Kurashi - News From Japan

I went to the large demonstration today at Hibiya in central Tokyo and in the warm, sunny weather, some 10,000 people showed up for the parade to surround the Parliament Building (Diet) - Japan's Palace of Westminster or Capitol Hill... Update : Kyodo (J) has the number of participants today as 14,000. The event was also billed as the "Democracy Convention 2015" in English. If you have ever been to a large demonstration elsewhere, prepare yourself for the utter control here in Japan. Police and riot vans are everywhere, but as long as things go smoothly, like today, you can bring your baby stroller and your grandma... The organizers are committed to peaceful protests and so be it. But, that may not be the way Japan's Public Security Intelligence Agency sees things, according to Eric Johnston in The Japan Times: Security blanket: Should Japan beef up its anti-terrorism measures? Great coalition of hundreds of groups for solidarity with Okinawa an...

What a lot of travels and what everyone here calls the 連休 (renkyuu, consecutive days off) or "Golden Week" but here are some links that I think are important. Andrew DeWit has a great take on Obama's visit and how a US-Japan Green Alliance may be the key to the future. Heavy on military information but why not? The Pentagon apparently is way ahead of whoever-is-in-charge here in Japan when it comes to visions for defense that will not depend on oil. Japan Focus: Could a US-Japan “Green Alliance” Transform the Climate-Energy Equation? There was no emphasis on US-Japan military cooperation on climate change, even though the US military itself has for years identified climate change as the mother of all threats, including fully 8 detailed references to “climate change” and its consequences in its March 4, 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR 2014). Indeed, the American green military-industrial complex is openly calling for NATO to focus even more on climate ch...

Soon, it may be that we have those US Marines flying Osprey helicopters not only on Okinawa but also from Yokota, right next to Tokyo. Or so we are told. Of course they are just "studying" this at the moment. I wonder where they would fly. East and over the capital of Japan? Or north, over Saitama? And then? What would they be doing here, if not to cause a lot of anguish and trouble. Or, perhaps, just straight up, and then down again... Elevator flights bringing young recruits up and down again and again over that old US base, LOL. NHK World : US Air Force studying Osprey deployment in Yokota The US Air Force is studying the deployment of the Osprey transport aircraft at Yokota Air Base in Tokyo, in addition to a US base in Okinawa. Commander of the US Pacific Air Forces, General Herbert Carlisle, revealed this in Washington on Monday. The US Air Force is considering the CV-22 Osprey as a successor to its special operations helicopter now based at...

This could get interesting. In an event that celebrates the 120th anniversary of the establishment of the Ryukyu Shimpo, the newspaper will invite two-time Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, professor of History at American University to Okinawa. The event will feature a lecture by Stone with a panel discussion. Stone will also get to observe the U.S. military bases in Okinawa for the first time. With Satoko Norimatsu from the Peace Philosophy Centre as interpreter, the discussion will cover the excessive burden on Okinawa of hosting bases and U.S. military strategy. Some of the works of Stone and some digest footage of his visit to the prefecture will also be shown. Venue: Theater building of the Okinawa Convention Center in Ginowan On August 6 Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick will take part in a symposium in Hiroshima, and on August 8 they will visit Nagasaki. Their documentary The Untold History of the United States is currently...

A peace song by singer song-writer Maruyama Naotaro, born in Tokyo in 1976. "End of Summer" - Nice short speech there about getting kids, who do not know about war, to understand the importance of peace... Lovely Okinawa vibe. Hope the North Koreans (and South Koreans, and American GIs who are based in these parts of the wood) are listening tonight...

Defense Minister Tanaka, on the right, deeply bowing to Hirokazu Nakaima, Governor of Okinawa (left). How long will this farce go on? Sankei.com

Over at Japan Focus, Gavan McCormack and Norimatsu Satoko have taken a very close look at how Japanese media covered new Prime Minister Noda and his recent talks with US President Obama. Japan Focus: Discordant Visitors: Japanese and Okinawan Messages to the US Seems to me that the Daily Yomiuri has some serious explaining to do, while other news channels fare almost as badly. It is all down to who said what, and who quoted whom. It all matters a lot to the people in Okinawa. If the Yomiuri fails to explain why it failed to report what actually happened during the Noda-Obama meeting, or if the Japanese officials were involved in what is commonly known as "spin" and if the Yomiuri had its own agenda, I hope we will find out. Noda says he will try to get the "understanding" of the people in Okinawa. OK, good. So, when will he actually travel to the prefecture? When was the last time a Japanese Prime Minister bothered to visit Okinawa? Or is Noda planning to let other...

Kyodo News says the Okinawa prefectural assembly adopted a resolution Thursday to demand Tokyo and Washington cancel the planned deployment of MV-22 Osprey vertical takeoff and landing aircraft at the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station in October next year: While raising concerns over possible intensification of noise pollution around the base in Ginowan, the assembly also referred to risks surrounding the aircraft’s operation, saying it had resulted in “many casualties in repeated crashes at its development stage” and that its deployment would go “against efforts to eliminate the dangers” of the base. The assembly also strongly criticized the Japanese government's claim that the plan is merely a change of aircraft model to be deployed at the Futenma base, saying Tokyo "is ignoring the human rights and the lives of the Okinawa people." Looks like the debate that was stymied last summer - when PM Hatoyama suddenly quit after signing a controversial agreement with the ...

Okinawa, the most southern prefecture in Japan, has been a major focus during 2010. It is close to Taiwan, to South Korea, to Communist China. Yet, there is a massive U.S. military based there, as if World War II/Cold War never really ended. It is far south in the sense of Hawaii being far west of the United States. Oceans connect. For Okinawa, there is the culture, the music, the food, the ancient history. Japan should celebrate that it has such an amazing stretch, it reaches from the north to the south like few other countries. Dear readers, do we really "understand" what is going on in Okinawa, and near the islands that are all the source of conflicts... Do we not have a better set of values to solve problems? I would like East Asia to create a model for how to solve local/regional/national problems. After all, these are people/countries that have had close contact with each other for some 2000 years or more. I think we can/should/must expect better. Okinawa should look to...

The results of the election on Sunday in Okinawa are as follows, according to Ryukyu Shimpo , the local newspaper. NHK also notes that the LDP-backed candidate, Nakaima, 71 years old has won. ３３５７０８　仲井真弘多 Nakaima Hirokazu ２９７０８２　伊波　洋一 Iha Yoichi Both said they want Futenma, the US military base, moved out of Okinawa. Peace activists, however, doubt that Nakaima Hirokazu will follow up on this pledge. To NHK (video) he notes on Sunday night that the US military bases are not there just for the sake of Okinawa, but for the sake of the entire country. He also says, again, that the base should be relocated outside of the prefecture of Okinawa. However... While Iha Yoichi unequivocally opposes a new base in Okinawa, there has been some confusion by incumbent governor Nakaima's expression of his intent to call for relocation of MCAS Futenma "outside of Okinawa." However, throughout the campaign, he has avoided the question of whether he really opposed the government's pla...

Japan has its Three Non-Nuclear Principles . I have always wondered why Germany allows US missiles on its territory. Finally, Germany has moved a step closer to ridding its soil of the last remaining American atomic weapons: The federal government plans to end the deal by 2013 and perhaps earlier, when it decommissions its ageing Tornado fighter jets, which are equipped to drop the nuclear bombs, the Rheinische Post reported. At present, the Tornado fighters, stationed at the Bundeswehr base at Büchel in the Mosel region, are ready to drop the estimated 22 American-owned nuclear bombs stored on German soil. Those bombs are housed at the the Büchel base, guarded by US soldiers. But the Tornado jets are due to be decommissioned and the Rheinische Post reported that Germany would not continue the so-called NATO “nuclear sharing” agreement. While the change is being driven primarily by budget cuts, it also takes Germany a step closer to getting rid of the remaining nuclear weapons on its s...

From Satoko Norimatsu's Peace Philosophy Centre blog, "Base opponents win majority in Nago election 名護市議選、基地反対の稲嶺市長を支える与党が圧勝" Nago City Council Election on September 12 resulted in the candicates supporting Mayor Inamine's opposition against a new base gained 16 seats, winning the majority in the 27-seat council. The election was not a referendum on the base issue, but it sends a message to the Japanese and the U.S. governments that their heavy-handed efforts to buy off Nago's "min-i (democratic voices)" are not working. They should stop trying to convince voters of Nago, and start listening to them. ...And start respecting democratic process throughout Okinawa... Update: PanOrient News notes that the vote deals "a fresh blow to efforts to construct a new US Marine airbase along the pristine coastline of Henoko beach." According to local reports, allies of Mayor Inamine secured 16 of the 27 seats in the assembly. Moreover, two other candidate...

Remember Konan's ace pitcher Yosuke Shimabukuro , who helped his team win the High School baseball tournament this weekend? Turns out he is a well known figure in Ginowan City, where U.S. Futenma Air Station is located, at the time of the 2004 USMC helicopter crash into the Okinawa International University campus. Peace Philosophy Centre, reading Okinawa newspapers, notes that he even held a speech at the Rally against the American military bases, and there is also a photo of him on the town's website: Shimabukuro was a grade 6 student, and as a student leader, he spoke at the Ginowan Residents Rally, as representative of all elementary school students. The Rally was held on September 12, 2004, a month after the August 13 accident, and attended by more than 30,000 residents, one third of Ginowan City's residents (More rally photos from Ginowan City's website ). Shimabukuro then called for a safer living environment for the residents. Ginowan City website: One year afte...

Here are quotes and links to some very interesting articles that have appeared over the past few weeks, related to peace, Article 9, and the debates about the abolition of nuclear weapons. Terashima Jitsuro , "The US-Japan Alliance Must Evolve: The Futenma Flip-Flop, the Hatoyama Failure and the Future" (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, August 20, 2010) The Futenma flip-flop exposed the reality that Japan does not confront problems by considering their essential character. It confirmed, first of all, that there is no place in Japan outside of Okinawa that will agree to host an American base. At the end of May, Hatoyama requested the members of the National Governors Association to host a replacement base for Futenma, but not a single prefecture volunteered. The fact is that a base is a problem that no one wants nearby. At the same time, the pretense that the bases ensure the security of Japan and Asia goes unquestioned, and many Japanese are swayed by the argument tha...

Guam is a small island not well equipped to handle the proposed move of US Marines from Okinawa. The move of 8,000 US Marines and their families may be delayed, according to Yomiuri and other sources. A planned transfer of about 8,000 U.S. marines from Okinawa Prefecture to Guam could be delayed beyond the 2014 target, perhaps by up to six years, according to an office of the U.S. Defense Department. A final environmental impact statement released by the department's Joint Guam Program Office on Tuesday includes a proposal to delay the transfer of the troops and their dependents to as late as 2020 to reduce environmental impact from the personnel relocation and associated construction projects. However, the statement said a new time frame would be decided later. This is a strange fact that suddenly emerges in the middle of this hot summer after all the ground-shaking events, including the way former prime minister Hatoyama fired his outspoken and very popular minister Mizuho Fukus...

Over at Ten Thousand Things, blogger Kimberly Hughes writes about a symposium she attended recently. The speakers included Kato Tokiko, Ueno Chizuko, Hosaka Masayasu, Oguma Eiji, Linda Hoaglund with details of the struggle against ANPO, the Japanese abbreviation for the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan. This agreement was signed 50 years ago after a long and bitter fight, not just between the political parties* but also on the streets of Tokyo and elsewhere. Today, this treaty is like the elephant in the room, that noone likes but noone seems to like to mention: “For many people in Japan, the presence of U.S. military bases had been all but completely forgotten about in recent decades—until the issue became dragged out of the shadows by the Futenma base conflict,” explained Oguma, a social historian. “And since the United States has not bothered to provide any explanation whatsoever about what the benefits of this air base might provide, i...