Japan

France isn't the only government dealing with bizarre revelations about a politician's past. It turns out that Mieko Tanaka, a recently elected Diet representative from Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's Democratic Party, had a very interesting career prior to entering politics. This included a stint as some sort of cosplay sex columnist:

A publishing company employee explains that Tanaka used to pen a rather racy column in the magazine Bubka titled “Beautiful costume play writer Arisu interviews sex workers: a real battle of beauties” under the name Arisu Shibuya. “She would interview fuzoku [sex industry] girls while she herself was outfitted in some kind of costume. It become somewhat of a topic of conversation because nobody knew why she had to dress up like that,” the employee chuckles.

Tanaka had a bit of a film career as well. She appeared nude in cult director Teruo Ishii's 2005 slasher film Blind Beast vs. Killer Dwarf:

Tanaka plays one of four widows named Reiko, and she first appears sixty-eight minutes into the film. The ladies are initially seduced by the blind beast, who in reality is a killer, and succumb to his sensual massage, for which Tanaka is seen writhing in ecstasy as the beast fumbles with her breasts beneath her robe.

The politician then reappears at around the eighty-three-minute mark, when she tricks the sightless creature into thinking a doll is her body and subsequently flees in desperation.

Thanks to Tanaka's election, sales of Blind Beast vs. Killer Dwarf are apparently through the roof.

Tanaka is one of the so-called "Ozawa girls," a group of young female politicians recruited by DPJ chief Ichiro Ozawa to unseat aging, male LDP incumbents.

Between Tanaka's cult-film past and first lady Miyuki Hatoyama's close encounters, Japanese voters may have gotten more change than they bargained for with the DPJ.

Photo: Democratic Party of Japan

Today, new Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will address both the Security Council and the General Assembly. His foreign minister, Katsuyo Okada, will address the biannual meeting on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which Japan is strongly committed to enforcing. At a press conference today, the prime minister's Press Secretary Kazuo Kodama said that Japan "welcomed U.S. participation" in the CTBC conference, for the first time in a decade.

Foreign Minister Okada recently ordered an investigation into the secret agreements between Japan and the United States that allow nuclear-armed U.S. ships to visit Japan, in possible violation of the country's non-nuclear laws. I asked Kodama if, with non-proliferation on the table at this assembly, there were any talks between the U.S. and Japanese delegations over the investigation.

Kodama said that Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell had been briefed on the issue and that the investiation was still ongoing.

"The vice minister will complete this investigation by the end of November. If necessary we will communicate with state department on this issue," he said. "I don't think there's any sort of tension."

Kodama was also asked what stance Hatoyama would take on executive bonus regulation in Pittsburgh:

In Japan we don’t have any progblems with the level of bonuses. But we think it important to ensure that the existing salary or bonus system should not lead in any way to excessive risk taking. 

Two days into its new government, the Democratic Party of Japan is wasting no time setting new policies for the country. Yesterday, the Defense Minister suggested a withdrawl from Afghanistan; today, the country looks set to suspend use of the death penalty.

The new Japanese Government has in effect suspended the death penalty by appointing an outspoken opponent of capital punishment as Justice Minister.

Keiko Chiba, 61, a lawyer and former member of the Japan Socialist Party, has the final say in signing execution orders for Japan’s 102 death row inmates.

Although she has declined to say explicitly whether or not she will authorise them, her 20-year-long record as a death penalty abolitionist makes it a certainty that hangings will be put on hold.

The article goes on to note that the United States would now be the only "industrial democracy" to still use capital punishment. However, a look at Amnesty International's list of "retentionist" countries does show that the death penalty remains on the books in several of the largest developing nations, including India and China. Those looking for meaningless correlations should also note that other "retentionist" countries include North Korea, Chad, and Sudan.

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Miyuki Hatoyama, wife of Japan's Prime Minister-elect, Yukio Hatoyama, is a lifestyle guru, a macrobiotics enthusiast, an author of cookery books, a retired actress, a divorcee, and a fearless clothes horse for garments of her own creation, including a skirt made from Hawaiian coffee sacks. But there is more, much more. She has travelled to the planet Venus. And she was once abducted by aliens.

The 62-year-old also knew Tom Cruise in a former incarnation – when he was Japanese – and is now looking forward to making a Hollywood movie with him. "I believe he'd get it if I said to him, 'Long time no see', when we meet," she said in a recent interview. But it is her claim in a book entitled "Very Strange Things I've Encountered" that she was abducted by aliens while she slept one night 20 years ago, that has suddenly drawn attention following last Sunday's poll.

"While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus," she explains in the tome she published last year. "It was a very beautiful place, and it was very green."

While her husband at the time dismissed her experience as a dream, she says that Yukio "has a different way of thinking." Maybe there's more to this PM than we thought...

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Wow.

Japan's voters have handed the ruling Liberal Democratic Party an unprecedented beatdown in the country's lower-house elections, meaning the opposition Democratic Party of Japan -- long the Washington Generals, if you will, of Japanese politics -- is coming to power. It's only the second time the LDP has been ousted since World War II.

What does it mean? We'll have more on that in a bit (and you can read smart takes on the subject by Tobias Harris [twice!] and Dov Zakheim), but my view is that's it's a healthy development for a country that has never been quite as democratic as most of us assumed it to be. Japanese voters have finally punished the ossified LDP for its economic management and arrogance ignoring their everyday concerns, and it's punishment well deserved. And as an editor, anything that makes Japanese politics more interesting is welcome.

The U.S. State Department has issued a statement congratulating the DPJ on its win and pledging "close cooperation" with the new government "in moving toward denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, addressing the threat of climate change and increasing the availability of renewable energy, bringing stability to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and addressing international humanitarian and health issues," among other top priorities.

But will the DPJ be as easy to work with as its predecessor? Yukio Hatoyama, the likely new prime minister shown above, wrote last week in a frankly loopy New York Times op-ed that Japan would "aspire to move toward regional currency integration," making headlines around the world. He said it would probably take at least 10 years to accomplish, after which the goal would be EU-style "political integration" of the region. Hatoyama also made clear that he views the United States as a declining power and that Japan would be taking a more independent line in foreign policy.

We'll see if he carries it out. More on this later.

UPDATE: Jeff Kingston weighs in from Japan with his expert take on what the DPJ's win means for Japan and the world. He argues that Tokyo's new government may have a lot more trouble on the economic front, and a lot more success in foreign policy, than most folks think. Check it out.

... Tobias Harris has more.

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The Japanese have been as cautious as any nation in trying to avoid swine flu Even before the first case was diagnosed in May, many Japanese were wearing masks overseas, and after the disease spread to the island, thousands of schools were closed, and testing centers were overwhelmed.

And while the thorough response has done little to halt the disease--three people have died from the virus, and on Wednesday the health minister announced a higher number of cases than expected--even politicians are taking a bold new step to prevent infection: ditching the handshake. 

[C]andidate Denny Tamaki is playing it safe. "Shaking hands during an election campaign is key, so this is pretty troubling," Tamaki told the Yomiuri Shimbun.

"It would be bad if I get infected myself and then pass it on to older people with weaker immune systems," said Tamaki, whose home island of Okinawa has been hit hard by the flu.

Meanwhile, students at the British International School in Shanghai are probably glad they set their world handshaking record when they did.

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For decades, all that Japan knew of jury trials came from foreign legal dramas. Now, for the first time since 1943, Japan is watching a real jury decide the fate of a criminal, as six "lay judges" join three professional judges for four days of deliberations over the fatal stabbing of a 66 year-old South Korean woman by her 72 year-old neighbor. 

Since the end of trial by jury during World War II, Japan's trials have been carried out under professional judges, which led to accusations of too much secrecy. The 99 percent conviction rate that currently accompanies these trials has increased concern that many innocent people are being convicted, and the reintroduction of juries, which was passed five years ago, is designed to bring the public into the judicial process (though only for serious crimes such as murder). However, the public has been skeptical of the new system, especially the hassle involved in taking time off to serve. Furthermore, many Japanese do not enjoy the open forum of deliberations; a New York Times article from 2007 reported that even a mock trial "had left [participants] stressed and overwhelmed." Overall, polls show that almost 80% of the public does not want to serve, and there have been intermittent protests (shown above) since the law's passage. 

But while the hassle of serving and the confusion at a new system are at the top of the public's complains, the legal community is more concerned about something else: sentencing. Many critics in Japan have expressed unease at the power given to jurors to pass sentence on criminals, including the death penalty (though at least one professional judge must agree with the lay judges' recommended sentence). Since the accused has already pled guilty in this case, the jury will likely be focusing on the appropriate penalty -- as will the nation.

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Two days ago, the Chinese government expressed "strong dissatisfaction" with the visit of exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer to Japan. The Japanese government (whose record on Chinese human rights issues is not particulary strong) chose to let the visit go ahead anyways, despite China's assertions that Kadeer helped spark the riots in Urumqi earlier this month (an accusation Kadeer has denied).

What China probably feared most has happened: Kadeer said today in Tokyo that "The nearly 10,000 (Uighur) people who were at the protest, they disappeared from Urumqi in one night." Kadeer called for an internation investigation to uncover more about the riots. China claims that 197 people died in the riots, with a further 1,000 detained.

While China's attempts to pressure other countries (and a movie festival in Australia) over the Uighurs have been pathetic, one point should be made in its favor: the Western media response has been rather curious - numerous publications are carrying the quotes, but none that I've seen mention any further proof, even from Kadeer herself, whereas the AP account before her visit to Japan noted that "China has not provided evidence" of Kadeer's alleged role in the riots. This is not to question Kadeer's account (China's reputation for forging the facts when advantageous is well-established), but to ask: why merely repeat her words? 10,000 people in one night is a serious accusation by any country's standards, and similar claims about other countries would not (and do not) get the same benefit of the doubt. 

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