Ichiro Ozawa resigned last week as leader of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) over a fundraising scandal. The opposition democrats had a leadership election on Saturday and were faced with the choice between Yukio Hatoyama and Katsuya Okada, two former DPJ leaders with solic track records as total losers. Hatoyama won by a comfortable margin.

The basic political profiles of the two men are:

• Hatoyama was head of the DPJ from 1999 to 2002, after which he resigned after taking responsibility for the “confusion” over rumors about the merger with the Liberal Party, which was at the time lead be former DPJ leader Ichiro Ozawa. The two parties ultimately did merge, and Hatoyama took a role in party leadership. (Hatoyama’s tenure was preceded and followed by Naoto Kan, another regular in the leadership roster of the DPJ).

• Okada became head of the DPJ in 2004 and led the party to one of its largest electoral victories in history during the 2004 upper house election. The winning streak didn’t last—he resigned a year later after his party suffered a dramatic losses in the 2005 general election that saw Koizumi’s ruling party the Liberal Democratic Party take its strongest win in history.

For an opposition party that has been floundering in defeat for more than a decade as it struggles to take power, the candidates for the leadership are a sorry pair. Not only are they both uncharasmatic repeat losers, it shows the party has a poor ability at cultivating new leaders.

Hatoyama’s selection is especially ironic when you consider that weeks ago, the DPJ suddenly made their public pet issue the ending of hereditary elected positions. In many districts in Japan, long-serving members of the Diet retire and have sons run in their place. I don’t have current figures, but I’ve read that at one time, as many as one third of the districts had such hereditary members. The DPJ is trying to end the practice, but this new and sudden moral mission is amusingly ironic now that Hatoyama is the party leader. Hatoyama is the grandson of former Prime Minister Ichiro Hatoyama, the son of former Foreign Minister Iichiro Hatoyama, and his brother is the current ruling party Minister of Justice. Do the rules, or at least the spirit of the rules, not apply to the leaders?

Hatoyama’s impending task is leading the party into an election that is just months away. The DPJ was favored to win for months, but with the new fundraising scandals facing the party and PM Aso finally finding his mojo, the LDP may now manage to win yet another election. And when Hatoyama and Okada are the best possible men to be proposed to lead the nation, perhaps that’s for the best.

Ikizukuri (or ikitsukuri or iketsukuri) is a controversial Japanese method of preparing raw fish for consumption in which the fish (or other marine animal) is filleted and prepared alive, its carcass then put on display for the consumer to witness while eating.

Last weekend I saw a truly awesome display of ikizukuri in a cafeteria-style restaurant run by a fishing coopeartive, and posted the photos, along with a discussion of the morality behind the practice, at mutantfrog, where I occasionally contribute posts regarding Japan topics. You can read that post here. I’d encourage readers to engage in the discussion in the comments section in that post—but for those who just want to see the gore, my photos are posted below…

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During the heady days of the Koizumi era, it was common to see and hear of unusually progressive changes in how Japan worked. That included foreign private equity companies buying and managing Japanese banks, foreign-born naturalized persons elected to the Parliament, and privatization of such public institutions as the post office.

Since Koizumi left, there has been a feeling of malaise, that Japan has stagnated and even reverted to the old ways of fighting change. That’s certainly the common wisdom. But the past few weeks have been a rollercoaster of change that I can barely keep up:

• – The state bureaucrat civil service law has been rewritten to abolish “career bureaucrats” and introduce a new system that promotes technocracy.
• – The Ainu indigenous people of Hokkaido are to be recognized as a separate ethnicity in their own right
• – Bastard half-Japanese children can now obtain Japanese citizenship with recognition after birth, whereas previously the fathers had to recognize the children before birth or marry the mother
• – And now here’s the latest unbelievable item—Japan is to become an “Immigrant Nation”!

In my education in Japan and observation of public life, the word imin kokka—immigrant nation—is used to state what Japan is not. How often have Japan-watchers heard that Japan is a nation of “one language, one people, one culture.” Yet when I opened my newspaper this morning I saw some of Japan’s most powerful and conservative politicians state exactly the opposite: “In order for Japan to survive, it must open its doors as an international state to the world and shift toward establishing an ‘immigrant nation’ by accepting immigrants and revitalizing Japan.” The goal? 10% of Japan should be made up of immigrants over the next half century.

This is the first time any serious government proposal has referred to newcomers as “immigrants” instead of merely foreigners, with the emphasis on “visitors.” The proposal also said a foreigner who has lived in Japan for 10 years or longer should be given nationality if the person wishes to become a Japanese citizen, and citizenship should be given to all permanent residents.

A big question of mine, for certain reasons, is dual citizenship. Japan has previously forbidden dual citizenship for anyone over the age of 20, although the enforcement of this is so haphazard as to be laughable. The reason for the prohibition on multiple citizenship has been that Japan is, as noted, a nation of “one language, one people, one culture.” Will changes come with the new immigrant nation proposal? I’ll be watching developments closely.

Japan is an archipelago and has no land border with any neighboring nation. However, several towns and regions take the modern role of “border town”—politically, economically, and culturally.

Wakkanai is the northernmost town in Japan and is located just across from Sakhalin island, which today is Russian territory. Wakkanai developed a century ago as a port for transportation of goods to and from Sakhalin Island, the southern region of which was once Japanese. Today it serves primarily as a fishing town and regularly sees Russian sailors who bring their catches to Japan.

Tsushima Island is situated between Japan’s Kyushu Island and Korea, between the respective cities of Fukuoka and Pusan. Historically Japanese, it has long been a point of transit for trade between Japan and Korea through the course of many centuries, from lacquerware to cuisine. The island was ruled for centuries by the So clan, which historically even advocated Korean interests in Japan, and the last member of the clain Takeyuki married Princess Deokhye of Korea in 1931.

I have visited both Wakkanai and Tsushima, and one telling example that shows the interraction with the neighboring regions is road signs. All road signs in Japan display the Japanese names followed by Roman letters. Road signs in Wakkanai and Tsushima are trilingual, with a third language of either Russian or Korean.

Relations with the the respective foreigners in both border towns are polar opposites. Tsushima has an economy that has grown very dependent on investment and tourists from South Korea. In Wakkanai and other parts of the northern island of Hokkaido, incidents of crude or criminal Russian sailors has led to poor relations.

Sake-Drenched Postcards has a great account on clashes between far left and far right protestors at Yasukuni Shrine. With photos! Check it out here.

Both Malaysia and Japan are democratic states. Yet both have seen a majority party in control of all branches of government for many decades. In Japan, it’s the Liberal Democratic Party, while in Malaysia, it’s the Barisan Nasional (National Front). Elections a few years ago in both countries rewarded both – Japan’s LDP won a crushing 2/3rds majority in the lower house in 2005, and the Barisan Nasional won a whopping 90 percent of parliamentary seats in 2004.

However, these historic wins were short-lived. Just as Japan’s opposition Democratic Party won a majority in the upper house for the first time in history in 2007, Malaysia’s opposition party won key states in this weekend’s general election, and Barisan Nasional has lost its two-thirds majority for the first time since 1969 (read local blogger accounts here, here, here and here). The situation in Japan and Malaysia is now the same—after a few short years, the majority remains in control, but substantially weaker.

For decades both parties managed the economy and the general civic welfare of the nation, which voters recognized and rewarded accordingly. But scandals in recent years for both parties have undermined public support. The question in both Malaysia and Japan is whether the opposition will be able to deliver the final blow and wrest control of the executive branch. Whether or not that will succeed remains to be seen.

NEW DEHLI, India – Recent publication of graphic images of cows at an American slaughterhuose released by the Indian Cultural Affairs Office on Thursday mean a stronger legal case against cattle consumption, the Indian government says. Indian government officials have been monitoring American slaughterhouse activity and the nation is still considering what kind of legal action is available, should be taken, and which institutions and individuals should be targeted.

The picture above was released by the Indian Cultural Affairs Office and shows a spinning sawblade about to slit the throat of one cow in an American industrial slaughterhouse. The cow swinging from the mechanical rack was in the same position 30 seconds before.

Environment Minister Gogel Ganguli says the pictures support India’s position in condemning cattle slaughter. “I think it’s explicitly clear from these images that this is industrial-style killing of cows.” Agricultural Minister Kumar Patel said the “shocking images” would support international legal action to stop the mass factory farming of cows that claims the lives of more than a hundred million cows a year in the United States alone. It is not yet clear how the pictures were obtained.

The US State Department has condemned the Indian government and media for “creating emotional propaganda to mislead the public.” The Agricultural Department has further asserted that instead of publication of images that insight fear and hate, “we must handle the issues calmly and avoid damaging friendly relations.” The United States was particular concerned about one leading media report titled, “Death! Dismemberment! Exclusive footage of America’s shocking cattle slaughter!”

Complicating the debate is the finding that red meat can directly and indirectly cause a wide variety of health problems including cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease, and obesity. But the findings have not swayed US government officials. As part of the regular US rebuttal of India’s beef with these matters, Washington says its slaughter is legal and part of its historical food culture. The Hindu practice of revering cows in India is not a value that should be exported overseas at the expense of friendly relations, said a government spokesman.

Yet international pressure on the United States is growing. Jolipimp Wigglebottom, the environment commissioner of ASEAN, released a statement reading in part, “the graphic images on our television screens bring home the reality of cattle slaughter.”

Amid the tensions, a poll published Wednesday said that nearly two-thirds of Americans back beef consumption, although support is apparently waning among vegetarians.

Author notes: Image taken from the documentary film Our Daily Bread. Actual method of execution was either electrical or captive bolt. Thanks as always to Party Pooper for creative inspiration.

Most Americans know that it was the Zimmermann Telegram, sent by Germany to Mexico at the height of World War I, that brought US into the war in Europe. Frustrated with blatant US support of Britain, Germany solicited Mexico to invade the southern United States and offered aid and assistance. However, the telegram was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence and passed to the US, which provided the sufficient casus belli for war.

What few people know is that the Mexican response was, on its face, carefully considered. The country was then undergoing a constitutional crisis shepparded by President Venustiano Carranza, who assigned the military with a feasibility study of a takeover of lost territories of Texas, Arizon, and New Mexico. The study concluded that the plan as proposed by Germany was neither possible nor desirable for the following reasons:

• + Attempting to re-take the former territories would mean certain war with the United States.

• + No matter how “generous” it was, Germany’s “financial support” would be worthless as the United States was the only sizeable arms manufacturer in the Americas.

• + Even if Germany was to supply arms, the British Royal Navy controlled the Atlantic sea lanes, unless if absolute submarine warfare truly was successful in destroying the British fleet, which Mexico doubted.

• + Even if Mexico had the military means to re-take the territory it would have had severe difficulty pacifying the large English-speaking population.

Mexico accordingly provided an offical rejection to the offer by Germany—two weeks after the US declared war on Germany.

Also, I find it interesting that the decoded text of the telegram referred to possible involvement by Japan:

… we propose an alliance on the following basis with Mexico: That we shall make war together and make peace together. We shall give generous financial support, and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona… suggest that the President, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence with this plan; at the same time, offer to mediate between Japan and ourselves.

Reading the text of the telegram was the first I heard of the Japan connection. Interesting to note that the possibility of war between the US and Japan, and peace/alliance between Germany and Japan, was openly discussed at this early year of 1917.

Fascinating story. The luxuries enjoyed by Americans in post-war Japan spread to the rest of the “expat” world and was addressed and criticized in the book The Ugly American.

From Roy at MF:

This is already a week old, but did anyone notice that the very same day US Congressman Mike Honda (D, California) issued yet another call for Japan to issue a more concrete apology to former comfort women, New Jersey became the first Northern state in the United States to issue a formal apology for our state’s history of slavery? Although four Southern states of Virginia, Maryland, Alabama, and North Carolina had previously issued similar resolutions, the fact that many Northern states still allowed slave-holding well into the 19th century has been largely ignored. New Jersey, for example, did not finally ban slavery until 1846. There has been no such resolution at the federal level.

While it might be nice to see the Japanese government officially acknowledge past crimes in more specificity, perhaps the US Congress should apologize for slavery at the national level before its members go overseas to demand that foreign governments do the same thing. Maybe by setting a moral example, Mister Honda might convince a wider audience of his credibility.

Yup, that about sums it up.