The first of two elections...

 Another Sunday in April, part 2

This time last week, I was planning to write a little about being a Chair of a Department in a Japanese university...but the election was finally called in Australia today and so that has taken up some of my time. The election will be held on 21 May. That's six weeks of 'official' campaigning, and quite a long time to wait and see what happens. 

The Japanese Upper House election will be held sometime during summer, likely July. As someone whose day job is lecturing about politics, especially elections, it is a very newsworthy time and plenty of material to work with, digest and present to the students. 

In recent years, as I have observed contemporary politics, I note I have changed my 'public voice' in the case of the Australian situation in particular. In line with my role as academic, I have been invited by the media to offer comments on various aspects of the campaigns. Obviously, my own voting intentions are personal and I don't reveal them, the so-called 'neutral observer' status. I do think that is important. But it has also tended towards a non-critical or both sides approach, by many of us in commentary positions, that has partly led to our current political malaise. I think of the Trump years, or aspects of the Abe years, and of course, the situation in Australia where it appears the system is falling apart, rorted beyond repair. I say this about the current Government, not because it is a Liberal (National Coalition) government as such, but the abuses of the system are on a scale I have not seen previously. I would be critical if the Labor Party were doing these things as well. I have tweeted along the way that as undergraduate students when we studied governments in various Asian countries, they were held up as examples of cronyism and levels of corruption 'that we would never see in Australia, but...', indeed, but we have. That is my concern. We, the academic and media commentators, really do need to bring a greater nuance to our critique. 

When I taught Australian politics at uni in Australia, I used to tell the students that no matter how much you might despise the person in the office, we need to respect the office of Prime Minister, quite separate things in some ways. But I have rescinded this advice for the present. The incumbent has diminished the Office considerably, but hopefully not beyond repair. There are very few people on the current government benches who demonstrate the ideal of 'parliamentarian', as one who works for the betterment of all in society. It is ugly and partisan at present. Some say people will do 'whatever it takes' in politics; our politics is now well beyond that. It is dangerous. Others say that politics is a rough game, dirty business, but no, it doesn't have to be like this. 

One of the books I have in mind to write will reflect at length on these problems in our politics. I will watch with interest the progress of the several independents, the 'teal' independents running in this election, appealing to a better state. The votes they can garner, and perhaps even some seats, will give us some indication of how the electorate views our politics. 

These are the things I can think about now I am no longer Chair of a Department. 

More to come.

More occasional musings

A Sunday in April 2022, part 1

Now that the other blog is underway, having almost reached 100 posts in almost 100 days, I think I am ready to return to regular posting here, ideally weekly, perhaps more often as political events dictate, perhaps less as weekend work demands. On the latter, however, there should be less of that now that I am no longer burdened with the 'Chair of Department' role. That finished formally on 31 March although there will be a few minor things to mop up over the next few weeks.

If the purpose of restarting the #project365 blog over the way was to get myself back into writing habits, this blog will have a more specific purpose of honing my writing for all the writing I have in mind when I finally get home. That will be a combination of 'academic' writing, some commentary and maybe trying my hand at writing up life as an academic in Japan for a general audience. 

So the topics will be broad, the style varied as I try to strike a comfortable 'voice' but hopefully a bit interesting. Some have suggested a podcast of sorts, and although I wouldn't rule that our just yet, I'm not sure. I've tried listening to podcasts, some very good ones, but I just can't get into the habit myself. I like to listen live where possible, and somehow, as a radio person, I think I have a 'fear of missing out' on live radio if I'm listening to a podcast. As I said, that may change as life takes its course, so for now, it is writing for me.

I think I will also being using this space to review books as I read them, books in Japanese that I buy for research and recreation purposes, just for the record. Some parts might end up in lit reviews in articles and books. 

Overall, I think it is just time to start recording much more. 

This month, 1 April, the new academic and financial year begins in Japan. All the students who graduated last month took their first steps in their companies and new places of employment (often with rather formalised, organised pomp and ceremony). 

For me, tomorrow, the new first year students are welcomed to the university, with all the promise and excitement that brings them. Within a couple of weeks I'll be back in the classroom, something I expected would end in February 2021 until Covid put a stop to that. One day, there will be a post about the sense of being prevented to return to your own country...that was quite something. 

This year, there will be two elections, one in Australia and one here in Japan due around July. One of the key works I plan to publish in the next year will be some ongoing observations of the political cultures of both countries, a comparison of sorts and perhaps with more in common than people might think. The political is of course my main interest and is what much of my life has revolved around for the last few decades. There will be a few notes made about those events.

In the next few weeks, I suppose I would like to record a bit about holding the position of Chair in a Japanese university, but I guess too, I have to be 'thoughtful' shall we say, about what I might write, what I could write, what I should write... I still have some time to go here. Suffice to say, it has given me some interesting insights into the inner workings of a department that I didn't anticipate when I first arrived for the new academic year in 2016. I still hold a senior exec position at the University, so I have to consider that as well. What I can say, is that the positions couldn't be more contrasting. ...

I will probably be making further reflections on Japan-Australia relations--things I proposed in my PhD dissertation almost 20 years ago--seem to becoming all the rage in current commentary...it is a kind of 'told you so' moment after being essentially ignored for much of those twenty years. Anyway, that's the way to goes sometimes. 

There will be a few random pics too along the way, ones that have stayed with me over the week, or month. This post's pics from a walk I did around the neighbourhood last week...places you find the seasonal sakura blossoming where you least expect them. I like to think there is a bit of a metaphor in there somewhere, that hopefully I can tease out over the next few years of writing, and thinking. 

That you for following along this far. I will be back, soon.

A short essay on women and politics in Japan

 

Just recently, I was asked to contribute to the online journal, 'Disruptive Asia', a piece on women in politics in Japan.  It is not very long and so, kind of difficult to cover all that needed to be covered but if you are interested (and mainly for my own records), here is the link.

Disruptive Asia, 2022, vol. 5

#JapanVotes2021 A few observations

 It's a little bit funny...a little bit sad

Today is Election Day in Japan, the lower house, House of Reps. I've been following them since, ooh, about 1984. Actually, my first ever ticket to fly to Japan was booked for a date which would have meant arriving just days before the 1983 election. The flight was cancelled and the next available one was a couple of weeks later. (An acquaintance once pointed out, I am the *only* person they know who recalls travel dates and trips by whether there was an election involved...)

Prior to returning to Japan to work in 2016, I had made a point of flying to Tokyo each election from the landmark change of government one in 2009, to 2015. Self-funded of course, my then place of employ didn't consider my research a priority, but I digress. (At least I avoided a lot of form filling and submission.) Yes, friends who travelled to Japan for all sorts of reasons thought my psephological excursions were, well, strange. 

We wait for the poster (Tokyo 11th)

Anyway, back to the present. One of the reasons I took up my present position in Tokyo was I expected being on the ground as it were, would be better for the kind of research I like to do, the books I like to write (eventually, one day, when I have, er, time). I had detected a bit of a disconnect with the apparent 'high levels' of support for the then Abe government and what was going on at a grassroots level. I wanted to get in on this in situ, something I couldn't do with a ten-day annual trip. 

The candidates in my electorate, notice anything?

In my previous trips, I used to land and then set out my schedule to follow the candidates and leaders around as they made their speeches in public appeals, mostly at train stations, but in other public spaces as well. It wasn't just to hear what they had to say, but also observe the people who stopped to listen, to watch, to comment. All the interactions. I went as far as my budget would allow. Usually around the greater Tokyo region. One of my personal disappointments this time is that work has kept me away from the hustings...even when I planned to catch someone somewhere on the train line home, 'twas thwarted by someone turning up in my office at *just the wrong time*.

 

Even yesterday, Saturday, the 'grand finale' day where the main contenders make their final pleas...I had a four-hour graduate class. What does a psephy do? Once the class finished I had time to go to one, just one, final call. In Shinjuku, opposition party leaders were going to gather with key candidates. There is always a large crowd (we are still in Covid times). It is a couple of train rides away and it was probably already too late to get a front row spot.

So, to Akabane Station. A 30 minute bus ride away, the electorate next door to where I live and featuring a couple of politicians whose careers I have followed pretty closely. The call was for local candidate Ikeuchi Saori, a woman in her 30s, previously elected for a term in parliament but defeated in the last election. She started her campaign for the next election almost the very next day. She is dynamic, progressive, turns up at local events, is committed. She was being supported by the party's Secretary-General, Koike Akira, whose campaign to return to parliament I happened to capture in Shinjuku many years ago. There was a bit of historical continuity in following-up. So I went to Akabane. 

I have to stress, this was for research purposes. It was a hard decision, my researcher instincts want me to be everywhere. In going to the final call for candidates in the Japanese Communist Party, I am not advocating for their election, nor for their policies. I considered staying at home too, to avoid accusations of bias etc. But in all honesty, these rallies are fascinating, and I would think something like this introduced in Australia would be quite interesting, instead of the clinical, staged hotel conference rooms we tend to get. 

The crowd was a reasonable size, for one candidate, and enthusiastic. Ikeuchi has two chances--to represent the single-member district and she is also listed on the JCP's proportional list. It is an interesting system here in Japan, two systems in the one house--289 seats made up of single-member constituencies, 176 seats drawn from the proportional system, for a total of 465 seats. If a candidate wins in their single-seat electorate, obviously they don't take a seat in the proportional list. It is a kind of 'second chance' system, which has its fans, and critics. I have started to investigate the use of the proportional system to prioritise women, LGBTQI candidates and others to perhaps bring some 'proportionality' to Japan's parliament...but even if it works in theory, you would have to find a way to move the rusted-on time servers usually found at the top of the lists. (We know how this works from the Australia Senate example...)

So a few pics here, but I've decided to put a few more over on the psephyspix blog too...just for the atmosphere of a final campaign call.

Thanks for getting this far. More, as they say, to come.

Tokyo 2020+1 Thoughts along the way pt. 1

 Should we even be here?

This will be an occasional series over the next few weeks, how could it not be? These are the Olympics that should have been held last year. Last year they were postponed because Covid cases were reaching daily heights in the low hundreds each day...this year, this past week in particular, the daily average has been over 1000. 

Recently, I have been asked to write commentaries for The Conversation and The Interpreter (Lowy Institute) and several media interviews, mostly as an Australian in Tokyo at this time and what that perspective brings. It doesn't hurt that politics is my day job and let's face it, there is a lot of politics to digest. It does hurt that I have long been a sports fan (even played a few in earlier times) and that the Olympics are being held at all under the present circumstances. I feel for the athletes, I really do. I scored tickets to a couple of events too (women's hockey and rugby 7s, but not the surfing 😒). But I also recognise and share the frustration of many people here who don't want (rather, didn't want) the Olympics to go ahead. The costs, the risks, and for what? A keen observer of political protests, I would have liked to be out and about observing the many protests that have been going on around town...but I'm sticking to the pandemic rules, for now.

Japan was awarded the Olympics in 2013, and with a few years of candidate-campaigning prior to that, I feel my visits to Japan over the last decade or so, have had a distinct Olympic tinge to them. And now of course, with Brisbane winning the bid for 2032, if ever I get home, that will equate to some two decades of living in Olympic cities. The political scientist in me is wary...and perhaps by 2032, a little weary.

A secondary purpose of these posts is to get me back into writing mode. I won't be stuck as head of department forever (I hope) and I do want to get back into good writing habits. I have much to write. 

The mini-cauldron,
placed at Ariake,
just near work

The posts won't be linear as such but will reflect a journal of ideas and early analysis. Some of the posts will reflect comments made in media interviews, I guess they count as my own words, even if they have been published elsewhere. Some related posts will be over on the photo blog too (as I crank that one up again for another go at #project365, or # 52, or # 12, depending on whether my energies run to daily, weekly or monthly efforts...

On this, the first Sunday of the Olympics, officially opened on Friday night but with events commencing last Wednesday, I spent a fair bit of time watching the surfing, on an internet connection because this Olympics is being held with no spectators. We have been asked to watch the Olympics on telly (or other devices) instead. As a separate research project, I have been looking at surfing's introduction as an Olympic sport. I've travelled several times to the town where the venue is located, I've given two or three conference papers, I've invested quite a bit of time there. Now, with essentially a four day window of competition (with lay days for poor surf), I've spent time wondering whether I can break the current State of Emergency, and head out tomorrow, a rare meeting-free day, for research purposes. I need to write the concluding paragraphs to that article after all. But instead, I will probably stay home, wait until after the SoE, and look at the legacy post-Olympics for Ichinomiya. 

Sports me has won out over academic me today. But there is so much to write, to consider, to reflect. I plan to be back tomorrow, or the next day, to tease out a few ideas. 

A behind the scenes view of
the topiary mascots at Ariake

Ten years on: personal reflections on the Tohoku triple disaster

 A pause for reflection

I am here in Tokyo today, the tenth anniversary of the Tohoku disaster that struck the northern part of the main island of Honshu on this day 11 March, 2011. A few months ago I thought about travelling to Ishinomaki on the coast of Miyagi Prefecture to be there on this day. But I thought the better of it. One reason is that Tokyo remains under a State of Emergency due to Covid, and although I've been doing some work up in Ishinomaki in recent years, as well as Fukushima with some colleagues, I thought that these places would be crowded with people, media primarily, there to capture the tenth anniversary commemorations. It would seem intrusive to me, given I have no immediate, direct connections with people there.

On the other hand, I know that people I've worked with throughout Tohoku, also do not want the disaster to fade into history and they are grateful when I return, they are grateful when I listen to their stories, while I am actually the one who feels most honoured to share in their generosity. 

I was still in Australia in 2011 when news of the disaster reached us. I was working and my mother rang to tell me she had seen news of an earthquake in Japan. I wrote a short reflection about that day, and the first year here here back in 2012. It is interesting to look back on that post now. I did not expect I would be in Japan in 2021; I did not expect I would have been able to contribute, albeit it on a very small scale, to recovery. 

After 2011, when I went back to Japan each year on my annual research trip, I hesitated to travel north, for fear of being somewhat of a voyeur, an outsider looking in, and for what? To fulfil an academic curiosity while trying to understand and learn, as far as my discipline of political science was concerned? When I stayed with friends in Tokyo in 2012, 2013, 2014 and again in 2015, I heeded their advice. There will be time to go, just not immediately. There will be time to go and help in the recovery, there will be time. And indeed, this has turned out to be the case. One comment that sticks with me was the one where one person said to me, 'we are thinking 500 years ahead, we want this story to be known in 500 years, and beyond'. Five hundred years from now. It is a long time, but also a brief time, as 2021, ten years on seems to be from that day in 2011.

In retrospect, I made the right decision not to go this week. I wrote about my visit to Ishinomaki in 2018 for a university project here and it is where I would have gone today but I know will go another time, when the spotlight is off the town for the rest of the year and the locals will be pleased that we have not forgotten them. These last few weeks, there have been many programs on tv looking back, looking forward. My eyes and ears are drawn to the Ishinomaki stories. One in particular last week, ten years on, a father continues to go diving almost everyday to search for remains of his daughter, a bank clerk at the time, washed away in the tsunami. Each year on her birthday in December, friends and relatives gather to 'celebrate', to observe. Last December, due to Covid restrictions, it was just her parents. They go to her grave each day to wash her headstone because 'it is just like getting up to wash her face everyday' said her father.

Last week, authorities found the remains of a woman lost in 2011, in Matsushima, not far from Ishinomaki. Her discovery brought the number of people declared dead to 15 900, and those who remain missing, to 2525. Relatives continue to search for the missing.

I first visited the Tohoku region when I was an exchange student at a university in Tokyo. My summer holiday in 1985, before returning to Australia (not knowing when I would return to Japan, but imagining I might) was a long, detailed and planned train journey around Japan, back in the days when basically you were restricted to local or limited express trains. Part 1 of the journey was to head north from Tokyo, by rail, along the coast of Honshu via Fukushima, Sendai, Morioka, and back down the coast, through to Niigata...and onwards. In those days, my Tokyo friends 'warned' me I might struggle with the language in Tohoku since 'they speak a completely different language there you know', half-jesting, half-serious. Indeed, the Tohoku dialect is a strong and distinctive one as I learned on my travels. I momentarily lost confidence in my ability to understand the language I had been living with for almost two years! But the generosity of the locals remains memorable. 

I finished the trip, reaching all the way down to Kyushu and back along the coast to Tokyo via Hiroshima, Kyoto and Nagoya, and each town, each place, was special, but the Tohoku region remained particularly memorable. I don't think the railways exist these days for a repeat journey but maybe one day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As I have taught classes about Japan over the years, one question that comes up time and again is the question of 'anniversary' or 'commemoration'...why do we seem to prioritise those anniversaries ending in '0' over others? The dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki come to mind as examples of anniversaries people don't want to see recede into history. Yesterday, 10 March, was the anniversary of mass aerial bombing over Tokyo during World War Two, not as prominent as others but remembered nonetheless. Another thing I have learnt from speaking with people in Ishinomaki is they remember every day. It is important for them and others in the region that we too, do not forget, and that we too, will continue to remember for them and with them, any day of the year. 

I will get back to Ishinomaki, soon. It is one place I will return to, time and again. 

To my friends, I will remember you today, from Tokyo.

11 March, 2021, 2:46pm.

Photos taken from Hiyoriyama Park, and the Kajimamiko Shrine, atop the hill in Ishinomaki, where many people sought refuge from the tsunami.

Australia-Japan relations and pitching for a post-COVID future

Some thoughts on the 2020 Lowy polling

Looking ahead at what can be: Australia, Japan and the post-COVID world

If Prime Minister Abe reads the annual Lowy Institute poll, it might have provided about the only fillip to his recent political fortunes. He would have no doubt been pleased that a constituency, somewhere, thought rather highly of his leadership. In recent weeks, PM Abe’s polls in Japan, across most of the leading polling outlets, have seen a drop in satisfaction or popularity of him and his Cabinet (depending on the phrasing of the question). Scandals surrounding his government continue to hamper his leadership, his handling of the response to the COVID-19 crisis has drifted in the wake of more assertive responses by prefectural governors, and with the end of his third term approaching, there is less confidence he can once again persuade party colleagues of yet another extension to the previous two-year-two-term limit on the party presidency. His planned triumphs of 2020, the Tokyo Olympics and a referendum on changes to the Peace Constitution are all but corona-ed. Both incumbent Australian and Japanese governments are in lockstep with the Trump Administration, and PMs Morrison and Abe look set to accept the dubious invite to Trump’s G7 later in the year.

The Lowy poll invites an opportune moment to look to where the Australia-Japan relationship might go, in a post-COVID world, beyond the fog of the US-China entanglement. In key findings, seven in ten Australians express confidence in PM Abe, 79 percent recognise Japan as a democracy and in the ‘feelings’ thermometer Japan came in at 69 degrees, around the midpoint of 63 in 2007 and 74 in 2018. It is probably reasonable to speculate that Japan’s popularity as a tourist destination for Australians in recent years is reflected in these figures. In Japan, at the time of writing, a few news sites picked up the The Agence France-Presse (AFP) report with the focus on the China angle, nothing about Australians high level of confidence in Japan.

Prior to the signing of the security agreement in 2007, Japan viewed Australia as a key partner in the Asia-Pacific region, building a relationship as ‘advanced liberal democratic countries, supporting and strengthening peace and prosperity and a free trade system’, (Diplomatic Bluebooks, inter alia) amongst other aims. As successive Australian governments of both persuasions encouraged and enabled a stronger defence outlook by Japan, the two countries have boasted of a ‘special strategic partnership…sharing fundamental values and strategic interests’ (Diplomatic Bluebook 2016ff).

Despite a record of government-level engagement dating from the late-nineteenth century, most observers view the relationship through its mutually beneficial economic growth from the 1960s onwards, or more lately, the security agreement signed by PMs Howard and Abe in 2007. But in a post-COVID world, where we might hope for a return for good global citizenship, Australia and Japan could leverage this bilateral goodwill to forge a partnership with a broader ‘human security’ remit.

Abe has much to ponder (from a class simulation exercise) 

In an international environment which has accommodated advancing militarisation over other forms of security in recent years, it will take a courageous turn in leadership to recalibrate national interests to reflect a more nuanced, post-COVID world. To borrow an Olympic analogy, we may need try to pole vault our way into a new era. In doing so, I would suggest that the potential strengths in a future Japan-Australia alliance lie not in a narrow security alliance but a broader, human security approach. Many years ago, as a graduate student doing interviews about Japan’s relationship with Australia, one bureaucrat especially conversant with the Australian vernacular, told me ‘Japan sees Australia as a friendly corner shop; we might like to occasionally shop elsewhere but Australia will always there when we need them’. It is a comment that has stayed with me ever since and re-emerges when I think about what could be. In the 1970s and 1980s, the bilateral relationship was informed by regular ministerial meetings where ministers across several portfolios would gather to confer on matters of state. The increase in regional fora and a sense of redundancy saw the ministerial level meetings diminish over time, only to be revived in a foreign affairs/security 2+2 format as a part of ‘strengthening the strategic partnership’.

The bilateral relationship could return to its shared interests in the region (beyond narrow strategic parameters) and begin to build regional resilience on climate change and embrace the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In Japan, the SDGs are being taken up across corporate, educational and social institutions (disclaimer: including my own university) and operate within parameters that resonate with past practices of comprehensive security and human security. A renewed effort at people-to-people engagement (previously a strength of the bilateral relationship) would help facilitate and reconnect the breadth of the relationship and the possibilities. Those seven in ten people who believe PM Abe is doing a good job might not be aware that more than half the Japanese population still resist amendments to the peace constitution. We rarely see that reflected in the 2+2 dialogues.

There is a sense of the inevitable in expanding military responses. It is the dominant frame through which we view ‘security’, through which we view ‘strong leadership’. At the time of writing, there is speculation coming out of the weekend that PM Abe might call a snap election, a tactic he has used previously to try and bolster support for his agenda (though the opposition parties continue to be in disarray and unable, seemingly, to garner a majority vote). Tokyo is in the throes of a gubernatorial election in which former Abe foe and incumbent Governor Koike looks set to retain her post. That Koike is effectively backed by the Liberal Democratic Party this time (unlike the previous election where she faced a candidate supported by the LDP) will offer the national leadership a charade of support, should they choose to do so.

With many observers urging governments to reset the levers in a post-COVID world, Japan and Australia have a capability to do so, in the region, with the right leadership mix. We ought to start planning now, and rather than running behind opinion polls, here is an opportunity to get out in front.