Raw Japan

JAL’s game of chicken

“Turbulent” wouldn’t properly describe the recent flight path of national flag carrier Japan Airlines, in a spiralling game of chicken with its retirees and unions over a $3.7 billion pension shortfall.

President Haruka Nishimatsu, who needs a pension deal to get bridge loans and bailout money from the state,  is asking for an average 40 percent cut from retirees and current employees.

“If we can’t, risks to our survival will increase, including the possibility of a court-led reorganisation,” he said on Monday to a gathering of unions and retirees.

The merits for the 17,000 current staff and some 9,000 retirees, who can block any pension cut if more than one-third object, are not compelling to everyone.

“I feel an attachment to the company, but on the other hand I have my own life. I have been banking on that corporate pension to make ends meet,” said a 59-year-old male retiree.

Cracks at Japan’s press clubs

Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada got a rapturous round of applause and a gift of a T-shirt when he made a speech at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Tokyo a few days ago. The reason had nothing to do with his diplomatic skills.

Reporters were simply grateful for his decision to open up his twice-weekly news conferences to journalists, including foreigners, who are not part of Japan’s rigid system of kisha, or press, clubs.

Access to news conferences and briefings at Japanese government ministries has long been at least partly restricted to members of the press clubs, which in general means the country’s mainstream media — not freelancers or foreigners.

Member reporters from the top newspapers and television networks have their own desks within the ministries they cover, including at the Imperial Household Agency, and pay a nominal fee for the privilege.

Not surprisingly, the Japanese media  tend to defend the press clubs, saying they have enabled the mass media to combine forces and push the sometimes secretive bureaucracy to reveal more information. 

But the novice Democratic Party government has begun to chip away at the system, which has been criticised for creating too cosy a relationship between reporters and those they write about. Several ministries have improved access for non-members.

The move has been welcomed enthusiastically by foreign journalists. But some reporters say opening up news conferences to non-press club members or even abolishing the clubs altogether, as one provincial governor did in his corner of Japan several years ago, will make little difference in the long run.

Day one speed bumps

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama‘s first official day on the job has come with lots of media attention, photo opportunities and the first couple of speed bumps for his administration.

The contrast with his predecessor was clear from the TV coverage. All but one of the major channels in Tokyo carried him live. Leading up to his election drubbing last month, former Prime Minister Taro Aso could not always get his pressers carried live even on national broadcaster NHK.

Yet amid the ritual and grand opening statements, one minister gave an already strengthening yen another kick up, while a second pushed down the shares in Japanese banks — both before they’d been officially announced and sworn into their new jobs.

Banking and financial services minister Shizuka Kamei was the first to move markets.

A former police official and anti-postal reform rebel, he was a surprise pick for that job with a lack of markets experience leaving analysts scratching their heads as to what he might do.

They did not have to wait long as Kamei said he would push for banks to freeze repayments of mortgages and small business loans.

Watching the giants fall

Some elections count more than others, and never more than when a longstanding dominant party is sent packing. I’ve been lucky enough to witness turning points in four countries on two continents.

France, India, Italy, now Japan — all have rejected one-party dominance for the rough and tumble of alternating majorities. In each case, I was fortunate to behold history.

Japan’s election on Sunday marked the end of an era that started not long after World War Two and saw Japan rise from the ashes of defeat to a global economic power. Japan’s revival took root in an iron triangle locking the Liberal Democratic Party, bureaucrats and Japanese industry.

Now the LDP is tasting the same bitter fruit as paramount parties in other countries whose voters decided a few decades in power for one party were enough. The circumstances in each country were different, but the democratic impulse was similar and the result much the same.

In 1981 Francois Mitterand became the first leftist president of France since the Fifth Republic was created in 1957. I watched as ecstatic French voters poured into the streets after Mitterrand’s victory. France then trembled as this imperious socialist did the impossible by sharing power with his Gaullist rivals.

The Indian National Congress spearheaded that nation’s independence movement and then became the dominant political party led by the Nehru-Gandhi family. Eventually corruption allegations caught up with Congress and it had to yield power first to Hindu nationalists, then to a coalition of upstart leftists and regional parties.

I remember the sight of chastened ex-Congress leader P.V. Narasimha Rao standing in the dock in a Delhi court accused of corruption charges, for which he was later acquitted.

Net noodle-slinging heats up before election

“Be nice to kids too,” shouts a kid with his hand raised.

“OK, OK. Here, I’ll give you 26,000 yen worth of toppings,” responds the ramen chef who looks suspiciously like Japan’s opposition Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama, as he sprinkles more toppings on a bowl of noodles.

With Japan’s long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party at risk of losing power for only the second time in more than a half-century in an election on Sunday, the party is stepping up its campaign against the opposition with a new series of Internet attack ads – a rarity in a country that has leaned towards the polite and boring in election tactics.

Dripping with puns, one cartoon commercial viewable on YouTube zeroes in on what the LDP insists are impossible promises by the rival Democrats in their campaign platform, or manifesto, as the opposition prefers to call it.

The bowl of ramen is called the “boastful manifesto noodles” and the toppings – added one after the other as customers complain about the taste – represent pledges made by the Democrats, such as a 26,000 yen monthly child allowance.

By the time the chef is finished, a worried-looking woman notes the noodle dish is completely different from what she anticipated.

But a nonchalant chef assures her it’s been like this from the start – prompting a shocked gasp.

Japan says: “Now wash your hands”

The new flu strain that emerged in Mexico last month has brought Japanese TV shows, newspapers and government ads out in a rash of demonstrations of the art of proper hand-washing to avoid the spread of germs.

“First, you clean the palms, then rub the dirt off the back of the hands. Make sure you wash between fingers and finger tips. And yes, don’t forget your thumbs and wrists!!”

How to protect yourself from a new flu strain (Check out the demonstration from 7:40)

Even for the Japanese, who wear flu and hay fever masks by the million, sometimes when they’re not even sick, washing hands thoroughly for at least 15 seconds requires extra effort, as not many of us are well-versed in proper thumb-washing techniques.

The government also has a “cough etiquette” campaign calling on people to cover their mouths with a tissue when in the act, adding the rather obvious need to face away from other people. The guideline says post-cough dirty tissues must be thrown away immediately, although it doesn’t say where - a slight drawback in a country that is occasionaly trashcan-challenged.

Japan reported its first confirmed cases of the new flu  recently and now has four patients, detected at Narita international Airport and sent directly to a hospital nearby to limit the spread of H1N1.

The memory test for Japanese media

A furore over anonymous comments by a senior Japanese bureaucrat that landed him in the middle of a political funding scandal has highlighted an unusual practice in Japan of “no memo” briefings, where journalists can listen but are forbidden to take notes.

“Off-record” briefings are common in Western journalism. These conversations between reporters and contacts will never see the light of day but can be used by sources to get their points across and some would say spin the story.

“Background” briefings, in which comments can be quoted and attributed to a “senior official” or some such but without a specific name or title, are also well-known in many countries.

But the “no memo” briefing appears to be a uniquely Japanese twist — a chat from which comments can be quoted anonymously but where reporters are forbidden to record the briefing or even take notes by hand.

That means any article must be based on their memory of the discussion.

The affair of the “no memo” briefing began when Japanese media quoted an unidentified senior government official about the probe into illegal corporate donations.

The source said the scandal, which could cost the opposition leader his job just months before an election his party was on course to win,  would not spill over into the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Government stock rescue?

Japanese stocks are sinking towards levels unseen since 1982, sending alarmed government officials scurrying to come up with some way of propping them up.

 Officials are looking at steps to support stocks after the plunge, which has taken the benchmark Nikkei to within sight of a 26-year low hit last October.

That slices into the value of huge share portfolios held by Japanese banks and erodes their capital just when the economy needs them to boost lending.

Among proposals being considered is setting up a stock-buying agency as Japan did in the mid-1960s, which follows another plan for the government to buy up to 20 trillion yen in shares from banks — a plan currently stalled in parliament.

The latest suggestion, in a newspaper on Thursday, is for the Bank of Japan to be pushed into buying stock exchange-traded funds.

Though market players say stock buying by government agencies might help a little, most remain wary with the Japanese market slide part of a global criiss.

“These stock plans may buy a bit of time, but without enacting a decisive economic stimulus package simultaneously they won’t be really effective,” Takahiko Murai, general manager of equities at Nozomi Securities, told me.