FROM THE EDITOR

The administration of Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichirô had been seeking to secure passage of four key pieces of legislation in the current session of the National Diet: an emergency-powers bill, a bill to protect personal information, a revision of the Health Insurance Law to increase patients’ charges, and legislation on postal deregulation. But the emergency-powers bill, the core of a legislative package aiming to define the government’s authority in dealing with an invasion or other major national security emergency, ran into stiff opposition from those who complained that it would violate citizens’ rights—and from others who agreed with the need for this sort of legislation but declared that the government’s bill was woefully inadequate to deal with the sorts of emergencies that today’s Japan might actually face. And the bill on personal information came under concerted attack from media organs declaring that it would infringe on their ability to gather news; ordinary citizens, meanwhile, voiced complaints that the proposed law lacked teeth to deal with the everyday nuisances of telemarketing and junk mail.

The prospects for these two controversial bills were hurt by collateral damage from an unexpected source, namely, the Defense Agency, which was revealed to have been keeping a detailed list of people submitting requests for information from the agency under the nation’s Information Disclosure Law. The revelation of this illegal record keeping produced a tempest in the Diet and further heightened opposition to the latter bill in particular. It now appears that the administration has no hope of getting these two bills passed in the current session.

LEGISLATIVE LOGJAM The prime minister is frustrated not just with the recent legislative impasse but with the general lack of progress in achieving his agenda for structural reform. And he is not the only one who is frustrated. The public, having placed high hopes in Koizumi when he took office last year, is now thoroughly disillusioned with the meagerness of his administration's accomplishments, and his support ratings are continuing to fall. What I cannot fathom is why Koizumi has failed to address the erosion of his support by appealing to the nation with an explicit vision of the sort of Japan he hopes to create by implementing his reforms--or to show any sign of responding to the shift in the political climate. According to recent polls, his administration’s approval rating has now fallen below its disapproval rating (by 37% to 46% in a June 22-23 Asahi Shimbun survey). Why have matters come to such a pass?

This year’s ordinary Diet session has made little progress in deliberating the government's legislative agenda. This has been due in part to distractions from major incidents beyond the control of the prime minister and his team, but the situation has been aggravated by the ineptitude of top officials in Koizumi’s Liberal Democratic Party, such as Secretary General Yamasaki Taku, along with careless statements from key figures like Chief Cabinet Secretary Fukuda Yasuo, which have inflamed opposition party members and brought deliberations grinding to a halt.

One set of distractions came from a series of revelations of improprieties involving Diet members’ secretaries, which resulted in the resignation of three legislators, including the speaker of the upper house, a former secretary general of the LDP, and an opposition party member; two additional legislators accused of improper behavior have held on to their seats but resigned from their parties. And June 19 brought the arrest of one of the latter two—lower house member Suzuki Muneo, formerly a powerful figure in the LDP—on charges of bribe taking.

A series of incidents involving money and politics in recent years has deepened public mistrust of politics. Legislation has been passed to prevent improprieties, but loopholes abound, and the need for revisions has been recognized. A bill to revise the law against influence peddling by politicians has been submitted to the current session of the Diet, but this is just one step toward improvement, and critics complain that it leaves many of the loopholes unclosed. We require a system of controls that will assure transparency in all flows of public funds, regardless of amount.

INCIDENT IN SHENYANG Another matter that took up considerable time in the Diet was the handling of the May 8 incident in which a family of North Koreans sought refuge at the Japanese consulate general in Shenyang, China. The incident, in which members of the family were taken by force from the grounds of the consulate by armed Chinese police, enraged public opinion in Japan and led to a renewed round of criticism of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as a flood of commentary in the media about Japan’s policy on asylum seekers and toward China, along with criticism of China’s behavior.

A video clip of the incident that was broadcast time and again on Japanese television showed uniformed Chinese police dragging two screaming women from the consulate grounds as a tiny girl cowered on the side. The clip also showed the Japanese vice-consul standing by and observing the incident without attempting to intervene. Apparently he thought it was an ordinary altercation between the police and Chinese citizens seeking to apply for visas. The footage was recorded by a news organization at the request of the nongovernmental organization that had helped the North Koreans plan their bid for asylum. If it had not been recorded live on camera and subsequently broadcast in Japan, it is likely that the incident would have been quietly papered over. This served as a reminder of the power of the media.

The humanitarian aspect of the incident had a relatively happy resolution a couple of weeks later when the Chinese government permitted the five-member family to leave the country on a flight to Manila, whence they were quickly flown to South Korea. But Japanese public opinion toward China was hardened by the refusal of the Chinese to allow Japanese diplomats to interview the North Koreans before their departure (in place of the original Japanese demand for return of the asylum seekers) or to apologize for the flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention guaranteeing the extraterritorial status of diplomatic missions. Coincidentally, Japanese consumers have been taking a warier view of Chinese-produced foodstuffs following recent discoveries of excessive levels of additives and pesticide residues in imported meat dumplings and spinach. As we consider articles for inclusion in the next issue of Japan Echo, we will be looking for appropriate pieces dealing with the difficulties of diplomacy in the television age.

WORLD CUP The 2002 World Cup, hosted jointly by South Korea and Japan, started on May 31 with an opening ceremony in Seoul. Japan’s national soccer team did better than many had expected, making it through the opening round to the best-16 championship tourney; its string of successes gave a big boost to the nation’s depressed spirits. The feared trouble from hooligans seems not to have materialized, perhaps because of ample security precautions. The biggest trouble was with unsold tickets. The Japanese organizing committee had announced that no more tickets were available, but in the early matches there were thousands of empty seats because the organizers overseas had not sold their full quotas.

Other than this ticket trouble, the massive event went well, and the joint hosting by South Korea and Japan has greatly promoted exchange between the two countries. Hopefully this will contribute to friendlier relations between future generations of Koreans and Japanese.

CURRICULUM CONTROVERSY Schools in Japan are now operating under a new set of curriculum guidelines implemented this April. Some educators and commentators welcome the changes, which are intended to give children more “room to grow,” but others fear that they will accelerate the downward trend in scholastic achievement levels. We include a pair of articles this time representing these opposing viewpoints, and we will continue to cover the lively and wide-ranging debate on educational reform.

Finally, I would like to thank Kawachi Takashi, who is resigning from our editorial board, for his valuable contributions since joining the board in 1997. We wish him continuing success. (Iwao Sumiko)

© 2002 Japan Echo Inc.