Author: Toshio Aritake

TOKYO, July 4, 2020—Two Chinese coastguard ships had entered Japanese territorial waters around Japan’s Senkaku Islands on July 2 and remained there for more than 30 hours through July 3, a record-long violation of the United Nation’s Law of the Sea Convention, a Japanese Coast Guard spokesperson said July 4.
It was the 14th time since the beginning of this year that Chinese ships intruded into Japanese waters, the spokesman said. The Chinese coastguard vessels were identified as No. 2302 and No. 2502. He said there was one Japanese fishing boat operating in the area and the Japanese Coast Guard was on alert to protect the fishing boat. He declined to say how many Japanese patrol boats were in the area, but it’s believed to be one vessel.
At his regular news conference, Japanese chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga said his government was ‘strongly protesting (to the Chinese government) on the diplomatic level. The Chinese foreign ministry has instead that Senkaku Islands are China’s sovereign territory and cannot accept the Japanese protest, according to news reports.
Even though the Chinese maritime offensive against Japan is escalating, the U.S. military seems to continue taking a hands-off attitude. It could be because the Chinese invasion of the Japanese waters has not triggered a material confrontation, but as was the case of the Spratly Islands in South China Sea, the Chinese might claim physical control of Senkaku with frequent invasions and intimidations with the belief that the Japanese Self-Defense forces are limited in performing military actions by law and for its limited resources.
While The Obama While House kept silent, the Chinese continued building installations in the Spratly Islands and elseswhere.

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Tokyo, July 4, 2020—In the seemingly endless coronavirus pandemic saga, we (at least I) tend to see our environs with gloom, or at best, mumble ‘Que sera sera’ and grin and bear the resent condition. Boredom from self-restraint of not being able to travel, meet people, and speak and sing aloud is seeping deep unto us. And we (I) are growing skeptical about the United States’ ability to lead the world and fear that China would become the largest global influencer in a few years. So the world is not an exciting place now.
Well, that is not really true. As I have been perusing news stories on-line in late June, I stumbled into stories about a U.S. supreme court decision overturning Donald Trump’s ultraconservative policies and upholding abortion rights as constitutional. The decision came days after the highest court ruled against Trump on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and LGTBQ workplace rights. The liberal rulings could not have been possible without the votes of pro-Trump justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and the Trump appointee, Neil Gorsuch.
What can be deduced from those cases is that the highest U.S. court practices common sense with disregard for political interference from Trump and Congress, and it delivers decisions reasonably close to lay language releasing them on its website promptly.
The Japanese supreme court can be, almost in stark contrast, easily swayed by politics and other external pressures. And its decisions are released on its website in cryptic judicial language, so illegible that most people don’t care to read. Cases are posted on its website in docket numbers alone. One of its recent decisions, which had drawn much Japanese media coverage, was what is known as the hometown tax system. Shinzo Abe’s government disqualified Isumi-sano City near the western metro area of Osaka from using the tax system for collecting donations from taxpayers because of what the government had determined as excessive return gifts to taxpayers. The supreme court on June 30 ruled the government measure as illegal.
The case doesn’t warrant top court deliberations, and checking recent decisions, most were not of nation-shaking cases. Such cases as Abe’s graft-for-favor Moritomo and Kakei scandals, known as daily-front-paged ‘Morikake’ scandal combined, rarely go to the highest court. The case is now in a high court and the key plaintiff, Yasunori Kagoike, was sentenced to 5 years prison but, strangely, released on bail in February. It could be a few years before the case goes to the supreme court, if it does, when Abe, an alleged accomplice, would be long retired as prime minister. The smell of politics in the judiciary involving courts, prosecutors, and defense attorneys.
It’s been known that the Japanese justice structure is far from independent from the Diet (parliament) and the executive branch, and it clearly shows in the roster of 15 justices (15 compared with 9 for the U.S. counterpart!). Many of them had served as judges in lower courts, prosecutors, lawyers, and academia, as well as strong tie connections to the University of Tokyo law school. Eight of the current justices are the university’s graduates, and only one justice came from the non-judicial occupation, Keiichi Hayashi, a former top foreign ministry official. Not a single person came from the private business sector, and all are Abe administration appointees.
As I write this article, I’ve realized that I know all nine U.S. Supreme court justices and zero of the 15 Japanese top court. This could be a reason why I do not trust the Japanese judiciary – courts, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, and the para-legals.

–Toshio Aritake

June 13, 2020–The rainy season seems to have started. It reminds me of the Japan of by-gone days when every Japanese took it as a seasonal natural turn. Like the Byrds’ hit song. It brought rain, day in and out, making everything wet and moldy, and people to wish for the early arrival of the scorching summer heat and clear blue skies as cicadas scrape their feathers so noisily that you fear your ear drums might pop. Summer always arrived after lightenings and thunderstorms scaring children and animals and signaling the rainy season’s end. And yet you do not dislike what felt like the eternal drizzle and appreciate watching the threads falling from the gray sky noiselessly to the slowly meandering river, then to rice paddies that awoke green a short days ago. I realize finding myself liking the beginning of this season now for I am no longer certain whether it would actually come every year. It was a dry rainy season last year and I think the year before was too. Man find comfort and stability in cyclical turns and routines. We had it before the internet revolution of the 1980s-1990s, and the dissipation if it as the revolution expanded to mobilizing AI, robotics, IoT…that arbitrarily cause degradation and dehumanization of fauna and flora, including humans stripping us of necessary animal senses (called the Sixth Sense) and pulling us below our pets in terms of mammal capacity.
Is this what we want to head for?!

TOKYO, June 12, 2020—The Japanese stock market, which shone as the gold pavilion of the world in the 1980s, totally lost its luster. Even Toyota Motor, Panasonic and Honda Motor whose products once were envy of global consumers have been lackluster on the Tokyo Stock Exchange over the past several years. What it means is that Japan is finished as a post-WWII economic miracle and set to go into deep oblivion of other countries. The country would become an East Asian resort destination for Asian neighbors for its abundance of natural resources, and if its socioeconomic conditions become desperate, a Chinese province.
I have come to this conclusion by randomly analyzing historical stock price charts of leading Japanese companies, the likes of the three well-known companies but also of decades-old ones in industrial sectors and late-comers in consumer industries like Uniqlo.After hitting a record high of 8,783 yen in March 2015, Toyota has been fluctuating around the 7,000-yen level the past five years for most of the intervening period. That’s even with its massive stock buy-back over several times during the period. The pattern is more or less the same for Panasonic and Honda. And lesser known companies’ performances are more miserable: Nippon Steel, which once boasted as the world’s largest and best steel maker, was as high as 3,590 yen in September 2013. It’s now 1,016 yen.
Of course, there are companies whose stocks are rising, the likes of low-priced apparel maker Uniqlo and low-priced furniture retailer Nitori. But they do not come from the traditional and contemporary manufacturing sectors such as autos, electronics, and bio and robotics; they thrive on business models and designs that had been unbeknown to the Japanese until their stores opened in Japan. There are also-run and look-alike biopharma manufacturers and startups dabbling in robotics but not of the levels you find in the United States or Europe.
Based on my random analysis, and if the stock market is an indicator of developments to come in three years or afterwards, Japanese society is not looking promising. Rather, it’s looking gloomier than before, particularly after the coronavirus pandemic swept the world this winter.
So it was no surprising to hear long-time stock investor friends and economists say that the Japanese stock market – and the economy too – is in the midst of a slow death.

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TOKYO, May 29, 2020–The stock markets around the world are definitely in a bubble, and the roar is all the more eerie when considering that unemployment is surging and the economies are tanking. The secret is that Trump stole the MMT theory from Bernie Sanders without paying royalties.
It’s so ironic that Trump has adopted the Modern Monetary Theory, which theoretically is meant to rescue the needy and narrow the income gap between them and the riches.
Instead of going to the people who are leading a hand-to-mouth living and need money to pay for the rent and groceries, MMT money that the Federal Reserve is creating by buying anything to pump money into the banking system is going into the stock market and has sparked a bubble.
I’ve found a video clip of Reuter’s interview of Stephanie Kelton, one of the founders of the theory. It was as old as August 2019.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-mmt/mmt-may-be-democrats-economic-cure-but-only-trump-got-the-memo-idUSKCN1UX1VN

Tokyo, May 28, 2020—Siding with the United States, Australia and the UK, Japan would deny Chinese telecom companies selling 5G telecom equipment and systems to Tokyo’s 5G program, the Yomiuri newspaper, one of Japanese national dailies, reported May 27. While the ban is aimed at preempting potential Chinese cyber attacks on the Japanese system now being constructed, it could have a toxic impact on one of the three main telecom carriers that and could slow the country’s 5G development.
The newspaper said the Japanese government had compiled new guidelines on telecom equipment procurement and that Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, said at a news conference (the date, time and other details could not be identified) that equipment and systems to be mobilized in Japan should be free of malicious apps and functions. The daily identified Huawei and ZTE as subject to the guidelines.
The Trump administration, the Australian government and the UK, are poised to ban Chinese telecom equipment manufacturers from government procurement. This week, a Canada court ruled that Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, under house arrest in Canada since 2018, that her case meets the threshold of double criminality and that she had committed crimes both in the United States and Canada. The United States claims that Meng violated U.S. sanctions against Iran.
If the Japanese guidelines are to be enforced on the two Chinese companies, then Japan’s 5G plan could slow significantly. In the mobile telecom market, NTT DoCoMo, a former telecom monopoly, commands a 43.2 percent market share, and KDDI/au, a Toyota Motor Corp. affiliate, 31.4 percent. The smallest of the three main carriers, Softbank 25.4 percent. Softbank and KDDI/au have a joint undertaking called 5G Japan Corp. to jointly build and share %G antennas.
Japan began offering 5G services in early 2020. DoCoMo　offers 5G smart phones and South Korea’s Samsung and LG, Japan’s Sharp., Sony, but also China’s OPPO. KDDI/au sells the same smart phone makers’ models as well as ZTE’s. Softbank also sells the same makers and industry officials have said they expect Hauwei 5G phones to hit store shelves soon. China is penetrating into Japan with smart phones as well as its 5G technology, urging Japanese parts makers and telecoms to adopt its technology.

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Chino, Japan, May 21, 2020—Hiromu Kurokawa, a top prosecutor widely viewed as Shinzo Abe’s protege who is believed to be asked by the Japanese prime minister to exonerate a beleaguered lawmaker couple facing possible arrest, May 21 tendered his resignation to the prime minister admitting that he had played mahjong money gambling games with three journalists, a blatant violation of ethics for the Japanese criminal justice system. It’s another big political setback for Abe who wants to serve another term and amend the pacifist constitution. The incident also has sparked doubts about Japanese journalism integrity and independence of reporters, and arguments that ‘kisha (press) clubs annexed to the prime minister’s office and government administrative offices are hotbeds of collusion and information rigging.
Kurokawa, the Tokyo Regional Public Prosecutors Office inspector general, played mahjong games on May 1 and 13 at a condominium of a reporter of Sankei Newspaper with the reporter, as well as another Sankei reporter and an Asahi Shimbun reporter, Japanese media reported. The Japanese government was to formally announce his resignation and successor May 21 evening. Kurokawa, 63, was given a half a year extension of his retirement beyond the mandatory retirement when reaching 63. He turned 63 in February 2020 but was given a half a year extension by cabinet order in January 2020. Abe wanted Kurokawa to succeed the current prosecutor-general when his tenure runs its course in August 2020 right after Kurokawa’s half-year extension expires. It’s because Yoshihide Suga, chief cabinet secretary, reportedly wanted Kurokawa to consider exonerating a former justice minister and his wife who illegally paid more than legal limits to election campaign support staff. Prosecutors have been swooping over the couple the past few months, arresting his aide and questioning a local mayor and others.
Asahi released a statement confirming that a Tokyo office employee in his 50s of age played mahjong with Kurokawa and that the company was investigating whether the parties concerned were betting money. It said the employee formerly worked in the Tokyo editorial bureau and had acquainted with Kurokawa over news coverage work and continued associating with Kurokawa over meals during his off-duty days and hours. Sankei declined to comment beyond what was reported by the weekly Shukan Bunshun.
A senior Sankei editorial staffer told The Prospect that one of the two Sankei reporters who played mahjong with Kurokawa ‘invited Kurokawa to his posh (Tokyo) riverside condo.’ Kurokawa asked the reporter and called other guys to join the mahjong games, he said. Kurokawa’s favorite pass-time is playing money gambling mahjong and walking his dog. That he played money-betting games itself was illegal under Japanese law but the staffer told me that more serious was that he prodded the three reporters to join him while Japan was in coronavirus lockdown situation.
The incident is clear proof of the bureaucracy-press collusion for classified government information, passing-on to prosecutors of press ‘scoops’ by reporters, and numerous other exchanges between the two separate worlds that are supposed to confront, like the White House press corps and the president. It’s no surprise that while reporters belonging to the Tokyo public prosecutors office press club would ask mundane, boring questions at press conferences, their papers sometimes splash the front pages with scoops, e.g., on former Nissan Motor Co. CEO Carlos Ghosn who was arrested and detailed for more than half a year until his escape from Japan last year. The prosecutors office, such as Kurokawa, would drop hints or make leaks at such socializing occasions as mahjong.
It’s more or less the same at the prime minister’s office or even at a local city hall. And by no means defending the prosecutors office, other Japanese government entities also are doing it.

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Chino, Japan, May 14—In another big setback for Shinzo Abe, Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson said May 12 he was killing his grand project for a casino and resort facility in Japan and instead funnel more resources in his company’s Macao and Singapore locations.
In a PRNewswire statement, Adelson said that Japan ‘would benefit from the business and leisure tourism generated by an Integrated Resort, the framework around the development of an IR has made our goals there unreachable’ and bid farewell to Japan.
It’s not surprising that SandS has called it quit in light of the fact that the Japanese IR project is smelling foul and crime what with the arrest of a lawmaker of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party in January and questionable discussions at the government casino committee. (See The Prospect Jan. 30, 2020)
Adelson reportedly was planning to invest $10 billion to make a foray into the Japanese IR market. Its business in Las Vegas, Macao and Singapore fell victim to the coronavirus pandemic.
SandS’ withdrawal from the Japanese project leaves only two major foreign casino developers bidding to get in: Genting Singapore and Galaxy Entertainment of Macao.
(https://investor.sands.com/press-releases/press-release-details/2020/Las-Vegas-Sands-ends-pursuit-of-potential-Japanese-development-Chairman-and-CEO-Sheldon-G-Adelson-remains-bullish-on-companys-growth-prospects/default.aspx)

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Chino, Japan, May 14, 2020—Japan’s benchmark M2 plus CD money supply rose 3.7 percent in real terms on month to 1,064 trillion yen, the highest since November 2017 when it grew 4.0 percent, the Bank of Japan, the central bank, reported May 14. The sharp rise, which came after months of lethargic growth barely above 2.0 percent, was an immediate effect of fresh commercial bank lending to coronavirus-distressed borrowers urged by the Japanese government, a bank spokesman told The Prospect.
In March, M2 was up 3.3 percent.Year-on-year, M2 rose a seasonally adjusted 9.3 percent, after rising 5.9 percent in March.
The broad liquidity, which calculates almost all monetary instruments, rose 2.7 percent on month, unchanged from March’s level.
April’s outstanding bank loans were up 3.0 percent on year, rising from a 2.0 percent increase in March, the central bank reported May 13. The Japanese government asked commercial banks in March to keep lending to corona virus-affected borrowers, including outstanding and new loan. Over the coming months, the government is readying to give $900 cash payments to all Japanese citizens while extending government loans totaling some 25 trillion yen. This is expected to be reflected in money data.
The central bank also said it would buy CDs, ETFs, and other monetary instruments from financial institutions to pump liquidity into the banking system to make sure businesses remain afloat during the coronavirus crisis.

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Chino, Japan, May 14, 2020—As of May 13 afternoon, four Chinese coastguard ships remained positioned in close proximity to, but not cruising in, the Japanese territorial waters off the Japanese island clusters of Senkaku, a spokesman for Japan’s 11th Regional Coast Guard Headquarters told The Prospect May 14. There was no Japanese commercial or civilian vessels in the area, he said.
On May 8, two of the four Chinese patrol ships chased after a Japanese fishing boat, which a Headquarters spokesman said was the first such Chinese maritime act ever committed. Since then, the Chinese patrol ship fleet has remained near the Japanese territorial waters off Senkaku showing no signs of leaving the area, a spokesman for the Headquarters said May 14.
Chinese coastguard ships began cruising around the Japanese territorial waters more frequently over the past three months after the global coronavirus pandemic began spreading, including the lockdown of Wuhan, China. The move is seen as the Chinese government’s strategy to divert Chinese people’s frustration toward Xi Jinping’s initial mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic.
In March, Xi had to cancel indefinitely his visit to Japan scheduled for April 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic was spreading in China. Xi wanted to deepen China-Japan relationship to counter the strained China-U.S. relationship by embracing Abe as his key regional partner. Combined, China and Japan outrank the United States as the world’s largest trade and economic duo. It’s the reason why Xi wants to cultivate better ties with Abe.
The Japanese leader also wanted to hedge on improving ties with China as a curve ball against Donald Trump’s unpredictable policies toward Japan.Trump may see Abe as one that he can talk to casually and trust as one of his few allies but it’s not necessarily the rest assured situation for Abe. (Since Trump hates Japan for what he had to experience when he visited Tokyo in the 1990s (at the time, his real estate business was in deep trouble so he wanted to start Trump towers and casinos in Japan but received cold shoulders from Mitsubishi Estate and other Japanese property developers), he still nurtures nasty policies against Japan such as making unruly demands that Japan foot full costs of keeping the U.S. military in Japan and that Japan import U.S.-made cars regardless of the fact there’s no direct U.S.-automaker dealership in Japan.)
China’s latest maritime bluff toward Japan seems to reflect Xi’s thinking that amid the current Japanese political standstill conditions over Abe’s poor management of the coronavirus pandemic in Japan and other policies, and likewise in Trump’s U.S. government administration, Beijing’s diplomatic risks in acting aggressively would be limited.
As Trump is busy with coronavirus issues, China is steadily expanding its reach in the east and south China seas: It has established within its Hainan Province two administrative districts, one near Paracel Islands claimed by Vietnam, and the other near Spratly Island near the Philippines, claimed by Manila and half a dozen countries. Since the early 2010s, China has been building airfields, runways, military and more recently commercial facilities on those islands.

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