Reflections
How the Bank of Japan Can Turn Disaster into Triumph
Published in Japan Forward February 23 2024
If the Bank of Japan were a hedge fund, it would be celebrating a bumper performance, now that its huge treasure trove of Japanese equities has soared in value. Instead, there are concerns about how it can ever sell them. Fortunately, there is a solution that would cause minimal market disturbance while turbo-charging Japan’s new equity culture.
Government bodies are rarely renowned for their investment skills. More typical are their blunders such as the decision of UK Treasury to sell Britain’s gold reserves in 2001. That might have been a good idea in theory, but the timing was disastrous. The transaction was done near the 20 year low of $270 per ounce, and by 2011 the yellow metal had rocketed to $1,800 per ounce, creating billions of pounds of opportunity loss.
All the more reason, then, to applaud the superb market timing of the Bank of Japan in its foray into stock market investment. Some tiny positions in bank stocks were held on the BoJ’s balance sheet as early as 2011, but the really massive purchases were made from 2015 to 2021, as part of the “unconventional monetary policy” initiated by then-BoJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda as part of the late Shinzo’s Abenomics programme.
The average level of the Nikkei Index during that period was 20,800. The largest monthly purchases occurred during the Covid crash, but as the market swiftly recovered, the BoJ decided in early 2021 that enough was enough. The guidelines were changed, and since then the policy has effectively been shelved.
With the Nikkei Index subsequently breaking through its all-time high of 38,915, the results have been extraordinary. As of the end of February 2024, the BoJ’s stake in listed Japanese companies – mainly held in the form of Exchange Traded Funds – is worth over 70 trillion yen against an acquisition cost of 37 trillion yen.
These are huge numbers, overshadowing the domestic equity holdings of Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund, often termed the world’s largest pension and known in the Tokyo market as “the whale.” Now it seems more of a sleek orca, while the BoJ has taken on the appearance of a heavyweight and potentially dangerous Moby Dick.
In the early days, critics of the BoJ charged that holding equities would be disastrous in the event of a financial crisis, blowing a hole the bank’s balance sheet and causing a run on the currency. Now the concern is the reverse; that the BoJ’s investments have ballooned to such a size that they could not be sold into the market without triggering a meltdown. With Japan’s central bank owning some 7% of the Prime Market, any announcement of an intention to sell could well cast a pall on stocks for years.
Whereas bonds disappear when they reach maturity, equities are forever. The BoJ is under no pressure to act quickly – it can carry on collecting the roughly one trillion yen of dividends year by year – but the problem will only become more anomalous as stock prices rise over time, as has generally been the case historically.
Is there any precedent for the BoJ’s dilemma? Yes, there is. During the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-8, the Hong Kong dollar and stock market came under heavy speculative attack. In response, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority made massive purchases of the major stocks in the benchmark Hang Seng Index.
The financial battle lasted ten days, and in the end the HKMA proved victorious. However, it had used one fifth of its balance sheet in the process. Estimates at the time suggest that it had accumulated about a third of the equity of the 33 stocks in the index. As with the BoJ today, the investment turned out to be highly profitable in the end, generating a capital gain of 70%.
Proud of its reputation as a free market bastion, Hong Kong was keen to return the stocks to the private sector as soon as possible. For individual investors, incentives such as “loyalty bonuses” (effectively discounts that became valid after a certain amount of time elapsed) were offered to encourage them not to sell. There was also some showbusiness razzmatazz, with Canto-pop singer Danny Chan being chosen by the taskforce to provide the campaign song.
There are obvious differences between Hong Kong’s position then and Japan’s today but the big picture, the need to return a large amount of stocks to the private sector, is the same. Likewise, incentives are needed to attract investors, but ordinary discounts will encourage “flipping”: selling the stock (Exchange Traded Fund, in this case) at the prevailing market price and pocketing the difference.
The way to avoid that is to restrict eligibility to individual investors with NISA accounts and make the discount a Hong Kong-style retrospective “loyalty bonus” that gradually diminishes over, eg, a 5-year horizon.
Given the enormous scale of the BoJ’s equity portfolio, it would also be advisable to stretch the process out over several years, perhaps using a lottery system, as was the case for the listing of NTT in 1987. Adroit use of showbiz razzmatazz could make it a huge public event, with people queuing around the block, or the digital equivalent.
If all this happens as described, it would be a win-win for everybody, politicians included, as the much discussed move from bank deposits to stock market investment became a reality – with all the action centred not on U.S. or Indian equities, but exclusively Japanese names.
Needless to say, the Bank of Japan, whose excellent market timing made the whole thing possible, would be basking in glory. At the very least, its board members should be allowed to choose the J-pop star for the campaign song.
The Intelligent Ambiguity of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer”
Published in Japan Forward 14th August 2023
An atom bomb has just been dropped on the city of Hiroshima. In a lecture room in Los Alamos, home of the Manhattan Project which created this new weapon, there is wild excitement. Project Director J. Robert Oppenheimer stands before the crowd and pronounces it a great day for America.
Flags are waved. One woman looks almost maddened with triumph. Then the scene changes to black and white, signalling Oppenheimer’s subjective experience. The room starts to shake and there are ominous flashes and rumbles. He realises that the world has changed forever, that from now on unimaginable carnage will always be a button push away.
The movie “Oppenheimer”, which tells the story of the so-called “father of the atom bomb”, has become a huge worldwide hit. It has already earned box office receipts of over $550 million since its first screening in July, a few days before the 78th anniversary of the Trinity test that ushered in the era of nuclear weapons.
That date made it impossible for the film to open in Japan at the same time as the rest of the world, given the sombre annual commemorations of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that take place in early August, followed by the anniversary of the end of the war and the “O-Bon” festival of the dead. Yet there is nothing disrespectful of Japanese sensitivities in “Oppenheimer”.
Wisely, Nolan does not attempt to capture the devastation caused by the atom bombing through special effects or newsreel, which could indeed have appeared exploitative. Instead, he has a character recount the terrible damage done to the bodies of children and young women, leaving the audience to use its imagination.
Why has the film been so successful? One reason is that it is an outstanding example of contemporary cinematic art, superbly constructed and acted. The three hour running time zips by without longueurs. Another reason, surely, is that the issue of weapons of mass destruction, which had seemed less relevant after the end of the Cold War, is very much with us today. We are living in Oppenheimer’s world.
Oppenheimer with Einstein
The decision to drop the bomb has generated a great deal of controversy over the years. It was originally New Left academics like Gar Alperovitz who cast doubt on the justification for using nuclear weapons. Interestingly, in recent years some voices from the opposite side of the political spectrum have come to agree.
In 2020, John Denson of the libertarian Mises Institute wrote “Japanese leaders, both military and civilian, including the emperor, were willing to surrender in May of 1945 if the emperor could remain in place and not be subjected to a war crimes trial… After the bombs were dropped on August 6 and 9 of 1945, and their surrender soon thereafter, the Japanese were allowed to keep their emperor on the throne.”
Likewise, Peter Van Buren, writing last year in the conservative Spectator magazine, states that the “Hiroshima myth”- that the bomb was the only alternative to a land invasion that would have cost millions of lives – was manufactured in the late 1940s as an antidote to John Hershey’s reportage of the bomb’s human consequences.
Nolan’s film handles the issue with a great deal of nuance. On one hand, President Harry Truman declares that his advisors are certain that the Japanese will never surrender. Yet well before the bomb is dropped, one of the Los Alamos scientists comments that Japan has already lost, as if it is an obvious fact.
Oppenheimer himself is given a prescient line of dialogue in which he posits that the carnage will be so terrible that such a weapon would never be used again. M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction) certainly worked during the era of superpower confrontation, but will it be as effective when weapons of mass destruction are in the hands of theocratic states, non-state actors and dictators with nothing to lose?
Oppenheimer is the figure that all the action revolves around, yet he remains hard to sympathize with or understand. Born into great wealth and privilege – he was given a 28 foot yacht for his sixteenth birthday – he had a brilliant mind. As the film shows, he was capable of reading Sanskrit and teaching himself enough Dutch in a matter of weeks to deliver a physics lecture. Well-versed in the arts and literature, he named the Trinity test in tribute to a favourite poem by John Donne.
He was also dangerously impulsive. One of the first scenes in the film has him attempting to murder his tutor at Cambridge University by means of an apple spiked with cyanide, apparently a real event. He was already severely depressed and undergoing Jungian psychoanalysis at the time. Later, we see him and his wife transferring their baby to a friend because its crying had got on their delicate nerves.
The film depicts Oppenheimer as sympathetic to communism, but a patriot at heart. When a friend at a Christmas party mentions an underground route for getting atomic secrets to Moscow, he responds “that would be treason”. Yet, it is no surprise that his security pass was withdrawn once the Cold War started. Many of his associates were card-carrying members of the American Communist Party, including his lover, his brother and his sister-in-law. Oppenheimer’s own wife was a former member.
No doubt, several would have been attracted by the emphasis on antiracism and workers’ rights, but the party was no Eurocommunist-type middle-of-the-road outfit. It danced to Stalin’s tune. When the Nazi-Soviet pact was signed in 1939, there was no more talk about fighting fascism. “Peace” was the slogan, though members were required to support the unprovoked Soviet invasion of Poland, part of the secret deal between Stalin and Hitler. Some were also involved in underground activities, as delineated in the film’s Christmas party scene.
The process by which Oppenheimer is stripped of his security clearance in 1954 – thereby ending his career as a top government advisor – is manifestly unfair, but the script gives the bullying adversary lawyer some pointed criticism of his inconsistencies. Why, the lawyer thunders, does Oppenheimer still justify the mass killing of Japanese civilians while advocating disarmament with the Soviet Union? What does he really believe in? Oppenheimer’s response is silence.
Ambivalent testimony is given by General Leslie Groves, the man who picked Oppenheimer to head the Manhattan Project. When asked if he would approve Oppenheimer’s security clearance now, he answers in the negative – then adds, as an aside, that he would not give clearance to any of the other nuclear scientists on the project either.
We know now that the Manhattan Project was compromised by several Soviet-sympathizing scientists. The most notorious and the only one featured in the film is Klaus Fuchs who spent nine years in jail in Britain for espionage, then moved to East Germany where he enjoyed a long and illustrious career. Some say that included instructing Mao Zedong’s China in nuclear weapons development. History never ends.
The source book for Nolan’s film is “American Prometheus” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Prometheus is the god who stole fire from the other gods and gave it to humans. As punishment, he was chained to a rock where an eagle gnawed his liver for all eternity. Oppenheimer had it easier, spending time sailing around the Caribbean and eventually receiving an award from President Johnson.
Genius, victim, hero, fool, egotist, communist, patriot, confused soul, or all of the above – Nolan’s film leaves it up to you to make up your mind. Hopefully, Japanese audiences will have the same opportunity before too long.
Hans Sautter’s “Japan”: A Photographer’s Lifework
I’m lucky. I’ve walked through this book many times before.
I’ve strolled through the backstreets of Shibuya on the way to work, past pastel-hued love hotels with fake ivy running up the façade to balustrades that look like they are made of icing sugar.
I’ve seen the dawn come up in Golden Gai, the souk of tiny ramshackle bars that stands as a living monument to the heyday of Japan’s counter-culture in the nineteen sixties and seventies.
My eyes have been blasted by ten thousand fizzing, scrolling invitations to hedonistic excess in the neon wonderland of Kabuki-cho, the largest pleasure district in the country that invented pleasure districts.
I’ve watched a man clutching a briefcase ascend an escalator in a deserted station, as isolated as a figure in a Edward Hopper painting. I have been that man.
That comes from my introduction to veteran photographer Hans Sautter’s magnificent tome, “Japan”. It’s a heavyweight offering in every sense of the word, and constitutes a summary of his life’s work as a professional photographer.
You can find it on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.jp and Amazon.co.uk, as well as in all respectable bookstores.
Hans arrived in Japan on a one way ticket in 1972, attracted by Shuji Terayama’s outrageous and surreal film, Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets. While remaining intimately involved with Japan, he subsequently spent significant time in South East Asia and Australia, where he worked in construction, erecting high-rise steel girders.
In a recent Press Club event, Hans explained his photographic process, revealing the staggering amount of preparation behind each image, which is usually mapped out in his mind long before he arrives at the scene. He insisted on “no Kyoto” and has no captions on the page, though there is an index at the end. Some of the shots were taken in hazardous circumstances as the elements – fire, water and wind – raged.
Copyright: Hans Sautter
The book is organized into six themes, each introduced by an expert commentator and each broad enough to contain polar opposites.
Metropolis offers the structured calm of the Kyu Shiba Rikyu garden and also the pandemonium of the Shinjuku night-life. Within Nature, you see the twisted roots of a primeval forest in Yakushima and also a mountainside covered by an anti-landslide wall that looks like a huge concrete waffle.
Within Aesthetic, you can find austerely beautiful ceramic bowls, ten foot tall transformer robots, the chalky-white neck of a geisha, family crests that have been in use for the best part of a millennium and Hello Kitty, the mouthless feline icon that appears on all kinds of goods, from pencil cases to vibrators.
Costume is a way of telling stories about ourselves, which is a deep-seated human need; the fashion industry is based on it. Hans shows us Japanese people formatting their identity in ways that are light-hearted and deadly serious, as ephemeral as this year’s pop sensation and as long-lasting as Shinto myth.
Copyright: Hans Sautter
Rituals remind us that we are individuals but also social creatures linked to what came before us and what will come after. They are conducted in special places like temples and tea ceremony rooms, but are also part of the ordinary routines of life such as morning calisthenics and ceremonies at school sports days. The Sacred is there to balance the profane. We need them both.
From this stream of events, Hans Sautter has captured moments and patterns, people and objects and natural phenomena in a mosaic of images that will dwell in your mind long after you have put the book down.
Hiroshige Does Dylan
At bottom right, Bob Dylan and his girlfriend Suze Rotolo walk through a snowy landscape created by Hiroshige Ando (1793-1858), one of Japan’s greatest woodblock print masters.
The original photo of the couple, used for the cover of Dylan’s 1963 album Freewheelin’ was shot in Greenwich Village in February 1963. It was pretty cold there too, judging by the snow on the ground.
The ‘woodblock’ artwork was created to publicize Dylan’s current 11 concert tour of Japan. The script above the figures says “welcome to Japan” and gives the year in the traditional counting system as Reiwa 5 (2023).
Dylan will be 82 next month, but his voice was clearer and stronger than it has been in a long time. He performed all except one of the songs from his exceptional album Rough and Rowdy Ways, released in 2020.
Twelve years old, they put me in a suit
Forced me to marry a prostitute
There were gold fringes on her wedding dress
That’s my story, but not where it ends
She’s still cute, and we’re still friends
From Key West
I’ll pick a number between one and two
And ask myself, “What would Julius Caesar do?
From My Own Version of You
Step right into the burning hell
Where some of the best-known enemies of mankind dwell
Mr. Freud with his dreams, Mr. Marx with his axe
See the rawhide lash rip the skin from their backs
From My Own Version of You
Everything’s flowing all at the same time
I live on a boulevard of crime
I drive fast cars, and I eat fast foods
I contain multitudes
From I Contain Multitudes
The hall was by no means full, but the mood was reverent. In the seat directly in front of me was a skinny figure sporting a black leather jacket and a mass of curly hair in the style of Dylan in the mid-60s.
It turned out to be Naoki Urasawa, one of Japan’s most imaginative and successful manga creators. Thanks to 20th Century Boy, Pluto and other best selling series, he is a household name in Japan and has a strong following overseas too. According to Bong Joon-ho, director of the Oscar-winning film Parasite (2019), Urasawa is “the greatest story-teller in the world today”.
He is also a major Dylan fan and leads a folk rock band.
The real Dylan was in relatively expansive form, performing significantly rewritten versions of some familiar songs and joshing with his musicians as he introduced them. Supposedly, one had appeared in the TV show Columbo, another in “the movie Tommy” and another was said to have played the supersized Hoss Cartwright in the 1960s TV show Bonanza !
One of Dylan’s improvised lyrics ran “in another ten or twenty years I’ll be gone”. So he’ll probably be back in Reiwa 6.
Rock Gods in Japan: Who’s Appropriating Who?
Published in Japan Forward 10/11/2022
On their first tour of Japan in 1971, hard rock maestros Led Zeppelin came up with a generous gesture. In addition to their scheduled concerts in Tokyo and Osaka, they decided to add a benefit performance in Hiroshima.
The event was a success, with vocalist Robert Plant giving a moving speech about the healing power of music and seven million yen (about $150,000 in today’s money) being raised for the victims of the atom bomb.
Later in Osaka, drummer John Bonham, a heavy drinker with a violent streak, ran wild with a samurai sword he had bought, slashing everything in his suite to ribbons including pillars and decorative scrolls. The damage: seven million yen.
Led Zeppelin with the Mayor of Hiroshima
This anecdote encapsulates the contradictions and absurdities that surround the encounter between Western rockers and modern Japan, as described by author Chrisopher Keaveney in his book Western Rock Artists, Madame Butterfly and the Allure of Japan.
The intellectual key he uses is “orientalism”, cultural critic Edward Said’s term for the depiction of eastern cultures as exotic, alien and inferior. The template is Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly, which tells the tale of a relationship between Lieutenant Pinkerton of the U.S. Navy and a young geisha in Nagasaki.
Keaveney is an Assistant Professor at Rikkyo University, but also an ardent fan of “the golden era of album rock” who played in several cover bands himself. A barometer of his musical taste is that he describes Cheap Trick Live at the Budokan as a “legendary” album and reveals that his first live rock show was Queen in New York in 1977.
It is fair to say that there is a tension between his obvious love of this brash, unruly music and the contemporary academic’s sensitivities to gender, race and power relations.
Cheap Trick in action
Does Deep Purple’s Woman from Tokyo really “draw liberally from conventional orientalist expectations of the geisha figure”? This is Deep Purple we are talking about here! Their best-known song is about a Swiss chateau burning to the ground. Another famous number of theirs compares a girlfriend’s physical attributes to those of a high-performance sports car.
In comparison, Woman from Tokyo – recorded before the band had ever visited Japan – is rather sweet.
Rising from the neon gloom
Shining like a crazy moon
Yeah, she turns me on like a fire
I get high
My woman from Toh-kee-O
She makes me see
My woman from Toh-kee-O
She’s so good to me
So influential was the song that most foreign bands have followed the three syllable pronunciation of Tokyo, as did J-pop megastar Kenji Sawada in his 1980 hit song Tokio.
Probably the first meeting of modern rock and modern Japan occurred in 1965 when a young Japanese music journalist called Rumiko Hoshika showed up at the Abbey Road studios in London where the Beatles were recording the Rubber Soul LP.
She won the band’s full attention because she was wearing a brightly coloured kimono. She had the full attention of Brian Epstein, their gay manager, because she had brought him a samurai sword and he was a major fan of the films of Akira Kurosawa.
Rumiko Hoshika with the Beatles
In the world of cultural studies, this is known as “self-orientalism” and is considered rather disgraceful. Keaveney goes as far as to say that Japanese people themselves are “complicit in the construction of Orientalism” if they offer a western visitor an unusual regional cuisine or a traditional souvenir like an uchiwa fan.
Back in the real world, Hoshika’s gambit worked wonders. Her meeting with the Fab Four went on for three hours and she was to interview them every year until the band broke up. She is still going strong today, hosting all kinds of Beatles events.
Keaveney does dig up some unpleasant and borderline racist material from a Swiss heavy metal band, as well as cliché-ridden stuff from 10cc and some forgettable British “new wave” bands of the 1980s. More valuable is his commentary on Styx’s song Mr. Roboto, with its Japanese language opening and super-catchy refrain of “domo arigato, Mr. Roboto”.
“For a Western audience,” Keaveney notes, “Mr. Roboto, a song about the cold efficiency of robots in a dystopian future and the association between this future and Japan, had a particular resonance. It is hard now to imagine the sense of anxiety, approaching, panic produced by Japan and felt in the West as Japan’s economic might steadily grew in the 1980s.”
Indeed. A year after the song was released in 1981, a Chinese-American man was beaten to death in Detroit by two auto workers who mistook him for a Japanese. This kind of paranoid Japan-bashing rock seems a good deal more objectionable than Deep Purple’s “Fly into the rising sun / Faces smiling everyone.”
It is a pity that the author did not spend more time on David Bowie, a long-time Japanophile with a particular interest in Yukio Mishima. During his stint in Berlin, Bowie painted a portrait of Mishima and in the 1990s acquired Sir Eduard Palozzi’s bronze bust of the Japanese novelist at Sotheby’s. In his 2013 album The Next Day, Bowie referenced an episode from Mishima’s novel, Spring Snow.
Then we saw Mishima’s dog
Trapped between the rocks
Blocking the waterfall
David Bowie’s Japan was very different to Deep Purple’s, let alone Styx’s.
Paolozzi’s Mishima
Likewise, rather than dwelling on obscure or boring artists, Keaveney could have analysed Japan-related songs by more interesting songwriters such as Nick Lowe’s Gaijin Man or Elvis Costello’s Tokyo Storm Warning. Then there are these curious lines in Bob Dylan’s Tight Connection to My Heart –
Madame Butterfly, she lulled me to sleep
In a town without pity where the waters run deep
She said be easy, baby
There ain’t nothin’ worth stealin’ round here
The rest of the song has nothing to do with Japan, but the associated music video plays amusingly with Orientalist fantasies. Shot in pre-bubble Tokyo, the story, insofar as there is one, has Dylan being busted for drug possession by singing policemen (perhaps a nod to Paul McCartney’s arrest at Narita Airport a few years before), then wandering around the Roppongi entertainment district.
There, the future Nobel laureate finds himself torn between a jealous America girlfriend and a mysterious Japanese beauty, played by Mitsuko Baisho. Unwilling to take sides, he seems to end up with both. Why didn’t Lieutenant Pinkerton think of that?
The book’s final chapters take us into the twenty first century, where rock has been dethroned by other musical genres like rap and pop and the market for CDs has collapsed. The two phenomena are linked since rock, with its thunder and theatrics, is ill-suited to streaming, which is for people to listen to while doing something else.
Japan’s image has changed too. Instead of Kurosawa movies and Zen temples, it’s all about anime, monster movies and cosplay. Contemporary rock band The Flaming Lips captured the zeitgeist brilliantly with their album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and elaborate live stage show.
Needless to say, there is no more running naked through hotel lobbies or wielding of samurai swords. The new breed of artist has to be super-sensitive to the ethical dimension of everything said and done or face the wrath of the social media police.
Keaveney’s hero is Rivers Cuomo, frontman of the band Weezer. In the 1996 album Pinkerton he gives a guilt-ridden account of dysfunctional relationships, struggles with identity and loneliness and likens himself to the “asshole America sailor” of Puccini’s opera.
On the other hand, Keaveney takes pop stars Gwen Stefani and Avril Lavigne to task for “cultural appropriation” in their Japan-themed music videos, echoing the condemnation of Asian-American activists at the time. Yet there was never any criticism of Harajuku Girls and Hello Kitty in Japan itself. Indeed, the songs were well received by the Japanese public, a fact that Keaveney finds perplexing and disappointing.
“One of the abiding ironies of criticisms in the West of the Orientalist representations of Japan by Western artists is how rarely Japanese traditionally have taken offense,” he comments. “What are seen as acts of inappropriate racial appropriation and stereotyping in the West often have been regarded by the Japanese as flattering.”
When Keaveney mentions the West, he really means the United States and the sliver of its population that obsesses about such issues. As for so-called “cultural appropriation”, that has been Japanese national strategy for the last 170 years.
Japan has also appropriated Led Zeppelin. Drummer John Bonham, who died of alcohol poisoning in 1980, was nobody’s idea of a role model, but the band is much loved in Japan, despite his appalling behaviour. Numerous tribute bands keep Zeppelin’s legacy alive, with the oldest, Cinnamon, now in its fiftieth year.
There is even a piano trio made up of top-notch Japanese jazz musicians which plays the music of Led Zeppelin and nothing else.
It’s unlikely that Weezer, or Gwen Stefani or Avril Lavigne or any other contemporary artist, will be attracting a similar following fifty years on.
Reflections on a Funeral
Published in Japan Forward 1/10/2022
It was one of those sticky late September days that seem to hark back to the summer, rather than anticipating the crispness of a Tokyo autumn.
I emerged from the Kudanshita metro station and joined the slow-moving crowd edging up the hill towards Yasukuni Shrine. The other side of the road, where the Budokan Hall stands, was blocked off to pedestrians.
Many moons ago, I worked in an office near here. Indeed, my colleagues and I would sometimes take our bento lunch boxes to the usually deserted shrine.
I also have memories of various events at the Budokan. Concerts by Eric Clapton, The Who, Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson. A karate tournament presided over by the awesome figure of Masatatsu Oyama, the originator of Kyokushinkai full contact karate.
Today, though, I was participating in a much more sombre affair, the state funeral of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister. Together with 26,000 others, I was here to present a bouquet of flowers.
I did not know exactly what to expect, but neither did anybody else. Japan’s last state funeral, for Shigeru Yoshida, took place in 1967. There must be very few people who participated in both events.
I wore a dark shirt and trousers and a black mask, though it turned out that white masks were advised. I did better with my ample bouquet, having decided on white lilies, which symbolize purity. Well over half of the public lining up to present their flowers had made the same choice.
The area for handing in flowers was right next to the Budokan, but the organisers had sensibly decided not to have huge crowds standing around for hours.
Instead, we were sent on a scenic detour that took us past the British Embassy, where there were still floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth on display. Then on past the National Theatre and the Supreme Court before doubling back along the Imperial moat to Chidorigafuchi, one of Tokyo’s prime cherry blossom spots in the spring.
Some people were smart and had equipped themselves with parasols, hats and bottled water. I practiced my gaman (“endurance”) and sweated in the midday heat.
Finally, I arrived at the destination. There were several tables on which to place the bouquets, behind them large photos of a relaxed-looking Shinzo Abe. As you would expect, security was tight, but also polite and helpful. Signs everywhere said “no photos”. They were widely ignored, as people clicked away on their smart phones and officials pretended not to notice.
The whole experience took about three hours. The only protest I saw was when a group of elderly ladies appeared at a junction and attempted to hand out fliers denouncing Abe’s 悪政 (“evil politics”).
Nearly all my fellow walkers – mostly middle-aged or younger – blanked them out as if they did not exist. Only the man directly in front of me reacted by taking a flier, giving it a cursory glance, then scrunching it up and hurling it to the ground.
I’m glad the protesters were there and glad they got some feedback.
Several of my left-wing friends were opposed to the state funeral taking place at all, citing the fact that opinion polls showed that a majority of the public did not approve of it.
Opinion polls contain much important information – especially, when the same question is asked over time – but they have limitations. In particular, the phone polls taken by Japanese newspapers cannot measure the intensity of opinions.
A good proxy for intensity is how many people are willing to take time off work, in some cases travelling from distant locations, and trudge around central Tokyo on a hot and humid day. On that basis, the pro-funeral group outmatched the anti-funeral group by about 90% to 10%.
Strangely, there was grumbling about the cost, which was born by the public purse. The estimated sum of $12 million is trivial, equivalent to ten cents per Japanese citizen, and was spent mainly on security and accommodation for the foreign guests. Compare that with the last G7 meeting in Canada, which cost 750 million Canadian dollars
Why was it appropriate to hold such an elaborate state funeral for Shinzo Abe but not for other eminent leaders, such as Yasuhiro Nakasone? In retrospect, perhaps there should have been a similar event for Nakasone, who did great things for Japan in his time. But to be frank, there are no other fitting candidates amongst Japan’s myriad ex-prime ministers.
Shinzo Abe stands out for his length of tenure and the breadth of the changes that he initiated, but there is more to it than that. There is the manner of his death to consider too. The state funeral, with the participation of the public in offering flowers and signing condolences, sent another message – that Japanese society will not accept political assassination.
Finally, there is the geopolitical context of this particular moment in history. Shigeru Yoshida, the only other politician to be granted a state funeral, was a key figure in the development of post-war Japan. But he was not a global figure because Japan itself had little global impact then, not even being a member of the OECD when he was politically active.
Today Japan has become a crucial player in the politics of Asia, the fastest growing and potentially wealthiest area in the world. The expansionism of China and the naked aggression of Vladimir Putin’s Russia have set off a reaction in Western and Asian countries that is bringing them closer together. Expectations for Japan’s role are high. That is why four Australian ex-prime ministers attended the funeral as well as so many dignitaries from other regions.
Japan is global. The funeral was a global event with a global message. Those who criticise it on grounds of expense, constitutional niceties or distaste for Abe’s policies are thinking very small. The man himself rarely did that.
Yakushima: Where I Met the God of the Forest
Published in Japan Forward 8/7/2022
“My advice is to turn back right now,” said our guide. “We’re way behind schedule and you’re clearly having difficulty.”
What he said was perfectly true. My knees and ankles were barely functioning. The sole of my left climbing shoe was flapping loose, and one of my middle toes had lost all sensation. Worse, I was finding it hard to move from moss-covered boulder to tiny wooden steps without lurching around like a drunk.
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Never felt better.”
Into the mountain (photo: NW)
Of course, I felt deeply sorry for the guide, having to deal with someone like me. If I fell and injured myself, it would be his problem. Already this week he had carried an injured young woman on his back for hours. I’d probably be twice her weight.
We were on Yakushima Island, two hours by jetfoil from Kagoshima, which is the southernmost city in Kyushu. I came here to meet Japan’s oldest living thing, the Jomon Cedar. I was determined not to fail in this mission, no matter the cost in blisters, miscellaneous bruises and damaged pride.
As it happens, luck was already on our side. Yakushima, thanks to its sudden elevation from sea-level, is the rainiest place in Japan. As the locals say, it rains thirty five days a month. Torrential downpours are common, leading to cancelled flights to and from the tiny airport and cancelled hikes for would-be tourists, who cannot access the mountain without a permit.
Our trip took place bang in the middle of the rainy season, yet – miracle of miracles – on the day we had booked for our hike, not a drop of moisture fell from the sky. Deer gambolled. Monkeys chattered. It was like entering the magical world of a Hayao Miyazaki film.
Ashitaka searches for the Princess
In fact, the resemblance is no coincidence. The great anime creator came to Yakushima in the mid-1990s and used the ancient cedars as inspiration for the mystical forest scenes in his masterpiece, Princess Mononoke.
There are several possible hiking courses to follow, ranging from gentle inclines and well-marked paths to overnight stays on the higher reaches of the mountains, the highest in Kyushu, in order to see the sunrise.
For us, the moment of decision came at the Wilson Stump, named after British “plant-hunter” E.H. Wilson who visited Yakushima in 1914. All that is left of what must have been an enormous tree is a cavernous hollow the size of a sumo ring. The rest was delivered to warlord Hideyoshi Toyotomi in 1590 who used it to rebuild a temple in Kyoto.
Inside the stump is a small shrine, a spring and an aperture that, when looked at a certain way, looks like a heart. Gazing through it confers luck in love, or so they say. Would it confer luck in climbing too, I wondered. It’s from this point onwards that the going gets a lot tougher.
The view from inside the Wilson Stump
Fit people should be able to do the return trip to the Jomon Cedar in ten hours. In the end, we managed it in thirteen and a half. For the last two hours along the trolley-car track, my feet were acting independently, without any instructions from my brain. Various joints threatened to come apart. I enjoyed every minute.
Was it worth it? Absolutely. Being in the presence of the Jomon Cedar is an unforgettable spiritual experience – both humbling and uplifting. That’s why so many people from all backgrounds and walks of life make this pilgrimage – including some like me who are in no shape to do it.
Fortunately, the great tree-god was in a forgiving mood and chose to overlook my rashness.
UGLY WINNING
The Jomon Cedar is so-called because it began its time on the planet in the Jomon era, which stretched from 14,000 BC to 300 BC. Exactly how old is this tree? You would have to slice through the trunk to find out and that cannot be done until the tree dies of natural causes – which may not happen for a long time to come.
The conservative consensus says it is “over 3,000 years old”, though more aggressive estimates have it at 7,200 years old. In the latter case, it would be older than Stonehenge and older than the oldest pyramids. In the former case, it would have been around before Confucius, Buddha, Socrates and King David walked the earth.
Ageless (photo: NW)
Like an aged human being, the Jomon cedar bears the marks of its long life. The trunk is gnarled and lumpy and a large branch was torn off in a typhoon a few years ago. It’s not that tall at 25.3 metres, with a trunk circumference of 16.4 metres – the body shape of a rugby prop forward rather than a basketball player. Slimmer, more elegant cedars have fallen victim to the elements and, most dangerous of all, human activity.
Something like 80% of Yakushima’s ancient cedars have been chopped down and converted into furniture and building materials for dwellings, shrines and temples. In the Edo Period (1603-1867), the people of Yakushima submitted their annual tribute to their feudal lord, the Shimadzu clan of Kagoshima, in the form of timber, rather than rice, which was hard to cultivate on the island’s unusual terrain.
Then after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, the Japanese government prioritized logging in order to build accommodation for the large number of people whose homes had been destroyed. There was a repeat after several of Japan’s cities were bombed flat in the last stages of the Pacific War. The use of modern tools, such as electric saws, meant that tree-felling that would have taken weeks in the Edo Period could be accomplished in a matter of hours.
The government even established a logging village of 500 inhabitants half-way up the mountain, with a school, a post office and a barber. A “torokko” trolley car system connected the tree felling areas with the port, which was eight kilometres of distance and 1200 metres of altitude away. Footage exists of trolley cars hurtling down the mountain to sea level with lumberjacks bestriding mighty logs like cowboys riding bucking broncos.
The highest peak in Kyushu (Photo: NW)
Logging stopped in the early 1970s. Nothing remains of the village which once rang with young voices singing the stirring words of the school song. The area containing the most ancient trees is now a UNESCO designated World Heritage Site.
The lack of any conservation effort until then seems strange from our privileged perspective, but, as our guide put it, in hard times people come before plants. Only when the lower and middle levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs have been satisfied does society concern itself with the higher levels.
Ironically, the Jomon cedar survived the two devastating phases of tree-chopping not because it was revered, but because it was considered valueless. Its wood was too old and crooked to support a temple roof or make a smooth table for a shogun’s concubine. The same goes for the other venerable survivors – the hollow-trunked “Great King”, the “Mother and Child” and the “Husband and Wife” cedars, two proximate trees whose branches have gradually fused together over the centuries.
Sometimes being ugly and uncooperative is a winning strategy.
Even so, being a cedar on Yakushima is a tough job. Unlike the nearby Tanegashima, which is mostly flat, the mountainous Yakushima is the product of an undersea eruption. That gives it a highly varied climate – as warm as Okinawa at sea-level, as cold as Hokkaido at 1800 metres. Vegetation is stratified by elevation, with cedar and other trees competing in relatively narrow bands.
The only ancient cedar allowed to be touched (photo: NW)
The volcanic rock means that trees cannot sink their roots deep into the earth. Instead, roots spread widely but in shallow ground, making the trees vulnerable to landslides, storms and heavy snowfalls. We saw several uprooted trees, like the 2000 year old “Old Man Cedar” that toppled a decade ago and now lies on its side further down the slope with its roots hanging forlornly in the air.
The Jomon Cedar still stands, dominating the area with its girth. It may have lost a bough or two, but there is new growth on its upper branches.
Civilizations have come and gone while the wind troubled its leaves and its thick dark trunk got thicker and darker. Will our civilization be any different? I would bet on the tree every time.
The pilgrims that come this far offer the tree-god ichi rei – a reverent bow. All will return to their daily lives knowing they have seen something wondrous.
My Favourite Things: Wasabi up your nose
Japonica asked me about my favourite Japanese places, activities, foods, books and so on. The last question was the most difficult.
What do you like about living in Japan?
A maelstrom of images came to mind.
The air, the light, children’s voices, the rattle of trains, the yells of welcome when you enter a shop, persimmons, white gloves on taxi drivers, vivid green mosses, the labels on sake bottles, the Meiji Restoration, Beat Takeshi, wasabi up your nose, kimonos on coming of age day, the Emperor, Golden Gai, the Liberal Democratic Party, bunraku, the rainy season, Shibuya scramble, elaborate envelopes at weddings and funerals, Akira Kurosawa, strings of natto hanging from your chopsticks, the Japan Communist Party, the bing bing bing sound at level crossings, roast ginko nuts hot enough to burn your fingertips, carp streamers on boys’ day, the smell of yakitori in neon-splattered alleyways, the office workers’ competition for witty haiku, the high blue sky in winter, the Edo Period, the glare of a 7/11 open at 4 a.m., Shohei Ohtani, Yukio Mishima, Maki Asakawa, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Ryu Murakami, Setsuko Hara, Shuji Terayama etc. etc.
Those are my impressions. Yours will be different.
The entire interview can be found here.
“The Walking Major”: Yujiro, Mifune & Young Sinatra
“What do you care about humanity? You’re a typical representative of your country, captain. A great benefactor – as long as you get the public acclaim you want. The saviour of the world – as long as the world does what it is told to do. You want peace – but on your terms. Captain Allen, you are America!”
These words are spoken, or rather spat out, by Yujiro Ishihara in a film with the English title of “The Walking Major” and the Japanese title of “Aru Heishi no Kake” (“A Soldier’s Bet”).
The character played by Ishihara is an investigative photojournalist who has witnessed Captain Allen’s killing of unarmed civilians in the Korean War. Now Allen has become a celebrity in Japan, where he is stationed, by embarking on a two week march from Camp Zama, near Yokohama, to Beppu in Kyushu, 870 miles away.
The idea of this gruelling, near-impossible feat is to raise funds for an orphanage in Beppu. The photojournalist is the only person who knows Allen’s dark secret. The confrontation between them takes place in a crematorium where the major and the G.I. who has been “volunteered” to accompany him are bunking down for the night.
The film is set in 1960 but was made in 1970. The photojournalist’s angry denunciation of what he sees as Allen’s hypocrisy reflects the frustration that young Japanese felt about their country’s passive involvement in the Vietnam War. American bases in Japan were crucial staging posts for U.S. military operations, including bombing raids on North Vietnam.
Yet the film was authorized by the US military authorities in Japan, as the credits make clear. The American soldiers we see are good guys. The killing of the Korean family was a tragic mistake, rather than an atrocity. Yes, the Americans are problematic, but what can Japan do without them?
That’s a conundrum that has yet to be solved half a century on – and may well never be.
Yujiro Ishihara, younger brother of Shintaro Ishihara, the writer and politician, was a huge star at the time. Often likened to James Dean, he had set up his own film production company. A Japanese star of an earlier generation, Toshiro Mifune, had done the same thing. Both men found it hard to translate their acting fame into commercially successful productions and ended up in financial trouble.
So it is no surprise to see Mifune taking a small part in a Ishihara Productions film. In the role of the impetuous photojournalist’s boss, he offers instant alpha male credibility. When his character references the forced marches he experienced during the Pacific War, he conveys a sympathetic understanding of what war does to people through tone of voice and gesture.
Mifune himself was called up into the Imperial Japanese Army. In his four year stint, he didn’t see action but did work on a base where young kamikaze pilots were trained. He could play military men of all kinds in his sleep – from Admiral Togo, who destroyed the Russian fleet in 1905, to Minister of War Anami, who committed seppuku the day after Japan’s surrender in 1945.
His character in the film has a more nuanced view of the media’s social role than Yujiro’s. “When there’s a beautiful story, if you dig up the roots you often find something dirty. But it’s not necessarily our job to bring that to people’s attention. We should value the straightforward dreams of the public and leave the roots alone.”
So what will Yujiro do? Publish the unvarnished truth and deprive the orphans of their new orphanage? Or let a killer of innocent civilians be celebrated as a benign “Santa Claus” figure? That is the dilemma on which the drama hangs.
“The Walking Major” was Yujiro Ishihara’s attempt to make an international film. The cast was impressive. Cliff Robertson, an Oscar winner, played Captain Allen, with his wife of the time, Dina Merrill, playing his wife in the film. Frank Sinatra Jnr. contributed an affable performance as the Captain’s happy-go-lucky marching comrade.
He also demonstrated some of his father’s vocal talent with a rendition of “Re-enlistment Blues.” The song, originally sung by Merle Travis in the film “From Here to Eternity”, is staged in a Suntory beer factory, with a half-drunk Frank Jnr. surrounded by female factory workers!
On the Japanese side, apart from Ishihara and Mifune, there were big names like Frankie Sakai and Michiyo Aratama in the cast. The story, supposedly based on real events, was written by prolific dramatist James Miki and direction was by Keith Larsen and Koji Chino.
The film was nominated for a Golden Globes award in 1972 but is little talked about today. It’s an interesting piece that mixes war trauma, humour and pathos in an unusual but effective way. Yujiro’s tendency to over-act is occasionally evident, but Sinatra, Robertson and Mifune are very good.
The version available on Amazon Prime Japan is in Japanese with the English dialogue subtitled in Japanese. Surely, a full English language version must exist somewhere. But if you have decent Japanese, it’s worth taking a look.
Review: Surviving the New Era of Great Power Conflict
Published in Nikkei Asia 12/03/2022
“Pandemics do not put geopolitics on hold… they may even intensify geopolitical competition by distracting states’ leadership.”
Elbridge Colby’s recently published book, The Strategy of Denial, already seems prescient, given recent events in the Ukraine. His intention was to map out a sustainable long-term strategy for containing the only great power that will rival the United States for the foreseeable future, China.
The term “contain” does not appear in the text – Colby prefers “decent equilibrium” and “decent peace” – but his thinking is in the tradition of geopolitical realists such as George Kennan, originator of the containment doctrine that formed the bedrock of America security policy during the Cold War.
Yet the contours of the 21st century are very different from the era of American supremacy in which Kennan and his successors operated. Colby is highly critical of the hubris of the “neo-con” thinkers who refused to acknowledge the limits on American power. In his view, the U.S. “does not need to make the world democratic or liberal in order to flourish as a free republic, nor does it need to dominate the world in order to be secure.”
The goal he proposes is more modest — the negative one of denying China hegemony in Asia. And he is clear that the U.S. would have no chance of succeeding on its own. It needs the help of other powers with congruent interests.
The author is not just an observer. Formerly a deputy assistant director of defence, he led the development of the 2018 National Defense Strategy.
His grandfather, William Colby, was an intelligence officer who operated behind German lines in World War II and eventually headed up the CIA. His great grandfather, also called Elbridge, was an academic-cum-soldier who lived in China for several years. National security appears to be a family business.
Hegemony means much more than influence. It means control, to the extent that subordinate nations lose the capacity to make independent decisions. Colby believes that China is determined to achieve such a hegemonic status and can only succeed by military means.
The test case, though not necessarily the only case, will be Taiwan. If the U.S. and its allies fail to protect Taiwan from being forcibly annexed, their credibility would collapse. Other Asian states would follow the line of least resistance and kowtow to Beijing.
The scale of the economic activity that would then be placed under China’s control would make it the undisputed global superpower, with the capacity not just to boss the rest of Asia, but also to create an exclusive trading bloc that would disfavour the U.S. and other “uncooperative” countries.
Over time, the result would be the steady erosion of American economic power and increasing Chinese political leverage, offering much greater ability to intervene in U.S. internal affairs than is already the case.
It is possible that being “pro-China” or “anti-China” could become the defining domestic political issue, not just in the U.S., but right across the Western world, with media and political parties divided by their sympathies, just as they are divided into “progressives” and “conservatives” today.
In other words, the stakes could hardly be higher.
Putting himself in his opponent’s shoes, Colby sees China’s best strategy as “sequential targeting”, in other words picking off its neighbours one by one. The best tactic is the fait accompli.
Recovering a lost territory, as in the D-day landings or the American advances in the Pacific War, requires overwhelming superiority, which the U.S. and its allies will not have. So their best strategy is effective deterrence – or victory in what Colby calls “imaginary wars,” the ones that are never fought because one side realizes it will lose.
Deterrence worked in the Cold War because America’s overwhelming superiority in nuclear weapons gave it the capability to wreak devastating destruction on the Soviet Union. But, as Colby makes clear, military conflict in East Asia would most likely be a limited affair, with neither side seeing any benefit from “horizontal” (wider geographical) or “vertical” (deadlier in terms of weaponry) escalation.
So how can the U.S., situated far from East Asia and increasingly constrained by financial issues and a sceptical and war-fatigued general public, make deterrence credible? Colby has two answers. The first is reducing American military involvement elsewhere.
“The United States must avoid becoming entangled in peripheral wars that sap American will and power,” he declares. “Americans’ strength and resolve should be husbanded for the primary challenges, above all China in the Western Pacific… Calls to use military force for any but these primary challenges should thus receive a highly sceptical review.”
Apparently, the U.S. has made security pledges to more than 50 countries. Germany alone, he notes, has a far bigger economy than Russia. With its wealthy European allies, it should be doing much more to bolster its own security. Islamic terrorism he sees as an unpleasant irritant, not an existential threat. In Colby’s view, for the U.S. to draw down resources from Europe and the Middle East would raise overall credibility, not undermine it.
The second and more important point is the creation of an “anti-hegemony coalition”, likely to include Japan, India, Australia, South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines, with the U.S. acting as the cornerstone member. Put together, these countries would easily outweigh China and its allies (such as North Korea and Cambodia) in terms of economic heft. There would be no need for a formal alliance, just an agreement to act in concert in the case of a Chinese land grab.
Colby is well aware of the problems of collective action in this kind of set-up. “Americans are more likely to turn away from this effort if other coalition members – especially allies… – do not pull their weight… Given Japan’s importance, position and very low levels of defence spending, this issue is especially pointed for Tokyo. Its decisions on this matter are likely to have outsize implications for the entire anti-hegemony coalition.”
As a realist, Colby has no time for the “coalition of democracies” concept promoted by U.S. President Joe Biden. Indeed, he goes as far to say that a democratic China might also pursue hegemony – just as Russia, once considered quasi-democratic, is doing today. In his view, this is simply how great powers have behaved throughout history.
Yet he is sensitive to psychological factors too. He notes that George Washington against the British and Abraham Lincoln against the Confederacy managed or manufactured scenarios in which the other side fired the first shot.
What he calls “thumotic reactions” (reactions to violation of honour) can have a powerful effect at the state level in building resolve. The fierce Ukrainian response to invasion by Russia is a perfect example.
Thus, Colby has a suggestion that would potentially add to American resolve while inducing apoplexy in Beijing: the stationing of a small number of American troops in Taiwan.
Not a fan of strategic ambiguity, he writes that the anti-hegemonic coalition cannot be “half-pregnant” with regard to Taiwan. It either commits explicitly to Taiwan’s security or it leaves it to the tender mercies of the People’s Liberation Army. Interestingly, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, now an ordinary parliamentarian but still extremely influential, commented a few weeks ago that Japan would defend Taiwan in the case of an attack.
The author ranges widely over global affairs and makes use of many historical references, from the Trojan Wars to America’s failed “nation-building” efforts of this century. Whether you agree with his thesis or not, it makes a valuable contribution to the most important geopolitical issue of the coming decades. And it ends on an optimistic note.
“China could proudly live in a world in which this strategy had succeeded; it would be one of the greatest nations of the world and its preferences and views would command respect. It would not be able to dominate, but neither would the United States or anyone else be able to dominate it… For the peoples of the region, it would mean the autonomy and independence for which they have striven so mightily since freedom from colonial rule.”
A golden scenario. Many would hope that Colby is right. In the meantime, there is this timely reminder to ponder: “Although hard power is not the only form of power, it is dominant if effectively employed; hard power always has the capacity to dominate soft power. Left unaddressed, might trumps right.”
The Strategy of Denial – American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict, by Elbridge A. Colby (Yale University Press, 2021).