Media availability

I am available to comment on the implications of Fukuda Yasuo's resignation.

Please direct your questions to observingjapan@gmail.com.

Observing Japan on Radio Australia

I recorded an interview on Japanese agricultural policy for a story that aired on Radio Australia.

Not my most articulate media appearance, but readers can listen to the story here. Ken Worsley of Japan Economy News was also interviewed.

APSA blogging

I imagine that some of my readers may be in Boston for this year's APSA annual meeting.

I'm planning on attending, and will be at a number of Asia-related panels (and possibly blog about what I hear).

If you'll be at APSA, feel free to drop me a line (observingjapan@gmail.com).

UPDATE: Blogging will depend on whether panels are on- or off-record. Can anyone confirm one way or the other?

Blogging again

I must apologize for the absence of the past several days.

Between moving to Greater Boston and being transfixed by events in the Caucasus, I've found it hard to write about developments in Japanese politics.

Blogging will resume momentarily.

Back to blogging, for now

I have returned from my trip to western Japan (Ehime and Hiroshima prefectures).

Like m'colleague at Shisaku, I climbed a mountain — Ishizuchi, which at 1982m is not nearly as impressive as MTC's hike up Kitadake. (Apparently bloggers on holiday flee to mountains.)


In any case, returning to the blog after a week away is as good an opportunity as any to provide an update on the future of Observing Japan.

As some of you know, my life as a full-time freelance writer and blogger is coming to an end. From September, I will be reinstitutionalized into higher education, beginning my Ph.D. in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The life of a graduate student will not allow the kind of blogging I have done to this point. I am resigned to the fact that from September I will be unable to write as often or as much as I have to date. In the nearly two years that I have worked on this blog, I have found blogging to be an incredibly useful activity for gathering my thoughts, and, more recently, exploring ideas in a rough form before turning them into more polished articles. In short, I am reluctant to abandon it completely. I am entertaining ideas for making it into a group blog or moving my writing to a new site, but for now, I will keep Observing Japan, albeit with lower volume. The frequency of posts will likely drop to one or two a week at best.

I will continue blogging regularly during the remainder of my time in Japan (now just over a week) and throughout August, although I may find it hard to write as often as I move to Cambridge.

Thanks for your readership, your comments, your emails, and for bearing with me during this transition.

Mr. Fukuda on holiday

Fukuda Yasuo, his (un)popularity barely affected by his hosting of the G8 summit last week, celebrated his seventy-second birthday Wednesday by starting a six-day vacation.

Asahi notes that this is early for a prime minister to take his summer holiday, and speculates that since the prime minister does not have plans to travel far, there might be some truth to speculation within the LDP that Mr. Fukuda is getting ready to reshuffle his cabinet.

Maybe so, but there is little information in the body of the article to merit inclusion of the phrase "Preparation for a cabinet reshuffle?" in the headline.

Mainichi includes a similar phrase in its headline — "mixed with speculation about a cabinet reshuffle" — but at least provides some reason for why the prime minister would be taking his vacation now as opposed to later in the summer. At the end of July and beginning of August, Mr. Fukuda will be working on budgetary requests, after which he will be in Hiroshima for the anniversary of the atomic bombing and then Beijing for the opening ceremony of the Olympics.

Instead of being a scheme to plan a reshuffle, Mr. Fukuda, no spring chicken at seventy-two, could simply need a few days rest at home with family.

The point is that while it's possible that the prime minister could be planning a reshuffle, neither Asahi nor Mainichi provides any evidence of this apparently headline-worthy claim. This is unfortunately typical for Japanese political journalism.

If they have information suggesting that there's truth to this, they should report it. If they have no evidence, they should write a short article about the prime minister's vacation and leave it at that. No speculation, no wishful thinking, just the facts.

As for a reshuffle, I remain convinced that it won't happen, that the prime minister doesn't want to break in a new cabinet before the next Diet session. He will return from his holiday next week and plunge back into the work of preparing for the autumn session.

UPDATE: Sankei outdoes everyone in its coverage of Mr. Fukuda's vacation and the prospect of a reshuffle. Sankei — Sankei and no other media outlet — claims that on Tuesday, Mr. Fukuda decided (their word) to reshuffle his cabinet on July 28. There is no source for this report. I may be wrong: it may be true that a reshuffle is coming. But this article reinforces my argument about the poor quality of Japanese political reporting. If they know this to be a fact, Sankei should do us the favor of stating just how it came by this knowledge. All they tell us are "government sources," government sources who leaked only to Sankei.

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SPEAKING of holidays, I will be taking one myself from Thursday evening. This will be my first non-blogging (and non-email) holiday since I started writing this blog. I may or may not write a post Thursday, so this may be my last post until next week.

Republic of Bloggers

It's two months after the fact, but readers can listen to my comments on political blogging in Japan delivered at the Korea Society of New York's "Republic of Bloggers" event in April.

Click here to listen. (I'm the fourth speaker.)

To Kansai readers

I will be in Osaka this weekend. Please send an email to Observingjapan@gmail.com if you are interesting in meeting up.

"Unsustainable Inequities"

After nearly six months of work, during which it has passed from the hands of one leading US foreign policy periodical to another, an article questioning the fundamentals of the US-Japan alliance that I have co-authored with Douglas Turner has finally seen the light of day.

It is available online here at Policy Innovations, a publication of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

Alliance cooperation

The HMCS Toronto, in New York for Fleet Week 2008, seen from my window this morning:

Summer in Japan

I will be in Japan again as of next week, this time for longer. I'll be staying the summer, writing (possibly working on a book) and perhaps giving talks in the Tokyo area.

Stay tuned.

Erratum?

A reader informs me that the pictures mentioned in this post are most likely not pictures of the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, but are instead pictures of the aftermath of the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923.

No less moving, in light of today's news.

May contribution to FEER Forum

You can find my latest contribution to FEER Forum here, discussing the impending demise of the Fukuda government.

To DC readers

I will be in Washington, DC from Thursday to Friday this week, and would be interested in meeting with readers either individually or in a group over coffee.

Send an email to Observingjapan@gmail.com if interested.

Miscellenia

Following the example of Arthur Goldhammer of the blog French Politics, I have decided to set up a Google Reader shared page, which you can access here.

Thanks to Google Reader I read far more articles daily than I have time to write about; I will use this page to share articles (often on topics other than Japanese politics) that I find of interest.

First TV appearance

For those interested in seeing my first ever TV appearance, the video is available at CNBC's website, here.

Observing Japan on CNBC Asia

I will be appearing on CNBC Asia's "Asia Squawk Box" to discuss the BOJ succession at around 8:40am Japan time Thursday.

It is my understanding that American viewers can watch it on CNBC World at approximately 7:40pm EDT.

Observing Japan in the Wall Street Journal Asia

My (optimistic) assessment of the current political situation is in today's issue of The Wall Street Journal Asia.

You can read it here.

Latest at FEER Forum

My latest contribution to FEER's website — "The Second Coming of Taro Aso" — can be read here.

See me live

I'm back in New York City now and normal blogging will resume momentarily.

In the meantime, readers who will be in New York City area on Thursday, April 10 will be able to see me live at an event called "The Republic of Bloggers" at the Korea Society. The official announcement follows.

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The Republic of Bloggers

Thursday, April 10, 2008

The Korea Society, 950 Third Avenue, Eighth Floor, New York City
(Building entrance on SW corner of Third Avenue and 57th Street)
6:00 PM-6:30 PM ♦ Registration and Reception
6:30 PM-8:00 PM ♦ Presentation and Q&A
$10 for members (The Korea Society, Japan Society or Carnegie Council). $15 for non-members.
Buy tickets

For more information or to register for the program, contact Patrick Clair at (212) 759-7525, ext. 328 or email

With some of the highest rates of broadband and wireless Internet penetration in the world, Korea and Japan are home to thriving online communities that affect politics, shape public opinion, and forge new forms of social bonding. In Korea, the net has empowered citizen journalism and created a new national pastime of “massively multiplayer online games.” According to the Washington Post, more blogs are written in Japanese than in English, despite the fact that English speakers outnumber Japanese speakers by five to one. Both countries are bastions of participatory Internet use, but what accounts for subtle differences in user attitudes and behavior? In addition to exploring the challenges and lessons learned by people blogging about Korean and Japanese society and politics, the panel discusses how the peculiarities of Japanese and Korean political and online cultures affect participatory democracy in those countries, and whether these experiences will be a bellwether for the global community.

This program takes place in conjunction with the ongoing, two-year, Ethical Blogger project conducted by Brown University’s Watson Institute, the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, Demos, NYU’s Center for Global Affairs, and Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Introductory remarks by Devin T. Stewart, Director, Editor, Global Policy Innovations program, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

Speakers:

David Weinberger, Author, Fellow, Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society

Wendy H.K. Chun, Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media, Brown University

Tobias Harris, Publisher, ObservingJapan.com; freelance blogger and journalist

Stuart Thorson, Professor of Political Science, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University

Samuel Jamier, Senior Program Officer, Contemporary Issues & Corporate Affairs, The Korea Society

Moderated by Daniel B. Levine, The Korea Society