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Uankaa yourself

People in politics are the objects of a lot of sneering and scepticism, and overall this is a healthy and necessary thing. But often, I suspect, even we sneerers have a touching and naive faith in those who lead us. We complain about them, of course, but they are doing a job that few of us could handle. Underneath it all, even if they're not particularly nice people, they are at least discriminating and perceptive and able, they know what they are doing, we are in safe hands . . . aren't we?

Then you come across someone like Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's long time spokesman and chief bully boy. And you realise how wrong all those cosy assumptions can be.

I was fuming over this in a bookshop in London the other week, so I am grateful to Kyodo News for their story today, which saves me from having to enrich Alastair Campbell. In July, the eminent flack published The Blair Years, extracts from the "diary" of his years at Tony's right hand (although doubts have been expressed about how much they may have been touched up for publication).

Flicking through the book in Waterstone's, I naturally looked up the references to Japan in the index. I wasn't expecting that any of this would raise my opinion of AC; I anticpated superficiality, glibness, and self-justification. What I hadn't expected was that both Campbell and Blair would come across as so pitifully low powered.

The lost of Ikebukuro

My piece in yesterday's paper was about internet cafe "refugees"; a few days earlier I had the melancholy experience of visiting one of the places they gather, the Manga Hiroba (which I translate as 'Comic Plaza') at the north exit of Ikebukuro Station (I was accompanied by the excellent Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert who took these photographs).

Ikebukuro is one of the quarters of central Tokyo that I know least well; the contrast with the sleekness of west Tokyo and the areas around the moat is very striking. The overpasses of the Yamanote Line and the Expressways are sooty and brittle-looking; there are illuminated signs in primary colours for burgers and noodles and pachinko; and the people lack the sheen of central Tokyo people, that look of having stepped out of a department store in clothes fresh out of the wrapper. "Ikebukuro," wrote the French critic Roland Barthes of Ikebukuro in the 1960s. "Workers and farmers, harsh and friendly as a big mongrel dog."

Spoiled goods?

I was away from Tokyo during the Upper House elections, so I speak now from instinct rather than inside information. But I can't help feeling that, six months from now, yesterday's cabinet reshuffle will be a forgotten irrelevance, that will do nothing to save Shinzo Abe from his inevitable doom.

Commentators more deeply immersed in Japanese politics than I (MTC at the excellent Shisaku and the sage Jun Okumura at GlobalTalk) have warm things to say about some of his new ministers (particularly the new Chief Cabinet Secretary, Kaoru Yosano). They may well be right that some of them are sound fellows and good eggs. But it won't make the least difference. The spin which Abe's people are putting on last month's unprecedentedly bad election defeat is that he was let down by idiots in his cabinet (the Defence Minister who thought Hiroshima and Nagasaki "couldn't be helped", the scandal-stricken Agriculture Minister who topped himself etc). They have to say that, of course, because they cannot afford to own up to the obvious fact that the biggest problem lies not with the monkeys, but with the organ grinder himself.

Shinzo hasn't just been a disappointment - he's been a disaster, for his party and his coalition partner, and a disappointment and source of concern to his allies, his regional neighbours, even his unpleasant right wing supporters. You can be as sophisticated as you like in your microanalysis of his new cabinet, but it becomes largely irrelevant in the face of these fundamental facts. Abe's had his chance; he's consistently blown it; and if Japan is to return to the very interesting path of transition on to which it was guided by Junichiro Koizumi, he's got to go.

Oink! Oink!

The flap over Princess Masako, Prisoner of the Chrysanthemum Throne, a book about the Japanese Imperial family by the Australian journalist, Ben Hills, seemed to have come and gone rather quickly. It was last February.that Mr Hill's Japanese publisher, Kodansha, dropped its plans to publish a translation of the book, after the Imperial Household Agency threw a wobbly over its sneering portrayal of life inside the Palace. (see my post on the subject here). But six months later, the book has found a new Japanese publisher, and stirred predictable outrage among the sound truck-driving, Yasukuni Shrine-loving, Nanking Massacre-denying classes.

As the Kyodo news agency reports:

'Princess Masako' author, publisher threatened ahead of translation

SYDNEY, Aug. 21  KYODO   
     The Australian journalist who wrote a controversial biography of Japan's Crown Princess Masako has received death threats ahead of the release of the Japanese translation of his book.
     The Tokyo-based publisher of the translation, Daisan-Shokan, has also reported being targeted in protests by right-wing nationalist groups.
     The translation of ''Princess Masako, Prisoner of the Chrysanthemum Throne'' by Ben Hills is due to be published in early September.
     Hills told Kyodo News he has received several e-mail death threats, via his website, in the lead-up to the Japanese publication.
     ''I have had death threats. They were saying things like, 'Die white pork!' They were quite racist,'' Hills said.

None of that is particularly surprising except for one thing.

WHITE PORK?

What is going on with Die white pork?

Hot News

It's very hot in Japan, in fact it has literally never been hotter. Today in the otherwise obscure municipality of Tajimi, Gifu Prefecture, a temperature of 40.9 degrees centigrade was measured, higher than the Japan Meteorological Agency's previous record of 40.8 C (Yamagata, 1933).

Steeping outside into the sun you feel as if you have been boffed on the head by a large, sweaty, sand-filled sock. It's not just the heat and humidity so much as the thought of the solar radiation beating down around and into you. You can almost feel it cooking your insides, like a plastic container of curry rice in a convenience store microwave.

No wonder, then, that so many people are seeking relief in swimming pools like the one at Tokyo Summerland, pictured above.

Yes, underneath the rubber rings, trunks and congealing Ambre Solaire, that's a swimming pool.

The funniest thing of all is when they switch on the wave machine. Click here to see what happens.

(Clip by CScout Japan, via Plastic Bamboo.)

Man City boss: is he evil?

Until a few weeks ago months ago, when I wrote stories about Thaksin Shinawatra, I identified him with the simple formula "deposed prime minister of Thailand" and filed them to the Foreign Editor. Since then he has risen to become something much more important than a foreign head of government - the owner of a Premiership football team. These days in The Times, he is "Man City boss", first and foremost; my story in today's paper ran in the Sports pages.

Since Thaksin's footie acquisition, there's been a lot written about him in the British papers, a lot more than when he was merely one of the richest and most powerful men in south-east Asia. But no consensus has really emerged on what to make of him. Reduced to its essentials the question seems to be: is this man evil? or, put with a little more sophistication, is he fit for the honour of running one of our venerable Association Football clubs? Is he a classic Asian despot who has fled to our shores after being driven out by his brave people, and who is now sinking his blood-soaked talons into one a prized sporting institution? Or a brilliant businessman and visionary leader who has been shamefully tumbled from power by a clique of unelected generals?

It's a surprisingly difficult question to answer. But here is my stab at Thaksin-in-a-nutshell.

Blaming the victim?

A friend of Lindsay Hawker, the young British teacher murdered in Chiba in March, has posted a comment on one of my posts on the subject. She is enraged by some of the observations by earlier commenters. Her remarks speak for themselves and I think that they are worth drawing attention to in a new post.

Read on for the email which the Hawker family are urging well wishers to circulate in hopes of finding Tatsuya Ichihashi, the only suspect in the case, in whose apartment Lindsay's body was found. (He is pictured above in CCTV images from the lift in his  building.)

The comment is signed "an old friend".

To be honest after reading all of these comments it suprises me that someone who actually know's lindsay hasn't been able to bite their lip and posted a comment yet.

I have sat and read all of them and i could not contain myself.

I have known lindsay since she was 8 years old, i went all through school with her as a close friend and our dads also grew up together and still remain good friends, after speaking to bill since this awful tragedy and seeing how this has affected him and his family it would horrify me to think he would read some of these.

By the looks of it, not 1 single person knew lindsay and yet most of you seem so keen to discuss her simple error of judgement as if she was stupid and she should of known that this monster was out to do the eventual things that he did! Anybody who knew lindsay knows that all she ever wanted to do was help people and at the end of the day thats what she thought she was doing over there, she was there for that reason and that reason only. Lindsay was a human being and a lovely one at that and she, like any other person deserves to be left to rest.

If there is anyone who you should all be talking about it is "Ichihashi", about him and what a vile creature he is, not how Lindsay made an error in judgement, when it comes down to it everybody lets their guard down, she was never to know it was her time to keep it up.

Sally Brown, DO YOU GET IT??

miss you lindsay, always in our memories.. class of '95' xxxx