Pearl Harbor: Japan's oil blunder

In a sad admission of the passing of time, the Pearl Harbor survivors association used the 70th anniversary of the attack to announce they will disband at the end of the year. An estimated 8,000 people are still alive who survived the Japanese attack on Hawaii and some 2,700 of them are members of the association. But it has become too difficult to organise the annual national reunion in Honolulu. Association President William Muehleib cited the age and poor health of remaining members. "It was time. Some of the requirements became a burden," Muehleib said after this year’s ceremony at Pearl Harbor. (photo:Matt York/Associated Press)

The moment of silence at the ceremony was marked just before 8am when the first Japanese planes launched their attack. Tuesday, 7 December 1941 would become a day that would “live in infamy” as Roosevelt predicted when he responded to the attack. In two hours, 2,400 people would be killed, 1,200 wounded (a shocking discrepancy between the dead and wounded) 20 ships sunk and 164 planes destroyed. Yet the infamy FDR spoke about was not the death toll but the fact the Japanese had lied to him and attacked 30 minutes before they declared war.

The cause of Pearl Harbor, as so much of the 20th century’s conflict, was oil. Expansionist Japan was 80% reliant on US petroleum to fire its economy but knew the time would come when the alarmist Americans would turn off the tap. The US took a dim view of the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the subsequent war with China. Modern China retains so much bitterness about that war it still refuses to call the area Manchuria because it might legitimise Japanese claims. Instead it just called “North East China”.

From their puppet base in Manchukuo, belligerent Japan declared all out war on China in 1937. Relations with the US deteriorated with the USS Panay Incident that year when the Japanese sunk an American ship in Nangking and then the Allison Incident where US consul to Nangking John Moore Allison was struck in the face by a Japanese soldier. Japan said sorry for both incidents claiming it did not see the American flags on the Panay. It did not offer an excuse for Allison but bowed to US demands for an apology.

Despite the provocation, economic self-interest ensured the US kept supplying oil to Japan until 1941. It wasn’t until July that year they finally placed an embargo as did Britain. Crucially so did Dutch two months later, breaking an existing treaty with Japan and ending the possible increase in the supply line of Javanese oil which supplied 15% of Japanese crude. The embargo put a critical constraint on the conduct of the long-running war in China. Japan was the sixth largest importer of oil in the world. If Japan wanted to resume bombing Chiang Kai-Shek's and Mao Zedong’s armies, it would have to grab oil for itself and the East Indies was the easiest target.

While Pearl Harbor was a shock, the Pacific war was no great surprise. A majority of Americans expected war with Japan especially over the Philippines which held many strategic American interests. But Japan had other ideas. It was well aware it could not cope with planned American expansion of the Navy. The 1940 Two-Ocean Navy Act (sponsored by two Democrats Carl Vinson of Georgia and David Walsh of Massachusetts) planned to expand the size of the US Navy by 70%. Japan could never match this so struck a blow early before the Vinson-Walsh ships came off the assembly line.

An attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese believed, would also neutralise the existing Pacific Fleet to give Japan free reign to take Jakarta. Then the Americans would sue for a peace profitable to Japan. That this was flawed thinking is obvious in retrospect as was their complete failure to work out how the US would respond. Yet as a plan it no woollier than the thinking that led to another oil war while the execution was just as striking.

The 1941 attack was led by submarines. Five midget submarines came within 20km of the coast and launched their charges at 1am. At least four of them were sunk. Then the planes struck. There were almost 200 of them in the first group. A second wave of 170 flew closely behind. They were picked up by newly established radar on the northern tip of Oahu but misdiagnosed as a returning US crew and its immense size was not passed on to headquarters. At 7.48am they arrived at Pearl Harbor. The immediate target of the first wave was the battleships.

Japan believed that by targeting the battleships they would remove the biggest status symbols from the Navy. While they succeeded, they badly misread the importance of the technology. The sinking of one battleship the USS Arizona caused half the death toll on the day. Ten torpedo bombers attacked the ship. After one bomb detonated in the Arizona’s ammunition magazine, she went up in a deafening explosion. 1,117 of the 1,400 crew were killed instantly and the fire took two days to put out.

The second wave had various targets including hangars, aircraft, carriers and cruisers. After 90 devastating minutes, half the planes on Oahu were destroyed. A planned third wave to knock out Pearl Harbor’s remaining infrastructure was called off which Admiral Chester Nimitz admitted could have postponed US operations for another year. But Japanese Admiral Chuichi Nagumo refused because of likely casualties and a need for night-time operations.

Despite this lapse, the Japanese did not rest on their success. Hong Kong was attacked a day later as were US territories Guam and Wake Island. The Philippines, a commonwealth of the US at the time, was also invaded on 8 December. The same day Japanese troops made an amphibious landing at Kota Bharu in north-eastern Malaya, and six points along the south-east Thailand, an invasion ended by an armistice which allowed Japan to use Thailand as a base to attack Malaya. Malaya had rubber and was the obvious dropping off point to access Dutch oil in soon-to-be Indonesia.

Only the US, Iran and Romania exported more oil than the East Indies in 1941 but the profits went to Amsterdam and Royal Dutch Shell not Jakarta. Borneo was another yet victim of the 8 December naval blitzkrieg threatening the oilfields of Kalimantan. The rest of the island archipelago quickly fell and would remain in Japanese hands until 1945 while the war was fought elsewhere. The three aircraft carriers that called Pearl Harbor home were out at sea during the attack and the elimination of its battleships gave the US no choice but to put the fate of the war in its carriers.

While the Europe First policy slowed down the Pacific Conflict it was almost over as soon as it began. A wrathful America armed with its new Navy and massive fighting capacity was never going to forgive Japan’s treachery. By July 1942, America sunk four of Japan’s own carriers at Midway. Japan used its fierce military pride, deadly code of honour, incessant pro-war propaganda and Indonesian oil to keep the insanity going for another three years.

Why now is not the time to oppose nuclear technology

With Fukushima No 1, 2 and now 3 plant on the verge of meltdown now might not seem to be a good time to be advocating nuclear power. Yet I am coming to the conclusion that environmentalists like Lovelock are right. If we don’t go nuclear, we are toast. When scientists have good data that says the planet’s temperatures are heading into unknown territory and we don’t seem to want to change our ways, then at the very least we should have a bloody good Plan B. Despite the longer-term potential of solar and wind power, nuclear power is the best proven Plan B we currently have. (picture NTV Japan)

As Japan is proving, nuclear fission is a flawed technology. Yet Chernobyl aside, it has killed only a handful of people since the 1950s despite providing now 15 percent of the world’s electricity and 6 percent of the world's energy. Ever since the CND and Greenham Common, nuclear power has been an emotional talisman for the green movement. Opposition to it is one of its fundamentals and an almost taboo subject of discussion. The Greens, who in Australia are the most steadfast voices for recognising the problem of climate change, refuse to acknowledge the single most advanced technology we have for solving it in the short term.

Unassailable reams of climate data tells us that severe consequences are coming in the next 50 years if we don't do anything about our emissions. Green technologies are not quite ready to step up to the plate to fix the problem. Protectionism of fossil fuel technologies hasn’t helped but the best evidence is that we are 50 years away from renewable sources providing base load electricity that supports our current lifestyle. Renewable power stations will also be just as expensive and will face the same NIMBY issues as nuclear ones do.

Rebellion against that lifestyle motivates many Greens. But most humans, a majority of Greens included, are not yet prepared to give away improvements in technologies such as cheap international travel, internet access, or private transport. Short of some sort of human catastrophe we can all agree is attributable to global warming, the history of climate change international negotiation shows that change will be painfully slow.

Nuclear power is a way of confronting this problem, now. As Crikey editorialised today, the expense of setting up nuclear power is the biggest issue the industry has (though nuclear waste is not far behind as illegal dumping of radioactive waste by mafia groups such as the 'Ndrangheta is a huge law enforcement issue). Nuclear power has nothing to do with morality. What is moral or ought to be, is consistency with uranium and waste policy.

Both problems of creating nuclear power and disposing of its after effects could be resolved with the proceeds of a carbon tax though as yet no one is advocating this. The Libs would be the obvious candidate to suggest this possibility, but their implacable opposition to the tax means no one dares suggest that publicly.

Labor is just as equivocal as the liberals and their party website studiously avoids policy discussion on the subject. Only party extremists on either end such as Martin Ferguson and Peter Garrett could claim to have a coherent policy on nuclear power. Those in the middle equivocate according to the arguments du jour.

Regardless of what The Australian newspaper thinks, the Greens have been a very positive force in politics with their positions on climate change. It’s never a popular position to stand up as a Cassandra and warn of the problem if we don’t change our ways. For this reason, the Greens will never be popular enough to form Government in their own right without significantly ditching many core parts of their agenda.

Their ideological purity allows them to carry most ideas through to logical conclusions without the need for compromise. It’s no surprise to find they are the most inherently coherent party on most aspects of the conversion to a green economy. Yet there is one blind spot to their argument.

The near religious hold “no nuclear power” has on the green movement and many in the Australian Labor Party means we are considerably weakening our options to deal with the problems when they will inevitably arise. The Opposition is no better. The Australian right only seriously considers nuclear power as a wedge to taunt Labor. Together the three major parties perpetuate the fiction Australian is not a nuclear power despite its uranium exports, Lucas Heights facility and the likelihood of nukes at Pine Gap and visiting American warships. The Australian Greens policy remains a monument to pious thinking and not a solution to real world problems.

The Greens have five principals that deal with nuclear power worth exploring in more detail.

1. "There is a strong link between the mining and export of uranium and nuclear weapons proliferation."
This is true enough but is a weak first principle. It seeks to show that people can’t be trusted with nuclear power which is a fault of the people and not of the tool. Mutually assured destruction is not much fun for anymore, but it remains an important tactic for smaller powers to threaten larger ones. Take away nuclear power and they will find other weapons to achieve the same result. As alcohol prohibitionists found out, banning something is not the way to stop it.

2. "The consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, or of catastrophic accidents at, or terrorist attacks on, nuclear power stations, are so great that the risks are unacceptably high."
Much of this is a repeat of the first principle. The rest is hyperbole despite the current crisis. Nuclear weapons haven’t been used in war since 1945 though many times as exercises (see Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto’s astonishing 14 minute timelapse of all 2053 nuclear explosion between 1945 and 1998). There have been a few catastrophic accidents. But no deaths or serious injuries have ever been attributed to radiation from a Western civil nuclear power plant. Three Mile Island is one of only two meltdowns in the US (Fermi 1 was the other) and neither suffered loss of life.

The IAEA’s International Nuclear Event Scale goes from 0 (no safety issues) to 7 (major accident). The 1986 failure of Reactor 4 at Prypiat, Ukraine, better known as the Chernobyl Disaster is the only INES 7 accident yet recorded with a possible 4,000 deaths recorded caused directly or indirectly by the incident. This was a tragedy of the first rank but it says more about Soviet industry standards than it does about nuclear power. Other power sources in Russia are just as vulnerable. In the 1999 disaster at the largest hydroelectric power station in the country Sayano-Shuskensky in southern Russia seven people died. If the 240m dam had collapsed, hundreds of thousands in the cities below the dam would also have been in jeopardy. Yet there is no talk of The Greens wanting to ban hydroelectrical power because of the possibility of accidents.

The third part of that second policy principal deals with terrorist actions, which remains a potential threat. But again, banning something simply because terrorists use it, is not a problem limited to nuclear power.

3. "Future generations must not be burdened with high level radioactive waste.” This is a noble gesture but it begs the question: what is the extent of the burden? Waste comes from both the front and back end of the nuclear process. The front end waste depleted uranium is used in highly destructive weapons that are morally repulsive but it also has practical applications such as in the keel of yachts. The back end waste, spent fuel rods, is the heavy hitting stuff. The amount of High Level Waste worldwide is increasing by 12,000 metric tons a year, which says nuclear power company Marathon Resourcing is the equivalent to about 100 double-decker buses 100 double-decker buses. As an industry body, it is no surprise to hear them say it is “modest compared with other industrial wastes.” But they might be right. London currently has the largest of double decker buses with about 1200 buses which if put together would amount to 12 years of high level nuclear waste. The burden seems small on this evidence.

4. "Nuclear power is not a safe, clean, timely, economic or practical solution to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions".
The fear factor of safety returns to the ideas in the first three principles. How safe is not addressing global emissions by use of nuclear power? The word “clean” is a platitude presented without any evidence. “Timely” is questionable but has some merit. A nuclear power plant would take 12-15 years to commission and build, a small period of time given the consequences of inaction. They are expensive to build but so will be any solution that envisages humans keep up their energy usage-intensive lifestyles. As for nuclear being not a “practical solution”, go ask any of the world’s 440 commercial nuclear power stations in 30 countries, even those ones that are built on geological faultlines.

5. "Australia's reliance on the US nuclear weapons 'umbrella' lends our bases, ports and infrastructure to the US nuclear war fighting apparatus."
This final argument has nothing to do with nuclear power. Australia’s ANZUS agreement lends our bases to US nuclear war fighting apparatus regardless of our policy on nuclear power. The agreement needs to be understood in what it purports to be protecting Australia from and not what it protecting Australia with. Fight the agreement if this is wrong and not a tool used to enforce it.

These five principals are not wrong individually. It’s just that they are weak arguments given the current deck of cards we’ve been dealt with. Longer term, renewable energy is easily the most sensible solution. But we’ve got to get to that longer term first. Until we overcome the variability of solar and wind power production, land area required, and the NIMBY fights to get there, nuclear power is far and away the best proven technology to achieve base and peak load in an emission-free way. Nuclear reactors will never kill as many people as a nature’s earthquakes or tsunami, they just need to be a bit better built on the Pacific Rim.

Hatoyama brought down by the Keystone of the Pacific

Yet another Japanese Prime Minister has stood down less than a year into the job. Yukio Hatoyama resigned today a little more than eight months after taking office. His resignation came after he was forced to break an election campaign promise and keep open the controversial US marine base on the southern island of Okinawa. Speaking to members of his Democratic Party of Japan, he said he had tried for six months to move the base off the island but failed. He then bowed out as the fourth Japanese Prime Minister to be forced out of office in as many years.

Hatoyama had come to power on a wave of change. The DPJ won a historic election by a landslide in August 2009 over the Liberal Democrats who had ruled Japan for nearly 50 years. But the price of victory was high. Hatoyama made some extravagant election promises he would find difficult to keep. None was more difficult than removing the US bases off Okinawa.

Okinawa’s history and importance saw to that. The World War II Battle of Okinawa was one of the biggest and bitterest of the Pacific Campaign and was the last major battle before Japan’s surrender. It was the largest amphibious assault of the war outside of D-Day and 200,000 Japanese (half of whom were civilian) died in its fruitless defence. The US also suffered its largest casualties in the Pacific war with 12,000 soldiers killed in the invasion. 90 percent of the island was destroyed and the island would remain under American administration for 27 years after the war.

Okinawa was a crucial base in the Korean and Vietnamese wars as well as a launch pad for covert missions in Cambodia and Laos. Americans called the island the Keystone of the Pacific. America’s 50,000 military personnel on the island were exempt from local laws according to the Status of Forces Agreement. Their immunity and the wars they fought from the island led to the formation of a large protest movement on the island. The island was formally handed back to Japan in 1972 but the bases stayed. It remained the focal point of the treaty in which US guarantees Japan’s security at their expense.

But opposition to the Americans on the island grew to the point in 2007 where 85 percent wanted them out. Noise pollution, accidents, crime and environmental degradation were all cited as reasons. The US has looked at moving troops out to Guam and Australia but due to the large numbers involved (47,000 troops are still stationed there) the army is saying it is logistically impossible to move them all out until 2015.

This was the background to Hatoyama’s election promise. But after discussing the matter with President Obama last month, the best result Hatoyama could achieve was to move Futenma base from its current urban location to a less crowded part of the island. The deal was little different than the Liberal Democrat deal in 2006 Hatoyama vowed to overturn. According to the BBC “operational objections from the US, as well as opposition from people living on other islands proposed as alternative locations…forced the prime minister into a humiliating climbdown.”

The repercussions were immediate. Mizuho Fukushima, the gender equality minister and leader of the Social Democrats, said she could not "betray the Okinawans" by supporting the agreement. She was sacked from the ministry for not backing the deal. Fukushima then vowed to leave the ruling coalition. While the DPJ’s huge majority means they could easily rule alone in the Lower House, they rely on the SDs support to form a majority in the Upper House for which voters go to the polls in July.

The writing was on the wall for Hatoyama’s when new figures showed his approval rating plunged to just 17 percent at the start of this week. Hatoyama was the latest Japanese leader to find out he could not unlock the keystone of the Pacific. As Racewire says, the Okinawa base still stands as a symbol of an invidious occupation, and the communities living in the shadow of the US hegemony every day grow more and more resentful of their “protectors.”

Hatoyama’s challenges after DPJ landslide win in Japan

photo by wilbanks

As expected, the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) have won a landslide victory in elections ending half a century of almost unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The DPJ is likely to end up with 308 of the 480 seats in parliament almost tripling their representation from the last election in 2005. Incoming Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s work will be cut out as he has made many election promises that don’t sit well with Japan’s troubled economy. The 62-year-old US-trained engineer called the victory “the starting line” but won’t announce his cabinet until he is officially elected prime minister by a special session of parliament, expected to be in about two weeks.

The outgoing Aso government crashed to defeat despite asking many legitimate questions about the DPJ’s ability to pay for its expensive campaign promises. These included a $300 a month child allowance to push up the birth rate (ageing is a principal cause of Japan’s stagnation), income support to farmers and heavily subsidised schooling. But the LDP’s own record was in tatters after the collapse of Japan’s bubble economy and they have stumbled with a succession of mediocre Prime Ministers since the charismatic Junichiro Koizumi (who won the last election) resigned in 2006.

The Nikkei-225 share index reacted well to the DPJ victory going up two per cent to an 11-month high earlier today. But there is a lot of catching up to do. Its stock market contracted by a massive 45 percent between July 2007 and February 2009. Japan was devastated by the GFC and the economy contracted by 0.7 percent in 2008 and is predicted to contract by another 2.5 percent this year before reaching a modest expansion of 0.6 per cent in 2010. Over the medium term, economic growth in Japan is expected to recover to about 1.8 per cent a year. However, exports, the main driver of the country’s economic growth, have been declining rapidly, turning the country’s trade surplus into a deficit earlier this year.

Japan has the largest fiscal deficit (as a share of gross domestic product) among the OECD economies, with public sector debt forecast to reach around 174 per cent of gross domestic product by the end of 2009. This wasn’t helped by the Aso Government’s introduction of a 10 trillion yen (US$111 billion) fiscal stimulus package in December 2008. Any further fiscal stimulus package will only worsen that situation. But after a long period of minimal growth and then severe recession there is now a strong political incentive to pursue economic growth polices. What remains to be seen is whether the DPJ can deliver. The signs are not promising. In the election campaign, Hatoyama proclaimed what The Economist called a “mushy-sounding concept, yuai, that mixes up the Chinese characters for friendship and love”. He calls it fraternity and says tariff sectors such as agriculture will be even more protected than they already are.

Another major challenge will be the environment. Japan’s Kyoto target is 7 percent reduction by 2012 on the 2000 figure. But even with recession, they are tracking at an 8 percent increase. Japan has also been criticised for its 2020 targets which is a modest 15 percent reduction using 2005 as the base year (not 1990 as Europe is using). In June the then environment minister Tetsuo Saito outlined the LDP goals for Copenhagen. Saito claimed it was following the lead of the US by starting the clock from 2005 and said the country has invested $10b in the “Cool Earth Partnership” with developing nations aimed at reducing emissions by 50 percent by 2050.

A key part of the DMJ’s election manifesto was green reforms that went much further than the LDP’s targets. They promised to lift Japan’s 2020 target to reduce greenhouse emissions to 25 per cent below 1990 levels. Hatoyama has also promised to create a mandatory domestic emissions trading scheme, again something the LDP were opposed to. While green groups are obviously pleased with these outcomes, others have issued a warning. Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director at the US Natural Resources Defence Council, said the DMJ would have to deal with deep-rooted opposition in the bureaucracy and business sector. "You won't see a wholesale switch,” he said. “They will still have to deal with concerns of industries and with [strong] ministries that have very different views on climate change”. Hatoyama will need every seat of his huge mandate to overcome such bureaucratic inertia.

Japan deckchair shuffle: Aso favourite to replace Fukuda.

Ruling party secretary-general Taro Aso is the odds-on favourite to become Japan’s next Prime Minister later this month. He will be the 11th prime minister in the last 15 years. The 67 year old Aso was runner up to incumbent Yasuo Fukuda in last year’s election for premier and remains a popular and congenial figure. It is possible he will now be the only candidate to replace Fukuda who resigned on Monday. The chair of the ruling LDP's general affairs committee, Takashi Sasagawa said the party would meet on Wednesday to formally set a date for the internal leadership vote. Japanese media expect the vote to occur on September 20 or 22. Aso announced his intension to run yesterday. "I think [Fukuda] felt he had work that was left undone, and he said he wanted it to be carried out," he said. "As someone who discussed these issues with him…I think I have the credentials to take that on”.

Aso is a former foreign minister and a hawkish and straight-talking right-winger. His power is based in the party’s grassroots and he is no friend of Fukuda. In a cabinet shuffle last month Yoshiro Mori, one of the LDP’s power brokers (and a former unsuccessful PM himself), foisted Aso onto a reluctant Fukuda as the party’s new secretary-general. According to The Economist, Aso has done nothing since his appointment but work behind the scenes to undermine Fukuda.

Though his resignation was not unexpected, there was no obvious trigger for its announcement. Fukuda,72, called it a day on Monday saying he had decided several days earlier to step down to avoid creating a "political vacuum". At his farewell media conference, Fukuda said a cabinet reshuffle and the recent announcement of $107 billion in spending and tax cuts had not lifted his deeply unpopular administration in the polls. Fukuda was deeply unpopular and has been hampered by a hostile Upper House where the opposition Democrats blocked government bills and appointments, including Fukuda's candidate to be governor of the Bank of Japan.

The moderate conservative only took office last September after his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, quit in similar circumstances and after a similar time period in the job. Malcolm Cook at The Interpreter believes Aso has a better chance of staying longer in the job than either Abe or Fukuda. Unlike the two previous leaders Aso is popular and charismatic and can provide a message of hope and renewal. In that respects he most resembles the country’s last successful leader Junichiro Koizumi. Cook calls Aso a “Koizumi plus” candidate who will take a very strong line on strengthening the US alliance and on viewing China as a strategic competitor and a threat to Japan.

But for now the biggest threat to Japan remains Japanese politics. Fukuda struggled to cope with a divided parliament where opposition parties have the power to delay legislation. He tried and failed several times to compromise with Democrats' leader, Ichiro Ozawa (who quit the LDP in the 1990s). Important legislation could be rammed through the Diet thanks only to the two-third’s “supermajority” enjoyed by the ruling coalition in the lower house. But most notable was the failure to pass a bill to renew the Japanese navy’s refuelling mission in the Indian Ocean, an embarrassing set-back to the country’s commitment to the war in Afghanistan.

Fukuda’s sudden exit now raises questions about the LDP’s ability to cling to power or even avoid splitting up after ruling Japan for most of the past 53 years. The LDP does not have to call an election until next year but the Democrats are now pushing for an early vote. The party’s secretary-general Yukio Hatoyama said Fukuda’s sudden department showed that LDP didn’t have the ability to hold the reins of government. “I am deeply resentful towards Fukuda for not caring about people,” he said. “All we want is the calling of early elections.”

Jake Adelstein defies Yakuza death threats

In a brave article in the Washington Post last month, a Japanese-based American journalist blew the lid on Yakuza activities in Japan and abroad. The article is remarkable for Jake Adelstein’s rare insights into criminal activities that infect every aspect of Japanese society. Its wisdom is also hard won: the article’s author has received death threats from the Yakuza but refuses to be silenced. Adelstein is a rarity; a “gaijin” or foreigner who has immersed himself in the dark world of Japanese organised crime.

While most people outside Japan think of it as a law-abiding country, there are an estimated 1.3 million members of the Yakuza and they infiltrate every aspect of Japanese society. Their origins are shrouded in Japanese history; some believe they emerged from groups of leaderless samurai who either stole or gambled for a living. A group of violent yakuza emerged in Japan during the period of rapid industrialisation that followed World War II and took control of the black market. Various groups took over different industries and most now have very complex organisational structure. The yakuza have also spread to California where they have made alliances with Korean and Vietnamese gangs as well as more traditional partnerships with the Chinese triads. The bonds between members, and the bribes they pay to officials, make information on their activities very hard to come by.

One of the Yakuza’s biggest enemies is a Missouri-born journalist. Jake Adelstein was the first American ever hired as a regular staff writer for a major Japanese newspaper. He came to Japan as a graduate student, took the Japanese press entrance exam and became a crime reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. Yomiuri Shimbun is one of four national newspapers in Japan. This 120 years old institution has a circulation exceeding 10 million papers a day making it the biggest circulation newspaper in the world. Adelstein was one of two thousand journalists employed by Yomiuri and he was placed on their crime beat.

Though he initially knew nothing of organised crime in Japan, it wasn’t long before following Yakuza prostitution and extortion rackets would become part of his life. Adelstein used his charm to befriend cops and criminals alike and got on well with most of them because of his own outsider status. Adelstein noticed that over the last seven years the Yakuza has changed its tactics. It has moved out of traditional money-making schemes such as prostitution, gambling, drugs and protection and into high finance. Tokyo police have identified more than 800 yakuza front companies which masquerade as investment and auditing firms, construction companies and even pastry shops. They are now moving money offshore and have set up their own bank in California. Japan's Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission now has an index of more than 50 listed companies with ties to organized crime. Adelstein said the Japanese market is so infested with criminals that Osaka Securities Exchange officials review all listed companies in March this year and expelled those it found to have links with the Yakuza.

Adelstein’s mistake was to alienate Goto Tadamasa, one of the more psychopathic Yakuza bosses. Tadamasa is head of the Tokyo based Goto-Gumi gang and has a reputation as the “John Gotti of Japan”. According to Adelstein, Tadamasa is an unforgiving sort given to “doing things like driving dump trucks into pachinko parlours that won't pay protection money.” In 2005 Adelstein researched a story about Tadamasa’s involvement with the FBI. He found out that four years earlier the mobster agreed to provide information about yamaguchi-gumi (Japan’s largest Yakuza syndicate) activities in America in exchange for a visa to get a liver transplant operation in California. Tadamasa jumped a long queue to receive the life-saving operation from a world-renowned liver surgeon and donated a large amount of money to the hospital in return. Tadamasa threatened to kill Adelstein if he wrote a story about it. One of Tadamasa’s underlings gave the journalist a chilling message: “Erase the story or be erased”.

Adelstein (pictured left) took advice from one of his friends in the police department. He decided discretion was the better part of staying alive. He not only abandoned the scoop but also resigned from the Yomiuri Shimbun two months later. But Adelstein planned to write about it in a book banking on Goto's poor health to ensure he'd be dead by the time it came out. However disaster struck in November 2007 when the book contents were leaked to the media. Now Adelstein and his Japanese wife and child require 24-hour protection from the FBI and Tokyo Police. The book is called Tokyo Vice and will be available for publication in November. Adelstein said his aim in writing the book was the hope "to be such a public target that the calculation of repercussions of whacking me is so detrimental that nobody wants to do it."

Fukuda takes the reins in Japan

New Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has promised a more conciliatory approach to politics than his predecessor after his first week in the job. Fukuda has committed to keeping dialogue open with the media with twice daily interviews, town meetings and an email magazine. He also wants to engage in dialogue with the opposition Democratic Party of Japan to solve the current political impasse. His predecessor Shinzo Abe had antagonised the press and resigned over his failure to win support for an extension of a controversial anti-terrorism law.

The 71 year old Fukuda is a political survivor. He is the country’s longest serving chief cabinet secretary (between 2000 and 2004) and follows in the footsteps of his late father Takeo Fukuda who was Prime Minister between 1976 and 1978. Fukuda (the son) initially worked in private industry but moved into backroom politics during his father’s reign as premier. He was elected into parliament in 1990. He slowly worked his way up to Chief Cabinet Secretary until he was brought down in a purge after a major political scandal about the Japanese pension system.

Fukuda was approached to run for leadership last year after Junichiro Koizumi stepped down but he decided to leave the field clear for Shinzo Abe to take the leadership. Fukuda has now promised to use his negotiating skills to win approval for extending Tokyo's contentious mission in support of US troops in Afghanistan. Currently Japanese naval vessels refuel coalition ships in the Indian Ocean. The mission has been going since 2001, and Washington has called publicly for Tokyo to renew its commitment. The US joined a delegation of 11 nations that has called on Japan to “continue its important contribution” in Afghanistan.

Many in Japan think the ruling government’s support for the refuelling goes against the intent of Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, the so-called ‘anti belligerence’ clause. The first sentence of the article reads in part “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes”. The clause was included in the American-written Japanese constitution in 1947 and has never been modified. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was closely associated with a push to renew the Afghan mandate but was opposed by the Democratic Party of Japan.

He resigned suddenly on 12 September. Officially Abe said he resigned to expedite the end to a political stalemate caused by Afghan crisis and the defeat of the ruling coalition in the July Upper House elections. But many observers questioned how exactly Abe’s resignation will resolve the issue. This has led to speculation as to other possibilities to why he stood aside. Some aides have hinted of a health problem and Chief Cabinet Secretary Kaoru Yosano said Abe has been in “constant agony” lately. But there may be a second cause. There is talk in Japanese political circles that an upcoming story in the weekly tabloid Shukan Gendai will expose a ¥300 million inheritance tax evasion by Abe.

If this is true, it is just one more example of financial impropriety in Japan’s upper political echelons. Even new Prime Minister Fukuda is not immune. On Friday he was forced to admit reports that a political support group in his constituency crossed off its name on receipts and instead attributed the receipts to the ruling party's local chapter. Fukuda denied it was deliberate evasion but instead merely “sloppy accounting”. But the news does not bode well for a cleaner financial future. For now Fukuda is acting humble in the hope of riding the storm. "It has nothing to do with making a profit or financial wrongdoing," he said. "But as the head of the office I really feel ashamed."

Moonage Daydreams

America will go back to the Moon in order to prepare for a trip to Mars in two decades. NASA announced yesterday they plan to resume manned missions to the Moon by 2020 with a view sending to a manned mission to Mars by 2037. NASA administrator Michael Griffin made the claim at the 58th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in the Indian city of Hyderabad. But Griffin stated they would need help from the private sector to make it happen. He said greater private investment in satellite and rocket launches is needed to make such missions commercially feasible. “Space tourism may be the only way out to make space transportation economical,” he said. “[but], we have to evolve a mechanism to train the prospective tourists and ensure their safety”.

America is not alone as at least four other countries are planning moon missions. However, a top Indian scientist warned the same IAC conference we should not colonise the Moon or Mars. Dr MYS Prasad said their resources should be shared for the common good. Prasad, who is an Indian Space Research Organisation ISRO deputy director, said the space community needed to avoid the temptation to mine minerals from Moon or Mars until we create an environmentally friendly base. “The biggest ethical question before the space-faring nations is whether mankind is looking at ‘habitation or colonisation’ of Moon and Mars,” he said. “The construction and occupation of bases should be fundamentally treated as habitations rather than colonies in the conventional sense.”

Griffin's 'back to the moon by 2020' statement is a reiteration of a George W Bush claim in 2004. But with a Mars mission like to cost in excess of $1 trillion, it remains speculative at best without commercial or international support. The arguments for and against colonisation of the Moon are likely to hot up as the Asian countries enter the space race. India and China have plans to launch space probes in the next 12 months and Japan has already launched a spacecraft to the moon.

On 14 September Japan launched its Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE for short) from its Tanegashima Island spaceport off the country’s south coast. Better known by the Japanese by its nickname “Kaguya” (for a mythical princess that visited the Moon) the three ton craft is powered by a Mitsubishi H-IIA rocket, the 3 ton rocket. It will orbit the Earth twice before setting off on a two week trip to the Moon. Expected to arrive in a Moon orbit by 3 October, Selene will map and analyse the satellite’s surface, interior and gravitational field.

China will follow suit when it launches Chang’e 1 before the end of the year. Named for the Chinese goddess of the Moon, it will be the first phase of China’s ambitious lunar program. It will be launched before the end of this year. Chang’e 1 represents the “orbiting” phase of the Chinese program and will be followed by a “landing” phase in 2012 and a “returning” phase in 2017. A fourth “manned” phase remains off the agenda for now.

India will also launch its Chandrayaan-L lunar probe in early 2008. And the US’s traditional space rival Russia should not be discounted either. Although their program has been impoverished since the end of the Soviet Union, in 2006 the Duma (parliament) voted a 33 percent increase for Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency. The will bring its budget, including income from the sale of launch services, to $1.7 billion a year. That is serious money and has given Russia the opportunity to consider returning to the Moon, where no cosmonaut has yet to land. It plans a permanent research base by an ambitious 2012.

But as NASA’s Griffin hinted in his IAC speech, private enterprise will play a large part in all future endeavours. Google have offered $20 million to someone who can send a robotic rover to the moon and beam back a gigabyte of data of the trip. But Google have placed a time limit on the prize in an incentive to speed up the race. It drops to $15 million in 2012 and expires altogether in 2014.

The moon has many attractive properties that would attract private investment but perhaps the most precious of these is Helium 3. Helium 3 is a light isotope of helium with two protons and one neutron. This configuration is rare on Earth but is abundant on the Moon. Its value to an energy hungry world is as a fusion power source. Its major advantage is that it is not radioactive. Some scientists estimate there is about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the world for thousands of years. Gerald Kulcinski, has grand ambitions for the isotope. The Director of the Fusion Technology Institute (FTI) at the University of Wisconsin said Helium 3 could be a cash crop on the Moon. "Today helium 3 would have a cash value of $4 billion a ton”, he estimates. "When the moon becomes an independent country, it will have something to trade."

Japan court denies justice to war crimes victims

Japan’s Supreme Court has ruled against two women who were victims of Japanese War atrocities during World War II. The women filed for compensation saying they were kidnapped and used as sex slaves. The Supreme Court acknowledged the women were forced into sexual servitude but nevertheless upheld a 2005 Tokyo High Court ruling that rejected compensation claims. The court ruled the women’s right to reparation ended when Japan and China settled their diplomatic differences in 1972 and Beijing renounced their war claims. The woman had sought $US 390,000 in damages.

The same argument was used earlier yesterday when the same court also handed down a judgement against five Chinese men who were forced to work as slave labourers in Japan during the war. The plaintiffs were among 360 Chinese who worked at a Nishimatsu hydroelectric power plant construction site in western Japan for the last year of the war. The court overturned a Hiroshima court’s order for Nishimatsu to pay the five $US230, 000 in compensation. 78 year old plaintiff Song Jiyao lost his eyes in an accident while doing forced labour. He spoke to the media after the court result saying "We've lost. But we will continue to struggle with Nishimatsu to the bitter end."

China has denounced the court judgements. Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao acknowledged the 1972 agreement that waived war reparation rights but said it was a political decision to aid bi-partisan friendship. He said the court had ignored solemn representations lodged by China which opposed what it called an “arbitrary interpretation” of the agreement. The matter is now likely to become a political issue. “We have already asked the Japanese government to seriously deal with China's concerns and properly handle this issue." Said Liu.

The 1972 agreement quoted by the court is known as the Sino-Japanese Joint Statement. This agreement finally normalised relations between the two bitter foes. In 1951 the US held a peace conference regarding Japan in San Francisco. But newly Communist China was not invited. Premier Zou En Lai denounced the subsequent treaty as illegal and invalid. The following year Japan signed a treaty with Taiwan which further enraged Beijing. Relations finally thawed between the powers in the 1960s and the countries established liaison offices. In 1972 Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka visited China to establish the joint statement. The statement annulled Japan’s agreement with Taiwan and recognised Beijing as the legal government. In return China absolved Japan of war reparations.

While China had not fully forgiven Japan for its wartime invasion and associated atrocities, its attitude would now become formulated as “the past, if not forgotten, can serve as a guide for the future". In 1998 Japan formally recognised its aggression against China for the first time and expressed a profound apology to the Chinese people. In 2001 then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited the Museum of Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japan. There he expressed his apology and condolence over the Chinese people who lost their lives in the Japanese invasion.

Yet there is a strong new hawkish attitude visible in Japan today. In the same year he visited Beijing, Koizumi also re-established the tradition of a prime ministerial visit to the Yasukuni Shrine to pay homage to the Japanese war dead. This Shinto shrine was founded in 1869 to commemorate the dead from all wars since the Meiji Restoration in order to build a peaceful Japan (Yasukuni means "peaceful country"). The problem is that among the 2.5 million dead listed there are 14 Class A war criminals from World War II as well as over a thousand others convicted of other war crimes . The shrine steadfastly refuses to remove them. China and Korea have both repeatedly voiced anger at Japanese governmental visits to the shrine.

New Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was widely expected to be more hawkish than Koizumi but he surprisingly stayed away from Yasukuni as 160 Japanese lawmakers paid their respects there last week. Abe has visited the shrine in other capacities but not yet as Prime Minister. Abe is declining to say whether he would go to Yasukuni, keeping a delicate balancing act between Chinese sensibilities and his own conservative supporters. Abe told reporters last week he "still upholds the desire to pray for the souls of those who sacrificed themselves for the country."

Last month Abe further enraged the Chinese by telling the Japanese parliament there was no proof Japan's government or military had forced women to work in military brothels during the war. Currently at a summit in Camp David to discuss the US-Japan alliance with President Bush, he is the subject of protests in Washington. 78 year old Lee Young-soo, a former Korean sex slave, led the protest in a march to the White House. Abe told US reporters he has "deep-hearted sympathies" for what the women went through. But Young-soo wants a formal apology for the remaining victims. Young-soo was a prisoner for three years. She recalls how she looked when she finally returned to Korea after the war. "They were making a ceremony for my spirit because they thought I was dead,” she said. “I looked like a beggar -- beaten, bleeding."

Changing of the guard in Japan

Japan has a new Prime Minister. Shinzo Abe was installed yesterday to replace long-term successful leader Jun’ichiro Koizumi who stepped down after five mostly successful years in the top job. The PM is likely to signal a shift in Japanese foreign policy as they look to step away from the shadow of decades of postwar guilt

Koizumi meanwhile can enjoy his retirement. Jun’ichiro Koizumi was a third generation politician and son and grandson of government ministers. His grandfather Matajiro was known as the "wild man" and "tattoo minister" because of a large tattoo of a red dragon on his back. His unsuccessful bid to privatise the post office was picked up by his grandson Koizumi. Koizumi was born in 1942 near Yokohama. He studied economics at Tokyo’s Keio University, second most prestigious private university in Japan. His father died in 1969 and Koizumi unsuccessfully ran for election in his place. He got a job as secretary to the future PM Takeo Fukuda before getting elected three years later. Fukuda became his mentor in the Liberal Democratic Party – the LDP. The LDP have ruled Japan almost uninterruptedly since its foundation in 1955. For the first twenty years of its existence it was propped up by millions of dollars pumped into it by the CIA in the effort to stop an effective left-wing opposition in the country.

Koizumi gradually climbed up the political ladder. His arranged marriage in 1978 was a major event. The wedding cake was in the shape of the Japanese Diet building the reception drew 2,500 people including now PM Fukuda. Clearly Koizumi was destined for great things. He gained his first vice-ministerial role in 1979 and becoming a full minister nine years later. The only fly in the ointment was his divorce which caused Koizumi to vow never to marry again. Koizumi kept his first two sons and he never saw the third son who was born after the divorce. In 1993, the LDP’s long cosy reign was brought to end due to endemic corruption. This was a major shock to the ‘born to rule’ mentality of the party’s leaders. In opposition, Koizumi set up a new faction of younger, more dynamic members and he unsuccessfully fought to be elected president of the party in 1995 and again in 1999. In the meantime the other parties could not find a stable coalition and the LDP was returned to power a mere two years after their removal. Koizumi finally won the top job in 2001.

He immediately set up a program of reform. He realised his grandfather’s dream and privatised the post office. The Japanese stock market recovered after the country’s banking crisis. Koizumi became more assertive in the foreign policy area too. H emphasised Japan’s claims over the Russian occupied Kuril Islands. He sent troops to Iraq, a token gesture, but a large one given the express anti-militarism of the Japanese constitution. But his most controversial and provocative move was his annual visit to the Yasukuni shrine. The Shinto shrine near Toyko is dedicated to Japan’s war dead. The shrine’s Book of Souls listed the names of over two million men and women who were killed in wartime. The list includes over a thousand convicted of war crimes. While the visits were condemned by South Korea and China, it was politically popular in Japan where they had a 69% approval rating in 2001. Koizumi was known as a maverick leader and he was obsessed by Elvis Presley with whom he shares a birthday (8 January). In 2001 he released a CD collection of his favourite Elvis songs which included his comments on each song. His brother is Senior Advisor of the Tokyo Elvis Fan Club. On his farewell trip to the States in June, the highlight was a visit to the less controversial shrine of Gracelands where he wore Elvis trademark sunglasses and sung a few bars of his songs.

His replacement Shinzo Abe is not quite as idiosyncratic but very similar in upbringing. He was born on the 21st of September 1945, which makes him by a matter of weeks Japan’s first post-war born Prime Minister. He graduated in political science at Seikei University near Tokyo in 1977. After a short stint working in private enterprise he began to work for the Japan’s long-term ruling LDP government. Like Koizumi, he is the third generation scion of a political family. His father Shintaro Abe was a possible candidate for Prime Minister until brought down by one Japan’s numerous financial scandals. After Shintaro died in 1991, his son was the obvious choice to take his seat in the Diet. Shinzo gradually worked his way to the top and became a Cabinet minister in the short-lived government of Yoshiro Mori in 2000. Mori was an unpopular PM with "the heart of a flea and the brain of a shark”. It wasn’t long before he lost his job to Koizumi. But Shinzo held his position under the new leader.

He came to public prominence in the 2002 negotiations with North Korea on Japanese citizens kidnapped by Kim Il-Jong’s regime. This referred to a strange episode between 1977 and 1983 when North Korea abducted up to 80 Japanese citizens. It is likely they were taken to teach the Japanese language and culture at North Korean spy schools. Shinzo struck a hard bargaining position with the Koreans which went down well at home. In October last year he was appointed Chief Cabinet Secretary of the fifth Koizumi administration which left him the heir apparent to succeed his boss. Yesterday the Diet elected him PM with a vote of 339-136 in his favour. At 52 Shinzo is the youngest Japanese leader since before Pearl Harbour.

Shinzo is a political conservative with even more hardline views on Japanese wartime activities than Koizumi. He published an instant bestseller in Japan “Towards a Beautiful Nation” where he repudiated the post war Tokyo Tribunal which charged many Japanese leaders with war crimes. He was also accused of censoring a tribunal on the military “comfort women” who were forced to provide sex for in military brothels during the war. He also opposes laws to allow women ascend the Chrysanthemum Throne.

Despite his hawkish credentials, Shinzo has pledged to repair tattered relations with Asian neighbours. Relationships with China and South Korea have been frosty since Koizumi visited the war memorial. Although Shinzo is also in favour of such visits, his appointment has been cautiously welcomed by China and South Korea. Shinzo also has no ambitions to change the nature of the alliance with the US and told the press that alliance “forms the foundation of our foreign and security policy." However we can expect to see a more militarist stance from Japan as he attempts to change the pacifist constitution which has been in place since the end of World War II.

Japan and Korea with rocks in their heads

Today, South Korea set up an 18-ship naval blockade around a disputed group of islands, warning of a "physical clash" as two Japanese coastguard ships steam towards them.

The islands are to be found in the middle of the Sea of Japan roughly half way between the two countries. The Koreas know the islands as Dokdo and the Japanese call them Takeshima. Woolly Days’ atlas has a third name for them: Liancourt Rocks. The islands got this name from a French whaler "Le Liancourt" which visited them in 1849. The Russians named them Manalai and Olivutsa Rocks in 1854 and a year later the English got in on the act calling them the Hornet Rocks.

So why all this fuss over these multi-named but tiny islands one hundred and fifty years later? To quote a serial philanderer, it’s the economy, stupid. But that is only partially correct. The Koreans and the Japanese have a long history of political and military disputes and Dokdo/Takeshima (/Liancourt/Manalai/Hornet etc.) is, along with the recompense of the so-called ‘comfort women’, one of the most important unresolved squabbles from the Second World War.

I said the islands are roughly half way between the two countries but Korea is slightly closer being 217km away compared to the 250km distance to Japan. And though there is no fresh water on the islands, there are approximately 50 Koreans living there working as police, government officials, lighthouse keepers and one unattached couple who live off the fishing.

And it is the fact that they are rich fishing grounds that makes the islands economically important. There is also possible reserves of natural gas though none has yet been found. The Koreans have placed an Exclusive Economic Zone around the island and the Japanese are not happy.

The rocks are also important for military strategic reasons. They served many times as a military base, most notably in the Russo-Japanese War. The Japanese claimed the islands in that year of 1905 using the doctrine ‘terra nullius’ (familiar to Australians as the point of law that led to the native title legislation.) They remained a Japanese possession until the end of the Second World War. The Americans excluded the rocks from Japanese administrative authority in 1946. However the exclusion order did not clearly state who should take over the rule of the rocks. Indeed, the US maintains a policy of non-recognition for claims by either side to this day. The South Koreans claimed it in 1952 towards the end of the Korean War but the Japanese fought skirmishes in a vain effort to re-establish control in 1953. The incident ended with the sinking of a Japanese ship. In 1954, the Korean government rejected a Japanese offer to seek arbitration at the International Court of Justice. Instead the Koreans built a lighthouse and helicopter pad. Subsequently they built a radar station enabling them to track the naval forces of Russia, Japan, and North Korea winding their various ways through the Sea of Japan. The status of the island was omitted from the 1965 “Basic Relations Treaty” which normalised the relationship between the two countries.

Today, despite the fact that they are major trading partners, both sides still vigorously claim the islands. This month, the Japanese dispatched two ships to conduct a maritime survey near the islands without first formally notifying the Korean government. In response, the Koreans dispatched eighteen patrol ships and warned Japan not to go through with its plans.

Last heard (April 19, 2006), the Japanese convoy were still on course, ignoring Seoul’s calls to turn back. Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Shinzo Abe, claimed that there was "no problem" whereas South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said "We don't want the situation to worsen, but we will take all steps to protect the sovereignty over Dokdo.”

Another Korean spokesman warned ominously "in case of any physical clash, Japan should assume full responsibility."