I support Istanbul for the 2020 Olympic Games

Rio de Janeiro is scheduled to host the 2016 Olympics, after the next month's London Games for 2012.  It will be for the first time in Latin America and the Caribbean.  And after that?  For 2020?  At the moment three cities have passed the preliminary IOC (International Olympic Committee) standard.  They are Istanbul, Tokyo and Madrid.
Being a Japanese I know Tokyo fairly well.  This is a city where the Prefectural Government has scarcely taken care of housing for the low-income groups.  After the so-called economic bubble exploded two decades ago, the socio-economic gaps are widening.  The less well-to-do are neglected not in housing alone.  In education, care of the aged/handicapped people, especially in terms of the nursing facilities to look after them, or protecting the working mothers, Tokyo is very much backward.
Is not the urban infrastructure well-laid?  The suburban trains are running on time, which may or may not be a great thing.  But the roads are not up to the standard.  They have buried many beautiful small waterways to turn them to tiny parks(in the absence of real ones) and parking places for cycles.  This has robbed us of the scenery, and also the channels for water when it rains hard.
The support to the proposed Olympics by the residents, the IOC says, is the lowest in Tokyo.  Compared to 73% in Istanbul and 78% in Madrid, it is only 47%.
The above-mentioned degrading living conditions are certainly not conducive to creating the atmosphere welcoming the Olympics.  What is more significant may be the fact that the number of parks and sports facilities per unit of population in Tokyo, or in Japan in general, is very small.  Therefore the sports activities of the residents are generally discouraged.
Both the national and the Prefectural governments have no positive policies for providing the general public with sports facilities, and enhancing their health standard.  Prevention is definitely better than cure.
Under the circumstances, it is difficult to find a spontaneous support coming up, to create an atmosphere to welcome it.  The above 47% is, if at all, exaggerated.  People may enjoy watching the games on the TV.  But they do not feel that they are respected as lovers of sports.  The initiative has come only from above.
It would be the height of folly to appeal to the IOC on one hand, but neglect sports and sports facilities domestically.  Tokyo is thus not qualified to host Olympics.  The earlier it withdraws the better.
That would leave Madrid and Istanbul.  I like them both.  There is a great apprehension about the Spanish currency right now, but if lots of tourists bring money with them, it will be a great help.  They have many great treasures such as Picasso's "Guernica", Museo Nacional Centro De Arte, Reina Sofia, Madrid.
But if Istanbul hosts it, it would be the first Olympics in the Islamic country.  It would certainly help reestablish the principle of multi-culturalism.  I am heartily in support of Istanbul Olympics.           

The Idea of "Nuclear-free Japan" Attacked

On 7 May I wrote under the title "And Then There Was None",  to congratulate ourselves on the emerging possibility of having no nuclear reactors any more in the country.  This was, and is a hope that a great many of my countrymen and women do share.
The government, however, does not look at it in the same way.  On the contrary they have decided to reactivate two reactors, Nos.3 and 4 at the Ooi nuclear plant, Fukui Prefecture, which are under periodical checking at present.  The decision was taken on 16 June.
Anticipating this, as many as 11,000 people gathered at the Prime Minister's Office to protest in the previous evening.  They said that nothing has changed after Fukushima to make it possible to reactivate them, many people are still unable to come home there, no authentic report has been out to establish the cause of the disaster, and it is not at all clear how the residents at Ooi and nearby can escape once a similar earthquake with or without an accompanying tsunami assault the area.
A Buddhist monk was saying that, after 16,000 dead and 3,000 missing by the earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear disaster last year,  we are still mourning, and it is too early to take any action of this sort.
Interestingly the local residents are not necessarily in sympathy with the protest.  At a poll 64% say they support the government decision.  This is apparently because they are in the pay of the power company running the reactors, or beneficiaries of the municipal revenue from the increased company tax.  But even then 52% of the 64% have expressed anxiety.
The government says that in our hot and humid summer, which is just round the corner, there will be a shortage of 15% as we have to depend heavily on the air-conditioning.  But they do not disclose how many hours a day on the average this maximum shortage continues.  Moreover the reactivation is for an indefinite period, not just for the summer.
And this is when a large number of us are trying to find ways and means of how to live with a limited supply of energy, and to find an alternative way for an industrial society to exist.  The government is apparently taking the side of the monopolistic power industry.
As most of the other reactors in the country, Fukushima included, the Ooi reactors are also facing the sea, not on the Pacific, but the other side.  We call it the Japan Sea, but the Koreans have named it the East Sea.  The photographs show the reactors standing quite defenselessly and right on the coast.
The German and the Swiss peoples have sufficiently learned from the Fukushima and have decided to close down all their nuclear plants in due course.  Are we not destined to do so?        

Film Director Shindo Kaneto Passed Away

Mr.Shindo Kaneto, a great Japanese film director, passed away a few days ago.  He was born in 1912, and was just 100 years old.  Having been born in Hiroshima, and gone through military experiences, many of the films he has directed give us a strong anti-war message.
Here I would like to tell about his last film, named "A Postcard"(2011).  In his long working life, he has said on several occasions that this time it is going to be his last film.  It has gone wrong on every previous occasion.  But this time it has unfortunately come true.
I saw it only two days before his death.  Until then I had misunderstood the meaning of the title.  In Japan up to August 1945 there was military duty.  When an eligible person gets a call either from the Army or the Navy he has immediately to report at the stated place at the stated time.  The call usually came by a postcard in red colour, which was known as the red piece of paper.  I was under the impression that this was what the title meant.
It was not.  Shortly after the film begins, you will find yourselves watching a group of 100 soldiers.  They are mostly middle-aged, and are not considered fit for fighting.  Still 94 of them are sent to three different battle grounds, only to be killed, all of them.  Only six of them have survived, as Japan surrendered while they were waiting to be sent somewhere.
One evening while the original 100 were still together, an elderly one hands over a postcard to Keita, his younger comrade, with a request.  It was a postcard he had received on that day from his wife, saying that it is the night of the festivals but since you are away there is no joy, signed  Tomoko.  The request was that since he has no hope of coming back alive, he would like his comrade to visit her and and tell her that he has certainly got this card.
Surprisingly, the story thus far is based on Shindo's own experience, Keita being himself.  Shindo preserved this story for his very last film.  So he survived the war, one of the lucky six.  He has to find the widow to fulfill the promise.
When Keita met Tomoko at her house in a hilly village, he came to know that she had been going through one tragedy after another.  After the death of her husband, she married his younger brother according to the local customs.  He was also called, and though he told her that he would come home alive, as he had loved her by this time, Tomoko became a widow for the second time.  Her father-in-law died of a heart attack, and the mother-in-law hanged herself.  The family had sold out the only piece of rice field when Tomoko came to them, for the first time, and now had depended on a piece of rented field.
Keita by this time had decided to go over to Brazil to make a living, but the meeting with Tomoko and staying in her house for a day or two changed his mind.  Finally they two have started working together on that piece of field.  The solution was there itself.       

The 40th Anniversary of the Return of Okinawa

A.  15 May is an memorable day for Okinawa, one of the 47 Prefectures of Japan.  The US returned it to Japan in 1972.  It's 40 years on.
B.  Yes.  It was separated from Japan proper by the Peace Treaty in 1951.  The US was going to propose to the UN that she would place Okinawa as a UN Trusteeship Territory, with Japan's previous approval.  But the US abandoned the plan, and decided to return it to Japan.
A.  Why?
B.  The US saw that if she would go along the original programme, the anti-American feeling would flare up, and the whole Japan-US security alliance would be put in danger.  So they decided to return the administration of Okinawa to Japan.  But they saw to it that the most of their military bases in Okinawa would be usable to them even afterwards.
A.  How significant are those bases?
B.  They are the most important US Marine forces outside the US mainland.  They are not stationed in Okinawa to defend Japan, as is clear from a number of documents and statements by their officials.  They are for fighting in other parts of Asia, or the world, as the spearhead of the US forces.  That's what they have been doing all these years.  Okinawa is a mere stepping-stone.  There presence there does not conform to Article 6 of the Security Treaty which says, 'For the purpose of contributing to the security of Japan and the maintenance of international peace and security in the Far East, the USA is granted the use by its land, air and naval forces of facilities and areas in Japan'.  Most of these forces in Okinawa are Marines.
A.  Still why is it then that there are troubles occurring every now and then?
B.  Many reasons.  There were no Japanese military bases in Okinawa up to the Pacific War.  During the War the Japanese forces fought the US in hurriedly-constructed trenches etc.  Most of the present US bases were built on a permanent basis after the Peace Treaty, when the US began looking at the islands as good as their territory.  Residents were evacuated at the time, illegally, and by force.  There are 33 US bases at present, which is 74% of all the US bases in Japan, and takes up 18% of the land space of the main Okinawa island.  When it was returned, the residents certainly did not take a passport any more just to go to Japan.  But the then government said that the Security Treaty would apply there in the same way as to the Japan proper.  Considering the large number of the bases, the free use by the US forces of them, the way they had been occupied, the way the Treaty applies there, however, are different.  Informed people say that the Japan proper had downgraded to the standard of Okinawa.
A.  There are also plane crashes, crimes and so on, lots of them, aren't they?
B.  There have been 43 plane crashes.  One of them hit a university.  There are countless crimes against women, including small girls.  This shows the offenders are so much involved in the training for killing fellow human beings, that they are already suffering from a kind of trauma even before they are put into fighting.  One thing more is beyond my comprehension.  It was at least several years before 1972 that the US decided to return Okinawa.  Then the above-mentioned clause in the Peace Treaty on the future of Okinawa would have been nullified.  On what basis did the US continue to occupy it till 1972?
A.  The Okinawans have shouldered the burden of having the US bases unequally. Now they are united in their demand for less bases, less noise, less crime.  Is there any way for the rest of the Japanese to shoulder the burden?  Opinion polls are quite negative on this point, showing that by far the most of them are against sharing the bases in Japan proper.
B.  That's because they also think that those bases are not worth having with them.  The only way to get rid of the burden on Okinawa is to revise the Security Treaty into a Peace and Friendship Treaty, with no military substance in it.  55% of the Okinawans are supporting it, while only 16% are supporting the present Treaty.  There are reasons to believe that many Americans will also support such a change.  They have fed up with persistently fighting others in remote areas.  They did not have to.      
        

And Then There Was None

The third reactor at the Tomari nuclear plant in Hokkaido, Japan, has gone off line because of periodical inspection.  This has put the whole country in a peculiar, but very interesting, and very encouraging, situation.  For the first time since 1970, no reactor in the whole country is actually generating electricity.  Compared to that time when there were only two reactors, we have as many as fifty at the moment.  There were four more before the Fukushima disaster in March last year, but they were seriously damaged.
The stoppage of the above reactor is therefore really epoch-making.  It ceased to generate at 11pm, 5 May, and came to a complete halt in the small hours of the next day.  There were gatherings at many places, even in front of the plant itself, on 5 May which is the Children's Day, a public holiday.  It has been called, if not by all but certainly by many, as the Day of Zero Nuclear Generation.  People have declared that we should not give those plants to the children as our legacy.
Not all of the other reactors are in inspection at the same time.  Some have come out of it, and are technically capable of operating.  The government and the business organizations want them to start working.  But the shock of the Fukushima is still so great that the government is not quite in a position to say 'yes'.  They have been prevented from saying so, at least by now.
What if all the sources of power supply are cut off as in Fukushima?  Has it been certified that areas where the reactors are located quake-proof, and tsunami-proof?  And what is the condition at Fukushima itself now? Those questions still remain to be answered.  Meanwhile the number of the operative reactors has decreased one by one.  Finally it has come to zero.
So we are, in a sense, nuclear-free at the moment.  Great, isn't it?  I hope this will continue indefinitely.  Nuclear power is something too dangerous for the humanity at their present level of knowledge to handle. Many people would agree with this.  That is why they have been encouraged by achieving zero generation.  Many others, however, are not yet convinced.  They accept the danger of nuclear power, but still would ask, by what means do we get power, then?
Well, we have obtained at least some space this time where we can discuss the question.  Let us discuss it as part of the larger one of what shape Japan is going to take in the future, and what kind of relations we are going to have with our neighbours.  That space may be limited, but it is where our civil society is expected to grow more self-confident.