Tag: World Affairs

In recent months, most independent observers have admitted to complete uncertainty about the outcome of the demonstrations and disturbances that for months have plagued Bangkok with its metropolitan area population of some 15 million.

But now there is a date with fate. Organizers of the demonstrations and their leader, Suthep Thaugsuban, have set Jan 13 as the day to shut down Bangkok as they try to prevent a planned national election in February.

As expressed in the Thai Constitution, when an election is called, it is the King who allows the parliament to be dissolved for the election.

So, legally, it is the King’s will that the election take place, but that is just what the protestors and demonstrators want to thwart. Such an abandonment of loyalty to the king is an unprecedented development in Thailand, though the protesters claim to be more loyal to the king than the government is.

The protestors, sometimes referred to as “Yellow Shirts”, have set deadlines and given ultimatums many times before. But this time they appear determined to bring the capital to a grinding halt. There is talk of clogging the city with trucks and busses rammed into each other to prevent movement. What follows from that will be chaos and could be violence.

The police and the army were notably absent from demonstrations in November and December, allowing crowds of up to 150,000 protesters to process and blow their whistles unsupervised and even at times enter government buildings.

However, in the last two weeks, military leaders have become more outspoken, signaling a new interest in events and their part.

Recurrent issues keep the crisis alive:

• The demonstrators reflect the view of the Bangkok middle class and elite – the political old guard, who claim to be most loyal to the King;
• Their party has not won an election since 1992;
• The party of Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister deposed in 2006, and his sister Yingluck who is caretaker prime minister has won the last five elections;
• The Bangkok elite believe that the Shinawatra governments are illegitimate and run by remote control from Dubai by Thaksin;
• Thaksin is loathed by the Bangkok elite for alleged competitiveness with the King for leadership in Thailand and generally for being a grubby and corrupt ex-policeman whose political power has been bought with bribes from the immense wealth he generated for himself before and while in power;
• The fact is that the country has changed and Thaksin is more appealing to most than the Bangkok-focused policies of those behind the protests can deliver.

The problem – and Suthep and his “Yellow Shirt” supporters know it – is that Thaksin’s party will win a sixth successive election if it goes ahead in February. They have to avoid a further popular vote.

The last time they held power was in the Government led by the Oxford educated Abhisit Vejjajiva (2008 – 2011) Mr Abhisit was lucky enough not to have to be voted in. The then opposition managed to get the country’s courts to disqualify Thaksin’s parliamentarians and, with most of the government expelled from parliament, conveniently found the numbers to form a government without going to the polls.

What the “Yellow Shirts” propose as their solution to the problem that they seem never to be able to win elections is to install a sort of aristocratic government of the good and the worthy.  How they are to be selected and by whom and for how long is not absolutely clear.

While Bangkok is a booming city with a strengthening stock market and a robust set of industries to build prosperity, rural Thailand has also seen a significant increase in prosperity, educational opportunities, health services, industries and benefits from tourism.

More than 80% of the Thai population is in rural areas and it is there that the power of the Thaksin family and their political allies has been overwhelming.

For example, rice, the country’s staple and one its leading exports, is bought by the government at a fixed price, irrespective of the international price the product can be sold at. Happy farmers vote for governments like Thaksin’s and his sister’s that bring rewards and subsidies like this.

What has emerged in rural Thailand is a new and educated middle class for whom the allegiances, policies and prejudices of the old Bangkok elite have little appeal.

One possibility in the current crisis – much precedented in Thai politics – is military intervention to remove the incumbent elected government. That may well occur in the next ten days.

If that sort of chaos doesn’t happen, another will. The disturbances and protests sponsored by the Bangkok elite will continue until Thaksin and his family are seen to suffer and be driven out.

Either way, in spite of this being the cool season in Thailand, it will be a hot time in Bangkok for a while.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit on Thursday to Yasukuni Shrine – the place where Japanese venerate their war dead – was its timing. Abe chose to go on the day that marked the first anniversary of his administration, in effect directly linking his government with this controversial establishment. He not only became the first serving prime minister to cross its threshold for seven years but, most unusually, he lent the visit an official stamp. (Notwithstanding that the Prime Minister’s Office described it as a “private” affair, the media were forewarned, his visit was televised live and he signed the visitor’s book using his official title.)

Abe’s action was immediately condemned by China and South Korea, which consider Yasukuni Shrine an unholy vestige of Japanese militarism. It is the place where soldiers and sailors dedicated themselves to the emperor before heading off to war and where, since 1978, the spirits of fourteen convicted “Class A” war criminals have been enshrined.

Japanese nationalists argue that Yasukuni, occupying a large site in central Tokyo, serves the same purpose as, for example, the Cenotaph in London, Arlington Cemetery in Washington or the War Memorial in Canberra. But, despite now being operated by a private organisation (an arrangement paying lip service to the constitutional separation of religion), the shrine is irrevocably associated with the discredited apparatus of State Shinto that once promoted emperor worship, imperialism and notions of racial and cultural superiority. For many, this association is perpetuated by the military museum now attached to the shrine. Jeff Kingston, Director of Asian Studies at Tokyo’s Temple University, is one of many critics of the museum’s “selective and sly” representation of Japan’s shared history with Asia:

Japan’s war in China is supposed to have suppressed banditry and terrorism, while its invasion of the rest of Asia is represented as a war of liberation from Western colonialism. Missing from the extensive exhibits are any mentions of the Rape of Nanjing, the awful [biological] experiments conducted by Unit 731 on prisoners of war, or the suffering endured by tens of thousands of “comfort women”… The only thing that Japan’s modern reactionaries regret about the war is defeat, and they are still fighting an uphill battle against Japanese public opinion to justify wartime Japan’s ‘’noble mission.” No amount of sanitizing will change that.

                                             – The Japan Times, 14 August 2013

Prime Minister Abe said he visited Yasukuni “to pledge and determine that never again will people suffer in war.“ It was “not intended to hurt the Chinese or South Koreans.” His remarks, however, upend the reality of what Yasukuni represents in both historical and contemporary terms. He knew full well any attempt to associate anti-war sentiments with such a place would be highly offensive to those who suffered at the hands of Japanese militarism. To expect them somehow to “reform,” to “grow up” and feel differently about the issue, just because he says so, seems to me the height of arrogance. (Not even Yasukuni is as brazen as this: sensitive to disapproving eyes, it requires journalists to obtain prior permission from the management before reporting on the contents of its revisionist exhibits. For the record, this journalist did not comply.)

To some extent Abe’s action is unsurprising. After his first stint as prime minister, in 2006-7, he went on record as saying he deeply regretted having abstained from visiting Yasukuni Shrine. He did so then out of concern for relations with China and South Korea, which had been damaged by his predecessor Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni. Since Abe’s return to office relations have plummeted again mainly as a result of territorial disputes inflamed by the activities of super-patriots in all three countries. It must now be assumed that Tokyo either does not want or cannot foresee a return to cordiality in the immediate future.

The Abe Government is set upon a course to “normalise” Japan, most notably by expanding its military posture. The stated purpose is to enable it to be more proactive in contributing to international peacekeeping, but elements of the military build-up, such as the acquisition of a capability to undertake opposed naval landings, are clearly part of a response to China’s claim on the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea. Beijing’s strongly worded criticism of Abe’s defence plans, together with its recent declaration of an air defence identification zone incorporating the disputed islands, are part of the tit-for-tat confrontation to which Abe’s Yasukuni visit is the latest contribution.

Japanese nationalists who wish to refight old battles – to make out, for instance, that Yasukuni is a shrine to peace – are incapable of taking the country forward to a sounder, more productive relationship with their neighbours. Even if the “history debate” has been hijacked in China and South Korea by equally blinkered nationalists – as, seems to me, is the case – nothing is achieved by giving them legitimacy by adopting the same mentality. Abe, judging from his expression of regret about his past efforts to assuage the feelings of Chinese and Koreans, is looking backwards, not forwards. Whether he realises it or not, he is sounding like the Japanese leaders of the 1930s who, impatient with being “misunderstood,” insisted that other nations accept Japan on its own terms – or else. It is ugly, wrongheaded and dangerous. Most particularly, it ill fits the reality of Japan’s place in the world in 2013: a dignified place forged out of the disaster of the 1930s and dependent upon a repudiation of self-aggrandisement and the use of force.

Other nations, with an interest in improved regional relations, have a role to play in urging all sides to step back from confrontation and stop trying to win old battles or overturn the verdict of the past. The United States Embassy was quick to make its views known. While Japan was “a valued ally and friend”, it said in a statement, the Embassy was “disappointed that Japan’s leadership has taken an action that will exacerbate tensions with Japan’s neighbors.” The Australian Government recently sided with Japan on the issue of China’s air defence zone; it should now make its “best friend” feel the brunt of its disapproval of Abe’s reckless action.

Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for eleven years.

Using its dominance of both houses of the Diet, Japan’s ruling party has pushed through a new anti-terrorism and secrecy law. The strong-arm parliamentary methods used to secure its passage have added to public concerns about the way the law may be employed by the Abe Government to stifle dissent, curb public access to information and intimidate political opponents. The LDP mustered its numbers during a late-night session on Friday, noisy public protests and extensive media criticism notwithstanding.

The State Secrecy Protection Law is the legislative accompaniment for Japan’s newly created National Security Council (modeled on America’s NSC), both required, says the government, for effective crisis management. What crisis? Many observers believe Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has moved swiftly to exploit the sense of crisis affecting Sino-Japanese relations as a result of their territorial dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.

Critics of the law say it is vague and all encompassing and lacks a clearly defined process of review. The law defines “terrorism” as any activity that forces “political and other principles or opinions on the state or other people.” Concern that this could be used to control dissent took on more substance after LDP secretary-general and senior government member Shigeru Ishiba likened public demonstrations against the law to “terrorism” (he later “corrected” his statement). The law puts into the hands of bureaucrats the power to determine what is and what isn’t a state secret. While this is not unusual by international standards, the political culture in Japan is already conservative and opaque, and freedom-of-information laws have proven less effective than in some other countries. The threat of prison terms for journalists who seek or handle classified information is another provision that has drawn fire.

The government’s lame response to these complaints has been to say that officials would be required to “take into consideration” human rights and freedom of the press. Abe also promised to set up an agency to monitor what information was being made secret, but the powers and scope of such an agency were not incorporated into the legislation. One of the weakest aspects of governance in Japan, most political scientists agree, is oversight of the bureaucracy and public accountability for its decisions. There is no reason to believe this is about to improve––more likely, it will get worse.

Since the war Japan has not had a law directed specifically at protecting state secrets. This situation complemented the country’s constitutional restraint against belligerency as a means of settling international disputes: Japanese pacifism. “If Japan can never make war, what secrets does it need to protect?” or so the argument went. In some quarters, the country was regarded as a poor keeper of secrets. (It was always thus, if one looks back at the Allies’ success in breaking Japanese codes before and during the war and the activities of the Soviet spy Richard Sorge.) The United States, Japan’s ally, is a supporter of the new law, which its backers say is needed to facilitate intelligence sharing. Once upon a time, much critical intelligence did not need to leave the American “defense community” responsible for guarding Japan; increasingly, however, military burdens are being shared or taken over by Japanese agencies. The new law’s larger significance is how it fits into the LDP’s plans for constitutional change and the trend towards a more self-reliant or self-directed Japanese military posture.

Abe has used up a considerable amount of his political capital in getting the secrecy law through the Diet. Commentators have likened his methods to the “bad old days” of LDP hegemony in the 1960s and 1970s. Though Japanese voters may from time to time hand one party (or a coalition) a strong mandate, they prefer governments to approach controversial issues with delicacy, allow a full airing of opinions and strive for consensus, rather than muscle through. Abe’s approval rating recently slipped below 50% for the first time since he took office. The scars of this latest battle are unlikely to heal quickly. It will be difficult to assess the operation of the new law because of its very nature, but when it is breached and a whistleblower is brought to book, as inevitably will happen, the government may find it harder to deal with the consequences than it was to corral the Diet.

Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for eleven years. He is the author of “Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story”.

China has expanded its air defense zone, ramping up a dispute with Japan that goes from bad to worse and shows no sign of abating. Observers are even thinking about the unthinkable – armed conflict between the two countries. And such conflict would not be limited to them. As was demonstrated by their sending two B-52 bombers through the area newly claimed by China, the Americans are bound to honor their alliance with Japan in the event of conflict.

How did things reach this point? Though the issues that underlie the crisis have existed since at least the end of the Pacific War, until lately it has not been a cause of friction. China claimed some islets as theirs and Japan did likewise. In fact, the islands were privately owned by some Japanese. Rather than make an issue of it, each country simply ignored the other’s claims. However, the recent finding that there may be undersea gas fields near the islands made both countries more interested in sovereignty.

Then, one of Japan’s most divisive figures entered the picture. Shintaro Ishihara is a far-right politician who was governor of Tokyo for nearly 13 years. He has made a career of making statements that demonstrate a hyper-nationalistic attitude against foreigners both in and outside of Japan. He seems to take delight in upsetting people.

Last year, he declared that he would arrange for Tokyo to purchase the islands from their owners in order to secure Japanese sovereignty over them. What had been a situation of “you say they’re yours, we say they’re ours, but they’re not worth arguing over” may, contrary to anyone’s wishes, become a casus belli.

The Chinese government has fostered a patriotism of resentment, emphasizing insults to the country by European and Japanese colonialists and by American “hegemony.” It can be a useful way to give a common ethos to people who are ethnically diverse, who have their own mini-nationalistic tendencies and who are increasingly disillusioned with the official ideology and practice of the ruling party. Foreign insults and injustices, ancient or modern, real or imagined, are handy ways to distract people from current domestic ones.

So, it was impossible for the Chinese government to ignore Ishihara’s move without losing face among the people of China. (I doubt anyone outside China and a few Japanese hyper-nationalists care in the least.) Whether the Chinese leadership cares about the islets or not, it cannot appear to acquiesce in an insult from Japan, a historic enemy. Acquiescence could provoke an unmanageable domestic reaction.

Japan, too, is faced with the problem of loss of face. The country has slipped from the time when “Japan as Number One” was the world’s mantra. But, just as Japan seemed poised to rival the U.S. at least economically, the bubble burst. Japanese have been humiliated to see their country become a has-been on the world stage. Especially galling is that their place has been taken by China, a country that has always been seen as a backward neighbor. The Japanese government is forced to put up a show of opposition to China in order to head off domestic accusations of weakness on the world stage.

So, we have two countries that probably wish the islands would just sink into the sea and end the dispute, but which until that day are forced to save face by escalating their mutual blustering. It may all be a game.

The worrying point, though, is that though the chief players may know they are playing a game while trying to find some way to minimize the loss of face on either side, their pawns might not be aware that it’s a game.

In the 1930s, Japanese troops intoxicated by hyper-nationalistic claims and against the wishes of their government provoked incidents that eventuated in war throughout Asia. This time, it is more likely to be some Chinese pilot raised on the patriotism of resentment who will fire an air-to-air missile and launch disaster for the world.

I hope that when Chinese leaders scramble their fighter jets because some Japanese (or American) aircraft has “violated” their air defense zone, they remember to remove the missiles from under the wings.

Bill Grimm is a Maryknoll priest who has lived and worked on and off in Japan for 40 years. He is the publisher of UCA News.

China’s unilateral declaration of an “air defense identification zone” in the East China Sea is the most serious escalation of its territorial dispute with Japan since the large-scale mob attacks on Japanese property in China just over a year ago.

China’s Ministry of National Defense has declared that as of two days ago new rules govern the entry of aircraft into the vast zone that encompasses the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, with all over-flights now requiring prior notification.

To back up this measure, the PLA Air Force has begun enforcement patrols.

Both Japan and the United States have condemned what they call Beijing’s “destabilizing” move and indicated they would not recognize the restrictions.

China says that aircraft flying into the “air defense identification zone” should report their flight plans to its government agencies and respond in a “timely and accurate manner” to identification inquiries. “China’s armed forces will adopt defensive emergency measures to respond to aircraft that do not cooperate in the identification or refuse to follow the instructions,” it added.

In September last year there were nationwide protests in China against Japan’s decision to nationalize several of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, off Taiwan, over which both it and China (and Taiwan) claim sovereignty. Since then Chinese and Japanese patrol boats have been shadowing each other in the disputed area, known to contain undersea oil and gas reserves.

As recently as a week ago Japanese government officials were reported as saying they had begun to see signs of improvement in the severely strained Sino-Japanese relations. That assessment now seems premature. China’s latest move makes clear that it will not allow the dispute to slip back into the background where it had sat for decades, until last year.

In stating Japan’s opposition to the “identification zone”, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida did not say whether the country would take direct counter-measures. Tokyo has mostly tried to contain the dispute but is being hemmed in by Beijing’s every new assertion of control.

Japanese Defense Ministry analysts have been concerned for some time about the aerial dimension of the territorial dispute. On regular occasions Japanese military aircraft are being scrambled to intercept Chinese patrol planes flying near the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Though no exchanges of fire have occurred, it is thought to be a more dangerous theatre of confrontation than the standoff on the water. China’s declaration of its “air defense identification zone”, in the first instance, may be intended to establish a more formal basis for resisting these Japanese Air Self-Defense Force operations.

The official Xinhua news agency quotes “military experts” as saying the zone “accords with international common practices…if the move does not violate international laws, breach other countries’ territorial sovereignty or affect the freedom of flight”. Even this predictably supportive commentary suggests that disputed sovereignty and curtailment of freedom of the air would constitute valid grounds for objection.

The Japanese and US military must now calculate the risks of testing China’s resolve to enforce its East China Sea “identification zone”. The recent relative calm in this strategic flashpoint may now be over.

Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for eleven years for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He is the author of “Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story” (NewSouth Books).

In a speech at the United Nations in September 2013, Prime Minister Abe conveyed Japan’s willingness to be involved in U.N security actions. He also emphasized Japan’s commitment to oppose sexual violence against women in war zones. Strangely, he didn’t mention comfort women, also known as sexual slaves, women who were forced to provide sex to the Japanese Imperial Army in WWII.  How many lies must be told to cover up the truth?

The sex slave issue has become an international gender issue of grave and continuing concern. This issue needs to be confronted.

In the past month there have been three incidents concerning Japan’s attempts to cover up the comfort woman issue.

The first incident was the erection of a memorial for comfort women in Glendale, California. According to the Japanese press, there has been considerable opposition from sections of the Japanese community in California to the memorial. This may be so. However, in a conversation with Dr. Edward Chang (Professor of Ethnic Studies at University of California, Riverside) I was informed that the NCRR- Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress is endorsing the movement to remember comfort women. It seems that the Japanese press however does not want the Japanese public or the world to recognize that the issue is gaining worldwide support. In addition, perhaps naively the mayors of Glendale and Buena Park (another area marked for a possible memorial) have been embroiled in a scandal created by Japan’s ultra-rightist internet channel – Channel Sakura. This channel seeks to repudiate Japan’s past aggressions and opposes any form of reasonable reconciliation with Korea or China. Mayor Weaver of Glendale informed Channel Sakura that he had regrets about supporting the memorial, saying “we opened a beehive, a hornet’s nest; we just shouldn’t have done it.”(Chosun Ilbo – a Korean news source). Now, the Glendale Council is demanding his resignation for his comments. Channel Sakura then went on to interview Mayor Elizabeth Swift of Buena Park. Her attempt to be impartial failed. I have reviewed the translations on Channel Sukura (85% correct and 15% incorrect). This was in order to establish whether the Channel had manipulated her viewpoint. Unfortunately, the interviewer nudged her into appearing to be taking a very sympathetic conservative stand with Japan on the comfort woman issue. I then found that protest emails sometimes pay off! I informed Mayor Swift on how Channel Sakura manipulated the interview. She now has regrets. Hopefully she won’t be granting any more interviews to Channel Sakura.

The second incident was the agreement of the Nagoya Education Centre to accommodate an ultra-right group, the Zaitokukai, and allow an exhibition maintaining that the comfort women issue is a fabrication. Objections were to no avail. The Nagoya Education Centre then informed activists in support of comfort women that it did not want a law suit for refusing to permit the exhibition. Flyers for the event were handed out in tissue packages.

The third incident was another cover up to try and preserve Japan’s international reputation. On the 14^th October, 2013 the Asahi newspaper reported a declassified official document, about Japan’s diplomatic attempts in 1993 to cover up the comfort woman issue in Indonesia. It seems that Japan wanted to snuff out any anti-Japanese sentiment linked to the comfort women issue akin to what was happening in Korea. During the Suharto regime, the Japanese Embassy was successful in obstructing the publication of a book on comfort women, by a famous Indonesian author (name blacked out in declassified document); The Japanese Embassy advised that the publication could “hurt bilateral relations”.

All of these incidents have occurred within the last month, Japan’s long term and continuing offensive to cover up the truth about comfort women is intense. Japanese politicians seem to lack consistency in any issue to do with Japan’s militarist past. They waste our precious time. Sadly time is something the aging former comfort women do not have.

In his meeting with President Yudohono tomorrow, Tony Abbott will find that his one-liners that have been so successful in Australian politics will not have traction in Jakarta. It will require a lot more subtlety than ‘stop the boats’ and ‘axe the tax’.

Our Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop has already been shown how Indonesian society and politics work. She was outflanked by the Indonesian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Marty Natalegawa, who completed a doctorate at the Australian National University in Canberra. He understands Australia and Australian politics very well. At her meeting with Marty Natalegawa in New York, Julie Bishop failed to appreciate that the rhetoric of the coalition about border protection will not work in the complex environment of Indonesia.

In opposition, Julie Bishop kept repeating the mantra that the coalition ‘wasn’t seeking Indonesian permission, we are seeking their understanding’ on border protection and the turn-back of boats.The Indonesian Foreign Minister clearly  rejected unilateral action on border protection and turn-backs at sea. But Julie Bishop didn’t get the message. She again attempted to put an Australian domestic gloss on the meeting with Marty Natalegawa. We now find that the Indonesian record of the meeting that was made public spells  out the Indonesian position very clearly. Marty Natalegawa emphasised that “unilateral steps” such as “tow back the boats” would risk “cooperation and trust” between the two countries. He said that if Australia and Indonesia were to address these problems we should do it as joint chairpersons of the Bali Process.

The first serious encounter between the two foreign ministers was not promising.

In his meeting with President Yudohono it is to be hoped that Tony Abbott can undo some of the damage that Julie Bishop has caused and build a trusting relationship with Indonesia. I suggest there are three things that Tony Abbott will need to keep in mind.

The first is that President Yudohono is a good friend of Australia and he will be very polite. But he is criticised in Jakarta by many as being too friendly and accommodating towards us. His term expires next year and the next president, possibly Joko Widodo, may not be as accommodating. His reputation is that he is more nationalistic and protectionist. The real readings about Indonesian attitudes to Australia will not come from polite discussions with President Yudohono but will come from ministers like Marty Natalegawa, Indonesian members of parliament and officials. We have already seen that in the text of conversation between Marty Natalegawa and Julie Bishop. Only last week, Tantowi Yahya, a prominent member of the Indonesian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Commission, said that ‘Operation Sovereign Borders was offensive and [we] won’t accept it’.

The second is that countries like Indonesia and Malaysia don’t take the same legalistic approach to international relations that Australia often does. Has Tony Abbott the subtlety to understand this? Trust is so important as the basis for developing good relations. For example, the Jakarta Declaration of 20 August 2013 on Irregular Movements of People has been criticised in Australia because it was not legally binding. But with Indonesia and other countries in our region, most progress is made on the basis of trusting one another. With Indonesia, the political and moral leader within ASEAN, the way we build trust with Indonesia will be crucial.

Thirdly, Indonesia is no longer a highly-centralised political country as it was under President Suharto where word from the top carried the day. Indonesia has over 500 local government administrations with widely varying autonomy. It is a lesson which our politicians, business people and our media will have to learn.

The rhetoric of Australian domestic politics that Tony Abbott has so successfully used will not work in Jakarta. This meeting with President Yudohono will be a defining meting for him.

Speaking in support of Tokyo’s bid for the 2020 Olympics, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on 7 September that the situation at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power station was ‘under control’. Recent disclosures, however, about leaks of radioactive water from storage tanks at the site and the contamination of ground water flowing into the ocean make his claim appear brave at best and dishonest at worst. The ‘everything is fine’ stance means the government is still relying primarily on the operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., to see through the clean up and decommissioning process. Though TEPCO might be expected to know more than anyone else about the situation at Fukushima, its performance so far does not inspire confidence.

The problems associated with making safe a large and severely damaged nuclear power station, containing six reactors, are obviously highly technical in nature as well as being unprecedented in scale. I am no expert on the nuclear physics or the engineering involved, but given what has happened so far it seems prudent to pay attention to warnings that are emanating from those who prudently opposed ever allowing a nuclear power industry in such an earthquake-prone country. I do have some knowledge of the way regulators and corporations interact in Japan ­– often so cozily it is hard to tell them apart – and this is another reason for listening to critics who say TEPCO must not be left to its own devices.

When the earthquake and giant tsunami struck two years ago, three of Fukushima’s six nuclear reactors were on line. The fuel rods in all three subsequently melted down releasing high-level radiation that contaminated a vast area of land around the plant. Two other reactors, units 5 and 6, were in cold shutdown for maintenance. That left unit 4, which was offline, with all its fuel rods transferred to the spent fuel pool. The building housing this unit was badly damaged and still lacks a roof. In order to make it safe the fuel rods inside must be removed – an operation that itself poses serious risks.

TEPCO all along has maintained a sanguine commentary about the situation at unit 4. On 14 February it reported that the temperature of the spent fuel pool was stable at 25-30 degrees Celsius and that the fuel rods were ‘secured inside the rack’ and well covered by water. The building, it said, was standing upright and not on a lean. On 26 April TEPCO reported that a structural analysis had confirmed that the building, including the spent fuel pool, which is raised above the ground, would not collapse even if struck by another earthquake of seismic intensity 6. It restated this opinion on 29 June.

But if TEPCO is the government’s main source of information, there is evidence that even members of the government are struggling to achieve an understanding of the real situation. Doubts about Abe’s grasp of the facts have been aired in various quarters, including in the Asahi Shimbun of 20 September. It noted that, after a visit to the Fukushima plant, Abe told reporters: ‘The effects of contaminated water have been completely blocked within a range of 0.3 square kilometres within the harbor’. The newspaper commented that ‘although Abe used the term “blocked”, the silt fences in the harbour cannot prevent all water from flowing out into the ocean. Radioactive materials pass through the silt fences and mix with the ocean, becoming so diluted that they are difficult to detect. Even Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, the top government spokesman, said the measures at the Fukushima site were not stopping all of the water within the harbour.’ Experts also criticized the outdated sampling methods being used, which can result in a tenfold variation in measures of radiation.

So who really knows and who is telling the truth?

Various anti-nuclear blog sites are sounding the alarm. Harvey Wasserman, a journalist-activist writing at www.globalresearch.ca claims the world is ‘within two months of what could be human kind’s most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis’. He goes on: ‘Fukushima’s owner, Tokyo Electric (Tepco), says that within as few as 60 days it may begin trying to remove more than 1300 spent fuel rods from a badly damaged pool perched 100 feet in the air. The pool rests on a badly damaged building that is tilting, sinking and could easily come down in the next earthquake, if not on its own. Some 400 tons of fuel in that pool could spew out more than 15,000 times as much radiation as was released at Hiroshima’. Wasserman’s claims, as we have seen, directly contradict TEPCO’S public statements, but he is not the only voice questioning the operator’s credibility. The website www.fukuleaks.org cites concerns about the rods having shifted out of alignment, and thus being difficult to grasp and remove, and corrosion of their protective casings. The greatest danger would arise if the fuel rods came into contact with each other or were exposed to the air. Some activists are calling for an international task force of experts to take over control, though there are no concrete moves in that direction. In the latest English-language update on the status of the power station provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency by Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority none of these specific concerns are addressed. It mere states that the removal of spent fuel from unit 4 will start in November and concentrates instead on the leaking water issue – in a sense, yesterday’s problem.

(The update is at www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2013/fukushimaupdate160913.pdf)

With so much conflicting information and so many compromising factors involved (the Japanese government now locked in to Abe’s ‘under control’ mantra and TEPCO keen to deflect further criticism and keep a lid on the spiraling costs of decommissioning) it would be foolhardy not to consider the situation at Fukushima both serious and unresolved. Insufficient progress has not been made towards building trust to justify any other conclusion.

Walter Hamilton, a former ABC Tokyo correspondent, is the author of Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story (NewSouth Books).

In my August 1 blog I referred to the failure of many Australian companies to integrate their business and human resource strategies. Too many send executives overseas on an ad hoc basis without planning how that experience gained overseas can be used when they return as a catalyst to change the business culture of the Australian organisation.

Every individual has personality. Every organisation has a culture. The grip of that culture – the way we do things without thinking – is remarkably powerful. It entrenches status, power, attitudes and values. It is hard to change.

My experience is that overseas experience is the best way to challenge and change individuals and organisational culture. Cultural difference needs to be experienced rather than learned. It is visceral rather than cerebral. That is why overseas experience, living and working in a different culture, can be the best catalyst for change in individuals and organisations. It can’t really be learned in a classroom.

Yet few Australian organisations are really serious about overseas experience being the catalyst for changing the organisational culture at home. The Business Alliance for Asian Literacy, representing over 400,000 businesses in Australia, recently found that ‘More than half of Australian businesses operating in Asia had little board and senior management experience of Asia and/or Asian skills or languages’. It is proving very hard to changes insular cultures. Asia is an ad hoc add on and little more.

My contention is that sending promising staff to overseas appointments is the best way to drive cultural change provided the process is well organised, including the return home. That wise planning also involves support for spouse/partner and children. If they are unsuited or unhappy it will greatly impair the success of the overseas posting.

But too often those executives returning from overseas are not supported and they often leave the organisation. They have changed their outlook and world view but on return, they find the organisation is still as insular as ever.

I have seen figures from the US suggesting   that 70% of executives returning from overseas assignments leave their organisations within 3 years. The Ernst & Young survey of 2012 that I mentioned in my earlier blog of August 1 pointed to the very high cost to organisations of executives sent overseas and then leaving soon after return to the organisation at home.

It is eight years old, but the Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Reform Committee report, ‘Enquiry into Australian Expatriates’ said

‘The committee is surprised at the level of disappointment of many repatriates concerning the job opportunities available to them on their return to Australia. Many of them left Australia precisely because of the greater employment opportunities on the world stage, the higher incomes, the greater job satisfaction or the enhanced career opportunities. Even if they have returned to Australia, as many undoubtedly have, with more experience, enhanced skills, better contacts and greater cross-cultural understanding, this does not necessarily mean that openings will have developed in Australia in their absence.’

That Senate report, and my own reading and experience, confirms in my mind the difficulties of expatriates returning from an overseas assignment. Many have told me that they feel unwelcome and their organisation quite unsympathetic. There was often resentment that they had had the benefit of an overseas trip whilst executives at home really kept the business going and did the hard work!.

So many Australian companies do not understand that if they want to change their organisational culture to make it more sensitive and understanding of the countries in our region, they must take greater care on the returning home process. It is just as important as the selection of executives to go overseas and supports them when they are overseas.

If we want to adapt and change organisational culture in Australia to fit better with our Asian geography, we need to effectively integrate business and human resource strategy at every stage. So often we waste the opportunity .Business strategy and human resource management so often work in parallel and not together.

Overseas experience in Asia can be the catalyst for organisational change in Australia provided it is done carefully and over a long period. If developed well, overseas experience can progressively build a change team. At the moment we are just not building those change teams.

Taro Aso, Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Japan, has a clumsy tongue; it’s always getting him into trouble. He’s so malapropic (remember the one about people becoming so affluent ‘even the homeless are getting diabetes’), we can only shake our heads and say, ‘Japan’s a funny place,’ before changing the channel on our Sonys.

 But wait a moment. Did he really say this latest thing?

 On Monday Aso addressed a forum on constitutional change organised by a right-wing lobby group, the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals (more on it later). He spoke extempore, as usual, with an eye to creating controversy that, if necessary, might be explained away later. The rubric ‘I was misunderstood’ or ‘I failed to explain myself properly’ or ‘I didn’t say what I meant’ is familiar with politicians of Aso’s type, who habitually linger between not meaning what they say and not saying what they mean.

 The Deputy Prime Minister reminded his audience that the National Socialist Party in Germany came to power by democratic means under the Weimar Constitution. ‘They did not seize power by force of arms. It’s easy to forget they were chosen by the German people.’

 He then turned to the subject at hand.

Inside Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, he said, discussion of constitutional change went on calmly, without raised voices, and that was the best way to proceed. Politicians need not stir up passions by, for instance, visiting Yasukuni Shrine on the anniversary of Japan’s defeat. (Yasukuni enshrines the country’s war dead, including a number of convicted war criminals.) China and South Korea were sure to complain. Why not go, quietly, on another day? It was always better to avoid a fuss (though he conceded, mischievously, that when he once suggested the anniversary of Japan’s 1905 victory over Russia as a better day it had caused one.)

 Mr Aso again took up the example of Germany to illustrate his argument: ‘One day, before anyone was aware, the Weimar Constitution was changed into the Nazi Constitution. It was changed without anyone noticing. Why don’t we learn from that technique.’

Oops.

Presumably the particular audience he was addressing found it instructive to learn from the Nazis, since it was not until his comments were reported in the media, and condemned in the United States, Germany, China and South Korea, that a retraction became necessary. Reading from a prepared statement on Friday he conceded that it was inappropriate to offer the Nazis as a model for any undertaking. He had been ‘misunderstood’.

 In reporting Aso’s original comments, some Japanese media outlets suggested he was being  sarcastic, or at least ambiguous, and should not be taken seriously. The Japan Times – well known  for its pro-LDP leanings – was one of them. But having gone over Aso’s entire speech with the assistance of a Japanese native speaker, I believe there can be no doubt he was extolling the virtues of constitutional change by stealth.

Aso is not a minor member of the government. He served – without distinction – as Prime Minister in 2008-2009 and remains close to the current leader Shinzo Abe. Both men are descendants of Japan’s conservative old guard. Taro Aso is a grandson of Shigeru Yoshida, who led Japan in the 1940s and 1950s, and his wife is a daughter of another former LDP chief Zenko Suzuki. His views on history reflect an intimate connection with past historical misdeeds. A family business, Aso Mining Company, in Fukuoka (Aso’s electorate) exploited Korean conscript labour and Allied prisoners, including nearly 200 Australian POWs.

 The organisation that provided Aso a platform for his ‘Nazi’ remarks, the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals, formed in 2007, has a mission to ‘reconstruct’ a ‘malfunctioning’ Japan. Its president is Yoshiko Sakurai, 67, whose career in journalism began with the foreign media in Tokyo in the 1970s. She attracted a following as the host of a nightly television current affairs program in the 1980s and 1990s, taking up progressive social issues. More recently, however, she has become a glamorous proponent of extreme right-wing views.

Her institute can be judged by its string of recent policy pronouncements: ‘All Japanese must be resolved to reject foreign interference in our own affairs’; ‘Japan should lead international rule-setting to pursue national interest’; ‘Japan should not abandon nuclear power generation’. Sakurai advocates a tough line against China and South Korea, abandonment of Japan’s pacifist constitution, and all-out pursuit of the LDP’s economic and cultural agenda. Born in Hanoi just a month after the surrender, she is the archetypal ‘child’ of the postwar peace and prosperity Japan has enjoyed under its current constitution. As a political insider and media darling, however, she appeals to younger Japanese ripe to be recruited to the argument that Japan has become a ‘malfunctioning state’ (a phrase the Nazis would have approved of) due to a lack of vigour and self-assertiveness.

The accident-prone Mr Aso will have done his country and the world a service if only, by knocking over the furniture, he has managed to awaken the household to the presence of intruders stepping softly towards the family jewels.

In my blog of March 14 on Productivity and Skills I drew attention to the failure of Australian business to equip itself for Asia. PM Rudd in his address to the National Press Club on 16 July this year put it very clearly.

‘I am concerned that if you went through our business elites, you would not find a lot of the top 25 executives in each of our top 100 firms who have spent any of their career time serving in Asia – the engine driver of the global economy through until mid-century. Remember this is the Asian Century. The truth is Australia is much underdone in Asia.’

There are many reasons for our business failure in Asia. One is the continuing habit of company boards appointing people like themselves – Anglo-Celtic males, often from the same schools and with little knowledge or experience in Asia. Talk about the unions running a closed shop!

One other major obstacle in Australia and elsewhere to developing Asian skills in our major companies is their failure to align business and human resource strategies. Cross-cultural experience that are learned by appointing staff overseas are too often ad hoc and operational. Overseas appointments are not used as the catalyst to drive change in the organisation at home.

The most extreme example that I know of business failure to integrate business and HR strategy is Rio Tinto. It staffed its Shanghai office with local Chinese. Unfortunately some of them finished in goal. But the major failure was that Rio Tinto apparently had no plan to use postings in China to develop executives who would come back to Australia and use the experience gained in China to drive cultural and organisational change in Australia.

This failure is not just an Australian problem. A recent Global Mobility Effectiveness Survey, 2012, by Ernst & Young entitled ‘Driving Business Success’ highlighted the problem of so many firms sending staff overseas in a quite ad hoc manner and not using that experience learned overseas to enrich the talent pool of the organisation. (This survey covered 520 international countries including some from Australia.)

The survey said that business should take several crucial steps to improve its performance in overseas markets. It said that companies needed to ‘better align mobility strategy with business strategy … crucially talent-management and global mobility must be integrated.’

There is a lot of depressing reading from this survey.

• Only 51% of companies surveyed have a global talent management agenda.
• Less than a quarter of senior management have been on (overseas) assignment.
• More than one in twelve countries had at least 11% of international assignees return before the end of their contracts – at huge cost.

I will write later about the disappointment of many executives who on return from overseas postings quickly leave their organisations. They often feel that the cultural experience overseas has changed them and their outlook on the world but the culture of the company back in Australia has not changed. It remained a closed shop. So they leave and the money invested in them is lost, at least to the company.

If there is any consolation in the Ernst & Young survey it is that Australia is not alone in failure to equip itself for Asia and new markets. But with our geographic position, we have probably more to lose by not properly equipping ourselves for our own region.

A key is clearly the integration of a business strategy for Asia and the human resources strategy – to steadily build on the experience of executives living and working in Asia, and when they return to Australia to use that experience to drive organisational change at home. We have a long way to go.

There is a lot of lip service by Australian companies about the Asian Century. They seem unable to grasp what is involved to change organisational culture and in the process drive productivity improvements and their long-term business prospects in our region.

The business and other opportunities in Asia is not something new. The spectacular economic rise of Japan started 50 years ago. It was followed by Korea. Now it is China. Where has our business sector been in the last 50 years? It has profited opportunistically but has not built the skill base we need for the long term.