Raw Japan

Emperor enjoys hip-hop hurrah

Japan’s Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko celebrated 20 years on the throne this week with a typical formal ceremony, including a speech from the prime minister and classical music performances.

But the elderly imperial couple then escaped the palace for an outdoor celebration that included hip-hop dancers.

Friday’s newspapers showed the Imperial couple, both 75, beaming as they watched the show from a balcony, overlooking thousands of flag-waving Japanese.

EXILE, an all-male group among Japan’s top selling artists, eschewed their usual wear for formal black suits and white ties, delivering a song and dance performance of “Flower of the Sun”.

“The sun shines without changing. It smiles at the breeze and quietly watches over everyone,” go the lyrics, composed especially for the occasion.

Legend has Japan’s imperial family, and Akihito, as descended from the sun goddess Amaterasu.

Will Obama find time to shoot hoops in Tokyo?

U.S. President Barack Obama will have his work cut out during his 24-hour stay in Japan from Friday as he and Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama try to soothe concerns that the decades-old alliance is fraying as the two countries adapt to China’s rise.

 Other U.S. presidents have also had rough agendas in Tokyo, given a relationship historically plagued by trade spats and security angst.

But most have found time for a friendly photo op — sampling local culture or cuisine or squeezing in some exercise time.

Jimmy Carter jogged and swam at the U.S. ambassador’s residence and sampled “yakitori” chicken kebabs at a restaurant in downtown Tokyo with his family in 1979.

Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy were served Japanese tea in a traditional ceremony by Yasuhiro Nakasone at the then-prime minister’s mountain cottage, where the two leaders famously forged their chummy “Ron-Yasu” relationship at a summit in 1983.

George H.W. Bush lost a tennis match against Emperor Hirohito and his heir, then fell ill and threw up at a state dinner in 1992. 

It’s only been a week

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama stepped onto the world stage last week, just days after formally being voted into his post. After his party’s decade in the obscurity of opposition, the sometimes dour academic seemed exhilarated by the whirlwind of top-level meetings at the United Nations in New York and the Group of 20 in Pittsburgh.   Some other party officials along on the trip appeared a little lost. “We’ve only been doing this a week,” followed by an embarrassed chuckle, was the answer to some of the more probing questions put by the Japanese press corps flying with the prime minister.   Hatoyama’s Democratic Party has made much of its determination to do things differently from the long-ruling Liberal Democrats, including how they treat the media.   Signs of change appeared almost immediately his official plane took off from Haneda airport bound for New York, when Hatoyama made an appearance among the journalists at the rear of the plane. That’s a rarity in itself in status-conscious Japan, but he caused even more of a stir by bringing along his wife, former musical star Miyuki, who handed out boxes of cakes for reporters to share.   Buns aside, the biggest sign of change was the regular briefings during the trip, which were given by a politician, rather than a bureaucrat. Some sessions turned into a bizarre game of Chinese whispers, with the briefer passing on information passed on by a bureaucrat present at the meeting.   But Hatoyama himself seemed eager to talk to reporters in person. After a detailed run-down of his first meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama left one interviewer speechless, he caught himself in mid-flow with: “Oh, did I go on too long?”He also chatted freely with reporters off the record.   Less of a joker than popular former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, who initially attracted popstar-like adulation, Hatoyama could yet win fans in the press with sheer enthusiasm.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Ruling party takes off gloves, irking opposition

Japan’s conservative ruling party,  torn  by internal feuds and facing a possible loss in an Aug. 30 poll, is making attacks on the opposition Democratic Party of a sort rare in a country where many have had an allergy to Western-style negative campaigns.

The strategy — portraying the novice Democrats as weak on security and profligate on spending –  prompted a harsh reply from the opposition,  who polls show have their best-ever chance of defeating unpopular Prime Minister Taro Aso’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the election,  ending its more than half a century of nearly unbroken rule.

“It is natural for there to be healthy criticism and debate about policies, but the stance of the LDP, which is stressing partial, biased information and is not engaging in serious debate, is extremely regrettable and sad,” opposition Democratic Party Secretary-General Katsuya Okada told a news conference.

On Wednesday, the LDP ran a full-page newspaper ad with a big, bold-faced headline declaring: “The Future of Japan in ins Danger.” The party is also running an animated cartoon on its website portraying Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama as a smooth-taking suitor wooing a woman with fuzzy promises. 

The LDP has also charged the Democrats with being under the thumb of the leftist teachers’ union, a group anathema to conservatives.

“It’s an old political trick, although new in Japan,” Sophia University professor Koichi Nakano told me.

“The question is whether it will come out as desperate and unseemly, or convince some undecided voters. It’s not clear because we’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Unpopular PM to voters: “No-one’s perfect”

For the crowd waiting for Prime Minister Taro Aso to show up for a campaign speech in Ome on the western edge of Tokyo, it was a bit like watching the warm-up acts before the main attraction.

Aso picked ruling party candidate Akinobu Nomura’s home district of Ome  to kick off a campaign for the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election, the results of which are likely to affect the unpopular 68-year-old premier’s chances of keeping his own job ahead of a nationwide poll expected next month.

With the PM’s cavalcade stuck in traffic, Nomura and his other backers had to amuse the crowd for more than an hour under cloudy skies. The local man filled some of the time by inviting photographers to snap him shaking hands with his wife, who had earlier shyly delivered a speech, for what he said was the first time ever. Then he took to listing up his contributions to the local community.

Nomura  also went out of his way to assure listeners that he really appreciated Aso’s personal appearance — really! He’d been flooded with calls from reporters asking if he wouldn’t have preferred that Aso stay away, he said, before enjoining the media to report his next words faithfully: “I welcome Prime Minister Aso’s coming here from the bottom of my heart.” 

When a smiling, waving Aso finally showed up to the obvious relief of Nomura and others standing atop a green and white campaign truck, he first acknowledged that Ome was a long way from central Tokyo, where he spends most of his time. ”It really is far, isn’t it?” Aso said. ”But this feels better than being under a kind of house arrest in the prime minister’s official residence,” he added, prompting chuckles from some supporters.

Aso then launched into a speech touting the long-ruling LDP’s efforts to boost Japan’s sagging economy, attacking the opposition Democratic Party for inexperience, irresponsible promises and a funding scandal, and pleading with voters to stick with those they know rather than risk something new.

Prime Minister, 68, keeps fit

Sit-ups, push-ups and back exercises — 50 a day each — are keeping Japan’s 68-year-old Prime Minister Taro Aso as fit as a fiddle. 

Aso, in his latest e-mail magazine, brushed off a comment by one reader that he was looking worn out after five months on the job. Tabloids have also been awash with stories that the premier was losing sleep and weight over a series of setbacks, including the resignation last month of his finance minister, who had been forced to deny he was drunk at a G7 news conference in Rome.

“My weight hasn’t changed since I became prime minister. My body-fat ratio is 15-16 percent. Everyday, I eat and sleep well,” Aso said in the weekly e-mail magazine.

Stretching and quick walks were also helping him keep healthy.

“Thanks to exercising more, my waist has slimmed down by 2.5 cm.”

Aso is known to take morning walks, sporting a cap and sunglasses, with security officials in tow, but even these jaunts have led to some odd incidents.

Fun and games keeping a finance minister awake

Do you play games on your mobile phone, as millions of Japanese do? Here’s one for you.

A software company has launched a mobile phone game that pokes fun at former Japanese finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa, who resigned earlier this month after nearly dozing off at a news conference in Rome.

He denied he was drunk, saying he was on cold medicine, but was forced to quit when videotape of his performance at a news conference after the Group of Seven finance ministers meeting triggered an uproar in Japan.

The game, created by Liveware Inc and called “Exhausted Minister Dozing at a News Conference”, challenges the player to keep the minister awake when a reporter asks a question during a spoof press conference.

Players push number 5 to wake the minister up or to put him to sleep so he can rest. The game is over if the minister is sleeping when a reporter asks a question or he runs out of energy.

When that happens, the minister reaches for a glass of red wine.

If the minister stays awake for questions, his support rate rises and the time between the questions grows shorter, increasing the game’s difficulty.

Japan’s next prime minister?

Japan’s finance minister, Kaoru Yosano, already has three key cabinet posts. Now some pundits say  he looks well-placed to take the top job, too.

Public support for Prime Minister Taro Aso, suffering  a slump after policy flip-flops and gaffes, took another hit when close ally Shoichi Nakagawa quit as finance minister last week after being forced to deny he was drunk at at G7 gathering in Rome.

Surveys also show his long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party is in danger of losing an election that must be held by October, making more and more ruling party lawmakers nervous about their own job security and looking for options.

“Yosano is the front-runner given the conditions at this juncture,” Sophia University professor Koichi Nakano says.

Yosano, 70, added the finance and banking supervision portfolios to his economics post after Nakagawa quit, prompting some Japanese media to refer to a “de facto Yosano government”.

A fluent English speaker and the grandson of two well-known poets, Yosano has a sharp sense of humour.

Asked by an opposition lawmaker why he was tapped to replace Nakagawa,  whom critics say Aso had chosen because he was a close mate, Yosano replied: “Isn’t it because I’m not his friend?”