2020

Chinese Vessels Leave Disputed Waters After Record 111 Days

SNA (Tokyo) — The Japan Coast Guard confirmed today that four Chinese patrol vessels that had been operating in the waters near the disputed Senkaku-Diaoyu islands have departed after 111 days.

While Chinese patrols into these waters have been common since then-Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara sparked an intensification of the territorial dispute in April 2012, never before had Chinese vessels maintained a consistent presence for such a long period.

The Japan Coast Guard speculates that the four ships’ withdrawal at this time may be related to safety concerns as Typhoon No. 4 (Typhoon Hagupit) advances into nearby waters.

US Forces Japan Commander Lt. Gen. Kevin Schneider stated at a press conference last Wednesday, “We are seeing unprecedented levels of incursions in the vicinity of the Senkakus over the last 100 to 120 days, and while Beijing has operated in these areas and continue to do incursions three to four times a month, the duration of the incursions is beyond anything that we have seen in a long, long time.”

The Chinese ships first entered the disputed waters on April 14.

The uninhabited Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands, also known as the Tiaoyutai, Diaoyutai, or Pinnacle Islands, possess only 7 square kilometers of land area, but are claimed by Japan, China, and Taiwan. The islands have no confirmed major natural resources, but it is thought possible that that there are nearby undersea oil reserves.

August 1, 2020

Okinawa Enters Covid-19 State of Emergency

SNA (Tokyo) — Okinawa Prefecture entered a self-declared “state of emergency” August 1 in line with the declaration made by Governor Denny Tamaki the previous evening.

“We want residents to know that we are facing a critical juncture,” the governor appealed, “We have issued this declaration as a measure to try to stop the spread of the infection. We must do whatever we can to prevent the collapse of our medical system.”

The declaration asks the residents of the prefecture to exercise “self-restraint” regarding a number of higher risk activities, including the avoidance of nightlife districts in Naha city and the holding of large-scale public events and gatherings. Residents are also advised to stay at home as much as is practical, to avoid travel to remote islands where healthcare systems are particularly weak, and to close their businesses by 10pm each evening.

Businesses which cooperate with the prefectural government’s requests are being offered up to ¥200,000 (US$1,900) in financial support.

Okinawa’s “state of emergency” carries with it no legal force because the national government continues to insist that such measures are not necessary at this time.

58 new infections were reported in Okinawa Prefecture on August 1, following a record 71 cases the previous day.

Counted separately are the cases on US military bases, with the US Marines reporting a total of eight new cases at Camp Hansen and at Futenma, bringing their total to 256 cases.

US Forces Japan Commander Lt. Gen. Kevin Schneider insisted at a press conference on July 29 that there is no connection between the coronavirus outbreak on the US military bases and that of the civilian population in Okinawa.

“While we have seen a growth in cases in a couple of our bases, those have been managed. They’ve been contained, and there’s been absolutely no connection that has been proven to show that there has been any spread from the clusters on the bases to the local community,” he said.

The period of the Okinawa state of emergency has been set to run until August 15.

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