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Prime Minister of Japan’s Schedule December 15-21, 2014

April 26, 2015, 8:33 pm
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Monday, December 15, 2014

AM
12:04 End meeting with Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide and Special Advisor to President of the LDP Hagiuda Koichi
12:37 Depart from LDP Party Headquarters
12:47 Arrive at private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo
01:30 At private residence (no visitors)
08:00 At private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo (no morning visitors)
11:29 Depart from private residence
11:49 Arrive at LDP Party Headquarters

PM
12:00 LDP Officers Meeting opens
12:29 Meeting closes
12:46 Speak with Chairman of LDP Election Strategy Committee Motegi Toshimitsu. Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide also attends
12:55 Finish speaking with Mr. Motegi
12:56 Depart from LDP Party Headquarters
12:59 Arrive at Diet
01:00 Enter Committee Chairman’s Room. Ruling Party-Leader Coalition with Chief Representative of New Komeito Yamaguchi Natsuo opens
01:27 Ruling Party-Leader Coalition closes
01:28 Leave room
01:30 Depart from Diet
01:33 Arrive at LDP Party Headquarters
02:00 Press conference
02:29 Press conference ends
02:31 Depart from LDP Party Headquarters
02:34 Arrive at office
03:18 Meet with former Minister of Finance Omi Koji
04:02 End meeting with Mr. Omi
04:03 Meet with Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Saiki Akitaka
04:33 End meeting with Mr. Saiki
04:41 Speak with Minister for Foreign Affairs Kishida Fumio
04:51 Finish speaking with Mr. Kishida
05:00 Phone conference with Prime Minister of the UK David Cameron
05:10 Phone conference ends
05:14 Meet with Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy Amari Akira, Vice-Minister of Cabinet Office Matsuyama Kenji, and Cabinet Office Director-General for Policies on Cohesive Society Maekawa Mamoru
05:41 End meeting with Mr. Amari, Mr. Matsuyama, and Mr. Maekawa
06:40 Depart from office
07:03 Arrive at private residence

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

AM
12:00 At private residence (no visitors)
08:00 At private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo (no morning visitors)
09:15 Depart from private residence
09:33 Arrive at office
09:42 Ministerial Meeting Concerning Measures Against Crime
09:59 Meeting ends
10:00 Speak with Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Takaichi Sanae
10:01 Finish speaking with Ms. Takaichi
10:04 Cabinet Meeting begins
10:21 Cabinet Meeting ends
10:28 Government-Labor-Management Meeting
10:49 Meeting ends
10:50 Speak with State Minister of Cabinet Office Nishimura Yasutoshi
10:51 Finish speaking with Mr. Nishimura
10:52 Meet with Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Miyazawa Yoichi and Commissioner of Agency for Natural Resources and Energy Ueda Takayuki
11:19 End meeting with Mr. Miyazawa and Mr. Ueda

PM
12:44 Speak with Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA)’s Director-General of Foreign Policy Bureau Hiramatsu Kenji
12:54 Finish speaking with Mr. Hiramatsu
12:55 Phone conference with Prime Minister of Australia Tony Abbott. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretaries Kato Katsunobu and Seko Hiroshige
01:10 Phone conference ends
01:57 Meet with Minister of Finance Aso Taro, Ministry of Finance (MOF)’s Vice-Minister Kagawa Shunsuke and Director-General of Tax Bureau Sato Shinichi
03:03 End meeting with Mr. Aso, Mr. Kagawa, and Mr. Sato
03:04 Meet with Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Saiki Akitaka
03:29 End meeting with Mr. Saiki
03:40 Speak with Mayor of Nagato City (Yamaguchi Prefecture) Onishi Kurao
03:50 Finish speaking with Mr. Onishi
05:02 Director of National Security Council (NSC) Yachi Shotaro, Director of Cabinet Intelligence Kitamura Shigeru, and Commandant of Japan Coast Guard Sato Yuji enter
05:12 Mr. Sato leaves
05:13 Mr. Yachi leaves
05:36 Mr. Kitamura leaves
05:37 Speak with Special Advisor to the Prime Minister Isozaki Yosuke
05:46 Finish speaking with Mr. Isozaki
05:47 Meet with Special Advisor to the Prime Minister Eto Seiichi
06:07 End meeting with Mr. Eto
06:49 Depart from office
06:59 Arrive at sushi restaurant Shimada Zushi in Nishi-Shinbashi, Tokyo. Dinner with Jiji Press Commentary Committee member Tazaki Shiro, NHK Commentary Committee member Shimada Toshio, and other news people
09:21 Depart from restaurant
09:37 Arrive at private residence

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

AM
12:00 At private residence (no visitors)
08:00 At private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo (no morning visitors)
09:31 Depart from private residence
09:48 Arrive at office
09:56 Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy Amari Akira, Vice-Minister of Cabinet Office Matsuyama Kenji, and Cabinet Office Director-General for Policies on Cohesive Society Maekawa Mamoru enter
10:13 Mr. Matsuyama and Mr. Maekawa leave
10:26 Mr. Amari leaves
10:47 Meet with Cabinet Advisor Iijima Isao
11:07 End meeting with Mr. Iijima
11:30 Meet with Chairman of Federation of Economic Organization (Keidanren) Sakakibara Sadayuki, Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chairman Mimura Akio, and Japan Association of Corporate Executives Chairman Hasegawa Yasuchika
11:49 End meeting with Mr. Sakakibara, Mr. Mimura, and Mr. Hasegawa

PM
12:00 Phone conference with President of the US Barack Obama. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretaries Kato Katsunobu and Seko Hiroshige, and Director of NSC Yachi Shotaro also attend
12:15 Phone conference ends
12:16 Meet with LDP Secretary-General Tanigaki Sadakazu
12:53 End meeting with Mr. Tanigaki
12:59 Meet with Cabinet Advisor Sakaiya Taichi
01:17 End meeting with Mr. Sakaiya
01:28 Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Aso Taro, MOF’s Vice-Minister Kagawa Shunsuke, Vice-Minister for International Affairs Yamasaki Tatsuo, and Director-General of International Bureau Asakawa Masatsugu enter
01:38 Mr. Yamasaki and Mr. Asakawa leave
01:39 MOF’s Director-General of Budget Bureau Tanaka Kazuho and Director-General of Tax Bureau Sato Shinichi join
02:29 Everyone leaves
02:30 Speak with Cabinet Advisor Kiso Isao
02:40 Finish speaking with Mr. Kiso
02:41 Speak with Cabinet Advisor Otani Yasuo
02:46 Finish speaking with Mr. Otani
02:47 Meet with Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Takaichi Sanae
03:15 End meeting with Mr. Takaichi
03:16 Speak with Cabinet Advisor Nakamura Yoshio
03:24 Finish speaking with Mr. Nakamura
03:30 Phone conference with Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato Katsunobu also attends
03:45 Phone conference ends
03:55 Meet with Minister of Defense Eto Akinori, Mr. Yachi, Director of Cabinet Intelligence Kitamura Shigeru, Ministry of Defense’s Administrative Vice-Minister of Defense Nishi Masanori, Chief of Staff for Maritime Self-Defense Takei Tomohisa, and Director of Defense Intelligence Headquarters Miyagawa Tadashi
04:27 End meeting with Mr. Eto, Mr. Yachi, Mr. Kitamura, Mr. Nishi, Mr. Takei, and Mr. Miyagawa
04:28 Speak with Mr. Eto
04:36 Finish speaking with Mr. Eto
04:37 Speak with Mr. Yachi
04:43 Finish speaking with Mr. Yachi
04:58 Awards Ceremony for Contributors to Promotion of BarrierFree Universal Design. Commemorative photo session
05:12 Ceremony ends
06:03 Summit Conference with President of Palau Tommy Remengesau
06:34 Summit Conference ends
06:37 Joint press release with President Remengesau
06:48 Joint press release ends
06:49 Depart from office
06:50 Arrive at official residence
08:05 See off President Remengesau

Thursday, December 18, 2014

AM
12:00 At official residence (no visitors)
08:00 At official residence (no morning visitors)
09:42 Depart from official residence
09:43 Arrive at office
10:09 Meet with Cabinet Advisor Munakata Norio
10:29 End meeting with Mr. Munakata
10:30 Speak with Cabinet Advisor Fuji Satoshi
10:38 Finish speaking with Mr. Fuji

PM
12:00 Phone conference with Vice-President of the United States Joe Biden. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretaries Kato Katsunobu and Seko Hiroshige also attend
12:10 End phone conference with Mr. Biden
12:13 Depart from office
12:16 Arrive at Japanese restaurant Kurosawa in Nagata-cho, Tokyo. Lunch with LDP Upper House member Nishida Shoji and Cabinet Advisor Fuji
01:16 Depart from restaurant
01:18 Arrive at office
01:31 Meet with LDP Secretary-General Tanigaki Sadakazu
02:03 End meeting with Mr. Tanigaki
02:09 Meet with Chairman of New Japan-China Friendship Committee for the 21st Century Nishimuro Taizo, member Mori Mamoru, and other members
02:39 End meeting with Mr. Nishimuro and committee members
02:40 Speak with Cabinet Advisor Honda Etsuro
02:45 Finish speaking with Mr. Honda
03:09 Interview with Sankei Shimbun and Nippon Broadcasting System
03:52 Interview ends
04:07 Meet with Special Advisor to the Prime Minister Kimura Taro
04:28 End meeting with Mr. Kimura
04:29 Speak with Cabinet Advisor Furusawa Mitsuhiro
04:39 Finish speaking with Mr. Furusawa
04:40 Speak with political commentator Nakamura Keiichiro and President of Nihon Netsugen Systems Harada Katsuhiko
04:50 Finish speaking with Mr. Nakamura and Mr. Harada
04:51 Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy Amari Akira, Vice-Minister of Cabinet Office Matsuyama Kenji, and Cabinet Office’s Director-General for Policies on Cohesive Society Tawa Hiroshi enter
04:54 Mr. Matsuyama and Mr. Tawa leave
05:03 Mr. Amari leaves
05:04 Meet with State Minister of Cabinet Office Taira Masaaki
05:19 End meeting with Mr. Taira
05:31 NSC meeting. Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Miyazawa Yoichi also attends
06:10 NSC meeting ends
06:30 Phone conference with King of JordanAbdullah II bin Al Hussein. Mr. Kato and Mr. Seko also attend
06:40 End phone conference with King Abdullah
06:48 Depart from office
07:04 Arrive at Chinese restaurant Ginza Higankaku in Ginza, Tokyo. Dinner with Mitsui Sumitomo Banking Corporation Deputy President Takahashi Seiichiro and Kake Educational Institution Board of Trustees Chairman Kake Kotaro
09:16 Depart from restaurant
09:38 Arrive at private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo

Friday, December 19, 2014

AM
12:00 At private residence (no visitors)
08:00 At private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo (no morning visitors)
09:12 Depart from private residence
09:29 Arrive at office
09:34 Cabinet Meeting begins
09:47 Cabinet Meeting ends
09:52 Council on National Strategic Special Zones meeting
10:08 Meeting ends
10:09 Meet with Taiwan contact organization Interchange Association Chairman Ohashi Mitsuo and MOFA’s Director-General of Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau Ihara Junichi
10:31 End meeting with Mr. Ohashi and Mr. Ihara
10:32 Speak with Minister of the Environment Mochizuki Yoshio
10:44 Finish speaking with Mr. Mochizuki
10:49 Speak with Cabinet Advisor Yoshimura Yasunori
11:02 Finish speaking with Mr. Yoshimura
11:03 Meet with LDP Lower House member Yamamoto Yuji
11:30 End meeting with Mr. Yamamoto
11:33 Depart from office
11:41 Arrive at Imperial Palace. Imperial Court Luncheon

PM
01:25 Depart from Imperial Palace
01:36 Arrive at office
01:54 Meet with Minister in charge of Overcoming Population Decline and Vitalizing Local Economy in Japan Ishiba Shigeru, Special Advisor to Minister of State for Special Missions (Ishiba Shigeru) Ito Tatsuya, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Sugita Kazuhiro, Assistant Chief Cabinet Secretary Furuya Kazuyuki, and Acting Senior Chief Secretary of Headquarters for Overcoming Population Decline and Vitalizing Local EconomiesYamasaki Shiro
02:25 End meeting with Mr. Ishiba, Mr. Ito, Mr. Sugita, Mr. Furuya, and Mr. Yamasaki
02:26 MOFA’s Vice-Minister Saiki Akitaka, Administrative Vice-Minister Sugiyama Shinsuke, Special Envoy for Peace in the Middle East Kohno Masaharu, Director-General of Middle Eastern and African Affairs Bureau Uemura Tsukasa, and Director-General of Intelligence and Analysis Service Oka Hiroshi enter
02:57 Mr. Kohno and Mr. Uemura leave
03:06 Everyone leaves
03:07 Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy Amari Akira, Vice-Minister of Cabinet Office Matsuyama Kenji, and Cabinet Office Director-Generals for Policies on Cohesive Society Maekawa Mamoru, Habuka Shigeki and Tawa Hiroshi enter
03:23 Mr. Matsuyama, Mr. Maekawa, Mr. Habuka, and Mr. Tawa leave
03:29 Mr. Amari leaves
03:37 Interview with journalist Sakurai Yoshiko for her weekly column
04:17 Interview ends
04:21 Meet with Director of Cabinet Intelligence Kitamura Shigeru
04:39 End meeting with Mr. Kitamura
04:42 Receive report from UN Ambassador Yoshikawa Motohide and others other attendees of an international organization of ambassadors meeting (Japanese). Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretaries Kato Katsunobu and Sako Hiroshige also attend
04:51 Report ends
05:02 Ministerial Council on Monthly Economic Report and Other Relative Issues meeting
05:17 Council meeting ends
06:11 Depart from office
06:18 Arrive at Imperial Hotel in Uchisaiwai-cho, Tokyo. Attend Gathering to Celebrate 50 Years of Aoki Isao’s Professional Life in banquet hall Fuji within hotel, deliver address
06:38 Depart from hotel
06:42 Arrive at official residence

Saturday, December 20, 2014

AM
12:00 At official residence (no visitors)
08:00 At official residence (no morning visitors)
Stay at official residence throughout morning (no visitors)

PM
01:40 Depart from official residence
01:52 Arrive at Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi head store in Nihonbashi-Muromachi, Tokyo. Enjoy viewing 2014 News Photograph Exhibition
02:13 Depart from Mitsukoshi
02:28 Arrive at Grand Hyatt Tokyo in Roppongi, Tokyo. Exercise at NAGOMI Spa and Fitness within hotel
05:39 Depart from hotel
06:07 Arrive at private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo

Sunday, December 21, 2014

AM
12:00 At private residence (no visitors)
06:43 Depart from private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo
07:41 Arrive at golf course Three Hundred Golf Club in Chigasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture. Golf with friends and secretaries

PM
01:50 Depart from golf course
02:58 Arrive at private residence
06:38 Depart from private residence
06:55 Arrive at restaurant Cúnn in Akasaka, Tokyo. Dinner with wife Akie and friends
09:31 Depart from restaurant
09:50 Arrive at private residence

Provisional Translation by: Erin M. Jones


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Showing Abe Americans care

April 27, 2015, 8:14 am
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On Tuesday, April 28th and Wednesday, April 29th from 9:00am to Noon there will be demonstrations on the West side of the Capitol Building on the grassy middle area, know as Area 1 hoping to catch the attention of visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. A Comfort Woman from South Korea will be there. It is an opportunity to show that Abe’s denial of Japan’s responsibility for WWII and Imperial Japan's war crimes concerns Americans. It is not merely a problem for Korea and China. 

Events Happening Elsewhere in the country related to the Comfort Women

Uemura Takashi, a former reporter of the Asahi Shimbun, is currently an adjunct lecturer at Hokusei Gakuen University in Sapporo. In 1991, while a reporter for the Asahi, he wrote two articles on Kim Hak-sun, the first “comfort woman” to come forward to tell her story (1991). Because of these two articles, Uemura has been the target of denunciations by nationalists. He has been labeled "the reporter who fabricated the 'comfort woman' issue" and denounced by nationalists as a “traitor.” Such bashing took a critical turn for the worse in 2014, to the extent that he and his family risk losing their right to a livelihood.

REPORTING ON THE "COMFORT WOMEN": THE EXPERIENCES OF A JOURNALIST NOW FIGHTING A BACKLASH. 5/1, 9:00am-3:30pm, Milwaukee, WI. Sponsor: Center for Transnational Justice, Marquette University. Speakers: Takashi Uemura, former Asahi Shimbun reporter; and Norma Field, University of Chicago. Location: Marquette U, Alumni Memorial Union, 1442 W Wisconsin Avenue, Room 163.

REPORTING ON THE "COMFORT WOMEN": THE EXPERIENCES OF A JOURNALIST NOW FIGHTING A BACKLASH. 5/4, 4:00-6:00pm, New York, NY. Sponsors: New York University (NYU); Columbia U. Speaker: Takashi Uemura, former Asahi Shimbun reporter; Introduction: Carol Gluck, Columbia University; Commentator, Yukiko Hanawa, NYU. Location: NTU, 19 University Place, 1st floor conference room.

SCENES FROM A JAPANESE BACKLASH: THE EXPERIENCES OF A FORMER JOURNALIST REPORTING ON THE 'COMFORT WOMEN. 5/8, 5:30-7:00pm, Los Angeles, CA. Sponsor: UCLA, Asia Institute. Speaker: Takashi Uemura, former Asahi Shimbun reporter. Location: UCLA, 10383 Bunche Hall. 
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Shinzo Abe’s Ill-Timed Speech

April 27, 2015, 8:21 am
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The young Edward Jackfert
(VW Public Broadcasting)
Addressing the U.S. Congress on Hirohito’s birthday is an insult to Pacific War veterans

 The Diplomat, April 27, 2015

By Edward Jackfert, 93, a POW of Japan captured on Mindanao, The Philippines as a member of the U.S. Army Air Corps. He was twice National Commander of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s April 29 address to the U.S. Congress will come at the expense of America’s Pacific War veterans. As a former POW of Japan who endured a hellish three-and-a-half years of captivity and slave labor, I am astonished that Abe’s address falls on the birthday – a national holiday in Japan – of the man who initiated World War II, Emperor Hirohito. For me, it was a day of harsher beatings and lower bows. I am outraged that this high American honor was given to a Japanese leader who still evades his country’s war responsibilities. 

It has been difficult for me to watch the fading memory of Japan’s war atrocities accompanied by increasing Japanese denials of their heinous war record. A complacent U.S. Congress has been complicit. In 2011, no effort was made to remember the 70th Anniversary of Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the American entry into WWII. This omission and others regarding the war, I understand, were the result of new House rules ending commemorative resolutions.

But Congress was not totally opposed to celebratory resolutions that year. On December 19, 2011, it marked the 70th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s December 1941 speech before Congress. Churchill, barely two weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, urged Americans to pursue the war first in Europe and not in Asia.

As someone who fought in the Philippines in the first battles of WWII, I have painful reminders of Churchill’s successful Europe-first lobbying. Most Pacific veterans from the early months of the war believe that his efforts ensured that we were abandoned. We were condemned to hopeless battles with obsolete weapons and no provisions ending in death or imprisonment in Japan’s notorious POW camps.

I think that most Americans view the bombing of Pearl Harbor as a more transformative event than a speech by a foreign dignitary – even one by Churchill. Ignoring the attack on Pearl Harbor was a slap in the face to Pacific War veterans.

Previous Japanese government officials have apologized for their country’s actions before and during WWII. Abe objects to those. He believes the war was just and walked out on the parliamentary vote in 1995 for the now-standard government apology. Today, he never uses the word “apology.” Instead, he is “deeply pained” by events of the past, yet never connects them to decisions made by Japanese leaders.

Speaking to Australia’s parliament last year, Abe was neither contrite nor clear. He merely mentioned “Sandakan” and sent his “condolences towards the many souls who lost their lives.” Never mentioned was that “Sandakan” was a series of death marches in 1945 on Borneo forced upon approximately 2,400 emaciated Australian and British POWs by the Japanese. [only 6 survived]

Most important, Abe failed to identify who was responsible for this war crime against Australians. It was simply something that “happened in the past.” As a survivor, myself, of Imperial Japan’s mindless brutality and fanatical leadership, I am not satisfied with disconnected “condolences” for “the evils and horrors of history.”

I want to know what Abe learned from the past, and what steps he plans for reconciliation with Japan’s former adversaries and victims. To the American POWs of Japan, this means acknowledging our inhumane imprisonment and brutal slave labor for Japan’s corporations. It means creating a program of remembrance and education on the war.

We Pacific War veterans ask most that what we fought for not be forgotten. This is what Congress must demand of Shinzo Abe.

Imperial Japan was a brutal regime that was merciless to the people put in its care. It astonishes me that Japan’s leaders now avoid offering an apology or acts of contrition. Yet, if the U.S. Congress cannot remember this history, it is unlikely that the Japanese will want to disturb that amnesia. And if Congress does not speak for America’s veterans, it is unlikely that Japan will feel compelled to remember them as well. Prime Minister Abe will simply indulge this ignorance.
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Negotiating Reconciliation with Japan

April 29, 2015, 3:02 am
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Bataan Death March By Ben Steele
Negotiating Reconciliation with Japan
American POWs of Japan 

Friday, May 1, 2015

2:30 PM – 2:00 PM

Bernstein-Offit Building, Room 500
1717 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20036

Featuring:
Lester Tenney | Former POW and Bataan Death March Survivor
Jan Thompson | President, American Defenders of Bataan & Corregidor Memorial Society

Event will be webcast HERE. Please fill out the registration HERE.

Please join the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS and Asia Policy Point for a panel discussion featuring Bataan Death March survivor Lester Tenney and documentary filmmaker Jan Thompson, who will discuss reconciliation efforts between POWs and Japan, as well as what is left to do. They will also address the idea of closure for both the victims of the war and the generations to come.

Lester Tenney, 94, was the last National Commander of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society (ADBC-MS). He successfully convinced the Japanese government to deliver a formal apology to American POWs of Japan in 2009 and create a reconciliation program for former POWs to visit Japan. He was a tank commander from the famous Maywood, Illinois National Guard, Company B, 192nd Tank Battalion and fought in the Battle for Bataan from December 1941 to April 1942. He survived the infamous Bataan Death March, a hell ship, and slave labor mining coal for Mitsui at Fukuoka #17 Branch POW Camp in Omuta. Dr. Tenney is a professor emeritus of finance and accounting at Arizona State University. He lives with his wife in Carlsbad, California.

Jan Thompson is the Founding President of the American Defenders of Bataan & Corregidor Memorial Society (ADBC-MS). For nearly three decades, she has devoted much of her time to researching and creating works about the POW experience. Part of this work includes two documentaries: The Tragedy of Bataan, narrated by Alec Baldwin, and Never the Same: The Prisoner of War Experience. Thompson is a professor at Southern Illinois University, where she teaches documentary production. She is the daughter of Robert E. Thompson, who served as a Pharmacist’s Mate on the USS Canopus and survived the Bilibid and Mukden Prison Camps as well as three infamous hell ships: Oryoku Maru, Enoura Maru and Brazil Maru.
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"Shocking and Shameful" Says Congressman Honda's

April 29, 2015, 1:49 pm
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CONGRESSMAN MIKE HONDA’S STATEMENT ON JAPANESE PRIME MINSTER ABE’S SPEECH TO CONGRESS

Washington, D.C. – Congressman Mike Honda (D-CA17) today made the following statement about Japanese Prime Minister Abe’s speech to a joint meeting of Congress:

It is shocking and shameful that Prime Minister Abe continues to evade his government’s responsibility for the systematic atrocity that was perpetrated the Japanese Imperial Army against the so-called “comfort women” during World War II, by not offering an apology during his speech today.

Today, he said Japan “must not avert our eyes” from the suffering of the Asian countries, and that he upholds his predecessors’ views. Yet, he refused to explicitly mention the "comfort women," nor their sexual enslavement. Today’s refusal to squarely face history is an insult to the spirit of the 200,000 girls and women from the Asia-Pacific who suffered during World War II. This is unacceptable.

He also said in today’s speech “In our age, we must realize the kind of world where finally women are free from human rights abuses.” I agree with him completely. But without acknowledging the sins of the past, history will repeat itself.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Abe claimed to be “deeply pained to think about the ‘comfort women’” who experienced this suffering. But, his pain is nothing compared to the 70-year-long torment of justice denied. Having waited these seven decades for an honest and humble apology, 87-year old Ms. Yong-Soo Lee traveled from Korea to be my guest in the House Gallery today. My heart breaks for Ms. Lee and her sisters, as she must now return to Korea without having received an apology from Prime Minister Abe.
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The Okinawa Threat to U.S.-Japan Defense Ties

April 29, 2015, 3:50 pm
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dugong
The onus is on U.S. military personnel to build stronger ties with locals
Wall Street Journal, April 28, 2015

By YUKIE YOSHIKAWA
Ms. Yoshikawa is an adjunct fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s Reischauer Center, former fellow at the Okinawa prefectural government, and APP member

U.S.-Japanese security ties are a major theme of this week’s U.S. tour by Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, during which he and President Barack Obama have announced updated defense-alliance guidelines for the first time in two decades. Amid strong bilateral cooperation concerning joint military training, missile defense and other issues, however, the matter of U.S. military bases on the Japanese island of Okinawa remains unsettled and potentially explosive.

Especially controversial is whether the U.S. Marine Air Station at Futenma, in the densely populated city of Ginowan, will be relocated to a rural part of the island—as Washington and Tokyo agreed in 1996—or moved out of Okinawa, as the local governor and many voters demand.

During my tenure as a fellow of the Okinawa prefectural government from 2012 to 2014, I visited most of the U.S. military bases and their local city halls in Okinawa. This is the island where nearly 75% of U.S. military facilities (for exclusive use) in Japan are concentrated. I met with many local residents and members of the U.S. military and learned a great deal about U.S.-Japan relations on the ground.

To my dismay, and despite much high-level rhetoric from Washington and Tokyo about the importance of the U.S.-Japan alliance, most Okinawans had very low opinions of the U.S. military. Some local government officials told me it had been several years since a U.S. military officer last visited their offices.

Few Okinawan officials had a clear understanding of the chains of command within the military institutions based on the island. Local U.S. Marine commanders may provide the prefectural government with an organization chart, I was told, but there would be no accompanying explanation of how each department within the organization functions.

Part of this stems from wariness on the part of the Americans. When one U.S. Marine commander suggested that more information be shared with the prefectural government in order to minimize the chances of miscommunication, his advisors rejected the proposal, believing that Okinawan officials would leak the information to local interest groups opposed to the presence of U.S. bases there.

This lack of communication helps create a climate of animosity, as local officials seeking clarity on military procedures are routinely stonewalled and frustrated, lending credence to their belief that the U.S. military doesn’t care about them. They, in turn, become more uncooperative toward U.S. military personnel.

The onus, however, is on the Americans. The Americans need to maintain good relations with the locals, especially given that many locals question the very existence of the bases. The base issue has always been a touchy one, driving risk-averse local bureaucrats to avoid military contact. The language barrier stands tall, while the fence surrounding the U.S. bases creates a physical divide that allows little space for interaction.

Americans have tried to build good relations with the locals and contribute to Okinawa’s quality of life—for instance, by cleaning up beaches, teaching English or organizing sporting events. But such actions don’t always succeed. Often they are viewed by locals with suspicion or cynicism.

These acts of goodwill should not be a goal but merely a starting point. I found during my interviews, with very few exceptions, that the most successful U.S. base commanders and liaison officers were those who had developed deep local relations. These officers and commanders are frequently visiting city halls and befriending ward chiefs. They also clean beaches and teach English, but they focus first on establishing friendships with the locals, sometimes going for coffee together after beach events or having dinner after language lessons.

Such relationships make it easier to establish the necessary lines of communications when potential controversies arise, such as car accidents or crimes committed by U.S. service members. The locals would inform the liaison officers and base commanders of incidents soon after they occur, helping them understand how and when to apologize, and to whom—all of which would be vital for effective damage control.

Meeting in person with local leaders and residents, therefore, is the essential first step to reducing mistrust between the U.S. military and the people of Okinawa. As one successful U.S. commander said he learned from his Okinawan interlocutors: “If I see you in person, it is difficult to hate you.”
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Prime Minister of Japan’s Schedule December 22-28, 2014

May 2, 2015, 2:13 pm
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Monday, December 22, 2014
AM
12:00 At private residence (no visitors)
08:00 At private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo (no morning visitors)
09:32 Depart from private residence
09:46 Arrive at office
09:58 Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Aso Taro, Ministry of Finance (MOF)’s Vice-Minister Kagawa Shunsuke, and Director-General of Budget Bureau Tanaka Kazuho enter
10:52 Mr. Kagawa and Mr. Tanaka leaves
11:01 Mr. Aso leaves
11:25 Meet with Chairman of LDP Diet Affairs Committee in House of Councillors Yoshida Hiromi
11:45 End meeting with Mr. Yoshida

PM
02:01 Awards Ceremony for Long-Serving Employees of Cabinet and Cabinet Office. Take commemorative photo
02:18 Ceremony ends
02:35 Depart from office
02:38 Arrive at LDP Party Headquarters
02:39 Endorse candidate for Saga Prefecture gubernatorial election. Take commemorative photo
02:42 Finish delivering endorsement
03:10 Speak with LDP Executive Acting Secretary-General Hosoda Hiroyuki
03:15 Finish speaking with Mr. Hosoda
03:16 Depart from LDP Party Headquarters
03:18 Arrive at office
03:30 Meet with President of Karate Promotion Parliamentarians’ Union Suga Yoshihide, Secretary-General Takeshita Wataru, and President of Japan Karate Federation Sasagawa Takashi
03:46 End meeting with Mr. Suga, Mr. Takeshita and Mr. Sasagawa
04:16 Interview with Yukan Fuji
04:41 Interview ends
04:53 Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy meeting
05:37 Meeting ends
06:28 Depart from office
06:29 Arrive at official residence

Tuesday, December 23, 2014
AM
12:00 At official residence (no visitors)
10:00 At official residence (no morning visitors)
Stay ay official residence throughout morning (no visitors)

PM
12:28 Depart from official residence
12:35 Arrive at Imperial Palace. Attend Emperor’s Birthday Celebration Ceremony and Banquet with wife Akie
01:48 Depart from Imperial Palace
02:07 Arrive at private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo
02:33 Depart from private residence
02:43 Arrive at salon HAIR GUEST in Shibuya, Tokyo. Hair cut
04:15 Depart from salon
04:29 Arrive at private residence

Wednesday, December 24, 2014
AM
12:00 At private residence (no visitors)
08:00 At private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo (no morning visitors)
08:43 Depart from private residence
08:56 Arrive at office
09:03 Cabinet Meeting opens
09:14 Cabinet Meeting closes

PM
12:27 Depart from office
12:29 Arrive at Diet
12:32 Enter Lower House 14th Waiting Room
12:33 General Meeting of LDP Upper and Lower House Members
12:44 Meeting ends
12:51 Gathering of LDP Diet Members
12:56 Gathering ends
01:00 Leave waiting room, enter Lower House Plenary Meeting Hall
01:03 Lower House Plenary Session opens
01:42 Speak with Japan Innovation Party Lower House member Matsuki Shizuhiro (nickname Matsuki Kenko)
01:43 Finish speaking with Mr. Matsuki
01:46 Speak with Chairman of LDP Research Commission on the Tax System Noda Takeshi
01:47 Finish speaking with Mr. Noda
01:49 Speak with Deputy Chief Representative of New Komeito Kitagawa Kazuo
01:50 Finish speaking with Mr. Kitagawa
02:49 Designation of 97th Prime Minister during Lower House Plenary Session
02:50 Lower House Plenary Session adjourns, leave Lower House Plenary Meeting Hall
02:51 Enter Cabinet Ministers’ Room
03:07 Leave room
03:09 Make rounds to Lower House Speaker Machimura Nobutaka, Vice-Speaker Kawabata Tatsuo, Chairman of Lower House Committee on Rules and Administration Hayashi Moto, and all political parties
03:28 Finish making rounds
03:29 Make rounds to President of Upper House Yamazaki Masaki, Vice-President Koshiishi Azuma, Chairman of Lower House Committee on Rules and Administration Nakagawa Masaharu, and all political parties
03:46 Finish making rounds
03:47 Depart from Diet
03:49 Arrive at office
04:19 Ruling Party-Leader Coalition with Chief Representative of New Komeito Yamaguchi Natsuo. LDP Secretary-General Tanigaki Sadakazu and Secretary-General of New Komeito Inoue Yoshihisa also attend
04:24 Ruling Party-Leader Coalition ends
04:25 Establish Cabinet Formation Headquarters
04:26 Inauguration of incoming Cabinet Ministers
04:49 Inauguration ends
05:30 Depart from office
05:38 Arrive at Imperial Palace. Secret report to Emperor, Investiture Ceremony of Prime Minister, and Cabinet Ministers Attestation Ceremony
08:22 Depart from Imperial Palace
08:30 Arrive at office
08:47 Deliver notices of appointment and personnel change to Cabinet Ministers
08:55 Finish delivering notices
09:12 Press conference
09:36 Press conference ends
09:45 First Cabinet Meeting convenes
10:10 First Cabinet Meeting closes
10:13 Commemorative photo session with Cabinet Ministers
10:16 Photo session ends
10:19 Deliver notices of personnel change to Eto Seiichi and other Special Advisors to the Prime Minister
10:25 Finish delivering notices of personnel changes
10:27 Commemorative photo session with Special Advisors to the Prime Minister
10:29 Photo session ends
10:36 Depart from office
10:52 Arrive at private residence

Thursday, December 25, 2014
AM
12:00 At private residence (no visitors)
08:00 At private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo (no visitors)
09:21 Depart from private residence
09:41 Arrive at office
09:45 Meet with Minister of Foreign Affairs Kishida Fumio, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA)’s Vice-Minister Saiki Akitaka, and Director-General of Foreign Policy Bureau Hiramatsu Kenji. Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihida and Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato Katsunobu also attend
10:34 End meeting with Mr. Kishida, Mr. Saiki, and Mr. Hiramatsu
10:35 Meet with LDP Lower House member Kawai Katsuyuki
10:56 End meeting with Mr. Kawai
10:57 Speak with President of Japan Medical Association Yokokura Yoshitake
11:09 Finish speaking with Mr. Yokokura
11:10 Meet with LDP Upper House member Yamamoto Ichita
11:40 End meeting with Mr. Yamamoto

PM
12:04 Depart from office
12:13 Arrive at Federation of Economic Organizations [Keidanren] Assembly Hall in Otemachi, Tokyo. Attend Keidanren Board of Councillors Meeting, delver address
12:28 Depart from Keidanren Assembly Hall
12:36 Arrive at office
12:57 Meet with Director of Cabinet Intelligence Kitamura Shigeru
01:27 End meeting with Mr. Kitamura
01:34 Extraordinary Session Cabinet Meeting begins
01:40 Cabinet Meeting ends
01:42 Meet with Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare Shiozaki Yasuhisa
02:24 End meeting with Mr. Shiozaki
02:25 Meet with Mr. Saiki
02:58 End meeting with Mr. Saiki
03:14 Depart from office
03:25 Arrive at Imperial Palace. Secret report to Emperor, attestation ceremony for State Ministers
06:17 Depart from Imperial Palace
06:26 Arrive at office
06:42 Take commemorative photo with State Ministers
06:44 Photo session ends
06:50 Deliver address at Meeting of State Ministers
06:54 Finish address
07:10 Deliver notices of personnel change to Parliamentary Vice-Ministers
07:21 Finish delivering notices
07:25 Take commemorative photo with Parliamentary Vice-Ministers
07:27 Photo session ends
07:32 Deliver address at Meeting of Parliamentary Vice-Ministers
07:36 Finish address
07:37 Depart from office
07:38 Arrive at official residence

Friday, December 26, 2014
AM
12:00 At official residence (no visitors)
08:00 At official residence (no morning visitors)
08:40 Depart from official residence
08:41 Arrive at office
08:48 Council on Overcoming Population Decline and Vitalizing Local Economy in Japan meeting
08:59 Council meeting ends
09:03 Ministerial Council on Snow Disaster Countermeasures meeting
09:14 Council meeting ends
09:18 Cabinet Meeting begins
09:25 Cabinet Meeting ends
09:29 Headquarters for Ocean Policy meeting
09:36 Meeting ends
10:05 Depart from office
10:07 Arrive at Diet
10:08 Enter Cabinet Ministers’ Room
10:21 Leave Cabinet Ministers’ Room
10:22 Enter Upper House Plenary Meeting Hall
10:31 Opening Ceremony for 188th Diet Session
10:38 Ceremony ends
10:40 Leave Upper House Plenary Meeting Hall
10:43 Depart from Diet
10:44 Arrive at office
11:26 Meet with LDP Secretary-General Tanigaki Sadakazu

PM
12:00 End meeting with Mr. Tanigaki
12:03 Ruling Party Liaison Council meeting
12:27 Meeting ends
12:48 Meet with MOF’s Vice-Minister Kagawa Shunsuke, Vice-Minister of Finance for International Affairs Yamasaki Tatsuo, and Director-General of International Bureau Asakawa Masatsugu
01:10 End meeting with Mr. Kagawa, Mr. Yamasaki, and Mr. Asakawa
01:34 Depart from office
01:41 Arrive at Akasaka Estate in Moto-Akasaka, Tokyo. Register assumption of office at Akishinonomiya Residence, Mikasanomiya Residence and Takamadonomiya Residence
01:56 Depart from Akasaka Estate
02:04 Arrive at Togu Gosho (Crown Prince’s Residence) in Moto-Akasaka, Tokyo. Register assumption of office
02:36 Depart from Togu Gosho
02:52 Arrive at office
03:22 Meet with Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy Amari Akira, Cabinet Office’s Vice-Minister Matsuyama Kenji and Director-Generals for Policies on Cohesive Society Maekawa Mamoru and Tawa Hiroshi
03:39 End meeting with Mr. Amari, Mr. Matsuyama, Mr. Maekawa and Mr. Tawa
03:40 Speak with Minister in charge of Economic Revitalization Mr. Amari and Acting Director of Japan Economic Revitalization Bureau Sugawara Ikuro
03:54 Finish speaking with Mr. Amari and Mr. Sugawara
04:20 Interview with Yamaguchi Shimbun
04:40 Interview ends
04:41 Meet with Director of National Security Council Yachi Shotaro, Assistant Chief Cabinet Secretaries Kanehara Nobukatsu and Takamizawa Nobushige, Director of Cabinet Intelligence Kitamura Shigeru, MOFA’s Director-General of Foreign Policy Bureau Hiramatsu Kenji, Ministry of Defense’s Director-General of Bureau of Defense Policy Kuroe Tetsuro and Chief of Staff for Joint Staff Council Kawano Katsutoshi
05:01 End meeting with Mr. Yachi, Mr. Kanehara, Mr. Takamizawa, Mr. Kitamura, Mr. Hiramatsu, Mr. Kuroe, and Mr. Kawano
05:09 Meet with President of LDP Research Commission on Tax System Noda Takeshi, LDP Research Commission on Tax System Subcommittee’s Chairman Nukaga Fukushiro and Acting Director-General Hayashi Yoshimasa
05:44 End meeting with Mr. Noda, Mr. Nukaga and Mr. Hayashi
05:58 Depart from office
05:59 Arrive at official residence
06:00 Informal talk with Cabinet Kisha Club
06:40 Talk ends
06:41 Informal talk with Kantei office staff
07:00 Talk ends
07:01 Depart from official residence
07:13 Arrive at Japanese restaurant Kyoto Hyoto Akasaka location in Akasaka, Tokyo. Dinner with secretaries and Kantei office staff
09:29 Depart from restaurant
09:43 Arrive at private residence (no visitors)

Saturday, December 27, 2014
AM
12:00 At private residence (no visitors)
08:00 At private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo (no morning visitors)
Stay at private residence throughout morning (no visitors)

PM
12:18 Arrive at office
12:19 Receive proposal letter from Chairman of LDP Comprehensive Research Commission on the Establishment of the Disaster Resilient Japan Nikai Toshihiro
12:29 Finish receiving proposal letter
12:30 Meeting of Government and Ruling Parties
12:34 Meeting ends
12:39 Depart from office
12:44 Arrive at Hotel Okura in Toranomon, Tokyo. Lunch with JR Tokai Honorary President Kasai Yoshiyuki at Japanese restaurant Yamazato within hotel. Director of Cabinet Intelligence Kitamura Shigeru also attends
03:00 Depart from hotel
03:04 Arrive at official residence
05:24 Depart from official residence
05:25 Arrive at office
05:31 Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy meeting
05:55 Meeting ends
06:00 Headquarters for Japan’s Economic Revitalization meeting
06:13 Meeting ends
06:19 Extraordinary Session Cabinet Meeting
06:26 Cabinet Meeting ends
06:36 Depart from office
06:56 Arrive at private residence

Sunday, December 28, 2014
AM
12:00 At private residence (no visitors)
10:00 At private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo (no morning visitors)
Stay at private residence throughout the morning (no visitors)

PM
04:33 Meet with LDP Lower House member Yamaguchi Taimei
04:55 End meeting with Mr. Yamaguchi
05:13 Depart from private residence
05:50 Arrive at Yokohama Arena in Kohoku Ward, Yokohama City. Watch Southern All Stars concert with wife Akie
09:16 Depart from arena. When asked “How was the concert?” Mr. Abe answers “I enjoyed it.”
09:53 Arrive at private residence

Provisional Translation by: Erin M. Jones
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Prime Minister of Japan’s Schedule December 29, 2014-January 4, 2015

May 3, 2015, 2:37 pm
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Monday, December 29, 2014

AM
12:00 At private residence (no visitors)
09:41 Depart from official residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo
09:54 Arrive at hotel Grand Hyatt Tokyo in Roppongi, Tokyo
10:00 Exercise at NAGOMI Spa and Fitness within hotel

PM
01:08 Finish exercising
06:15 Depart from hotel
06:32 Arrive at Italian restaurant Argento ASO in Ginza, Tokyo. Dinner with wife Akie, Director of Cabinet Intelligence Kitamura Shigeru, Mr. Kitamura’s wife, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA)’s Director-General of European Affairs Bureau Hayashi Hajime, Mr. Hayashi’s wife, Ministry of Finance (MOF)’s Director-General of Budget Bureau Tanaka Kazuho, and Mr. Tanaka’s wife
09:55 Depart from restaurant
10:12 Arrive at Grand Hyatt Tokyo

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

AM
12:00 Rest at Grand Hyatt Tokyo (no visitors)
10:00 Rest at hotel Grand Hyatt Tokyo in Roppongi, Tokyo (no morning visitors)
11:56 Lunch meeting with Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ohta Akihiro at steakhouse Oak Door within hotel

PM
01:43 Lunch meeting ends
02:45 Exercise at NAGOMI Spa and Fitness within hotel
04:00 Finish exercising
06:33 Dinner with wife Akie at sushi restaurant Roku Roku within hotel
09:19 Finish dinner


Wednesday, December 31, 2014

AM
12:00 At hotel Grand Hyatt Tokyo (no visitors)
10:00 Rest at hotel Grand Hyatt Tokyo in Roppongi, Tokyo (no morning visitors)
10:30 Exercise at NAGOMI Spa and Fitness within hotel

PM
12:30 Finish exercising
12:50 Lunch with wife Akie at restaurant Fiorentina within hotel
01:24 Finish lunch
04:04 Depart from hotel
04:22 Arrive at private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo

Thursday, January 1, 2015

AM
12:00 At private residence (no visitors)
10:00 At private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo (no morning visitors)
10:27 Depart from private residence
10:40 Arrive at Imperial Palace. Attend New Year’s Celebration with wife Akie
11:13 Depart from Imperial Palace
11:27 Arrive at private residence residence

PM
02:02 Depart from private residence
02:17 Arrive at hotel Grand Hyatt Tokyo in Roppongi, Tokyo
03:35 Depart from hotel
03:37 Arrive at movie theater TOHO Cinemas Roppongi Hills in Roppongi, Tokyo. Enjoy movie Vancouver no Asahi [バンクーバーの朝日] with wife Akie and relatives
06:04 Depart from movie theater
06:07 Arrive at Grand Hyatt Tokyo
06:26 Dinner with wife Akie, mother Kishi Yoko, LDP Lower House Member Kishi Nobuo, and other relatives at steakhouse Oak Door within hotel
08:20 Finish dinner

Friday, January 2, 2015

AM
12:00 At hotel Grand Hyatt Tokyo (no visitors)
10:00 Rest at hotel Grand Hyatt Tokyo in Roppongi, Tokyo (no morning visitors)
Stay at hotel throughout morning (no visitors)

PM
01:00 Exercise at NAGOMI Fitness and Spa within hotel
02:20 Finish exercising
03:05 Depart from hotel
03:09 Arrive at movie theater TOHO Cinemas Roppongi Hills in Roppongi, Tokyo. Enjoy movie Gone Girl with wife Akie, mother Kishi Yoko, and others
05:56 Depart from movie theater
06:00 Arrive at Grand Hyatt Tokyo
06:31 Dinner with wife Akie and others at Japanese restaurant Shunbou within hotel
08:44 Finish dinner

Saturday, January 3, 2015

AM
12:00 At hotel Grand Hyatt Tokyo (no visitors)
06:43 Depart from lodging at Grand Hyatt Tokyo in Roppongi, Tokyo
07:53 Arrive at golf course Three Hundred Golf Club in Chigasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture. Play golf with Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren)’s Honorary Chairman Mitarai Fujio, Chairman Sakakibara Sadayuki, and colleagues

PM
03:16 Depart from golf course
04:48 Arrive at Grand Hyatt Tokyo
06:35 Dinner with wife Akie and friends at French restaurant THE FRENCH KITCHEN within hotel
09:16 Finish dinner

Sunday, January 4, 2015

AM
12:00 At hotel Grand Hyatt Tokyo (no visitors)
06:48 Depart from hotel Grand Hyatt Tokyo in Roppongi, Tokyo
07:57 Arrive at golf course Three Hundred Golf Club in Chigasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture. Play golf with wife Akie, President of Fujifilm Holdings Komori Shigetaka and his wife

PM
01:49 Depart from golf course
02:37 Arrive at main location of Japanese restaurant Kokonotsuido in Sakae Ward, Yokohama City. Dinner with wife Akie and Mr. and Mrs. Komori Shigetaka
04:09 Depart from restaurant
05:09 Arrive at private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo

Provisional Translation by: Erin M. Jones
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Search

Monday in Washington, May 4, 2015

May 3, 2015, 2:52 pm
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TTIP AND BEYOND: ACHIEVING EUROPE’S STRATEGIC TRADE GOALS. 5/4, 9:00-10:15am. Sponsor: CSIS. Speakers: Anna Cecilia Malmström, European Commissioner for Trade; Scott Miller, CSIS Senior Advisor.

click to order
HIGH HOPES AND MISSED OPPORTUNITIES IN IRAQ. 5/4, 12:15-1:45pm. Sponsor: New America Foundation (NAF). Speakers: Author Emma Sky, Senior Fellow, Yale University; Peter Bergen, Director, International Security Program, NAF.

THE PATH FORWARD IN U.S.-JAPAN RELATIONS: TRADE, DIPLOMACY, AND SECURITY. 5/4, 1:00-3:00pm. Sponsor: Center for East Asia Policy Studies, Brookings. Speakers: Strobe Talbott, President of Brookings; Yasutoshi Nishimura, State Minister of the Cabinet Office of Japan, Member of Japan’s House of Representatives; Richard C. Bush III, Director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies and Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy, John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings; Isamu Ueda, Member of Japan’s House of Representatives; Koichiro Gemba, Member of Japan’s House of Representatives; Tetsuro Fukuyama, Member of Japan’s House of Councillors, Vice Secretary General of the Democratic Party of Japan; Jeffrey A. Bader, John C. Whitehead Senior Fellow in International Diplomacy in Foreign Policy at the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings; Mireya Solís, Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Center for East Asia Policy Studies and Philip Knight Chair in Japan Studies at Brookings.

THE ARAB GULF AND THE US STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP IN BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE. 5/4, 2:00-3:00pm. Sponsor: CSIS. Speakers: Abdullah Toukan, President and CEO, Strategic and International Risk Assessment; Anthony Cordesman, Chair in Strategy, CSIS.

CURRENT ISSUES IN US NATIONAL SECURITY AND DIPLOMACY. 5/4, 4:30-6:00pm. Sponsor: Institute of World Politics (IWP). Speaker: John Negroponte, Vice Chairman, McLarty Associates.

DEADLOCK TO DÉTENTE: COULD INDIA’S STRATEGIC COMPETITION WITH CHINA MEAN PEACE WITH PAKISTAN. 5/4, 5:30-6:45pm. Sponsor: Elliott School, George Washington University. Speakers: Neil Padukone, Fellow, Woman and Public Policy Program, Harvard University.

CURRENT DYNAMICS IN EURASIA REGION: POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS. 5/4, 5:00-7:00pm. Sponsor: SAIS Central Asia – Caucasus Institute, Johns Hopkins University. Speakers: SAIS Fellows.

THE UNRAVELING: HIGH HOPES AND MISSED OPPORTUNITIES IN IRAQ. 5/4, 6:30-8:00pm. Sponsor: World Affairs Council. Speakers: Author Emma Sky, Senior Fellow, Yale University; Ronald Neumann, President, American Academy of Diplomacy.

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Blame George Kennan for Abe's Bad History

May 3, 2015, 2:59 pm
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George Kennan
By James Gibney Editorial writer at BloombergView and APP member

First published on Bloomberg View April 29, 2015

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s hawkish policies, historical revisionism, and heavy-handed efforts to manipulate domestic and foreign media have infuriated critics in Japan and its neighborhood. They might want to reserve some of that anger for U.S. super-diplomat George F. Kennan.

During the early years of the U.S. postwar occupation, an ungainly mix of idealistic New Deal reformers and right-wing satraps of General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, launched a radical attempt to liberalize Japan's economy and society -- prosecuting war criminals, busting up industrial combines, imposing land reforms and nurturing a labor movement, among other changes. A new constitution largely drafted by U.S. lawyers and civil servants dramatically expanded citizen rights, giving Japanese women what the historian John Dower called “one of the strongest equal-rights provisions in modern constitutional law.” (Dower’s Pulitzer-winning “Embracing Defeat” covers the period brilliantly.) The constitution also formally committed Japan to pacifism under Article 9, in hopes of turning the country into what MacArthur, with typical bombast, called the “Switzerland of the Pacific.”

Kennan, however, saw MacArthur’s reforms as a recipe for strategic disaster. With China torn by civil war, Europe flattened and divided, and the Cold War taking hold, Kennan believed Japan needed to be built into “the cornerstone of a Pacific Security system.” Beginning in 1947-48, he and his allies in Washington engineered a 180-degree turn in U.S. policy. War crimes trials came to an abrupt end, public employees lost the right to strike and the U.S. began to nurture Japan’s businesses and export industries. Not only were conservative pre-war politicians and bureaucrats rehabilitated, but more than 20,000 leftist union members and other workers were fired in what came to be known as the “Red purges.”

One of the bigger beneficiaries of Kennan’s “reverse course” was Abe’s grandfather Nobusuke Kishi, who had co-signed the declaration of war against the U.S. in 1941 and overseen the conscription of hundreds of thousands of Korean and Chinese laborers as head of the Munitions Ministry. Dower called Kishi “brilliant and unscrupulous”; another historian of the U.S. occupation, Michael Schaller, dubbed him “America’s Favorite War Criminal.” In 1948, after spending three years in Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison while being investigated as a Class A war criminal, Kishi was released along with 18 others for lack of evidence.

U.S. money helped Kishi become prime minister in 1957. According to Schaller, President Dwight Eisenhower authorized the CIA to provide secret campaign funds to Kishi and selected members of his relatively new Liberal Democratic Party. In return, Kishi shepherded a revision to the mutual security treaty between the U.S. and Japan that scrapped some elements unpopular with Japanese but secured the U.S. right to retain its bases in Japan and, in a secret protocol, the right to move nuclear weapons "through" Japan. (Protests over the treaty would go on to force Kishi’s resignation.)
There’s no doubt that the U.S.-Japan security relationship, which Kishi's grandson Abe has now strengthened with newly-revised guidelines, ranks with NATO as one of the greatest U.S. strategic achievements of the postwar period. Yet the other side of the ledger is less frequently tallied (not least the cost to U.S. workers and communities of U.S. policymakers axiomatically putting security before economics when dealing with bilateral trade tensions). As a result of Kennan’s actions, the U.S. short-circuited promising economic and political reforms that could have made Japan a much more vibrant and dynamic society today.

If they’d been allowed to flourish, for instance, Japan’s labor unions might now be stronger advocates for higher wages, helping to break deflation’s grip. The Japanese bureaucracy -- intentionally given great powers to implement the about-face in U.S. policy -- might have less of a stranglehold over all aspects of Japanese life. The equal-opportunity protections for women might have added up to something more than just words on paper, rendering Abe’s much-vaunted “Womenomics” push unnecessary. Ordinary Japanese might even have a much more favorable view of the American temperament than they do today.

The LDP would probably not have been so politically dominant for so long: As late as the mid-1990s, the U.S. was still protecting the party by refusing to declassify documents about the CIA’s cash payments, with the State Department arguing then that “many of the LDP’s present leaders date from the period in question.” Now the entrenched economic interests that have always backed the LDP are blocking much-needed structural reforms that Abe says he wants to institute.

More troublingly, the party -- and Abe’s administration in particular -- is salted with members who seem to believe that advancing Japan’s future requires rewriting its past. Many members of Abe’s cabinet belong to an association championing visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan’s war criminals among its other fallen veterans, and also the Japan Conference, a grouping that seeks to cast doubt on the Nanjing Massacre and wartime accounts of women forced into prostitution by the Japanese military. Such revisionism, and Abe’s refusal to repudiate it, embitters relations with China and South Korea, and thus undermines the effectiveness of the enhanced U.S.-Japan military partnership.

That would come as a disappointment to Kennan, a realist who believed in power politics, not national fairy tales. Next to the Marshall Plan, he saw his work in Japan as “the most significant contribution I was ever able to make in government.” Now, with Kennan’s vision of a “Pacific Security system” even closer at hand, Abe’s historical delusions may be the biggest obstacle to fulfilling its promise.
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#FreeTheFive

April 3, 2015, 11:22 am
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China’s Fear of Women With Pamphlets

EDITORIAL, The New York Times, MARCH 27, 2015

China’s growing crackdown on political dissent is stirring global protests and demands for the release of five women’s rights advocates arrested this month as they sought to hand out leaflets as part of a campaign against sexual harassment on China’s public transportation.

The women were taken into custody ahead of International Women’s Day, March 8. They have been held on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking troubles” — a classic authoritarian premise for crushing free speech.

In truth, the five activists are affiliated with the Beijing Yirenping Center, a dedicated nongovernmental organization that focuses on discrimination suffered by various groups, including women, the disabled and people with H.I.V., hepatitis and other illnesses. As the government faced mounting international protests, the situation grew worse this week with a raid on the offices of Yirenping by Chinese security agents, who confiscated files and computers and locked workers out of the center.

The arrests have prompted global rallies and petitions as well as diplomatic complaints. Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, has called for the women’s release and a commitment from China to face up to their grievances, not muzzle them.

Since President Xi Jinping took power two years ago, scores of human rights defenders have been jailed in a crackdown across the spectrum of legitimate protest, from academia to the Internet to organizations like Yirenping. Rights groups say the attempt to throttle government criticism and other speech has been the worst since the deadly Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

President Xi should see that there is no place for such government thuggery in his campaign to modernize China. He has the chance to build a legacy embracing the advancement of human rights. Instead, he appears to be succumbing to the history of Communist Party leaders who fear citizens’ protests as a prelude to subversion. The Yirenping women stand as a noble opportunity for China, not a threat.

RELATED COVERAGE
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Prime Minister Abe’s Understanding of Human Trafficking

April 8, 2015, 8:23 pm
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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was interviewed by Washington Post Editorial Page writer David Ignatius in late March. The Prime Minister's press aide emphasized to Mr. Ignatius that it was significant that Abe had used the expression "human trafficking" in regard to the Comfort Women. That may be, but not for the reasons the Office of Prime Minister believes. Below is an analysis of Abe's use of one of the two Japanese expressions for "human trafficking" in this context. 

Summary

Abe’s use of the vernacular expression jinshin-baibai for “human trafficking” was intended to be ambiguous. On March 28th, the Sankei Shimbun quoted an unnamed “high-ranking government official” as saying that jinshin-baibai [human-body selling/buying] “which means selling and buying of human bodies like chattel,” as the paper explains, does not imply/include forcible recruitment.” The paper concludes that the Prime Minister meant to draw a line between his view that parents sold their daughters to brokers and the forcible “recruitment” of girls by members of Imperial Japan’s military and government officials. Abe purposely avoided Japan’s formal expression of human trafficking (jinshin torihiki) to avoid connection to the internationally-accepted legal  definition (which Japan agreed to in 2005) that includes coercion. He continues to deny state responsibility. Further he is hitting back at a March 2nd statement by the US State Department, “The trafficking of women for sexual purposes by the Japanese military during World War II was a terrible, egregious violation of human rights” that clearly ascribes responsibility to the Japanese state.

Analysis

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s use of the phrase “human trafficking” in his March 28th interview with the Washington Post does not constitute progress[1]. The fact that the prime minister’s press person artlessly emphasized that it was the first time for the Prime Minister to associate the Comfort Women with trafficking should have drawn a red flag. Abe uses a linguistic sleight of hand that appears in one context to acknowledge the Comfort Women experience, while in another distancing the Japanese state from responsibility. He has done more to muddle his intentions than to clarify them. Human trafficking suggests coercion, but this always implies private sector, not state, responsibility.

A. Abe and his government continue to believe that the Comfort Women were mainly Korean and not coerced by any Imperial Japanese governmental person or entity.

B. Since 2014, the Government of Japan has asserted that the term “sex slaves” is inappropriate for the “Comfort Women.” At a 2014 meeting of the UN Human Rights Committee, Osamu Yamanaka, Director, Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs Division, Foreign Policy Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated that Japan “had carefully considered the 1926 Slavery Convention and did not consider comfort women as a slavery issue.”[2]

C. There are two Japanese expressions for human trafficking/trafficking in persons.

a. 人身売買 [jinshin-baibai] – literal translation is “human-body selling-buying.” This is the expression Abe told the Lower House Budget Committee (March 30)[3] that he used in speaking to the Washington Post. It is often used in the vernacular.

b. 人身取引 [jinshin-torihiki] – literal translation “human-body deal/transaction” This is the official translation used by the Japanese government for the UN term “trafficking in persons” as written in the “Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children” [4], which the Japanese Diet approved in 2005.[5]

For a full discussion of the definitions of these terms and their use in Japan see The Japan Network Against Trafficking in Persons (JNATIP), an NGO that has long tackled the issue of trafficking in the country. Jinshin-baibai is a pre-2000 term focused on the buying and selling of people for sexual exploitation, while Jinshin-torihiki is the modern term that includes sex slavery and organ trading. Here is a chart they have on their website outlining the differences.

人身売買 jinshin-baibai
[human-body selling-buying]
人身取引 jinshin-torihiki
[human-body deal/transaction]
2000年以前も使用されていた
Used also prior to 2000
2000年人身売買禁止議定書採択以降使用
Used since 2000 adoption of UN Protocol prohibiting trafficking
歴史的に人を売買・取引した搾取を連想可能
Possible to associate the word to history of exploitation through buying-selling and trading  of persons
歴史的な搾取の経緯を不問
Not linking the word to a history of exploitation
女性の性的搾取、女性に対する暴力(VAW)を中心に言及する傾向
Tends to be used mainly when referring to sexual exploitation of women, violence against women (VAW)
性的搾取だけでなく強制労働、隷属、臓器売買を含む
Not limited to sexual servitude but including forced labor, enslavement and the human organ trade
定義不明確。搾取的な労働や臓器売買など新たな課題をとらえきれない
Definition unclear. Not necessarily capturing new issues including exploitative labor and the human organ trade
国際組織犯罪と定義し犯罪対策として国際社会の協調行動とりやすい
Defined as international organized crime, it is easier for the international community to take concerted action as a counter-measure against crime
[Provisional translation by APP]

D. Article 3 of the Protocol provides the definition of “trafficking in persons” as follows:

(a) “Trafficking in persons” shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs;

(b) The consent of a victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article shall be irrelevant where any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) have been used;

(c) The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered “trafficking in persons” even if this does not involve any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article;

(d) “Child” shall mean any person under eighteen years of age.[6]

E. What does jinshin-baibai mean in Japanese?

· The Japanese expression jinshin-baibai has the strong implication of selling and buying by private agents.

· The English word "trafficking" is broader and suggests the forced recruitment/acquisition of a person.

· This touches on the sensitive issue (among Japanese conservatives) of forcible recruitment/acquisition of the Comfort Women by members of Japan’s military and government.

· Japanese commentators believe Abe used intentionally the less inclusive phrase to show his domestic audience that he still does not accept that the Comfort Women were forcibly recruited while acting in such a way that he does not seem to the western world that he objects to the idea. Instead, they were part of what some in Japan see as a socially acceptable, culturally appropriate transaction of the time. [Debt bondage, however, was technically illegal in Japan since 1872.]

F. Abe’s intent was to be ambiguous. On March 28th, the Sankei Shimbun quoted an unnamed "high-ranking government official" as saying that jinshin-baibai [human-body selling/buying] “which means selling and buying of human bodies like chattel”, as the paper explains, does not imply/include forcible recruitment." The paper concludes that the Prime Minister meant to draw a line between his view that parents sold their daughters to brokers and the forcible “recruitment” of girls by members of Imperial Japan’s military and government officials.[7]

For Abe and his revanchist cohort, the Comfort Women issue is about who was responsible for trafficking these women and making their life miserable. The answer, they believe, is that Korean Comfort Women were either sold by their Korean parents to, or deceived by, Korean private agents. The Imperial Japanese government, in any form, was not involved. There is no recognition that it was the state that commissioned these agents and allowed for a trafficking system to exist in a tightly controlled police state.

US Government Positions Compromised by Abe’s word choice

Abe’s use of the term human trafficking in English holds a number of dangers for him and the US Government.

A. The US State Department 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report identifies Japan as a Tier II Country, meaning, “The Government of Japan does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.”[8]

Abe inadvertently highlights the fact that Japan does not share the same norms or values as other G7 countries regarding women and trafficking. In addition, he calls attention to modern Japan’s (Meiji onward, 1868-) long tradition of trafficking women, from the karayuki-san to the ianfu to today’s Japayuki “hostesses.”[9]

B. The US State Department links Comfort Women trafficking specifically to the Japanese military. Abe’s statement contradicts or possibly negates this position.

On March 2nd, the State Department’s Foreign Press Center responded to a Yonhap News question regarding the US Government’s stance on the Comfort Women with

The trafficking of women for sexual purposes by the Japanese military during World War II was a terrible, egregious violation of human rights. President Obama has said, it is in the interest of both the Japanese and the Korean people to look forward as well as backwards and to find ways in which the heartache and the pain of the past can be resolved, because the interests today of the Korean and Japanese people so clearly converge. We encourage Japan to continue to address this issue in a manner that promotes healing and facilitates better relations with neighboring states. We also emphasize the importance of treating surviving women with dignity and respect.[10]

On April 1st, however, the US State Department welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's recent remark that referred to Comfort Women as victims of “human trafficking.” The spokesperson said “We have welcomed Prime Minister Abe's positive messages in 2015 on history issues and Japan's postwar contributions to peace," adding, We see his interview with The Washington Post in this same light.”[11]

ENDNOTES
[1] See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/shinzo-abes-optimistic-vision/2015/03/26/2108bef0-d3e5-11e4-8fce-3941fc548f1c_story.html
[2] See: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=14878&LangID=E#sthash.QL6V5PYS.dpuf
[3] [Provisional translation] “This issue has been discussed in a variety of ways and it is a fact that the discussion of human-body selling-buying has been pointed out. From this perspective, I used the word human-body selling-buying."
「この問題については様々な議論がなされてきているところでございますが、その中において、人身売買についての議論も指摘されてきたのは事実でございました。その観点から、人身売買という言葉を使ったところでございます」http://news.tbs.co.jp/newseye/tbs_newseye2457451.html 
[4] See: http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/jinshin/
[5] See: http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/treaty/treaty162_1.html
[6] See: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/treaties/CTOC/
[7] See Sankei http://www.sankei.com/politics/news/150328/plt1503280026-n1.html
[8] See: http://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/2014/index.htm
[9] See: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-12-04/features/8802210904_1_japanese-ministry-filipino-japayuki
[10] This statement was an email response from the Foreign Press Club to Korean journalists; see Voice of America, March 3, 2015; See: http://www.voanews.com/content/south-korea-criticizes-us-officials-comments-on-comfort-women/2665589.html
[11] This statement was an email response from the Foreign Press Club to Japanese journalists, “U.S. Welcomes Abe's "Human Trafficking" Remark, JiJi Press News on the Web, English, 2015/04/02-11:49.
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Abe's Monetary Policy--Listen with Skepticism

May 6, 2015, 11:09 am
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The Lincoln Log:  Abe’s Monetary Policy
by Edward J. Lincoln
4/23/2015


This weekend Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will arrive in Washington.  In the following week, a bevy of LDP Diet members will also descend upon Washington in the annual Golden Week trek.  Obviously, the big attention-grabbing issue is what language Prime Minister Abe will use in his address to the joint session of Congress to speak about the Comfort Women and other historical issues (an attention that is altogether proper).  But whatever he says, he and his supporters will try to soften the potential negative reaction to his view of history by talking up the success of “Abenomics.”  That is, even if we (and the Koreans and Chinese) do not like what the Prime Minister has to say about history, we should be thankful that he is rescuing the Japanese economy.  After all, it was the willingness of the Japanese public to hold their noses about his offensive right-wing nationalism in a hope that his economic policies would be better than sorry record of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) prime ministers in office 2009 to the end of 2012.  

The goal of Abenomics was to achieve 2 percent real GDP growth and 2 percent consumer price inflation within 2 years (i.e. by the end of March, 2015).  Their story will be that while the targets have not been reached, all Japan needs is a little more time because fundamentally the policies are working.  The one piece of Abenomics that most of them will tout as being more or less on target, albeit a bit more slowly than anticipated, is monetary policy.  But their story is unduly optimistic.  

Spoiler alert: deflation is not over

What is on target is the Bank of Japan’s goal of doubling the monetary base over a two period, beginning from April, 2013.  That goal was considered to be a radical policy for the normally conservative Bank of Japan.  According to Bank of Japan data, the monetary base (currency in circulation plus commercial bank reserves—a technical term that should not be confused with the money supply) was 218% higher in March 2015 than it was in March 2013.  Voilà!!  They have achieved their goal in doubling the monetary base.

But what about the intended outcome of this monetary expansion of creating 2 percent consumer price inflation?  This turns out to be a somewhat confusing issue because of the 3 percentage-point increase in the national consumption tax (a sales tax levied on most consumer goods and services).  In addition, energy prices have gyrated in the past two years, further muddying the data.  But you can be sure that Prime Minister and various visiting LDP Diet members will find ways to describe the data to support the notion that the economy is on track to producing 2 percent inflation.  Not exactly.

On the following page is a chart showing the raw consumer price index (with a base year of 2010 = 100) on a monthly basis.  As you can see, there is a jump in the index in April 2015 because of the tax increase.  The chart shows two versions of the consumer price index—the full index covering all goods and services consumed by households, and one excluding food and energy.  Economists prefer to exclude both food and energy because they are so volatile and therefore muddy any attempt to discern underlying trends.  The Japanese government prefers a “Japanese core” index that only excludes food (I have no idea why), but that one remains affected by volatile energy prices so I will skip in this analysis.  To be sure, changing energy prices eventually feed through the economic system and affect prices of all goods and services that use energy (such as airline fares being affected by the price of aviation fuel, which, in turn, is affected by the price of crude oil). 

So what does this chart show?  Consumer prices were rising slowly in the year from January 2013 to April 2015.  Since then, however, the trend of the index—both for all items and the one excluding food and energy appear to have flattened or even declined.


Rather than looking at the actual index number, economists prefer to look at measures of the change over time.  There are two ways of doing this:  comparing one month to the previous month, or comparing one month to the same month in the previous year (called a year-on-year comparison).  Because monthly economic data of any sort if often subject to random short-term events, generally economists use the year-on-year comparison.  But in this case, it is useful to look at both.

If we look at the usual year-on-year comparison, the result is shown in the chart on the following page.  In the few months preceding the start of “Abenomics” monetary policy (which began in April 2013 after Mr. Kuroda was appointed as the new governor of the Bank of Japan by Prime Minister Abe), consumer prices were still falling at a rate of -0.5 percent or a bit more.  Thereafter, prices did begin to rise.  Part of that rise was simply due to the rising price of crude oil (and the increasing importance of that more expensive oil due to the shutdown of all nuclear power plants in the year subsequent to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster).  By March 2014, just before the consumption tax increased, the overall consumer price index was rising at a year-on-year rate of 1.5 percent


and even the index minus food and energy was rising at 0.8 percent.  While well short of the 2 percent goal, the trend appeared to be in the right direction.   

When the tax rate jumped from 5 percent to 8 percent in April, obviously the change in consumer prices increased.  While the tax applies to most consumer goods and services (e.g. housing construction) it does not apply to them all (school tuition fees, for example, are exempt).  In any case, in February 2015 (the latest data available), the overall price index was running about 2.2 percent higher than a year earlier, and the index minus food and energy was 2 percent.  Quite likely these are the numbers that Japanese visitors during Golden Week will tout as showing success of Abenomics monetary policy.


But what happens if we look at the month-to-month change in prices?  The chart on the following page gives those results.  Remember, in this case we are looking at the change in prices in one month compared to the immediately preceding month (the change from January to February 2015, for example).  The numbers here are very small.  After all, if prices increase 1 percent year-on-year, then they changed month-to-month by less than 0.1 percent.  And one can see that the changes do jump around somewhat from month to month.  However, there are several interesting results from looking at these numbers.


First, prices had begun to rise just before Governor Kuroda got his Bank of Japan Policy Board to embark on quantitative easing.  Second, prices were generally rising slightly month by month after quantitative easing began (except for January 2014).  Third, the spike due to the consumption tax increase becomes very obvious.  In April, 2014 prices jumped 2 percent (both the overall index and the index minus food and energy).  Fourth, prices since April, 2014 have not continued rising.  The explanation that will be put forth by visitors to Washington will be that this is a temporary phenomenon due to falling oil prices.  But the data show the same result for the price index minus food and energy. 

These data imply that initially quantitative easing appeared to have a small positive impact on prices in its first year of operation.  But in the year since the tax increase in April 2014, that positive effect on prices has petered out.  Let’s go back to the actual index to measure the changes over time.  Leaving out food and energy, overall consumer prices rose 1.3 percent in the year from April, 2013 through March, 2014 (i.e. the index was 1.3 percent higher in March, 2014 than in April 2013).  Part of that increase was due to increasing oil prices, so the price index minus food and energy rose a much smaller 0.2 percent.  Still positive, but not anything to shout about. But from April 2014 through February 2015, the overall price index fell by 0.2 percent and the index minus food and energy fell by 0.3 percent.  Not only did the price increases stall, but the drop in prices cannot be blamed on the external factor of declining oil prices.   

This is quite discouraging—quantitative easing appeared to be having some positive effect (even if the impact once oil price increases are factored out was quite small), but that effect has worn off.  Since late 2014 prices have resumed a resumed a mild decline.  Japan is not yet out of deflation.

But what about the stories of wage increases?  No doubt this development will also be brought up by Japanese visitors.  Toyota and some other large manufacturers have been persuaded by the government to increase wages.  Won’t this help to keep prices rising as firms have to pass along the cost impact of higher wages?  That’s another whole story not worth getting into in this short note.  But briefly:  What the large, politically sensitive Toyota does in bargaining with its union and what happens to all wages in Japan are not necessarily the same thing (remember that just like in the United States, only a small proportion of the labor force is unionized).  More important, firms were so stingy in granting wage increases last year, that even a 2 percent wage increase will do no more than restore the losses workers suffered due to stagnant wages in the face of the consumption tax increase.  No need from that for firms to start increasing prices.

Is there a way to draw a more optimistic picture?  Maybe.  One effect of monetary quantitative easing has been a rather dramatic fall in the value of the yen against other currencies.  This weakening of the currency is finally producing an increase in exports.  As exports rise, so does employment in the manufacturing sector.  With a falling working-age population, increased employment in export-oriented manufacturing causes labor markets to tighten and could possibly produce higher wages—not because the government jawbones companies like Toyota, but because they can get more workers only by paying more.  That might lead to higher prices.  But it is too early to tell if this will really happen (it did not happen during the rapid export expansion of 2002-2007).  At least for the near future, therefore, Japan is not out of the woods on deflation.  So listen to the upbeat talk from Prime Minister Abe and his fellow LDP politicians with a very large dose of skepticism.
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Monday in Washington, May 11, 2015

May 10, 2015, 6:23 pm
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THE FUTURE OF IRAQ: A CONVERSATION WITH SUNNI LEADERS. 5/11, 9:00-10:30am. Sponsor: Brookings Institution. Speakers: Rafe al-Issawi, Former Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister; Atheel al-Nuyayfi, Governor of Ninewah Province; Kenneth Pollack, Senior Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings.

STATE OF PLAY: THE TRANSPACIFIC PARTNERSHIP. 5/11, 9:00-11:00am. Sponsor: Washington International Trade Association (WITA). Speakers: Barbara Weisel, Assistant US Trade Representative; Mike Castellano, Vice President for Government Relations, Walt Disney Company; Celeste Drake, Trade Globalization Policy Specialist, AFL-CIO; Clay Hough, Senior Group Vice President and General Counsel, International Dairy Foods Association; Michael Smart, Vice President, Rock Creek Global Advisors.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND TRADE. 5/11, 9:00am-6:20pm. Sponsors: US Chamber of Commerce’s (USCC) Global Intellectual Property Center; Federal Circuit Bar Association. Speakers: Kanji Yamanouchi, Japanese Minister Economic Affairs; Colin Bird, Canadian Minister-Counselor for Trade Policy; Damien Levie, Delegation of the European Union To the US Head of the Trade and Agriculture Section; Susan Wilson, US Trade Representative Intellectual Property and Innovation Director; Hendrik Barkeling, German Embassy Head of the Economic and Commercial Section.

CHINESE THINKING ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS. 5/11, 9:30-11:00am. Sponsor: Carnegie Endowment. Speakers: Xu Weidi, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Strategic Studies, China’s National Defense University; Wu Riqiang, Associate Professor, School of International Studies, Renmin University of China.

US STRATEGY FOR CIVIL AND MILITARY SPACE. 5/11, 10:00-11:30pm. Sponsor: CSIS. Speakers: General James Cartwright, Harold Brown Chair in Defense Policy Studies at CSIS; Sean O'Keefe, Professor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University; Dr. John Hamre, President, CEO, and Pritzker Chair at CSIS.

ISIS IS ABOUT THE ARAB PAST, NOT THE FUTURE. 5/11, Coffee, 10:00-11:00am. Sponsor: Wilson Center. Speaker: Rami Khouri, Former Public Policy Scholar at the Wilson Center, Senior Public Policy Fellow and Former Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, Syndicated Columnist for the Daily Star.

A SHARED GLOBAL VISION FOR WOMEN AND PEACEBUILDING. 5/11, 10:45am-1:00pm. Sponsor: United States of Peace (USIP). Speaker: Reem Al Hashimy, United Arab Emirates Minister of State. 

THE BENEFITS OF IMPORTS. 5/11, 11:00am-Noon. Sponsor: Heritage Foundation. Speakers: Daniel J. Ikenson, Director of the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute; Bryan Riley, Jay Van Andel Senior Policy Analyst at the Heritage Foundation; Derek Scissors, Resident Scholar at AEI; Ambassador Terry Miller Director of the Center for Data Analysis and the Center for Trade and Economics, Mark A. Kolokotrones Fellow in Economic Freedom at the Heritage Foundation.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR BIPARTISAN ACHIEVEMENT IN THE 114TH CONGRESS. 5/11, Noon-12:45pm. Sponsor: Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). Speakers: Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont; Jason Grumet, President, BPC.

THE CAMP DAVID SUMMIT: REDEFINING THE US-GULF COOPERATION COUNCIL RELATIONSHIP? 5/11, Noon-2:00pm. Sponsor: Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington (AGSIW). Speakers: Kristin Diwan, Lecturer, American University’s School of International Service; Bernard Haykel, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University; Hisham Melhem, Washington Bureau Chief, Al Arabiya New Channel; Judith Yaphe, Visiting Professor of International Affairs, George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies.

click to order
O. JOHN OLCAY LECTURE ON ETHICS AND ECONOMICS: PHISHING FOR PHOOLS. 5/11, 12:15pm. Sponsor: Peterson Institute for International Economics (IIE). Speaker: Author and Nobel Laureate George Akerlof, Georgetown University. 

INDIA'S NUCLEAR POLICIES: ONE YEAR LATER. 5/11, 3:00-4:30pm. Sponsor: Proliferation Prevention Program, CSIS. Speaker: Dr. R. Rajaraman, Emeritus Professor of Physics of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Co-Chairman, International Panel on Fissile Materials.

CAN FRACKING SURVIVE? THE IMPACT OF LOW OIL PRICES AND PROSPECTS FOR INTERNATIONAL EXPANSION. 5/11, 3:00-4:30pm. Sponsor: Atlantic Council. Speakers: Subash Chandra, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Guggenheim Partners; Dr. Terry Engelder, Professor of Geosciences at Penn State University; Russell Gold, Senior Energy Reporter at Wall Street Journal; Cynthia Quarterman, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Global Energy Center at the Atlantic Council; Richard Morningstar, Founding Director of the Global Energy Center at the Atlantic Council.
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Abe Administration moves to intimidate scholars

May 10, 2015, 6:28 pm
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John Harvard mourns
Academics fail Abe administration on history

By Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan
First appeared in The JAPAN TIMES, May 9, 2015

On May 5, in an open letter in support of historians in Japan, an international group of 187 scholars (of which I am one) urged Japan to acknowledge and atone for the forced prostitution that occurred during wartime, stating: “Denying or trivializing” what happened to the “comfort women” is “unacceptable.”

There are many instances of sexual violence in wartime, but the letter, which has already been widely circulated on the Internet and has been the topic of numerous news reports, says, “The ‘comfort women’ system was distinguished by its large scale and systematic management under the military, and by its exploitation of young, poor and vulnerable women in areas colonized or occupied by Japan.”

The scholars note disagreement over how many women were involved, but stress that “large numbers of women were held against their will and subjected to horrific brutality” in what was a brutal and “inhumane system.” The letter goes on to call for further research that is “free from government manipulation, censorship and private intimidation.”

I asked some U.S. academics about their perspectives on government censorship in 21st-century Japan. Thomas Berger, a professor of political science at Boston University and author of the 2012 book “War, Guilt and World Politics after World War II,” had various talks and his participation in an NHK documentary cancelled due to what he believes was a combination of self-censorship and pressure from senior management.

In one publication, partially funded by a government-sponsored NGO, Berger was asked to avoid the comfort women issue. He insisted that it be left in, but it came at a cost.

“I did compromise by not using the term ‘sexual slavery,’” he says, while asserting that would be something he would not agree to now. Taking issue with revisionist views, Berger believes there were tens of thousands of comfort women, including some professional prostitutes, “the majority of whom were coerced in one way or another to become comfort women and who had no possibilities for escape once they reached the front lines,” she says. Moreover, “there was a far larger pattern of sexual abuse by the Japanese Army involving millions of women, some of whom were kidnapped and kept as what we today would call sex slaves.”

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has long lobbied for a more positive spin on Japan’s past because he thinks that the prevailing narrative unfairly stigmatizes Japan and that it is difficult to nurture pride in youth based on so-called masochistic history. Thus the government is now whitewashing the history taught in Japan’s schools by forcing textbook publishers to hue to new guidelines aimed at imposing patriotic education. As a result, the comfort women have disappeared from all but one of Japan’s middle school textbooks.

Critics point out that the purpose of history is not to nurture pride and that airbrushing history is not the basis for sound education. Furthermore, promoting a propagandized version of history that fails to address the horrors Japan inflicted throughout Asia from 1931-45 leaves students poorly prepared to develop critical thinking skills and engage with others in the region. How can Japan pursue its long-standing goal of internationalization if its students are left in the dark about its past and force-fed a valorizing and exonerating history that tramples on the dignity of Japan’s neighbors? Can this jingoism serve as the basis of what the government envisions as “Super Global Universities”?

Berger’s Japanese government contacts are “frustrated” by the current administration as well. “They think (the Abe administration) is pushing this issue in unproductive and unnecessary ways,” he says. “The campaign to stop the comfort women plaques in the United States seems to be a source of especial concern.”

Berger says some diplomats “see facing up to Japan’s past misdeeds as a vital mission, but feel that they were deeply burned by the Asian Women’s Fund issue and left vulnerable to right-wing criticism.”

(The Asian Women’s Fund was an attempt by Japan in 1995 to provide redress to former comfort women and promote reconciliation, but it failed for various reasons and was dissolved in 2007.)

One prominent right-wing pundit told me in March, “Our hearts ache for the suffering they (the women) endured” and we tried to help them, but “our sincere efforts” were blocked by “North Korean spies that infiltrated” comfort women advocacy groups in Seoul.

The pundit’s comments are an example of the level of delusion that prevails.

As a leading expert on war guilt, Berger is often approached for his perspective because he is known to be fair-minded.

It is crucial to “shift the terrain from debates about facts and morality, which I fear cannot ever be resolved, to discussions of U.S. and Japanese interests,” he says, using “comparisons from a broad range of cases — not only Japan and Germany (with its implied ‘good student-bad student’ message) — to make the case that many countries choose to deal with these issues when a confluence of domestic and international political pressures encourage them to do so.”

Japan should be encouraged on the basis of appeals to reason and interest, and “not by hectoring the Japanese to be more like the Germans.”

Berger says the pressure is indirect.

“No one has come up to me and accused me of working for the Chinese or threatened to prevent me from getting grants etc. from Japan,” he says. However, he thinks that revisionism is creating problems not only with China, but with fellow U.S. ally South Korea.

“It’s needlessly giving the Chinese government a propaganda victory,” he says, and risks stoking anti-Japanese sentiments in the States. This is because revisionist Japanese “attitudes are at best sexist and insensitive in the extreme, tantamount to Holocaust denial; at worst they represent a challenge to the foundations of the post-World War II human-rights regime.”

T. J. Pempel, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, is an influential Japan-hand in the United States.

“I have been approached by the local (consul general’s) office in which the agenda seemed to be to convince me of the ‘correctness’ of Japan’s positions on comfort women, the disputed Senkaku islands, and so on — usually with little regard for historical fact.”

It is interesting that a number of people I contacted for comments preferred not to be quoted. Some cited pending grants and concerns about reprisals as the reason, while others don’t want to become targeted or risk relationships in Japan that might suffer if they voiced their concerns. Privately, many U.S., European and Australian academics are scathing in their appraisal of the Japanese government’s more aggressive campaign to promote revisionist history, but are reluctant to go on record as saying so. Thus the 187 scholars who signed the open letter are the tip of an iceberg.

Many cite Japanese government contacts who share their views, but it is also apparent to them that some prominent Japanese academics and advisers have trimmed their sails to the prevailing winds under Abe and actively bad-mouth foreign journalists and scholars who are speaking truth to power. The new rules of engagement in contemporary Japan reflect less tolerance for dissent and academic freedom, and it is the Japanese public, journalists and academics who are paying the steepest price for this deepening chill.

Abe often speaks of the shared values that bind Japan and the U.S., but something is getting lost in translation.
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Prime Minister of Japan’s Schedule January 5-11, 2015

May 12, 2015, 7:51 pm
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Monday, January 5, 2015

AM
12:00 At private residence (no visitors)
08:00 At private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo (no visitors)
08:32 Depart from private residence
08:55 Arrive at JR Tokyo Station
09:00 Depart from station on Nozomi no. 213. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seko Hiroshige accompanies
10:40 Arrive at JR Nagoya Station. Reception by JR Tokai Honorary President Kasai Yoshiyuki
10:43 Depart from station
10:44 Arrive at Kintetsu Nagoya Station
10:50 Depart from station on Kintetsu Limited Express. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretaries Kato Katsunobu and Mr. Seko accompany

PM
12:15 Arrive at Kintetsu Ujiyamada Station. Reception by Governor of Mie Prefecture Suzuki Eikei and colleagues
12:19 Depart from station
12:22 Arrive at Ise Jingu Outer Shrine in Ise City, Mie Prefecture. Conduct shrine visit with Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Takaichi Sanae, Minister for Foreign Affairs Kishida Fumio, Minister of Defense Nakatani Gen, Minister in charge of Economic Revitalization Amari Akira, and others
12:49 Depart from shrine
12:55 Arrive at Ise Jingu Inner Shrine. Conduct shrine visit with Mr. Takaichi and others
01:31 Kagura Presentation at Kagura-den (Hall for Special Prayer) in Inner Shrine
01:54 Presentation ends
02:03 Presentation of bouquets by Ise Boy Scout Council’s 7th Group and Mie Girl Scout Council’s 1st Group in front of Jingu Administration Office, commemorative photo session
02:05 Presentation and photo session end
02:20 Press conference in Jingu Administrative Office
02:39 Press conference ends
02:50 Depart from Ise Jingu
02:57 Arrive at Kintetsu Ujiyamada Station
03:04 Meet with Mr. Takaichi; Mr. Kishida; Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Miyazawa Yoichi; Mr. Nakatani; Mr. Amari; Chairperson of National Public Safety Commission Yamatani Eriko; and Minister in charge of Promoting Women’s Empowerment Arimura Haruko in station’s VIP room
03:12 End meeting with Mr. Takaichi, Mr. Kishida, Mr. Miyazawa, Mr. Nakatani, Mr. Amari, Ms. Yamatani, and Ms. Arimura
03:14 Depart from station on Kintetsu Limited Express
04:38 Arrive at Kintetsu Nagoya Station. Reception by Governor of Aichi Prefecture Omura Hideaki
04:39 Depart from station
04:40 Arrive at JR Nagoya Station
04:43 Speak with Mr. Omura and JR Tokai Honorary President Mr. Kasai in station’s VIP room
04:52 Finish speaking with Mr. Omura and Mr. Kasai
04:54 Depart from station on Nozomi no. 34
06:33 Arrive at JR Tokyo Station
06:37 Depart from station
06:59 Arrive at Italian restaurant Ristorante ASO in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo Prefecture. Dinner meeting with actors Tsugawa Masahiko, Nakai Kiichi, and Okuda Eiji
09:49 Depart from restaurant
09:58 Arrive at private residence

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

AM
12:00 At private residence (no visitors)
08:00 At private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo (no morning visitors)
09:44 Depart from private residence
09:56 Arrive at LDP Party Headquarters
09:58 Attend LDP Resumption of Work after New Year Holiday, deliver address
10:25 Resumption of Work event ends
10:30 LDP Officers Meeting
10:51 Meeting ends
10:52 Depart from LDP Party Headquarters
10:54 Arrive at office
11:04 Cabinet Meeting begins
11:20 Cabinet Meeting ends
11:47 Meet with Cabinet Advisor Iijima Isao

PM
12:03 End meeting with Mr. Iijima
12:05 Ruling Party Liaison Conference
12:28 Conference ends
01:47 Depart from office
01:57 Arrive at Hotel New Otani in Kioi-cho, Tokyo. Attend New Year Party hosted by Three Economic Associations in banquet hall Tsuru within hotel, deliver address
02:33 Depart from hotel
02:41 Arrive at office
02:57 Minister of Finance Aso Taro, Ministry of Finance (MOF)’s Vice-Minister Kagawa Shunsuke, Director-General of Budget Bureau Tanaka Kazuho, and Director-General of Tax Bureau Sato Shinichi enter
04:07 Mr. Kagawa, Mr. Tanaka, and Mr. Sato leave
04:34 Mr. Aso leaves
04:35 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA)’s Vice-Minister Saiki Akitaka and Director-General of Middle Eastern and African Affairs Bureau Uemura Tsukasa enter
04:48 Mr. Uemura leaves
05:09 Mr. Saiki leaves
05:10 Director of National Security Council (NSC) Yachi Shotaro, Director of Cabinet Intelligence Kitamura Shigeru, Ministry of Defense (MOD)’s Director-General of Bureau of Defense Policy Kuroe Tetsuro and Director of Defense Intelligence Headquarters Miyagawa Tadashi enter
05:18 Mr. Yachi, Mr. Kuroe, and Mr. Miyagawa leave
05:38 Mr. Kitamura leaves
05:52 Meet with former Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro. Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide also attends
06:26 End meeting with Mr. Mori
06:47 Depart from office
06:59 Arrive at Nippon Budokan (Japan Martial Arts Hall) in Kitanomaru Park, Tokyo. Enjoy American singer Diana Ross Concert with wife Akie
08:30 Depart from Nippon Budokan
08:47 Arrive at private residence

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

AM
12:00 At private residence (no visitors)
08:00 At private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo (no morning visitors)
09:43 Depart from private residence
10:01 Arrive at office
10:03 Meet with Minister in charge of Civil Service Reform Arimura Haruko. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato Katsunobu and Cabinet Bureau of Personnel Affairs Director-General for Personnel Policy Planning Wako Toshihiko also attend
10:31 End meeting with Ms. Arimura
10:32 Meet with former Minister of Home Affairs and current Chairman of Diet Promotion Council for National Pond Maintenance Project [全国ため池等整備事業推進協議会：Zenkoku Tame Ike to Seibijigyo Suishin Kyogikai] Fukida Akira
10:51 End meeting with Mr. Fukida
11:23 Meet with Director-General of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Amano Yukiya. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretaries Mr. Kato and Seko Hiroshige, and MOFA’s Director-General of Disarmament, Non-Proliferation and Science Department Hikihara Takeshi also attend
11:38 End meeting with Mr. Amano

PM
12:02 Meet with LDP Secretary-General Tanigaki Sadakazu
12:37 End meeting with Mr. Tanigaki
01:44 Meet with Chairman of Science and Technology in Society (STS) Forum and former Minister of State for Science and Technology Policy Omi Koji
02:04 End meeting with Mr. Omi
02:37 Meet with Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy Amari Akira, Cabinet Office’s Vice-Minister Matsuyama Kenji and Director-General for Policies on Cohesive Society Maekawa Mamoru
03:04 End meeting with Mr. Amari, Mr. Matsuyama, and Mr. Maekawa
03:05 Meet with Minister of Defense Nakatani Gen, MOD’s Director-General of Minister’s Secretariat Toyota Katashi, Director-General of Bureau of Defense Policy Kuroe Tetsuro, Director-General of Bureau of Local Cooperation Nakajima Akihiko, and Director-General of Bureau of Finance and Equipment Mimura Toru
03:33 End meeting with Mr. Nakatani, Mr. Toyota, Mr. Kuroe, Mr. Nakajima, and Mr. Mimura
04:49 Depart from office
04:55 Arrive at Imperial Hotel in Uchisaiwai-cho, Tokyo. Attend New Year Party hosted by Jiji Press, Research Institute of Japan [内外情勢調査会：Naigai Josei Chosa Kai] and other Jiji-affiliated organizations
05:20 Depart from hotel
05:28 Arrive at office
06:15 Depart from office
06:22 Arrive at Japanese restaurant Fukudaya in Kioi-cho, Tokyo. Dinner meeting with Honorary Chairman of Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren) Mitarai Fujio, Chairman of Keidanren Sakakibara Sadayuki, Honorary Executive Consultant of JX Holdings Watari Fumiaki, and other financiers
08:30 Depart from restaurant
08:47 Arrive at private residence

Thursday, January 8, 2015

AM
12:00 At private residence (no visitors)
08:00 At private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo (no morning visitors)
09:39 Depart private residence
09:57 Arrive at office
10:09 Meet with Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism’s Vice-Minister Honda Masaru and Director-General of Railway Bureau Fujita Kozo
10:34 End meeting with Mr. Honda and Mr. Fujita
10:35 Meet with Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare Shiozaki Yasuhisa and Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s Health and Welfare Bureau for the Elderly Miura Koji
11:06 End meeting with Mr. Shiozki and Mr. Miura
11:07 Meet with Representative Director of International Economic Exchange Association and former Lower House member Yoneda Kenzo
11:31 End meeting with Mr. Yoneda
11:32 Meet with journalist Tahara Soichiro

PM
12:05 End meeting with Mr. Tahara
12:09 Meet with Honorary Chairman of Seven & i Holdings Ito Masatoshi and former Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Matoba Junzo
12:58 End meeting with Mr. Ito and Mr. Matoba
01:54 Interview with women’s magazines Tamago Club and Hiyoko Club
02:26 Interview ends
02:27 Speak with Cabinet Advisor Nakamura Yoshio
02:36 Finish speaking with Mr. Nakamura
02:44 Meet with LDP Upper House member Maruyama Kazuya
03:21 End meeting with Mr. Maruyama
04:54 Meet with Minister of State for Space Policy Yamaguchi Shunichi and Cabinet Office’s Director-General of Office of National Space Policy Komiya Yoshinori
05:12 End meeting with Mr. Yamaguchi and Mr. Komiya
06:25 Depart from office
06:35 Arrive at Japanese restaurant Matsuyama in Ginza, Tokyo. Dinner meeting with Minister of the Environment Mochizuki Yoshio, President of New Renaissance Party Arai Hiroyuki, and colleagues
08:34 Depart from restaurant
08:50 Arrive at private residence

Friday, January 9, 2015

AM
12:00 At private residence (no visitors)
08:00 At private residence in Tomigaya, Tokyo (no morning visitors)
08:41 Depart from private residence
08:55 Arrive at office
09:03 Cabinet Meeting begins
09:12 Cabinet Meeting ends
09:17 Strategic Headquarters for Space Development meeting
09:33 Meeting ends
09:34 Meet with Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy Amari Akira
09:54 End meeting with Mr. Amari
09:55 Meet with Minister for Foreign Affairs Kishida Fumio, MOFA’s Vice-Minister Saiki Akitaka, Administrative Vice-Minister Sugiyama Shinsuke, Director-General of Foreign Policy Bureau Hiramatsu Kenji, and Director-General of European Affairs Bureau Hayashi Hajime
10:33 End meeting with Mr. Kishida, Mr. Saiki, Mr. Sugiyama, Mr. Hiramatsu, and Mr. Hayashi
10:34 Meet with Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Shimomura Hakubun
10:55 End meeting with Mr. Shimomura
10:56 Meet with former Advisor to Vice-President of US (Joe Biden) Jake Sullivan and Chairman of Rebuild Japan Initiative Funabashi Yoichi
11:30 End meeting with Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Funabashi
11:31 Meet with Mr. Kishida, Mr. Saiki, and MOFA’s Director-General of Economic Affairs Bureau Saiki Naoko
11:58 End meeting with Mr. Kishida, Mr. Saiki, and Ms. Saiki

PM
01:36 Meet with Director of Cabinet Intelligence Kitamura Shigeru
01:56 End meeting with Mr. Kitamura
02:02 NSC meeting
02:42 NSC meeting ends
02:54 Forum for Consultations between the National and Regional Governments
03:01 Forum ends
03:06 Ceremony to Commend Leading Companies Where Women Shine
03:22 Ceremony ends
03:23 Speak with Minister of State for Science and Technology Policy Yamaguchi Shunichi, Cabinet Office’s Vice-Minister Matsuyama Kenji and Director-General for Policies on Cohesive Society Morimoto Koichi
03:37 Finish speaking with Mr. Yamaguchi, Mr. Matsuyama, and Mr. Morimoto
03:59 Meet with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Aso Taro, MOF’s Vice-Minister Kagawa Shunsuke, Director-General of Budget Bureau Tanaka Kazuho, and Administrative Vice-Minister for Policy Planning and Coordination Sakota Hidenori
04:59 End meeting with Mr. Aso, Mr. Kagawa, Mr. Tanaka, and Mr. Sakota
05:01 Nine Ministers’ Group of NSC meeting
05:05 Meeting ends
05:17 Extraordinary Session Cabinet Meeting
05:22 Cabinet Meeting ends
05:23 Depart from office
05:37 Arrive at Embassy of France in Minami-Azabu, Tokyo. Register condolence call to victims of shooting incident at French newspaper
05:40 Speak with resident French Ambassador to Japan Thierry Dana
05:47 Finish speaking with Mr. Dana
05:48 Depart from Embassy of France
05:57 Arrive at office
06:00 Meet with MOFA’s Mr. Sugiyama and Director-General of Middle Eastern and African Affairs Bureau Uemura Tsukasa
06:37 End meeting with Mr. Sugiyama and Mr. Uemura
06:49 Depart from office
06:50 Arrive at official residence

Saturday, January 10, 2015

AM
12:00 At official residence (no visitors)
07:15 Depart from official residence
08:45 Arrive at golf course Dai-Hakone Country Club in Hakone Town, Kanagawa Prefecture. Play golf with Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seko Hiroshige, secretaries, and others

PM
03:51 Depart from golf course
04:15 Arrive at Higashiyama Kyukishi-tei, former private residence of Mr. Abe’s grandfather and former Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke in Gotenba City, Shizuoka Prefecture
04:32 Depart from Higashiyama Kyukishi-tei
05:19 Arrive at holiday home in Narusawa Village, Yamanashi Prefecture
05:54 Depart from holiday home
06:03 Arrive at Chinese restaurant Isai Chugokusaikan Kokyu in Fujikawaguchiko Town, Yamanashi Prefecture. Dinner with Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seko Hiroshige and mother Kishi Yoko
07:58 Depart from restaurant
08:08 Arrive at holiday home

Sunday, January 11, 2015

AM
12:00 At holiday home (no visitors)
10:00 At holiday home in Narusawa Village, Yamanashi Prefecture (no morning visitors)
Stay at holiday home throughout morning (no visitors)

PM
01:30 Depart from holiday home
02:17 Arrive at Fuji Cemetery in Oyama Town, Shizuoka Prefecture. Along with mother Kishi Yoko, visit the graves of Mr. Abe’s grandfather and former Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, and Mr. Abe’s father and former Minister of Foreign Affairs Abe Shintaro
02:28 Interview open to all media: When asked “What were your feelings during the visit to their graves?” Mr. Abe answers “I swore to make this a suitable year as the 70th year after the war.”
02:29 Interview ends
02:30 Depart from Fuji Cemetery
03:11 Arrive at holiday home
06:00 Depart from holiday home
06:11 Arrive at restaurant Sumibi Kushiyaki I. W in Fujiyoshida City, Yamanashi Prefecture. Dinner with mother Kishi Yoko and secretaries
07:57 Depart from restaurant
08:08 Arrive at holiday home

Provisional Translation by: Erin M. Jones


↧

Monday in Washington, May 18, 2015

May 16, 2015, 3:10 pm
$
0
0
CHEMISTRY AND ENGINEERING OF SHALE GAS AND TIGHT OIL RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT. 5/18-5/19. Sponsor: National Academy of Sciences. Speakers: Alan Krupnick, Resources for the Future; Bruce MacKay, Schlumberger; Javad Paktinat, Anadarko Petroleum; Randy LaFollette, Baker Hughes; Avner Vidic, University of Pittsburgh; William Stringfellow, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Briana Mordick, Natural Resources Defense Council; Denise Tuck, Halliburton.

TURKMENISTAN: DOMESTIC EVOLUTIONS, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND REGIONAL ENVIRONMENT. 5/18, 9:00am. Sponsor: Elliott School, George Washington University (GWU). Speakers: Sebastien Peyrouse, Research Professor, GWU; Nazik Muradova, Central Asia Fellow, GWU; Slavomir Horak, Researcher, Charles University; Jan Sir, Professor, Prague University.

HOW LARGE ARE GLOBAL ENERGY SUBSIDIES? 5/18, 9:30-11:00am. Sponsor: Brookings Institution. Speakers: Vitor Gaspar, IMF Fiscal Affairs Director; Adele Morris and David Wessel, Brookings Senior Fellows.

FROM COOPERATION TO COMPETITION - THE FUTURE OF U.S.-RUSSIAN RELATIONS. 5/18, 10:00am-Noon. Sponsor: Russia and Eurasia Program, CSIS. Speakers: Col. Gert-Jan Kooij, Royal Netherlands Army; LTC Karen Briggman, US Army; LTC Joseph E. Hilbert, Jr., US Army; Lt. Col. Christopher Lay, US Air Force; James C. McNaughton, Department of the Army Civilian.

CIA COUNTERTERRORISM SUCCESSES AND FAILURES. 5/18, 10:00am. Sponsor: National Press Club (NPC) Newsmaker Program. Speaker: Michael Morell, Former Deputy CIA Director.

TRADE PROMOTION AUTHORITY (TPA) WITH ANGELA ELLARD. 5/18, Noon-1:00pm. Sponsor: Association of Women in International Trade (WIIT). Speaker: Angela Ellard, Chief Trade Counsel and Trade Subcommittee Staff Director of the Ways and Means Committee for the US House of Representatives.

THE ROLE OF NUCLEAR POWER IN ENERGY RELIABILITY: U.S. & INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES. 5/18, Noon-1:30pm, Lunch. Sponsor: GABI. Speakers: David C. Brown, Senior Vice President, Federal Government Affairs and Public Policy, Exelon; Andrew Paterson, Principal, Environmental Business International.

BEIJING+20: WHAT DOES MEANINGFUL PROGRESS LOOK LIKE FOR WOMEN AND POVERTY? 5/18, 12:30-2:00pm. Sponsor: Society for International Development Washington, DC. Chapter (SIDW). Speakers: Stella Mukasa, Director of Gender, Violence, and Rights at International Center for Research on Women (ICRW); Amanda Epting, Livelihoods Specialist at Pact; Patricia T. Morris, President of Women Thrive Gender and Inclusive Development Workgroup; Jennifer Collins-Foley, Senior Inclusive Development Advisor for World Learning; Cristina Manfre, Senior Associate at Cultural Practice, LLC.

FIGHTING FOR THE FINAL FRONTIER? CONFLICT IN SPACE DURING THE LATE 21ST CENTURY. 5/18, 1:00-2:30pm. Sponsor: Atlantic Council. Speakers: David Brin, New York Times Bestselling Author; Jason Batt, Creative and Editorial Manager of the 100 Year Starship; Jaym Gates, Communications Director of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; Alec Meden, Art of Future Warfare Project Creative Challenge Winner; August Cole, Director of Art of Future Warfare Project at the Atlantic Council.

REVISITING KOREA-JAPAN RELATIONS. 5/18, 2:00-3:30pm. Sponsor: ASAN Institute. Speakers: Brad Glosserman, Executive Director, Pacific Forum, CSIS; Scott Snyder, Senior Fellow for Korea Studies, CFR; Gilbert Rozman, Editor-in-Chief, Asan Forum; and Moderator: Jung-Yeop Woo, Research Fellow and Director, DC Office, ASAN Institute.

THE FUTURE OF FREE TRADE IN EAST ASIA: FROM KORUS TO CHINA TO TPP? 5/18, 3:00-5:00pm, Washington, DC. Sponsor: Korean Economic Institute (KEI). Speakers: Ahn Ho-young, Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to the United States; Lee Il-Houng, President of the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy; Edward Alden, Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations; James W. Fatheree, Executive Vice President, U.S.-Korea Business Council; Derek Scissors, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute; Mireya Solís, Philip Knight Chair in Japan Studies, Brookings Institution; Troy Stangarone, Senior Director of Congressional Affairs and Trade, KEI.

BURSTING THE PLUTONIUM BUBBLE: HOW UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES MADE DYSTOPIAN NUCLEAR LANDSCAPES. 5/18, 4:00-5:30pm. Sponsor: Wilson Center (WWC). Speaker: Kate Brown, Associate History Professor, University of Maryland.

XI TO PAKISTAN, MODI TO CHINA: WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE WEST. 5/18, 5:30-6:30pm. Sponsor: German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). Speakers: Tanvi Madan, Director, India Project, Brookings Institution; Daniel Markey, Senior Research Professor, Johns Hopkins University; Andrew Small, Fellow for Asia, GMF.

CRAFTING A NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY. 5/18, 6:30-8:30pm, Reception. Sponsor: Next Generation International Security Network. Speaker: Colonel Troy Thomas, National Security Council Director for Strategic Planning.
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Japanese Catholics express alarm at Abe Government

May 20, 2015, 2:46 pm
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Japanese Martyrs February 5, 1597
In February of this year, Catholic leaders in Japan released their statement on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. It is surprisingly blunt in expressing their wariness over what they view as the nation's attempts to rewrite history and play a significantly larger defense role in the world.

“We are gravely concerned about the current administration’s move,” Takeo Okada, archbishop of Tokyo and head of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan said of the statement. “We want to light a flame for a path that people should head to, which is the mission of all religious leaders.” The statement is as follows and below it is an Asahi Shimbun article about it.

Blessed are the peacemakers – Now especially, 
peace must not depend upon weapons

To our Brothers and Sisters in Christ and to All Who Wish for Peace

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan issued messages marking the end of the Second World War in 1995 (Resolution for Peace -- On the 50th. Anniversary of the End of the War) and 2005 (Peace Message After 60 Years From the End of War World II -- The Road To Peace Based On Nonviolence -- Now Is The Time To Be Prophetic). In this year in which we mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the war, we wish to once again declare our commitment to peace.

1. The Church Cannot Remain Silent in the Face of Threats to Human Life and Dignity

For the Catholic Church, this is a noteworthy year because it marks the 50th anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).

In the first half of the Twentieth Century the Christian Church centered in Europe experienced two world wars and genocide against the Jews by Nazi Germany. Reflecting on these tragedies, the Church cannot close itself up with merely “religious” concerns. We have realized that the problems of humanity are our problems. The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, issued at the end of the Second Vatican Council, is a clear example of this insight, opening with the following words.

“The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts.”[1]

From the end of the Second Vatican Council up to the papacy of Pope Francis today, the Church has actively faced the issues of human life and dignity, especially of those who are excluded or oppressed.[2]

2. The Decision to Renounce War

Japanese colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula until 1945 as well as acts of aggression against China and other Asian countries caused great suffering and sacrifice among people. The Second World War was a horrible experience for the Japanese people as well. Beginning with the Tokyo air raid of March 10, 1945, large-scale air raids struck many cities in Japan. In addition to the many Japanese and foreign troops who became casualties during land combat on Okinawa, many civilians suffered as well. Then finally there were the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. These experiences gave birth to a desire for peace that was codified in the Constitution of Japan promulgated in 1946 based on the sovereignty of the people, the renunciation of war and respect for basic human rights. Following this peace constitution, Japan has striven to build relationships of trust and friendship with the nations of Asia.

Against the background of the Cold War and the subsequent fall of the Berlin Wall, the Catholic Church throughout the world has made increasingly clear its opposition to the arms race and the use of weapons to resolve disputes.

In his encyclical Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII said, "in this age which boasts of its atomic power, it no longer makes sense to maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to repair the violation of justice"[3] Vatican II in Gaudiam et Spes opposed the arms race, and urged peace that does not rely upon military force.[4] In his Appeal for Peace in Hiroshima in 1981, Pope John Paul II demonstrated this clear renunciation of war when he said, "War is the work of man. War is destruction of human life. War is death."

Given this historical background, it is a matter of course that we Japanese bishops respect the ideals of Japan’s no-war Constitution.[5] For Christians, the renunciation of war is demanded by the Gospel of Christ. It is a respect for life that cannot be abandoned by religious people and an ideal that is held firmly by the whole human race.

3. The Japanese Church’s peace vocation

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan knows that it has a special vocation to work for peace. It is not based upon any political ideology. We continue to appeal for peace not as a political issue, but as a human one. Our awareness of this vocation is, of course, influenced by the horrors inflicted by nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it is also born of deep remorse when we reflect upon the attitude of the Church in Japan before and during the war.

During a Mass celebrated on September 26, 1986, at the plenary meeting of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) held in Tokyo, Archbishop Shirayanagi of Tokyo made the following declaration. “We Catholic bishops of Japan, as Japanese, and as members of the Catholic Church in Japan, sincerely ask forgiveness from God and from our brothers and sisters of Asia and the Pacific Region for the tragedy brought by the Japanese during the Second World War. As parties involved in the war, we share in the responsibility for the more than 20 million victims in Asia and the Pacific. Furthermore, we deeply regret having damaged the lives and cultures of the people of these regions. The trauma of this is still not healed.”

These words were not those of a single bishop. He spoke as president of the bishops’ conference, conveying the opinion of the whole conference.[6] As mentioned above, in their messages on the 50th and 60th anniversaries of the end of the war, the bishops continued to reflect upon the issue of the Church’s responsibility before and during the war and from that standpoint have expressed their determination in favor of peace.

4. Problems such as recognition of history and the exercise of collective self-defense

Seventy years after the war, memory of it is fading along with memories of Japanese colonial rule and aggression with its accompanying crimes against humanity. Now, there are calls to rewrite the history of that time, denying what really happened. The present government is attempting to enact laws to protect state secrets, allow for the right of collective self-defense and change Article 9 of the Constitution to allow the use of military force overseas.

At the same time, we cannot overlook growing nationalism not only in Japan, but among the governments of other countries in this part of the world. As tensions rise between nations, a strong commitment to improved relations through dialogue and negotiation rather than increased militarization becomes more important for regional stability.

Domestically, the situation in Okinawa presents a particularly serious problem. Compared to the rest of the country, the number of military bases there is especially high. New base construction is underway, contrary to the wishes of the citizens of the prefecture. This demonstrates an attitude that puts priority on armaments while ignoring people and efforts to build peace.

5. Amidst the serious crises facing the world today

Viewing the world today, the tragedies of military conflict and terrorism occur over and over again in many places. In addition to conflicts between nations and ethnic groups, now violence in the name of religion makes it increasingly seem as if throughout the world dialogue has become impossible. In that situation, women and children as well as ethnic and religious minorities are especially threatened and many lose their lives.

In the face of such worldwide destructiveness, Pope Francis has expressed concern that some people seem to speak of a “Third World War” rather than making sure we do not repeat the mistakes of the past.[7] The world faces the sorts of crises that cannot but cause people to wonder if force is the answer. What has become of respect for humanity? However, repeatedly answering violence with violence will only lead to the destruction of humanity.

The world is dominated by the globalization of companies and the financial system. Disparities continue to widen and the poor are excluded. Human economic activity is causing climate change and the destruction of biodiversity. If we wish to realize peace, this situation must change. We cannot ignore the problems of poverty and the environment that produce disparity and exclusion. We are each called upon to overcome our indifference to the world’s problems and change our lives. We cannot solve all the world’s problems at once, but we can patiently continue to work toward peace and mutual understanding.

In Conclusion

We recall the words of Pope John Paul II in his Appeal for Peace in Hiroshima: 

“Peace must always be the aim: peace pursued and protected in all circumstances. Let us not repeat the past, a past of violence and destruction. Let us embark upon the steep and difficult path of peace, the only path that befits human dignity, the only path that leads to the true fulfillment of the human destiny, the only path to a future in which equity, justice and solidarity are realities and not just distant dreams.”[8]

We are encouraged by the words of Jesus Christ, “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Mt. 5:9). Seventy years after the end of the war and 50 years after the end of the Second Vatican Council, let us renew our determination to seek peace and to work for peace. We Catholics in Japan are small in number, but in union with other Christians and along with believers of other religions and those throughout the world who wish for peace, we renew our commitment to work to make peace a reality.

February 25, 2015
Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan
Notes:
1. Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes 1965 n. 1.Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes 1965 n. 1.[back]
2. Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation The Joy of the Gospel (Evangelii Gaudium) (2013) n.182: “The Church’s pastors, taking into account the contributions of the different sciences, have the right to offer opinions on all that affects people’s lives, since the task of evangelization implies and demands the integral promotion of each human being. It is no longer possible to claim that religion should be restricted to the private sphere and that it exists only to prepare souls for heaven.”[back]
3. Pope John XXIII, Encyclical Pacem in Terris (1963) n. 127.[back]
4. Gaudium et Spes, n. 81. [back]
5. The Constitution of Japan, Preamble: “We, the Japanese people, desire peace for all time and are deeply conscious of the high ideals controlling human relationship, and we have determined to preserve our security and existence, trusting in the justice and faith of the peace-loving peoples of the world.” Ibid. Article 9: “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.” [back]
6. Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan plenary session, June, 1986.[back]
7. Pope Francis, Homily at the Military Memorial in Redipuglia, Italy, on the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War. (September 13, 2014)[back]
8. Pope John Paul II “Appeal for Peace in Hiroshima” (February 25, 1981) n. 5.[back]


Japanese Catholic leaders voice concern over 
Abe administration in peace message 

Asahi Shimbun, April 28, 2015

By KENTARO ISOMURA/ Staff Writer

A statement released by Catholic leaders in Japan to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II expressed their wariness over what they view as the nation's attempts to rewrite history and play a significantly larger defense role in the world.

“We are gravely concerned about the current administration’s move,” Takeo Okada, archbishop of Tokyo and head of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan said of the statement. “We want to light a flame for a path that people should head to, which is the mission of all religious leaders.”

When the bishops' conference issued statements to mark the 50th and 60th anniversaries, the Catholic leaders renewed their commitment to peace. But this year’s document was different from the previous two in terms of its strong language and the timing of the release.

Although it did not directly refer to the Abe administration, the statement was critical of moves to deny Japan's wartime actions and the government’s push to allow the Self-Defense Forces to use force overseas despite the war-renouncing Constitution.

The 16 prelates of the bishops' conference also issued the 2015 statement in February instead of August, when initially planned, and when the nation marks the war’s end.

The changes mirror the Japanese Catholic leaders’ mounting alarm with the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and are based on “deep remorse” over its record before and during World War II. Like many other religious organizations in Japan, the Catholic clergy collaborated with the military government’s war efforts. One priest reportedly said, “Japan took up guns and stood up based on God’s will.”

Dated Feb. 25, the statement read: “Seventy years after the war, memory of it is fading along with memories of Japanese colonial rule and aggression with its accompanying crimes against humanity. Now, there are calls to rewrite the history of that time, denying what really happened.

“The present government is attempting to enact laws to protect state secrets, allow for the right of collective self-defense and change Article 9 of the Constitution to allow the use of military force overseas.”

Kazuo Koda, a bishop from the archdiocese of Tokyo who was involved in drafting the document, said he and other priests were initially reluctant to argue specific policy measures.

“But we became convinced that we must speak out with clarity that these are wrong,” he said.

Koda also explained the document's early release.

“We grew alarmed by the dizzying pace of developments in the political world," the bishop said. "So we decided that we should publish it as soon as possible.”

When a Japanese delegation of Catholic leaders traveled to the Holy See in Rome on a regular visit in March, Okada and other members briefed Cardinal Pietro Parolin on the message and the philosophy of the war-renouncing Article 9. Parolin, the Vatican's secretary of state, reportedly encouraged the group to lobby the Japanese government to start a dialogue.

But the document set off criticism on the Internet.

“People from religious circles should not intervene in politics,” said one post.

“Judging from the message, (the Catholic clergy) looks like nothing but leftist activists,” said another.

The document also touched on Okinawa Prefecture, home to 74 percent of all U.S. military bases in Japan, and took issue with the construction of a new base to replace an existing one in the prefecture amid fierce protests.

“Domestically, the situation in Okinawa presents a particularly serious problem," the document read. "Compared to the rest of the country, the number of military bases there is especially high. New base construction is under way, contrary to the wishes of the citizens of the prefecture. This demonstrates an attitude that puts priority on armaments while ignoring people and efforts to build peace.”

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan is not the only religious body critical of a sea change in Japan’s defense policy, which has occurred since Abe took office.

Many religious groups have expressed opposition to or concerns over the Abe Cabinet’s decision last July to enable Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense by changing the decades-old interpretation of the Constitution.

Although Japan’s Christians represent only between 1 to 2 percent of the population, the bishops' conference statement appears to carry weight as it comes under the Vatican with 1.2 billion followers across the world.

The Holy See has been paying close attention to global confrontations and conflicts between states and ethnic groups.

It occasionally serves as a bridge between parties at loggerheads.

In the latest example, Pope Francis played a significant role behind the historic reconciliation earlier this year between the United States and Cuba.

The Vatican’s efforts to become relevant to the modern age stems from lessons learned from World War I and II, as well as its failure to save Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

A movement grew as a result within the Roman Catholic Church against its tendency to turn in on itself.

The movement led to the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council, in which thousands of bishops across the world met to discuss how to reinvent the Catholic Church to accommodate the needs of the contemporary world.
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Dialogue the key to resolving comfort women history wars

May 21, 2015, 4:09 pm
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By Professor Mary M. McCarthy, Drake University and APP member

First published in EastAsiaForum 19 May 2015

On 29 April 2015, Shinzo Abe became the first Japanese prime minister to speak before a joint session of the US Congress. Japan watchers listened closely, hoping to hear a preview of his upcoming statement on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. Of particular concern is whether the prime minister will take a step back from the historic apologies of the 1995 Murayama Statement and the 1993 Kono Statement.

In anticipation of Abe’s visit, US Congressman Mike Honda led 24 members of the House of Representatives in presenting a letter to the Japanese ambassador that expressed firm support for both Statements. Some of the signees subsequently articulated their views on the ‘comfort women’ issue to various media outlets. This included an op-ed by Charles Rangel in the national newspaper USA Today and a press release by Honda that called Abe’s failure to mention the ‘comfort women’ in his speech to Congress ‘shocking and shameful’.

Although the victims of Japan’s wartime ‘comfort women’ system were predominately women and girls from across Asia, with the majority coming from the Korean peninsula, US politicians have become actively involved in this issue. This was most apparent in 2007 with the passage of House Resolution 121, which called on Japan to acknowledge and apologise for the ‘coercion of young women into sexual slavery’ during the 1930s and 1940s. Similar motions or resolutions have been passed by legislatures in Canada, the Netherlands and the European Union. And the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women included the ‘comfort women’ issue in her 1996 report.

The concerted efforts of Japanese and South Korean NGOs, who felt that their governments had not responded adequately to the issue, as well as the willingness of former ‘comfort women’ to publicly tell their stories, has been a major force behind this global recognition. But it also reflects normative changes in the field of human rights and women’s rights over the past half-century. Worldwide acceptance of women’s rights as human rights has increased attention to the particular dangers facing women and girls in conflict-ridden areas and advanced global campaigns to combat sex trafficking.

Domestic factors, such as democratisation in South Korea and the death of Japan’s wartime emperor Hirohito in 1989, have encouraged local advocacy efforts for historical justice. The spread of the Korean diaspora has further ensured that the stories of ‘comfort women’ enter the domestic discourse in other countries.

These international and domestic pressures culminated in the 1993 Kono Statementby then chief cabinet secretary Yohei Kono. The Kono Statement included an admission of military culpability, a government apology and a commitment to educate future generations about this tragedy. Two years later, the Asian Women’s Fund, a public-private joint initiative intended to illustrate an acceptance of moral responsibility through apology and compensation, began operation.

Many hoped these steps would resolve the ‘comfort women’ issue, but in reality it was only the beginning of a debate over what really happened and what should be done about it. This debate has ebbed and flowed over the past three decades, often gaining steam from some statement by a Japanese government official that questions a conventionally accepted aspect of the narrative — be it the extent to which ‘comfort women’ were coerced or the degree of responsibility of the Japanese government.

Such comments, along with the active and polarising discussion within Japan that always follows, are due to the fact that there continues to be no national consensus in Japan on the issue. This is in stark contrast to the international scene, where a general consensus does exist.

The situation has been made even more difficult by the fact that the Japanese domestic and international discussions have tended to occur in parallel, rather than in intimate interaction with each other. Each has evolved in its own political and normative context.

The biggest challenge today is that Japanese government and society are at a stage in their own domestic discourse that hinders their ability to enter into dialogue with the rest of the world on this issue. What many Japanese officials, scholars, and members of the public view as clarifying the record comes across globally as denial or obfuscation. While many foreign actors view the international normative changes described above as conducive to reconciliation, many Japanese actors see the application of such norms to this historical case as an impediment.

Dialogue is a necessary prerequisite for a lasting settlement and all parties should be seeking avenues to achieve it. The only chance for true dialogue comes from greater comprehension, on all sides, of the reality of the debate both in Japan and internationally, as well as the political and normative contexts that shape those debates. Vilification will never lead to open exchange, but mutual understanding and tolerance may.
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