Japan’s ruling party under fire over links to far-right extremists

Calls for LDP politicians to distance themselves from extremists come amid campaign of terror targeting academics
The Guardian: 13 October 2014

In this August, voting for 「Hate Speech Restriction Bill」,proposed by the opposite parties, was postponed in Japan. The Economist article described, "In Tokyo’s Shin-Okubo neighbourhood, home to one of the largest concentrations of Koreans in Japan, many people say the level of anti-foreigner vitriol—on the streets and on the internet—is without modern precedent." 　 I observe hate speech has drama...tically increased in Japan for these years.
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In fact, racists and arrogant nationalists are everywhere in the world (and its counter activists too). However, the problems lie in Japan are, the cabinet is not active to protect victims, and some cabinet members are befriending with the notorious racist organization.
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Japan’s ruling party is under pressure to distance itself from the far right, after senior politicians were linked to groups that promote Nazi ideology and hate crimes towards the country’s ethnic Korean community.

The calls for three members of prime minister Shinzo Abe’s government to distance themselves from extremists come amid a campaign of death threats and intimidation targeting liberal academics, which observers say is a symptom of Japan’s sharp turn to the right.

Eriko Yamatani, who as chairman of the national public safety commission is Japan’s most senior police official, is the third senior Liberal Democratic party (LDP) politician to have been linked to ultra-rightwing groups, after a photograph surfaced of her with Shigeo Masuki, a senior member of the Zaitokukai group.

Yamatani, however, has refused to condemn Zaitokukai, whose members have labelled ethnic Korean residents of Japan “cockroaches” and called for them to be killed.

The 2009 photograph, which Yamatani claims she does not recall being taken, became public soon after two of her LDP colleagues acknowledged that they had been snapped with Kazunari Yamada, the leader of a Japanese neo-Nazi party, in 2011.

Sanae Takaichi, the internal affairs minister, and the LDP’s policy head, Tomomi Inada, claimed they were unaware of Yamada’s extremist views at the time.

When challenged to condemn Zaitokukai, Yamatani said it was not appropriate to comment on the policies of individual groups, “Japan has a long history of placing great value on the idea of harmony and respecting the rights of everyone,” she said. Masuki, who has left Zaitokukai, told Reuters he had known Yamatani for more than a decade through their shared interest in education.

Zaitokukai calls for the end to welfare and other “privileges” afforded to about half a million non-naturalised members of Japan’s ethnic Korean community, many of whom are the descendants of labourers brought over from the Korean peninsula to work in mines and factories before and during the second world war.

Rightwing activists have been emboldened by the Asahi Shimbun’s recent admission that articles it ran in the 1980s and 90s on Japan’s wartime use of sex slaves – so-called comfort women –were false. The liberal newspaper’s articles were based on now-discredited testimony of Seiji Yoshida, a former soldier who claimed he had witnessed the abduction of women from the South Korean island of Jeju.

The Asahi’s erroneous reporting prompted Abe and other senior politicians to accuse it of damaging Japan’s international image, claiming that the foreign media had taken the inaccurate sex slave articles as the cue for their own coverage.

Former Asahi journalists who work in academia have become the target of a campaign of bomb and death threats by the far right designed to hound them out of their jobs.

Activists have posted online the names and photographs of the children of one former Asahi journalist, Takashi Uemura, denouncing them as the offspring of a “traitor” and urging them to kill themselves. Uemura had written articles on the sex slave issue for the Asahi 20 years ago.

“[The government’s] lukewarm attitude towards hate crimes by the revisionist right is in itself a reason why we need to criticise the government’s handling of this [intimidation] issue, even if it isn’t directly orchestrating what is happening,” said Koichi Nakano, a politics professor at Sophia University in Tokyo.

Hokusei Gakuen University in Sapporo, which employs Uemura as a part-time lecturer, has postponed a decision on whether to rehire him for the 2015 academic year. Another former Asahi reporter declined a position at a university in western Japan after receiving threatening letters.

“Abe and other leaders’ outlook is encouraging the rightwing to conduct even harsher attacks on those who are critical of the history of the Japanese empire,” said Jiro Yamaguchi, a professor at Hosei University in Tokyo.

Abe’s recent cabinet reshuffle has raised fears that Japan is veering sharply to the right amid rising tensions over history and territorial claims with China and South Korea.

Yamatani, Takaichi and Inada are close allies of Abe and share his revisionist views of Japan’s wartime history. They have questioned the consensus that Japan forced tens of thousands of mainly Korean and Chinese women to work in frontline brothels between the late 1920s and Japan’s defeat in 1945.

Fifteen of the 19 members of Abe’s cabinet belong to Nippon Kaigi, a group launched in 1997 to promote patriotic education and end Japan’s “masochistic” view of its wartime campaigns on mainland Asia.

Abe played a prominent role in pressuring the education ministry to remove references to the comfort women from school textbooks.

Yamaguchi said the rightwing campaign had echoes of the 1930s, when militarists carried out purges of liberal academics. “If Hokusei [University] gives in to this pressure [to sack Uemura], that would mean academic freedom and freedom of speech is undermined, even under a democratic constitution,” he said. “This is a watershed moment for Japanese society.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/13/japan-ruling-party-far-right-extremists-liberal-democratic

Spin and substance: A troubling rise in xenophobic vitriol

Spin and substance: A troubling rise in xenophobic vitriol
The Economist: 25 September 2014

IN OSAKA’s strongly Korean Tsuruhashi district, a 14-year-old Japanese girl went out into the streets last year calling through a loudspeaker for a massacre of Koreans. In Tokyo’s Shin-Okubo neighbourhood, home to one of the largest concentrations of Koreans in Japan, many people say the leve...l of anti-foreigner vitriol—on the streets and on the internet—is without modern precedent. Racists chant slogans such as “Get out of our country”, and “Kill, kill, kill Koreans”.
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Perhaps for the first time, this is becoming a problem for Japan’s politicians and spin doctors (to say nothing of the poor Koreans). The clock is counting down to the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, and lawmakers are coming under pressure to rein in the verbal abuse and outright hate speech directed at non-Japanese people, chiefly Koreans.

 Japan has about 500,000 non-naturalised Koreans, some of whom have come in the past couple of decades but many of whose families were part of a diaspora that arrived during Japan’s imperial era in the first half of the 20th century. They have long been targets of hostility. After the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, Tokyo residents launched a pogrom against ethnic Koreans, claiming that they had poisoned the water supply.

So far the abuse has stopped short of violence. There have also been counter-demonstrations by Japanese citizens in defence of those attacked. But the police have been passive in the face of verbal assaults. And there is clearly a danger that one day the attacks will turn violent.

So the government is under pressure to act. In July, the UN’s human-rights committee demanded that Japan add hate speech to legislation banning racial discrimination. Tokyo’s governor, Yoichi Masuzoe, has pressed the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, to pass a law well before the games.
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The courts, too, are beginning to move. In July Osaka’s high court upheld an earlier ruling over racial discrimination that ordered Zaitokukai, an ultra-right group that leads hate-speech rallies across the country, to pay ¥12m ($111,000) for its tirades against a pro-North Korean elementary school in Kyoto. At least one right-wing group, Issuikai, which is anti-American and nostalgic for the imperial past, abhors the anti-Korean racism. Its founder, Kunio Suzuki, says he has never seen such anti-foreign sentiment.

The backdrop to a sharp rise in hate-filled rallies is Japan’s strained relations with South Korea (over the wartime issue of Korean women forced to work as sex slaves for the Japanese army) and North Korea (which abducted Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s). But, says Mr Suzuki of Issuikai, the return of Mr Abe to office in 2012 also has something to do with it. The nationalist prime minister and his allies have been mealy-mouthed in condemning hate speech.
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Even if Mr Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) bows to the need to improve Japan’s image overseas, the message is likely to remain mixed. Earlier in September a photograph emerged of Eriko Yamatani, the new minister for national public safety and the overseer of Japan’s police, posing in 2009 for a photograph with members of Zaitokukai. The government says she did not know that the people she met were connected to the noxious group. Yet Ms Yamatani has form when it comes to disputing the historical basis of the practice of wartime sex slavery.
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Many reasonable people worry that a new hate-speech law, improperly drafted, could harm freedom of expression. But one revisionist politician, Sanae Takaichi, said, shortly before she joined the cabinet in September, that if there were to be a hate-speech law, it should be used to stop those annoying people (invariably well-behaved and often elderly) demonstrating against the government outside the Diet: lawmakers, she added, needed to work “without any fear of criticism”. Ms Takaichi’s office has since been obliged to explain why, with Tomomi Inada, another of Mr Abe’s close allies, she appeared in photographs alongside a leading neo-Nazi. Some of the hate, it seems, may be inspired from the top.
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http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21620252-troubling-rise-xenophobic-vitriol-spin-and-substance?zid=306&ah=1b164dbd43b0cb27ba0d4c3b12a5e227

From Wikipedia:
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Japanese law covers threats and slander, but it "does not apply to hate speech against general groups of people". Japan became a member of the United Nations International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 1995. Article 4 of the convention sets forth provisions calling for the criminalization of hate speech. But the Japanese government has suspended the provisions, saying actions to spread or promote the idea of racial discrimination have not been taken in Japan to such an extent that legal action is necessary. The Foreign Ministry says that this assessment remains unchanged.
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In May 2013, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) warned the Japanese government that it needs to take measures to curb hate speech against so-called "comfort women", or Asian women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II. The committee's recommendation called for the Japanese government to better educate Japanese society on the plight of women who were forced into sexual slavery to prevent stigmatization, and to take necessary measures to repair the lasting effects of exploitation, including addressing their right to compensation.
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In 2013, following demonstrations, parades, and comments posted on the Internet threatening violence against foreign residents of Japan, especially Koreans, there are concerns that hate speech is a growing problem in Japan. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Justice Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki have expressed concerns about the raise in hate speech, saying that it "goes completely against the nation's dignity", but so far have stopped short of proposing any legal action against protesters.

On 22 September 2013 around 2,000 people participated in the "March on Tokyo for Freedom" campaigning against recent hate speech marches. Participants called on the Japanese government to "sincerely adhere" to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Sexual minorities and the disabled also participated in the march.
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On 25 September 2013 a new organization, "An international network overcoming hate speech and racism" (Norikoenet), that is opposed to hate speech against ethnic Koreans and other minorities in Japan was launched.
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On 7 October 2013, in a rare ruling on racial discrimination against ethnic Koreans, a Japanese court ordered an anti-Korean group, Zaitokukai, to stop "hate speech" protests against a Korean school in Kyoto and pay the school 12.26 million yen ($126,400 U.S.) in compensation for protests that took place in 2009 and 2010.
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A United Nations panel urged Japan to ban hate speech.

SoftBank's Son stands up to anti-Korean bigotry in Japan

SoftBank's Son stands up to anti-Korean bigotry in Japan
Nikkei Asian Review: 27 August 2015

TOKYO -- SoftBank Group Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son has long been discriminated against by Japanese because he is ethnically Korean.
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Even in his early childhood, he was attacked verbally and physically by Japanese classmates. In kindergarten, he was jeered at for being Korean. Once, another child cut his head open with a stone. Today,... he finds himself the target of malicious comments on the Internet. In a recent interview, Son talked about his experiences and his decision to be open about his background.
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Q: Why did you choose to use your Korean family name instead of your Japanese one?
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A: I used to go by Masayoshi Yasumoto before I went to the U.S. at the age of 16. After I returned from the U.S. and decided to start a business, I had a choice before me -- whether I should go with the Japanese family name Yasumoto, which all my family and relatives use, or the ancestral surname Son.
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It is undoubtedly easier to go by Yasumoto when living in Japanese society. A number of celebrities and professional athletes use Japanese family names in their chosen professions. It is not my intention to criticize such a practice. But I decided to go against the tide and become the first among my relatives to use Son as my family name.
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I won't go into the reasons and the origin of this issue, but if you are born into one of those families of Korean descent, you are subject to groundless discrimination. There are many children who undergo such hardship. When I was in elementary and junior high school, I was in agony over my identity so much that I seriously contemplated taking my own life. I'd say discrimination against people is that tough.
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Then you might ask why I decided to go against all my relatives, including uncles and aunts, and started to use the Korean family name, Son. I wanted to become a role model for ethnic Korean children and show them that a person of Korean descent like me, who publicly uses a Korean surname, can achieve success despite various challenges. If my doing so gives a sense of hope to even just one young person or 100 of them, I believe that is a million times more effective than raising a placard and shouting, "No discrimination."
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Q: Your coming out as an ethnic Korean risked involving the rest of your family, right?
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A: I met with fierce objections from my relatives, who had hidden their real family name to live their lives in a small community. One of my relatives said, "If you come out as a Son from among us, that will expose all of us." People would start saying things like "They are ethnic Koreans" or "Your nephew is a Son, not a Yasumoto. So, you, too, are part of the kimchee clan." That's why they tried to dissuade me. But I told them: "What I will do may disturb you all, uncles and aunties. If so, you don't need to say that I am a relative of yours. Just pretend that I am not related to you."
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Q: I hope there will be more success stories like yours in Japan. What do you think is necessary for that to happen?
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A: Currently, many Japanese companies are losing confidence. They are losing out to competition and have collectively become introverted. In such circumstances, even if we are the only one, SoftBank has risen to the occasion and taken on much bigger rivals in the U.S. And if we survive ... that will create a ripple effect and inspire even one company or 10 companies. I think that's a form of social contribution.
Son speaks before an audience. The slogan in the background says, "Challenge yourself and new horizons will emerge."
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Not just us, but Mr. Tadashi Yanai (chairman and president of Fast Retailing) and Mr. Shigenobu Nagamori (chairman and president of Nidec), and Rakuten, DeNA and other companies are working hard to challenge themselves. If young business leaders can set a couple of successful precedents, that could give a much-needed boost and help revive the Japanese economy.
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While it is important to oppose a move toward widening the wealth gap and put in place a social safety net, I think there is no need to stand in the way of other people's success. It is unnecessary to gang up and lash out at those who are successful. Successful people can serve as a light of hope for others. Personally, I think it is important to create a society where we can praise success and successful people. That will help keep alive Japanese dreams and create Japanese heroes.

 

Tokyo cancels Japan visit by U.N. expert on freedom of expression

Tokyo cancels Japan visit by U.N. expert on freedom of expression

Mainichi Japan: 20 November 2015

 

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- A U.N. expert in charge of freedom of expression said Thursday the Japanese government has canceled his visit to the country scheduled for next month.
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David Kaye, U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, told Kyodo News he hopes he "can continue t...o work with the (Japanese) government" and that he has always had good interactions with it.
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The rare cancellation by the government of an official visit drew criticism among his supporters that the government is seeking to hinder him from taking up such issues as the secrecy law for the prevention of leaks of state secrets.
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Under the contentious law that took effect last year, civil servants or others who leak designated secrets will face up to 10 years in prison, and those who instigate leaks, including journalists, will be subject to a prison term of up to five years.
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"We will rearrange the schedule because we couldn't make full preparations to accept the visit due to budget compilation and other reasons," said an official of the Foreign Ministry that coordinated the visit.
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While Kaye said "the government has said that they wanted to postpone the visit until the autumn," the ministry declined to confirm it.
.Kaye announced his planned visit to Japan from Dec. 1 to 8 at the Third Committee of the U.N. General Assembly in October.
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He planned to conduct hearings with government officials, journalists and citizen activists versed in disclosure of information with regard to the secrecy law and other topics related to freedom of expression in Japan, according to Kaye and Yuichi Kaido, a lawyer who planned to support him during his visit.
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The U.N. Human Rights Committee expressed concerns about the secrecy law last year.
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In response to Friday's request by the Japanese government to postpone the visit, he urged it to reconsider the decision. But Tokyo provided notification of the decision again on Tuesday, according to Kaye.
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"Japan as a government and as a country is, generally speaking, very respectful of freedom of expression," said Kaye.

"We look at things that are worth celebrating, perhaps as a model that other countries could follow," he said, adding, "We also identify areas where there might be some concerns."
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Rumsfeld, Berger, Aaron receive Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun

Rumsfeld, Berger, Aaron receive Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun
Stars and Stripes: 4 November 2015

Japanese Abe government awarded "Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun" to the former hawkish US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who represents the military industrial complex , and the most prominent public advocate of the Bush administration's global war on terror and its campaign in Iraq. The same award is also given to Richard Armitage who "controlled" many of Japanese policies such as applying collective self defence and Specific secret protection law, promoting TPP, resuming nuclear power plants, removing restriction on weapon trade thru the third Armitage Nye report as I posted earlier
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YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former White House national security adviser Sandy Berger and baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron were among 89 foreigners from 38 nations and nearly 4,000 Japanese nationals who were honored recently by the Japanese government.

Rumsfeld, 83, and Berger, 70, were awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun, and Aaron, 81, received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, during a ceremony Thursday, Nov. 5, 2015, at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. Emperor Akihito and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe were in attendance.

 

The Order of the Rising Sun — the third-highest honor bestowed by the Japanese government — is given to those who have made distinguished achievement in international relations, promotion of Japanese culture, advancements in their field or development in welfare or preservation of the environment.

Former Japanese Supreme Court Chief Justice Hironobu Takesaki, 71, was given the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Paulownia Flowers, the ceremony’s highest decoration. Other notable Japanese citizens honored include professional golfer Isao Aoki, 73; actor Kinya Kitaoji, 72; and Yoshiyuki Sakaki, 73, a molecular biologist known for his human genome research.

 

Rumsfeld served as defense secretary in 1975-77 under President Gerald Ford and in 2001-06 under President George W. Bush. Berger served as national security adviser in 1997-2001 under President Bill Clinton. Aaron, whose career spanned 23 seasons with the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves and Milwaukee Brewers, held the Major League career home-run record for 33 years after breaking Babe Ruth’s mark of 714 in 1974.

http://www.stripes.com/news/rumsfeld-berger-aaron-receive-japan-s-order-of-the-rising-sun-1.376888

On My Watch : Confession of a foreign Correspondent after a half-decade of reporting from Tokyo to his German Readers

On My Watch: Confession of a foreign Correspondent after a half-decade of reporting from Tokyo to his German Readers
The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan: 2 April 2015

My bags are packed, as the song goes. After more than five years as the Tokyo correspondent for the German daily, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, I will soon leave Tokyo for home.

 

The country I’m leaving is different from the one I arrived in back in January 2010. Although things seem the same on the surface, the social climate – that has increasingly influenced my work in the past 12 months – is slowly but noticeably changing.

 

There is a growing gap between the perceptions of the Japanese elites and what is reported in the foreign media, and I worry that it could become a problem for journalists working here. Of course, Japan is a democracy with freedom of the press, and access to information is possible even for correspondents with poor Japanese language skills. But the gap exists because there is a clear shift that is taking place under the leadership of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – a move by the right to whitewash history. It could become a problem because Japan’s new elites have a hard time dealing with opposing views or criticism, which is very likely to continue in the foreign media.

 

The Nikkei recently published an essay by their correspondent in Berlin about the February visit to Japan of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He wrote: “Merkel’s visit to Japan was more conducive to criticism of Japan than friendship. With Japanese experts, she discussed her country’s policy to end nuclear power. She talked about the wartime history when she visited the Asahi and when she met with Abe. She also talked with Katsuya Okada, president of the DPJ, the largest opposition party. . . . Friendship was promoted only when she visited a factory run by a German company and shook hands with the robot Asimo.”

 

That seemed harsh. But, even accepting the premise . . . what is friendship? Is friendship simply agreement? Is not true friendship the ability to speak of one’s beliefs when a friend is shifting in a direction that could cause him harm? And surely Merkel’s visit was more complex than just critical.

Let me make my own stance clear. After five years, my love and affection for this country are unbroken. In fact, thanks to the many fine people I’ve met, my feelings are stronger than ever. Most of my Japanese friends and Japanese readers in Germany have told me they feel my love in my writing, especially following the events of March 11, 2011.

 

Unfortunately, the bureaucrats at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) in Tokyo see things completely differently, and it seems some in the Japanese media feel the same way. To them I have been – like almost all my German media colleagues – a Japan basher capable of only delivering harsh criticism. It is we who have been responsible for, as the Nikkei’s man in Berlin put it, the two countries’ bilateral relations becoming “less friendly.”

Changing relations

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is politically conservative, economically liberal and market oriented. And yet, those claiming that the coverage of Abe’s historical revisionism has always been critical are right. In Germany it is inconceivable for liberal democrats to deny responsibility for what were wars of aggression. If Japan’s popularity in Germany has suffered, it is not due to the media coverage, but to Germany’s repugnance at historical revisionism.

 

My tenure in Japan began with very different issues. In 2010, the Democratic Party of Japan ran the government. All three administrations I covered – Hatoyama, Kan and Noda – tried to explain their policies to the foreign press, and we often heard politicians saying things like, “We know we have to do more and become better at running the country.”

 

Foreign journalists were often invited by then Deputy Prime Minister Katsuya Okada, for example, to exchange views. There were weekly meetings in the Kantei, the PM’s residence, and officials were willing to discuss – more or less openly – current issues. We didn’t hesitate to criticize the government’s stance on certain issues, but officials continued to try to make their positions understood.

 

The rollback came soon after the December 2012 elections. Despite the prime minister’s embrace of new media like Facebook, for example, there is no evidence of an appreciation for openness anywhere in his administration. Finance Minister Taro Aso has never tried to talk to foreign journalists or to provide a response to questions about the massive government debt.

 

In fact, there is a long list of issues that foreign correspondents want to hear officialdom address: energy policy, the risks of Abenomics, constitutional revision, opportunities for the younger generation, the depopulation of rural regions. But the willingness of government representatives to talk with the foreign press has been almost zero. Yet, at the same time, anyone who criticizes the brave new world being called for by the prime minister is called a Japan basher.

 

What is new, and what seems unthinkable compared to five years ago, is being subjected to attacks from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – not only direct ones, but ones directed at the paper’s editorial staff in Germany. After the appearance of an article I had written that was critical of the Abe administration’s historical revisionism, the paper’s senior foreign policy editor was visited by the Japanese consul general of Frankfurt, who passed on objections from “Tokyo.” The Chinese, he complained, had used it for anti-Japanese propaganda.

It got worse. Later on in the frosty, 90-minute meeting, the editor asked the consul general for information that would prove the facts in the article wrong, but to no avail. “I am forced to begin to suspect that money is involved,” said the diplomat, insulting me, the editor and the entire paper. Pulling out a folder of my clippings, he extended condolences for my need to write pro-China propaganda, since he understood that it was probably necessary for me to get my visa application approved.

Me? A paid spy for Beijing? Not only have I never been there, but I’ve never even applied for a visa. If this is the approach of the new administration’s drive to make Japan’s goals understood, there’s a lot of work ahead. Of course, the pro-China accusations did not go over well with my editor, and I received the backing to continue with my reporting. If anything, the editing of my reports became sharper.

 

The heavy handedness has been increasing over the past few years. In 2012, while the DPJ was still in power, I took a junket to South Korea, interviewing former comfort women and visiting the contested island of Takeshima (Dokdo to Koreans). Of course it was PR, but it was a rare chance to see the center of the controversy for myself. I was called in by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a meal and discussion, and received a few dozen pages of information proving that the island was Japanese.

 

In 2013, with Abe’s administration in charge, I was called in once again after I wrote about an interview with three comfort women. This also included a lunch invitation, and once again I received information to help my understanding of the prime minister’s thoughts.

 

But things seem to have changed in 2014, and MoFA officials now seem to openly attack critical reporting. I was called in after a story on the effect the prime minister’s nationalism is having on trade with China. I told them that I had only quoted official statistics, and their rebuttal was that the numbers were wrong.

My departing message

Two weeks before the epic meeting between the Consul general and my editor, I had another lunch with MoFA officials, in which protests were made of my use of words like “whitewash history,” and the idea that Abe’s nationalistic direction might “isolate Japan, not only in East Asia.” The tone was frostier and, rather than trying to explain and convince, their attitude was angrier. No one was listening to my attempts to explain why German media are especially sensitive about historical revisionism.

 

I’ve heard of an increase in the number of lunch invitations from government officials to foreign correspondents, and the increased budgets to spread Japanese views of World War II, and the new trend to invite the bosses of foreign correspondents deemed too critical (via business class, of course). But I would suggest the proponents tread carefully, since these editors have been treated to – and become inured to – political PR of the highest caliber and clumsy efforts tend to have an opposite effect. When I officially complained about the Consul’s comments about my receiving funds from China, I was told that it was a “misunderstanding.”

So here’s my departing message: Unlike some of my colleagues, I do not see a threat in Japan to freedom of reporting. Though many critical voices are more silent than during the DPJ administration, they are there – and perhaps in larger numbers than before.

The closed-shop mentality of the Japanese political elite and the present inability of the administration leaders to risk open discussion with foreign media doesn’t really affect press freedom; there are plenty of other sources to gather information. But it does reveal how little the government understands that – in a democracy – policy must be explained to the public. And the world.

It doesn’t strike me as funny any more when colleagues tell me that the LDP doesn’t have anyone in the press affairs department who will speak English or provide information to a foreign journalist. Nor does the fact that the present prime minister, who claims to be well traveled, has declined to make the short trip to speak to us at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. In fact, I can only be saddened at how the government is not only secretive with the foreign press, but with its own citizens.

 

In the past five years, I’ve been up and down the Japanese archipelago, and – unlike in Tokyo – I’ve never had anyone, from Hokkaido to Kyushu, accuse me of writings that were hostile to Japan. On the contrary, I’ve been blessed with interesting stories and enjoyable people everywhere. Japan is still one of the most wealthy, open nations in the world; it’s a pleasant place to live and report from for foreign correspondents.

My hope is that foreign journalists – and even more importantly, the Japanese public – can continue to speak their minds. I believe that harmony should not come from repression or ignorance; and that a truly open and healthy democracy is a goal worthy of my home of the last five great years.

Carsten Germis was the Tokyo correspondent of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from 2010 to 2015 and a member of the Board of Directors of the FCCJ.

http://www.fccj.or.jp/number-1-shimbun/item/576-on-my-watch.html

Broadcasting watchdog blasts government, LDP for pressuring NHK

Broadcasting watchdog blasts government, LDP for pressuring NHK
The Asahi Shinbun: 7 November 2015

A third-party panel monitoring TV programming from an ethical standpoint criticized the government and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Nov. 6 for rebuking the Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) over an investigative news program.

In its opinion paper on allegations the public broadcaster engaged in fabrication in a program production, the Broadcasting Ethics and Program Improvement Organization (BPO) stated the government and the ruling party must not be allowed to interfere with TV content.

It is the first time that the BPO, which was established by NHK and private broadcasters to ensure the freedom of broadcasting and improve the quality of TV programming, has criticized the government and ruling party.

“The government must not be allowed to intervene in the content of an individual program,” said the organization’s Committee for the Investigation of Broadcasting Ethics.

“The ruling party tried to impose nothing but pressure to constrain the freedom of broadcasting and the autonomy (of NHK) to ensure the freedom, and such conduct must be strictly criticized.”
The committee investigated NHK for excessively dramatizing re-enactments in a “Close-up Gendai” news program that reported on scams involving religious organizations last year. It acknowledged NHK’s “serious violation of broadcasting ethics” in the report.

After the broadcaster’s in-house investigation panel concluded that the production team of a news program “excessively dramatized” and “deceptively edited” staged scenes in an episode aired in May 2014, internal affairs and communications minister Sanae Takaichi issued an administrative reprimand to NHK in April.

The LDP’s Research Commission on Info-Communications Strategy also summoned an NHK executive in April for a briefing on the matter.

“For the government, especially the internal affairs and communications minister who have the authorization authority over TV broadcasters, to deliver such a reprimand should be regarded as highly problematic,” said lawyer Kazuharu Kawabata, the BPO committee chairman, during a news conference on Nov. 6.

Takaichi later defended her decision, saying she believes her rebuke was neither “excessive” nor “hasty.”
“The administrative reprimand is not legally binding and only a request to call for the recipient’s independent initiative,” the minister told reporters.

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201511070026

Fukushima Fallout: Ailing U.S. Sailors Sue TEPCO After Exposure to Radiation 30x Higher Than Normal

Democracy Now: 19 March 2014

Three years after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, scores of U.S. sailors and marines are suing the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, for allegedly misleading the Navy about the level of radioactive contamination. Many of the servicemembers who provided humanitarian relief during the disaster have experienced devastating health ailments since returning from Japan, ranging from leukemia to blindness to infertility to birth defects. We are joined by three guests: Lieutenant Steve Simmons, a U.S. Navy sailor who served on board the USS Ronald Reagan and joined in the class action lawsuit against TEPCO after suffering health problems; Charles Bonner, an attorney for the sailors; and Kyle Cleveland, sociology professor and associate director of the Institute for Contemporary Asian Studies at Temple University’s Japan campus in Tokyo. Cleveland recently published transcripts of the Navy’s phone conversations about Fukushima that took place at the time of the disaster, which suggest commanders were also aware of the risk faced by sailors on the USS Ronald Reagan.

TRANSCRIPT

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Three years ago this month, our next guest, Navy Lieutenant Steve Simmons was stationed aboard the USS Ronald Reagan off the coast of Japan. The aircraft carrier provided humanitarian assistance in the days after the massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan’s northeast coast. Simmons, along with thousands of other emergency responders on the USS Reagan, were diverted from their naval exercises in the Pacific Ocean and steered to Japan’s decimated coastline to distribute food parcels, clothes and blankets to victims. At the time, they were unaware they were entering into an unprecedented nuclear crisis: a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Shortly after returning home, Steve Simmons blacked out while driving. Then he began regularly experiencing gastrointestinal problems and soaring fevers. Within months, Simmons’ legs buckled. He was no longer able to walk. He’s one of many first responders who say they’ve experienced devastating health ailments since returning from Japan, health ailments ranging from leukemia to blindness, to infertility, to birth defects.

Simmons is now part of a class action lawsuit against the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, that accuses the utility of failing to disclose the risks of radiation exposure. Navy sailor Lindsay Cooper and marine Mathew Bradley are also part of the lawsuit.

MATHEW BRADLEY: This degenerative disease in my lower back, and I have no family history of it. And I have no accident that could have caused it. And I have some digestion problems, as well, and stomach pain, as well.

LINDSAY COOPER: Right now I have a lot of weight issues and thyroid issues, issues that I didn’t have before I came in and then issues that I didn’t have after I had my child. But I’m just—I personally can’t afford to go to a doctor and get checked out, like the others can. I’m kind of almost nervous, if you want to say—I’m really nervous to find out what’s going to happen.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Lindsay Cooper and Mathew Bradley speaking to the Ecological Options Network.

Now, recently obtained phone conversations suggest the U.S. Navy was also aware of the risk faced by sailors on the USS Ronald Reagan responding to the Fukushima disaster. The conversations, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, feature naval officials who acknowledge that even while a hundred miles away from Fukushima, the carrier was exposed to levels of radiation that were 30 times greater than normal.

AMY GOODMAN: The transcript also contains discussion of health impacts that could come within a matter of 10 hours of exposure, including thyroid problems. However, the Navy leadership continues to deny sailors were exposed to harmful levels of radiation, even though those aboard were later told to scrub the ship and equipment in protective suits.

Democracy Now! invited a member of the Navy to join us on the show, but they declined. However, Lieutenant Greg Raelson of the Navy’s Office did speak to us briefly, saying servicemembers who participated in Operation Tomodachi, the Fukushima relief effort, were not at risk of radiation poisoning.

LT. GREG RAELSON: There’s no indication that any U.S. personnel supporting Operation Tomodachi experienced radiation exposure at levels associated with the occurrence of long-term health effects. The tri-service dose assessment and registry working group studied the available data. And their report, which was peer-reviewed by a non-government counsel of subject matter experts, determined that the highest whole-body dose to any crew member doesn’t present any risk greater than normally accepted during everyday life.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we are joined now by three guests.
In Washington, D.C., Lieutenant Steve Simmons is with us, the U.S. Navy sailor who served on board the USS Ronald Reagan, participating in the class action lawsuit against TEPCO. This April, Simmons will "medically retire" from the military.

In San Francisco, California, we’re joined by one of his attorneys, Charles Bonner, who is representing the class action lawsuit.

And via Democracy Now! video stream from Yokohama, Japan, we’re joined by Kyle Cleveland, sociology professor and associate director for the Institute for Contemporary Asian Studies at Temple University’s Japan campus in Tokyo. Cleveland’s recent article in The Asia-Pacific Journal is called "Mobilizing Nuclear Bias: The Fukushima Nuclear Crisis and the Politics of Uncertainty." In it, he published transcripts of the Navy’s phone conversations about Fukushima that took place back in March of 2011, three years ago at the time of the disaster.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Let’s go first to Lieutenant Steve Simmons, the U.S. Navy sailor who participated in the Fukushima relief efforts. Can you talk, Lieutenant Simmons, about what happened on March 11th, 2011, three years ago? Where were you, and what were you called to do?

LT. STEVE SIMMONS: Well, after—after the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the shores of Japan, we—the Ronald Reagan had already been on a scheduled deployment, and following that earthquake and tsunami, we were called away from our exercise there in the Pacific to provide humanitarian assistance to the citizens of Japan.

AMY GOODMAN: And what happened next?

LT. STEVE SIMMONS: We arrived on, if I remember correctly, the 12th of March, so the following day, which had been after the first reactor had already melted down. And the understanding of everybody on board was that there was no health risk, no dangers, as far as the radiation exposure goes. At one point, we had actually sat in the plume off the reactor for approximately five hours. And another time, we actually had to secure the water system, because we actually had brought contaminants up into the water.

AMY GOODMAN: How close were you to it?

LT. STEVE SIMMONS: Honestly, at this point, I hear conflicting stories each time. I know the—I’ve seen photos where you can clearly see the mountains of Japan right there in the background. So, if I remember correctly, the human eye can only see about 17 miles on the horizon, so you’re clearly within visible distance. But then there’s also reports that we were no closer than 160 miles. So, at this point, which one’s accurate, I’m not exactly—you know, I would have to believe the photos.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Lieutenant Simmons, at the time, you weren’t aware that you were being exposed to any radiation. When did you start feeling the impact on your health? And what are some of the things that have happened since?

LT. STEVE SIMMONS: It wasn’t until November of 2011. We returned in September. At the end of November, I had started noticing something was wrong. The first thing was—I was actually driving into work. I was driving down Route 50 heading into Arlington, and I blacked out and drove my truck up on a curb. Following that, I started coming down with what maybe I thought was just maybe a flu, started running fevers. I dropped about 20 to 25 pounds unexpectedly and then started experiencing night sweats, difficulty sleeping, and had been back and forth to the doctor numerous times for lab work and other studies to try to figure out what’s been going on. And from January to March of 2012, I had been hospitalized tree different times.

The first hospitalization, they couldn’t figure anything out. The only thing they supposedly came up with was a sinus infection, and just kind of blew off the thought that radiation had anything to do with it. In fact, the intern told me that if it was radiation, I had—I should have seen symptoms long before now. Three days later, after I was discharged, I was back in the hospital because my lymph nodes started swelling, and still running constant fevers as high as 102.9.

During the second hospitalization is when I was actually just coming out of the restroom, and my legs buckled on me. And at that point—from that point on, they hadn’t been the same. It had been—it’s probably about April time frame when I started using a wheelchair for long distances. And then, by the summer of '12, I had to start using a wheelchair full-time. Every time I would try to stand or do anything, my legs would shake and muscles start twitching. And it just progressed from there, and now the muscle weakness affects my legs, my arms, my hands. And now everything is still progressing, and there's now issues with signals going from the brain to bladder, as well. So that’s another issue that I’m dealing with now.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re sitting in a wheelchair right now?

LT. STEVE SIMMONS: I am.

AMY GOODMAN: We also wanted to bring Charles Bonner into the conversation from San Francisco. Charles Bonner, can you talk about the other people who are part of this class action suit? How did you find out about them? What are the ailments they are experiencing?

CHARLES BONNER: Yes, thank you very much, Amy, for having me on your show.
We initially started out with only eight plaintiffs, eight people who had contacted us as of December of 2012. By June of 2013, we had 51 sailors and marines who had contacted us with various illnesses, including thyroid cancers, testicular cancers, brain cancers, unusual uterine problems, excessive uterine bleeding, all kinds of gynecological problems, problems that you do not see in a population of 20-year-olds, 22-year-olds, 23-year-olds, even 35-year-olds, as is Lieutenant Simmons, his age. So, now we have filed a class action for approximately a hundred sailors. And every day we’re still receiving calls from sailors with these various problems. Just a couple of days ago, I received a call from a father whose son now has lung cancer. The total number of sailors who responded to this Operation Tomodachi—"tomodachi" is a Japanese word meaning "friend," so this was an operation helping our friends—the total number of U.S. sailors who responded was approximately 24,000. But there were a total of 70,000 U.S. servicemen and women who ultimately were first responders, and that include servicemen and women who were based in Japan.

So we have filed this class action lawsuit on behalf of all of them, because one thing is very clear: They all were exposed to radiation. We can debate the level of radiation, and we are not suing the Navy, and we are not accusing the Navy of having done anything improper. Of course, no one in the Navy would knowingly expose these young sailors and marines to high levels of radiation, radiations that one commander measured at 30 times normal, and 30 times more than what TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, represented to the public and to the U.S. Navy. The responsible party for these young sailors’ injury is the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the fourth-largest power company in the world.

Tokyo Electric Power Company failed to tell the public, including the Navy, that they were in an active meltdown. They had a triple meltdown following the earthquake and the tsunami. They didn’t have batteries. They didn’t have backup power. They didn’t have any kind of auxiliary water supply to cool these reactors down. They actually called to the headquarters of Tokyo Electric Power Company for the power company to dispatch batteries to them, and they did, but the trucks carrying the batteries got mired into traffic because of the tsunami. So, meanwhile, you had these managers frantically in the dark trying to figure out what to do. They sent their workers out into the dark to get car batteries, so these workers, in the storm, raising their hoods, extracting car batteries, going back in with flashlights, trying to figure out how to connect the batteries to the water supply so that they can cool the reactors.

Meanwhile, these young sailors on board the USS Ronald Reagan are cruising into this unknown. They do not know all of this disaster is occurring. But more importantly, TEPCO does not tell them that they are in an active meltdown, that the reactor number one has melted down within four hours following the earthquake, and there have been all kinds of explosions. Major releases are happening. There’s radioactive releases, including 300 tons of radioactive water is being released into the Pacific Ocean. And as Mr. Simmons will tell you, these young sailors were using this desalinated water. They were bathing in it. They were brushing their teeth with it. They were cooking with it. And so, they were ingesting this radiation both through food and water, as well as the air. And now they’re all sick. And so, we have to put the sailors first. This is Operation Tomodachi; now it’s operation help our friends, the U.S. sailors and young marines. They have all kinds of problems.

I’d like to just take one second and read you just a paragraph from one declaration from one of our young lady sailors. She’s 32, and she states that, quote, "During Operation Tomodachi, I began having migraine headaches, irregular menstrual cycles, knee surgery, breast surgery and leg surgery to remove unexplained mass from these areas." This radiation not only hurts the young sailors, but it hurts their offsprings. This is a declaration from the wife of a sailor, who writes in her declaration to the court, "My husband was exposed to radiation particles while assigned to the Seventh Fleet on the USS Ronald Reagan assisting in Operation Tomodachi beginning in March of 2011. As a result of this exposure, our son, who was born on November 14, 2012, at eight months was diagnosed with brain and spine cancer." These are just a few examples of what these young sailors are dealing with.
And one last report. This is a sailor who’s 22, has been diagnosed with leukemia and is losing his eyesight. And he writes in his declaration to the court, "Upon my return from Operation Tomodachi, I began losing my eyesight. I lost all vision in my left eye and most vision in my right eye. I am unable to read street signs, and I am no longer able to drive. Prior to Operation Tomodachi, I had 20/20 eyesight, wore no glasses and had no corrective eye surgery. Additionally, I know of no family member who have had leukemia." So these are the examples of the kinds of illnesses and injuries that these young sailors are experiencing.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. Charles Bonner, attorney, joining us from San Francisco; Lieutenant Steve Simmons, a U.S. Navy sailor. And when we come back, we’ll also be joined by Kyle Cleveland. He’s a professor. He’ll join us from Yokohama, Japan, to talk about documents he obtained of backstage conversations among U.S. officials about the radiation risk at the time that all of this was happening three years ago this month. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.
[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking about a class action suit that has been brought by marines and U.S. sailors against TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, that runs the nuclear power plants that melted down March—in that week of March 11, 2011, after the earthquake led to the tsunami that created this catastrophe. Our guests are Lieutenant Steve Simmons, who was a sailor who participated on the USS Reagan in relief efforts, now suffering from very serious health ailments potentially related to radiation exposure, one of the plaintiffs in the suit. We’re also joined by his attorney, the class action attorney, Charles Bonner. He’s in San Francisco. And we now go to Professor Kyle Cleveland, who recently wrote "Mobilizing Nuclear Bias: The Fukushima Nuclear Crisis and the Politics of Uncertainty."

Kyle Cleveland, thanks for joining us from Japan. Talk about the backstage conversations that were taking place among the U.S. military and U.S. officials. And how did you get a hold of these conversations?

KYLE CLEVELAND: The documents you’re referring to are through the Freedom of Information Act, and these were documents that were made available maybe six or eight months after the crisis started, through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And in these documents, these were transcribed telephone conversations between NRC officials and Washington, D.C., embassy and diplomatic staff in Tokyo, and also people in Pacific Command or United States Forces Japan, principally the Navy.
And what those documents reveal is that there was a lot of backstage discussion by these experts, who were trying to assess just how bad the situation was. I think you quoted in the document a discussion in which they were saying—this is on, I think, March 13th—that they were picking up rates at about a hundred nautical miles out from the plant that were 30 times above background and would represent a thyroid dose, a committed dose equivalent to the thyroid—that in a 10-hour period would exceed the protective action guidelines set up by the Department of Energy.

So, in my research, I’ve interviewed some 160 people, including diplomats and diplomatic staff and people within the various nuclear agencies. It’s been quite interesting to see that at that period of time, particularly in about the first 10 days or so after the crisis began, there was a great deal of disagreement and a great deal of debate backstage about just how bad this was and what those rates represented and whether or not they could verify this. Now, keep in mind that TEPCO, at this period of time, in the period of time that we’re talking about where the Reagan sailors would have been exposed, they were trying to—frantically trying to deal with the situation. They were in a station blackout. And even though they knew that the radiation levels were quite high, that wasn’t really making it into the public.

When we talk about TEPCO, I think it’s important to make a distinction between the operational staff at the plant, who were really working desperately 24 hours a day to deal with this, and the TEPCO officials, including their spokesmen, who were really downplaying the situation. And anyone who followed the situation at that time, it was quite confusing. It was very frustrating that in every stage of this, they were downplaying just how bad it was. And so, in the first few days, the United States really had no information that they could act upon. And so, very quickly, they set up their own radiation assessment. You know, the United States has a great deal of military assets in Japan, some 82 military bases, and their own radiation measurements, starting about on the 13th or 14th of March and going for months after that, were revealing that the situation was really quite a bit more severe than what TEPCO was acknowledging.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: According to the documents that you saw about these conversations, the Navy was aware that the sailors on the USS Reagan would be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation?

KYLE CLEVELAND: Well, what they were—the readings that they were getting, these were coming from helicopters that were flying relief missions for the tsunami effort. They had landed on a Japanese command ship that was about 50 miles away from the plant, and the measurements that they were getting clearly alarmed them. These were readings much higher than they expected. In the documentation—again, the Freedom of Information Act documents—they did not anticipate that they would have really any readings of significance at a hundred nautical miles, and yet they were getting readings that were—that would exceed the protective action guideline dose in a 10-hour period. So, they were aware that they were getting hit by this radiation. Keep in mind, in the first week or so of the crisis, at least the first four or five days, the wind was blowing out to sea, and aside from these inland communities very close to the reactor, the first people that were hit by this plume were the U.S. military. And these nuclear aircraft carriers are arguably some of the most sophisticated radiation-measuring devices in the world. And what those documents reveal is that their alarms set off at very consistent levels, and they saw that they were getting rates that were surprising them. The issue of whether—

AMY GOODMAN: So, Professor Cleveland, why isn’t the U.S. Navy responsible for this as well as TEPCO, as Japan, the nuclear power company?

KYLE CLEVELAND: Well, I think that the real question is whether or not the U.S. government, and the U.S. Navy, in particular, took the appropriate protective action measures, given the information that they had available at the time. You know, it’s very easy now to look in retrospect and make these kind of severe judgments about this, now that we have more information and there’s a lot more transparency to this. But at the time, they had very little information to act on.

And from what I’ve gathered, at least from my interviews, they immediately were trying to take protective measures. They moved the carrier off. They did stop the water supply after they saw that it had become contaminated. For many of the servicemen who were close in, they provided potassium iodine to protect them against thyroid doses. And they set up also a radiation registry, called the Tomodachi Registry, which is still publicly available as an online interactive website, that allows servicemen and anyone who was in Japan at that time in proximity to the plant to go on and see where they were at a given day and what their estimated dose exposures were. So, I think the United States government and the Navy was doing whatever they could.

Keep in mind that many of the officers and the administrative staff that were dealing with this, they were on the ship themselves, or they were at the military bases in Japan, where their families were living, and they were also being exposed to this. So, I think that, you know, for many people who were not privy to these backstage discussions and these kind of elite-level decision makers and the kind of rationale and reasons for why they were making their decisions, it may seem that somehow it was unreasonable and unfair. But when you scrutinize it closely, I think that they were trying to take the appropriate protective actions. The question of whether or not that was useful and whether or not they were in fact the best measures they could take is kind of another question.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to Naoto Kan, an interview we did on the third anniversary of the meltdowns, March 11th. Naoto Kan was the prime minister of Japan when the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown occurred. I spoke to him in Tokyo when we broadcast from Japan weeks ago. The former prime minister spoke about the inaccuracy of the information TEPCO provided to him at the time of the disaster.

NAOTO KAN: [translated] From what I was hearing from the headquarters of TEPCO, and in particular from Mr. Takeguro, who was the former vice president, was—had almost no accurate information being conveyed about what was actually the situation on site.

AMY GOODMAN: The former prime minister of Naoto—the former prime minister of Japan. He went on to say that he flew to the nuclear plant, because he couldn’t get accurate information from TEPCO officials, to speak to workers, where he could get accurate information. I wanted to go back to Lieutenant Steve Simmons. What was your health like before March 11th, 2011, three years ago?

LT. STEVE SIMMONS: Before March, I was actually in what I would like to consider relatively good health. I was physically active. I had been doing P90X and Insanity workouts, and oftentimes kind of a hybrid between the two of them. And the summer of 2010, when I was down in Hawaii, one day I had met up with a friend and gone out and did a trail run, the following day hiked Diamond Head. And then, after—the day or so after that, I went and hiked Stairway to Heaven. So, I was in pretty good health.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Lieutenant Simmons, can you explain when you decided to join this lawsuit and what you’d like to see happen now?

LT. STEVE SIMMONS: It wasn’t—well, for a long time, actually, after my ailments started, I had tried to find out if there was anybody else that was dealing with similar issues or other ailments related from that deployment. And I had reached out to some of the other folks that I was stationed with on board the Reagan, and they hadn’t heard anything. And it wasn’t until, I think, December of '12, when my wife's sister had actually sent her a news article talking about the original plaintiffs of the case. Shortly after that, I had reached out to Paul and his team and inquired with them about it and sent them my information. And it really—for me, it comes down to the fact that, like Charles said, a lot of these sailors and marines are in their early twenties, mid-twenties, and they haven’t had the luxury that I’ve had to do 16 years of the service and be awarded the opportunity for medical retirement. And these young sailors and marines need to be taken care of. And that was the main driving force for me to come forward and bring my information to Paul and Charles to help strengthen their case, to make sure that these individuals are taken care of in the manner that they deserve.

AMY GOODMAN: How many people were on the USS Reagan?

LT. STEVE SIMMONS: Approximately 5,500.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you all for joining us: Lieutenant Steve Simmons, U.S. sailor, a part of the class action suit that’s being represented by Paul Garner and Charles Bonner; Charles Bonner, our guest from San Francisco; and Professor Kyle Cleveland, thank you for joining us from Yokohama, Japan. We’ll link to your piece, "Mobilizing Nuclear Bias."

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/3/19/fukushima_fallout_ailing_us_sailors_sue
The link with interview video

See no evil

See no evil: A slush fund is revealed in Japan
The Economist: 18 May 2010

The below is an old article from The Economist.
Hiromu Nonaka, a retired prominent figure of LDP (a leading party in Japan), confessed that when he was a chief cabinet secretary, it was a regular custom for Prime Minister Office to gift the secret money to journalists and television commentators, asking for favourable comments on their party.
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The other information from the related Japanese articles :

 (1) 70 percent of Japanese citizens trust the cont...ent of Newspaper/Magazine/TV while only 20 percent of US Citizens do the same. Since media credibility is such high in Japan, public opinion may be easily manipulated thru these media. (from Newsweek Japan)
..
(2) 2 years ago, LDP established an organization called Jimin Net Suppoters Club. Its members are consists of some LDP policy makers, media experts from big private companies and 15,000 voluntary staffs from citizens. They monitor the internet opinion about LDP politicians/policy, request to delete or object criticism, and analyze the opinions for how to promote their members/policy. Some doubt if they are also agitating or manipulating public opinion. (from the blog of a legal scholar)

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IN BRITAIN, after the Daily Telegraph broke the story last year that members of parliament had blatantly fiddled expenses, all the media had a field day. In Japan details are leaking out of a large secret fund kept in a black box near the prime minister's office that for decades has been used to curry political favours, including, it is said, among journalists and television commentators. Tellingly, the Japanese media is reacting to the scandal like the three wise monkeys of Nikko: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

The existence of the slush fund has long been known to insiders. But details of its size and the way it was spent were unknown to the public until Hiromu Nonaka, a former chief cabinet secretary, revealed last month that from 1998-99 he spent up to ¥70m ($600,000 at the exchange rate of the time) a month from his secret little piggy bank. That included ¥10m to the prime minister, ¥10m to politicians in the then-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and more scattered among political commentators and opposition-party members, including those going on trips to North Korea.
Mr Nonaka, who is 84, says he made the confession because he did not want to carry the secret to the grave about what he rightly refers to as taxpayers' money. But he may also have been making mischief for the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which drove the LDP from power last year. It has since come to light that the new government of Yukio Hatoyama, elected on a platform of transparency and accountability, has been dipping into the cabinet office's slush fund as freely as its LDP predecessors.

On May 14th Hirofumi Hirano, Mr Hatoyama's chief cabinet secretary, confirmed, in answer to a largely unreported parliamentary question by the Japanese Communist Party, that he had withdrawn ¥360m ($3.8m) from the fund between September and March, and spent all but ¥16m. He claimed to have returned the unused portion to the exchequer. But, he also said, for the time being he did not intend to disclose what the money was spent on, nor did he expect to stop using the pot.
Mr Hirano also appeared reluctant to investigate the outgoing LDP administration led by Taro Aso, which raided the fund last year just before it handed over power to Mr Hatoyama. Two days after the election, and two weeks before leaving office, it withdrew an impressive ¥250m.

Some people might shrug off the fund as part of the old Japanese tradition of gift-giving, admittedly involving some pretty generous presents. Mr Hirano says money is necessary to gather information “for the benefit of the nation”. But for a government that has long promised to dig up the “buried treasure” hidden in government accounts in order to improve shaky public finances, it is extraordinary that it, too, is taking such brazen advantage of this darkest of slush funds. Just as extraordinary, not to mention suspicious, is the impressive silence from most of the powerful mass media. More evidence, if it were needed, of its central role in Japan's longstanding political dysfunction.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2010/05/slush_fund_revealed_japan

Historical revisionism undermines Abe’s apology

Historical revisionism undermines Abe’s apology

East Asia Forum: 2 November 2015

 

Kuniko Inoguchi, a diet member from Abe’s LDP and a former scholar, has sent 2 English translated books to more than 100 scholars and journalists worldwide. The books are about asserting re-interpretation of history (Japanese military’s behavior at wartime) and victimization of Japan on history war. As I posted earlier, those who criticize about the Japanese revisionist movement are not limited to China and Korea. Former diplomat of Singapore said “as we reconciled diplomatically, we forgave but do not forget”. Some civilians of Southeast Asia, which wartime problem is already solved so no more confliction on this matter, mentioned they heard about what Japanese imperial army did from their grandparents. Western media also expressed confusion about contradictory behavior while making apology statement repeatedly. Even those who sympathize with Japan for the security threat of China do not support Japan on this matter.
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Her intension may be to improve Japanese status under such circumstances, but method is wrong and the result should be opposite. According to a Japanese scholar of the University in the USA, who received the books, “the books are full of emotional slogan with too many words like anti-japan, truth or fact. The books do not mention reliable source to support their opinion, therefore these are useless as academic material.”
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Before entering into politics, Dr. Inoguchi was a professor of the University who influenced her students by valuing liberal, democratic and pacifism ideology. Now many of her students feel betrayed and disappointed with her change. It seems as if she is brain-washed by “Cult” politic lobby of Shinto extremism.

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On 14 August, the day before the 70th anniversary of the end of the Pacific War, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe issued a long-awaited statement on Japanese memory of the war and his vision for the future. In it, he emphasised that the apologies given by previous Japanese cabinets ‘will remain unshakable into the future’. Abe’s statement received mixed responses from around the world.

While some expressed concern at its account of 20th century history, the United States welcomed Abe’s ‘expression of deep remorse for the suffering caused by Japan during the World War II era, as well as his commitment to uphold past Japanese government statements on history’.

But recent events raise serious questions about the commitment of the Abe government to upholding past apologies.

For the past several weeks, prominent members of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have sent unsolicited gifts of two books to academics, journalists and politicians in the English-speaking world (mostly in the United States). The books are accompanied by letters that draw attention to Abe’s 70th anniversary statement. They claim that history is being distorted by certain unnamed individuals and urge the recipients to read the books as a corrective.

The first book is Getting Over It! Why Korea Needs to Stop Bashing Japan, by Oh Sonfa, a naturalised Japanese citizen of Korean origin who is best known in Japan for publications disparaging her former homeland. Oh’s book urges Japan to turn its back on China and particularly on South Korea, which, she argues, suffers from incurable ‘narrow egotism and prejudice’ reflecting the nation’s ‘history and its racial characteristics’.

Echoing Japanese wartime propaganda, Oh paints Japanese colonial expansion, in opposition to Western colonialism, as essentially good. While she describes Western imperial powers as brutal and exploitative, she claims Japanese colonial control of the Korean peninsula ‘implemented no policies aimed at exploiting Korea’, ‘did not use armed suppression to govern’ and even ‘abolished restrictions on freedom of speech’. All of this will come as news to most historians of Asia.

The second book, History Wars, Japan — False Indictment of the Century, is written and published by the right-wing Sankei newspaper. It pours vitriolic scorn on the historic 1993 Kono Statement, which apologised to former ‘comfort women’, who were sexually exploited in Japanese military brothels during the war. The Kono Statement, along with the Murayama Statement, is the most crucial of the Japanese government official statement on wartime history that Abe declared Japan’s ‘commitment to uphold’ in his statement.

History Wars claims that there is no evidence to support Japan’s 1993 admission that some ‘comfort women’ had been recruited against their own will, at times with the direct involvement of Japanese military or officials. A number of the book’s arguments echo those presented in June 2014 by a team created by the Abe government to investigate the processes that led to the Kono Statement, though the Sankei book expresses these arguments in more extreme terms.

History Wars depicts the surviving Korean ‘comfort women’ as confused old women tempted into giving false evidence by promises of money. And it claims that the Japanese government made the apology knowing it to be factually baseless, simply out of an ardent desire to appease South Korea. These bizarre claims are based on a selective misreading of the available historical evidence and have been strongly denied by former Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono, who issued the 1993 apology.

If these books had been distributed by a fringe right-wing organisation, they might have caused minor embarrassment. But they are being distributed by leading politicians from the ruling LDP, including a key member of the party’s International Information Investigation Committee (LDP/IIIC). One of the politicians actively distributing the books in the United States has since been appointed the special advisor to the prime minister on cultural diplomacy.

On 19 June 2015, the LDP/IIIC presented Prime Minister Abe with an interim report on proposed measures to counter the ‘anti-Japanese propaganda of China and South Korea etc’. Abe’s reported response was to exhort the committee to ‘further strengthen its efforts’. On 19 September, the Committee passed a resolution that blamed the distortion of ‘international society’s perception of our country’s history’ on ‘lies’ disseminated by the liberal Asahi newspaper. It went on to call for a national information policy that would ‘change from the merely “neutral” or “defensive” stance to a more positive dissemination of information’. The dissemination of History Wars and Getting Over It appears to be a step in this ‘positive dissemination’ campaign.

This is deeply concerning as it suggests that the campaign has been endorsed by Abe and is being carried out by key figures in the ruling LDP party. These actions are inconsistent with Abe’s promise to the global community in his statement on 14 August. Historical revisionism that denounces the Kono Statement and whitewashes the record of Japanese colonialism is incompatible with Abe’s expressions of ‘deep remorse’ and promises to ‘engrave in our hearts the past’.

There is no evidence to suggest that the extremist views expressed in these two books are shared by most ordinary Japanese people. The actions by members of the LDP are undermining decades of hard work by many Japanese civil society groups to heal the wounds of past violence. Such factually inaccurate accounts of Japan’s war history can only damage the standing of Japan in the international community. The time has come for a more reasoned approach from all participants in these tragic and destructive ‘history wars’.
Professor Tessa Morris-Suzuki is an ARC Laureate Fellow based at the School of Culture, History and Language, at the College of Asia and the Pacific at The Australian National University.

 

Comfort Woman: Closure on thorny issue will come down to political will

Comfort Woman: Closure on thorny issue will come down to political will
Nikkei Asian Review: 2 November 2015

SEOUL -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe let out a small sigh of relief as he walked into the elevator of the Lotte Hotel in Seoul after addressing the press Monday afternoon.

 He had just ended his first meeting with South Korean President Park Geun-hye and was generally pleased with the outcome. Their talk lasted an hour and 45 minutes, the first hour of which was dedicated mostly to the wartime "comfort women" issue. Despite it being the thorniest matter lying between the two countries, "there wasn't a single moment when either side got emotional," according to a Japanese official who was there.

 

 The words exchanged between the leaders were positive. Whether that feel-good atmosphere evolves into real-world results will ultimately come down to the political will of Abe and Park.
     There were three new elements to Abe's stance when he met Park at the presidential Blue House. First, he said he wanted to "settle the issue as soon as possible," which is a shift from the Japanese government's official stance that the issue has already been settled.

 He also pointed out that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the normalization of the Japan-South Korea relationship, and that "with that anniversary in mind, we agreed to accelerate negotiations" for a settlement. Park had been signaling in interviews leading up to the meeting that she wanted a settlement by the end of the year.

 Perhaps most importantly, Abe said he did not want to "leave the comfort women issue as an obstacle for future generations as the two countries build a future-oriented cooperative relationship." The words signal that the Japanese leader wants to solve the issue once and for all while he is in office.

New confidence

The decision to take on the contentious issue -- which no previous Japanese government has been able to resolve -- is based on the confidence he gained from the positive response to his statement in August marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

 Although he received criticism from both the political left and right -- for either conceding too much or not conceding enough -- "he managed to quell the debate," said Kunihiko Miyake, research director at the Canon Institute for Global Studies. "Nobody is talking about it anymore; not the Chinese, the Koreans, the right or the left. He managed to find a minimum consensus."

 The South Korean side is asking for two things: a "sincere apology" from the Japanese leader and compensation for the thousands of women who had to work in wartime brothels. In the meeting, Park expressed hope for a solution that is "acceptable for the victims, and satisfactory for the Korean people."

The Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea of 1965 -- which established diplomatic relations between the two countries -- noted that with that treaty, all claims between Japan and South Korea were settled "completely and finally."

The Japanese side says because of that treaty, any monetary assistance to the victims cannot come as government compensation. "It would be like opening Pandora's box. It would invite all sorts of new claims," Canon Institute's Miyake said. The two leaders would have to search for another way, such as "humanitarian assistance," which is what they discussed during Monday's meeting.

Japan has attempted this approach before, when dovish Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama established The Asian Women's Fund in 1994. Former comfort women in South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, the Netherlands and Indonesia were offered a signed apology from the prime minister, as well as 2 million yen ($16,570) each.

 Yet, because the source of that money was donations from Japanese people and not from government coffers, most South Koreans declined to accept the cash.

Abe's team will explore the possibility of establishing a similar fund, but one that the South Koreans would be ready to accept. It will be up to Park to convince her people that this would be the final solution. And with the victims getting older by the day, it will be a race against time.

 Why would a plan that did not work in the 1990s work now? "The biggest difference between then and now is that the hawkish Abe, and not the dovish Murayama, will be leading the negotiations," said Miyake.

 For years, Abe has been one of the strongest critics of the 1993 Kono Statement, released by then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono after the conclusion of a government study that found that the Japanese Imperial Army had "forced" comfort women to work in military-run brothels during the war.

In the final weeks of the year, there will be a renewed effort to reach an agreement that both sides can accept. Is there a minimum consensus that just might be reached by the people on both sides? At stake is the future relationship of two neighbors who are close in many ways yet so far apart in others. Which leader will blink?

The Threat to Press Freedom in Japan

The Threat to Press Freedom in Japan
The New York Times: 20 May 2015

TOKYO — During a press conference in March, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga expressed concern over comments I had made during a program on TV Asahi, a major private broadcasting network: I had announced that I would no longer be appearing on the show after being subjected to “fierce bashing” from the prime minister’s office. According to the daily Asahi Shimbun, Mr. Suga said, “We will closely watch how the TV station handles the issue in line with the Broadcast Law” — a veiled threat to revoke the station’s license.

 

On April 17, a special panel of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (L.D.P.) held a special meeting at party headquarters and summoned executives of both TV Asahi and NHK, a public broadcaster, to discuss two TV programs the party thought had been critical of the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

 

After I appeared on Tokyo MX TV, a local station, on April 25, an executive member of the L.D.P. reportedly told some journalists, “I heard that there was a TV station which allowed Mr. Koga to appear on a program. What a courageous TV station, I should say!”

 

And so it is that the Japanese government tampers with the media’s independence. This is happening partly because of longstanding structural characteristics that govern the relationship between the media and the state in Japan. But the Abe government has been especially aggressive in using those to its advantage, and major segments of the industry are quickly internalizing its preferences.

Instead of pushing back against Mr. Suga’s intimidation, for example, TV Asahi reprimanded the employees who had produced the TV program during which I criticized the government. And instead of invoking the anti-interference provisions of the broadcasting laws to resist questioning by the L.D.P., those TV executives complied with the party’s summons.

 

In Japan, relations between the state and journalists are formally maintained through a network of reporters’ clubs, or kisha kurabu. There is a reporters’ club for each ministry, each local government, each political party, each industry association. Membership in the clubs is generally limited to reporters at major media companies. Typically, only members are allowed to attend the press conferences, and only members have access to the organizations’ officials. In return for endowing reporters with this privileged status, the officials take it for granted that their organizations will get favorable coverage. And very often they do.

 

Another problem is that the media in Japan is not regulated by an independent agency. For example, it is the government itself — specifically the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications — that grants licenses to TV stations, and these are up for renewal regularly. Consequently, TV stations are under constant supervision and fear losing their right to operate if they challenge the government. Given Japan’s parliamentary system, this means that the ruling political parties themselves have a large influence over broadcasting.

 

What’s more, there is virtually no separation of management and the newsroom at major media companies. A company’s chairman or president will often micromanage news coverage, or even the behavior of individual reporters. Few of them dare to challenge such intrusions because of the Japanese employment system: Historically, a job at a leading media company has meant security and a very high salary until retirement. Many journalists, recognizing that their bosses are obedient to the government and themselves eager to protect their own careers, hesitate to be critical of the government. Company loyalty trumps the professional ethics of independent journalism.

 

This system hardly is new. It has been in place since before World War II, and an independent agency regulating the media that was established by the Allied forces during the occupation was abolished in 1952 by Japanese conservatives. But recently the government has applied pressure on the media to an unprecedented extent. Under the Abe administration, the top executives of major media companies go out for fine meals or to play golf with the prime minister and high-ranking government officials. And they are unabashed about making this known to the public.

 

Last November, soon before the general election, the L.D.P. sent so-called request letters to major TV stations, enjoining them to ensure that their coverage would “not be one-sided” and with instructions on how to select topics to cover and commentators to interview. The party wrote to one station to complain that one of its programs had suggested Mr. Abe’s economic policies benefited only wealthy people — a view shared by many Japanese, according to opinion polls.

How can the media act as a government watchdog under such conditions?

 

The Abe administration’s treatment of journalists is worthy of an authoritarian state, not the liberal democracy Japan is supposed to be.

 

Shigeaki Koga, a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan from 1980 to 2011, is a writer and commentator.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/opinion/the-threat-to-press-freedom-in-japan.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0