We produce at least two Shasetsu pieces each month. Current contributors include Garrett DeOrio, Christopher Pellegrini and Ken Worsley. You can listen to Shasetsu here at Trans-Pacific Radio, or you can subscribe and get each episode automatically, as they're released. It's easy to subscribe to Shasetsu: Just copy and paste the RSS feed link for Shasetsu into iTunes or your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to come here and comment on the issues!

The day has come. Tomorrow, the International Olympic committee will meet in Copenhagen to decide which of the four finalist cities - Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, or Tokyo - will get the dubious honor of hosting the Games of the XXXI Summer Olympiad, better known as the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Obviously, each candidate city has spent years and millions of dollars already in an attempt to snag the Games, in the process making more and more promises that are almost certainly unachievable. (Tokyo budgeted $48 million for bidding alone, with $27 million of that explicitly coming from the metropolitan government.)

In this respect, the competition to get the Olympics is quite a bit like a political campaign: even if one of the candidates wanted to be up front about it and make a case, the process drags everyone involved down into the muck of disingenuous myopia. Once the bids begin, candidates go for the gold no matter what the costs - appealing in a sprinter, less so in a government. After all, the whole point of hosting the Olympics is to benefit the host city and environs in one way or another, right?

On Friday, the contenders are pulling out all the stops. In addition to the wining, dining, and wooing of the IOC that has already taken place, big names will be on hand to pitch for their respective cities. For Chicago, President Obama announced last week that he would join his wife, Michelle, in Copenhagen to make the case, even as protests heat up in the Chicago itself and fewer and fewer respondents to polls say they really want to see the Olympics in their town. For our own Tokyo, new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will make the case in what the media here have been entertainingly, but ridiculously calling “Hatoyama vs. Obama.”

First, let’s set aside some of the hogwash about what the Olympics actually represents. (Read on …)

The Japanese media is reporting that Democratic Party of Japan leader Ichiro Ozawa is set to resign at a press conference scheduled for 5:00 this afternoon.

Although details are still sketchy, Ozawa must be feeling the pressure of public opinion, which has indicated that his party’s chances will be hurt with him at the helm in the upcoming Lower House election.

More to come on this breaking story.

Post-Press Conference Update: (Read on …)

Hiroshi Nozaki had to have known that he would be the prime suspect. He needed to get out of the apartment fast. But even though it was already dark outside, his roommates wouldn’t get back from work for several hours, so he had time to tidy up a bit.

“Body parts are heavy when they are still half-filled with blood,” he thought.

Draining them would make things easier; he loaded up the laundry machine and let it do some of the dirty work for him. He was tired, after all. The last time he cut up a body was years ago, and he was out of practice.

“And what am I going to do with this blood-drenched futon?”

Somewhere in between the pulsing lights of the bridge, and the hard strikes on the windows from the wind coming off the bay, Nozaki found himself staring at one of his other roommates–the cousin of the woman crumpled in the laundry machine. She had made an early trip home from work to figure out why Honiefaith was late and not answering her phone.

The flesh Nozaki held in his hand confirmed the worst, and she raced out of the apartment to seek help. When the police arrived, Nozaki was gone. (Read on …)

Maybe I’m being overly-sensitive here, or just plain naive, but is it wise to publish information about an ongoing criminal investigation?

The Mainichi published an article yesterday stating that Lindsay Ann Hawker’s suspected murderer, Tatsuya Ichihashi, is hiding out in Ikebukuro (a shopping and entertainment district in northern Tokyo).

The article can be found here.

The article states that a man who looks very similar to Ichihashi has been hanging out in Ikebukuro, patronizing a pachinko parlor, a hotel and some restaurants. It was also reported that “a large number of investigators” have been sent to Ikebukuro in response to the some 40 tips that have been received by the Chiba Prefectural Police. The article also seems to indicate that Ichihashi has been living in Ikebukuro since just after the murder last spring.

Context: Just over a year ago, the naked body of Lindsay Ann Hawker, a teacher in Chiba, was found in a bathtub filled with sand on the balcony of Tatsuya Ichihashi’s apartment. Following up on a tip and a missing-person report, the Chiba Prefectural Police sent nine of its finest to question Ichihashi. Even though they had him cornered in his own home, he managed to out-maneuver all of them, bolt from the apartment and outrun them in his bare feet. He has eluded apprehension to this day.

Lindsay’s family has done an amazing job of keeping this case in the spotlight, and they come to Tokyo every so often to get information about the investigation and remind people that Ichihashi could kill again.

Back to the Mainichi article: it’s difficult to verify the veracity of the information provided in the article (English and Japanese versions of the article can be viewed by clicking the link above) as the Mainichi reporter, Yamamoto, declined to cite any of his sources. It seems possible that information already available to the public, including a couple old images of the suspect, was cobbled together into a news report.

If there is a comprehensive police stakeout of Ikebukuro in place at the moment, then publication of this information is obviously not helpful unless Ichihashi is tired of running and is actually trying to get caught.

Of course, we have seen how ineffective police stakeouts can be, so maybe it’s good to tune some additional sets of eyeballs in to the hunt.

If you didn’t take a moment to click on the link above, I’ll fill you in to what went on during that “ineffective police stakeout”. After murdering a 72-year-old with a knife in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki, Masahiro Kanagawa flew under the radar for a couple of days by staying at a hotel near Akihabara station in Tokyo. The police, hoping to grab him if and when he made his way back to his hometown, stationed eight plainclothes officers around Arakawaoki train station. The problem was that none of them were given radios or weapons. Consequently, they were not able to communicate with each other when Kanagawa did in fact arrive on the Joban line, knives in hand, and proceeded to stab eight people, including one officer, before eventually calling police from an unmanned police station notifying them that he wished to turn himself in.

If you just slapped your own forehead in disbelief, let me assure you that you’re not alone. It’s probably safe to say that Kanagawa would have gotten away if he hadn’t turned himself in.

Anyway, a phone number for people with information (047-397-0110) has been provided. However, if you have information to report, I recommend doing so in Japanese.

But it seems to me that the publication of this information, if its contents are true, is likely to promote either vigilante justice (there’s at least one group of non-Japanese residents that has taken it upon themselves to search for Ichihashi) or Ichihashi’s movement to another bustling locale.

However, let’s not forget the possibility that this is merely old information that has been discredited and abandoned by the Chiba Prefectural Police department but became news fodder so that the cops could look like they were making headway while the Hawker family was in town earlier this week. Or, perhaps more likely, that this is just a reporter from the police press club that is simply doing his job. He had this information for quite some time, but was finally told that he could print it this week. Either way, it’s probably safe to assume that whenever the police started to suspect that Ichihashi was hanging out in Ikebukuro, it would have been at least a few months ago.

If that’s the case, then let’s just hope that this press release is part of some larger police-controlled misinformation campaign that is designed to get Ichihashi to drop his guard and make a mistake.

Or the Yomiuri is on a roll. But more on that just a bit later.

Missing any fingers? Don’t fret, you can probably still count the legislative achievements of the Diet under the Fukuda administration on one hand.

An entire twice-extended extraordinary Diet session spent on the Maritime Self Defense Force’s refuelling mission in the Indian Ocean managed to address none of the important underlying questions and instead gave us nearly four months blown on an issue anyone unrelated to the sailors would have to squint really, really hard to see as mattering in any real way.

Prime Minister Fukuda’s first ordinary Diet session is shaping up, as many observers predicted, to offer not much more in terms of legislative achievement. Sure, the budget passed, but that was never really in doubt. That was never going to be a battle, it was never going to require political skill.

The gas tax was. (Read on …)

Are all rapes equal?

The facts are still a bit slim, but it appears that another young girl has allegedly been raped by an American Marine in Okinawa.

For many, the most recent assault, involving a junior high school girl, brings back memories of several other rapes that have happened over the years. The most notorious in recent memory was the rape of a 12-year-old girl by a Navy Seaman and two Marines on September 4, 1995.

The victim in Sunday’s attack, a 14-year-old from Okinawa, was allegedly raped by a 38-year-old Marine in a car in Chatan-cho, Okinawa prefecture. The perpetrator has been taken into custody by the Japanese police, and the government is using all of its powers of protest.

If the allegations are true, then this is a despicable act that deserves all the condemnation in the world. A man took advantage of a junior high school girl and we should be thankful that the police were able to apprehend him so quickly. At this point everyone seems to be up in arms, and one doesn’t have to wander far to find a politician who believes that this might negatively affect the strategic relationship between the US and Japan.

That said, it is unfortunate that this level of indignation is reserved for only certain instances of rape.

(Read on …)

Whatever trouble there is in your life at the moment, whatever stresses, trials, tribulations, or nuisances you have, you can always be glad you aren’t the LDP’s Tsutomu Takebe, a Diet member from Hokkaido. You see, in addition to all of his other responsibilities, poor Mr. Takebe seems to have been saddled with the task of keeping young Taizo Sugimura of Chiba in line.

If you’re not familiar with Taizo Sugimura, you should be - visionaries like him come but once in a　generation. Even in a party stocked with talent to rival his in a legislative body with a few potential challengers to his throne, Taizo Sugimura stands out. This young man, who made it into the Diet in the snap election of September 2005, when the LDP’s success was so deep as to propel even the lower reaches of the proportional representation list to Nagatacho, started his political career with a bang. He went on television and expressed his glee at his new position. He would, he crowed, be able to ride any train for free, in the Green Car no less, get a sweet Diet member’s apartment, and, best of all, be paid so handsomely that he’d be able to go out and buy a BMW at the tender age of 26. Even if many politicians are so selfish, you might wonder how one so demonstrably lacking in, well, political ability could make it into the upper reaches of the political world so quickly. Pity the LDP (there aren’t many reasons to), they were the victims of their own success. Pity Tsutomu Takebe even more. It was to him that the task of chastising Sugimura fell.

You might think Sugimura has learned his lesson. (Read on …)

(Editor’s note: Debito wrote this piece, and even recorded it, quite some time ago. Unfortunately, for reasons we can’t quite fathom, the audio file has. . . well. . . apparently disappeared. This is the text of his Shasetsu, a bit late. We apologize for the tardiness of the publication, for the missing audio, and for dropping the ball on this one in general. Nevertheless, it’s a well-done piece, well worth reading and discussing and we hope you enjoy it.

The second part of Arudou Debito’s appearance on TPR Spotlight will be up before you can say “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.”)

RUMBLE AT THE MINISTRY OF JUSTICE

A hearing on human rights is disrupted by right-wingers

In 1995, Japan signed the United Nations Convention against all forms of Racial Discrimination. By doing so, it promised “without delay” to take all measures, including legislation, to eliminate racial discrimination within its borders. However, more than a decade later, Japan still has not passed any laws against discrimination by race. And as the spread of “Japanese Only” signs and rules nationwide attests, laws are sorely needed.

So is the urge to come clean. Under this treaty, the Japanese government must submit a report every two years on what it is doing to eliminate racial discrimination. It is mighty late, filing its first report, due in 1998, in 2001. And it has filed no reports since then.

(Read on …)

(This editorial was inspired by and grew out of the ongoing debate at Liberal Japan in response to Matt Dioguardi’s posts of July 9th and July 31st - both of which are well worth reading and discussing, especially for those readers interested in a counterpoint to what I’m about to say here.)

On Monday, to my surprise, the US House of Representatives passed House Resolution 121, the so-called “comfort women” resolution by a voice vote, after making it out of committee on the third try. Before I get into why the passage of H.R. 121 is a positive step and why I think it has been somewhat misrepresented in many media - both mainstream and blogospheric - let’s take a look at what it actually “demands”:

(Read on …)

In January 1999, when I was an arch-Conservative Junior in the Department of Political Science at Winthrop University, one of those trifling incidents occurred which raises the hackles and the ire of young Conservatives, eager for a chance to point out the stupidity and unwarranted sensitivity of their Liberal antagonists. David Howard, head of Washington, D.C.’s constituent services office, referred to a budget item as “niggardly.” In the fine tradition of intellectual juggernauts in D.C., Marshall Brown, another aide to Mayor Anthony Williams, complained that it was racial slur and Williams, whom I thought should have fired Brown for being quick about casting aspersions and slow about using a dictionary to compensate for his stunted vocabulary, accepted Howard’s forced resignation.

This was a political issue. It was political because Anthony Williams was an intelligent man. If nothing else, Williams knew how to use a dictionary and valued Howard’s intelligence and skill highly enough to rehire him once the kerfuffle had been spread throughout the American press and not one literate person of any race or political persuasion had done anything other than defend Howard. It was political because it took pressure from gay lobbying groups to get Howard, who was gay, reappointed. It was political because Williams was running the predominantly Black Democratic District of Columbia, where even the appearance of racism would, quite rightly, be a political liability.

(Read on …)