Three items from Japan for a little yin and yang: lessons to be learned in the West from a nation that should not be overlooked in global politics and living with globalization.
021007 Former PM Yasuhiro Nakasone OpEd Shinzo Abe at a cross roads The previous administration, which derived its strength largely from the personality of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, pushed reforms in specific areas, such as the privatization of the postal services and the Japan Highway Public Corp. Koizumi practiced "theatrical politics," using grandiose political methods that appealed to popular sentiment. By contrast, the Abe administration signifies a return to mainstream conservative politics, as shown by his unambiguous commitment to constitutional revision and education reform. Abe practices the "politics of the parliamentary Cabinet," centered on coordination and cooperation with the governing LDP. Thus there are distinctive differences between Koizumi and Abe. If Koizumi was a presidential-type prime minister, Abe is a parliamentary Cabinet-type leader. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20070210a1.html <http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20070210a1.html> Still The Clean-Growth Model By Takamitsu Sawa, The Japan Times, February 12, 2007 Takamitsu Sawa is a professor at Ritsumeikan University's Graduate School of Policy Science and a specially appointed professor at Kyoto University. In terms of economic development, Japan, South Korea and China have achieved in two or three decades what it took Western countries more than a century to accomplish. Generally speaking, fast economic expansion creates a plethora of problems, including income gaps between individuals and between regions, disparities in income and infrastructure between urban and rural areas, environmental disruption, and unemployment. Until the 1990s, Japan was a rare model that achieved rapid expansion while minimizing disharmony and disequilibrium. * Balanced development of national land was the basis of national policy, and plans to expand railway, telephone, power supply and highway networks nationwide were taken for granted. * Half the cost of compulsory education was paid from state coffers and every effort was made to prevent the development of regional gaps in compulsory education. * The Japanese employment system based on seniority and lifelong employment helped minimize salary gaps within companies and government offices. * In the late 1960s, Japan started addressing problems of industrial and urban pollution and eventually succeeded in alleviating air and water pollution problems. Japan should be proud of this. Resources-poor Japan also has always stayed far ahead of Western countries in developing fuel-efficient automobiles and energy-saving home appliances. * Japanese technology should play an extremely great role in global efforts to deal with environmental problems, especially global warming. Fortunately, the Kyoto Protocol includes the Clean Development Mechanism. The CDM works this way: Suppose Japan invests in a Chinese wind-power project. If it is recognized that annual output from the station will replace annual output from a comparable coal-burning power station, the amount of carbon-dioxide reduction will be determined. As a reward for its investment, Japan can count the amount as credit toward meeting its own CO2 reduction target. To qualify for a CDM project, Japan must first obtain agreement on the venture from a developing country. Next, a United Nations-designated "operational entity," a private-sector body, estimates the amount of emissions that will effectively be reduced by the project. On the basis of that data, the U.N. CDM Executive Board then decides whether to approve the project as a CDM activity. Japan should make full use of its advanced energy conservation technologies to help countries develop economically while stabilizing or minimizing their CO2emissions. Japan, once described as the "most successful socialist country" by then Soviet Communist Party leader Mikhail Gorbachev, is a society that values equality and equilibrium. The nation emphasizes mutual aid and has no salient poverty or starvation problems. Japan is a typical harmony-based society. Nevertheless, under the rule of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's administration, which lasted from April 2001 to September 2006, Japan's economic policy shifted to one characterized by market fundamentalism, causing disharmony and disequilibrium in all sectors of society. Thus the expression "society of disparities" came into vogue. Still, Japan has fewer problems of economic disparity than do the United States and China. It is also actively pushing efforts for global environmental protection. Although it once leaned toward a "throwaway culture," Japan is now rebuilding a society based on "three R's" -- reduce, reuse and recycle. The Chinese government, at a meeting of the National People's Congress last March, announced a plan to build a harmony-based society and eliminate disharmony between coastal and inland regions, between manufacturing industry and agriculture, between urban and rural communities, between nature and man, and between China and the world -- especially the rest of Asia. So far, Japan has been a model of economic growth for developing Asian countries. In the coming years, it should be a model of the harmony-based society. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20070212ts.html <http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20070212ts.html> 021207 Japan Times ED A Milestone for Justice The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established 5 years ago to render "justice" less abstract and eliminate the impunity that political leaders have long enjoyed. The war crimes trials that followed World War II first focused international attention on the need for a tribunal to deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet the ICC's birth was possible only after the end of the Cold War. It is hard to miss that the ICC seems to spend a lot of its time dealing with African atrocities. That is partly a result of the bloody struggles throughout the continent; it also reflects a political judgment by the court that it must establish its credibility and Africa is the place to do so. While more than half the countries of the world appear to have accepted the idea of such a court, resistance in some quarters is still strong -- and the holdouts include the United States, China and Russia. US opposition has been especially strong. Washington has feared that the court would be used for political prosecutions of its soldiers and leaders. At one point, the US conditioned foreign military assistance on agreements that guarantee US citizens immunity from ICC prosecution. That hardline stand is ironic -- not only because the ICC embodies the objectives and values the US embraces, but also because the negotiations leading to the establishment of the court bent over backward to accommodate US concerns. For example, the ICC can only act when countries themselves are unwilling or unable to investigate or prosecute war crimes and similar offenses; the US has repeatedly investigated, charged and punished such misbehavior by its soldiers. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ed20070212a1.html <http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ed20070212a1.html> Japan experienced complete military defeat and the trauma of post-defeat criminals trials. Americans should be ashamed that we are conducting international warfare in a manner that others can rebuke our position as exceptionalism and hypocritical.
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