Issue:
January 2024
FCCJ members look ahead to the Year of the Dragon
David McNeill
Safest prediction first: The news that over a third of unmarried Japanese men and women in their 20s - 40s have never had a boyfriend or girlfriend, brings us ever closer to the 1970s’s classic Sleeper, where Woody Allen wakes up to find that the citizens of 2173 have swapped machine-induced sex for the messy, unhygienic real thing. In 2024, millions more young people will shun an activity that obsessed their parents and grandparents.
As for the rest, plenty will lean toward pessimism, but I defer to gazillionaire geek futurist Bill Gates. In his famous annual end-of-year musings, Gates predicts lifesaving chatbots, breakthroughs in malnutrition treatment and a great leap forward on climate change in 2024. To the dismay of some, this sunny vista includes a revival of nuclear energy, “the only carbon-free energy source that can reliably deliver power day and night, through every season, almost anywhere on earth”, according to Gates.
That is music to the ears of Japan’s nuclear industry, which says the Rokkasho nuclear reprocessing plant in Aomori prefecture will finally be finished in 2024. Dubbed by some the most expensive civil facility in history, construction began 31 years ago. Will Rokkasho finally have its day in the sun? Don’t put your money on it.
Mark Schreiber
Reflecting an unprecedented warming trend, Somei-Yoshino cherry blossoms will begin budding in the Kanto region from February 26 and will have mostly fallen by March 17, leaving millions of inbound visitors with no place to go. During Golden Week (April 27-May 6), the high temperature at 3 pm in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward will have reached 35.8 C.
Faced with the prospects of prolonged summer heat and untenable demands on the capital's aging thermal generators, Tokyo's power utility will appeal to the government for permission to bring several nuclear reactors back online.
Ilgin Yorulmaz
Democracy is a Greek word with no Latin equivalent and stands for "direct rule" (or getting things done) by the people. On the other hand, "representation" is a Latin word with no Greek equivalent, and stands for a delegated action on the part of some on behalf of someone else. Nearly half of the world population will go to the polls in local or general elections in 2024. These include 911 million people in the world's most populous democracy (India) and just 10,600 or so in the second least populous (Tuvalu), as well as 64 million of my fellow citizens in Turkey, who will vote for their local representatives. But as the Israel-Hamas crisis has shown us in 2023, is representative democracy really democratic? My answer is: not always. What's yours?
Anthony Rowley
The coup d’etat in Japan in 2024 came as a major shock to the world, although the writing had been on the wall for some time. The nation had slid into a state political and policy paralysis from which there was no apparent escape.
An even bigger surprise was the emergence of former political strongman Ichiro “the destroyer” Ozawa as the man favoured by the military to become national leader once civilian rule and democracy are restored.
Before the (bloodless) coup, political parties had become locked in an internecine struggle as they sought to discredit each other with claims of corruption and mismanagement. while the national interest was neglected
In retrospect, it should have been little surprise that the armed forces felt compelled to step in and restore order and discipline. The public seemed almost relieved to see tanks rumbling through the streets of Tokyo.
This is, of course, fantasy, but it is a scenario that could unfold at some point in the future even if not as soon as this year. Japan has entered a period of political drift and, as Aristotle observed, nature abhors a vacuum.
Japan has frequently been held up as being a model of stability, freedom and democracy in Asia, especially when set aside autocratic China. But questions have arisen over this rosy definition.
If this apparent stability is no longer underpinned by a stable polity but rests instead on shifting political sands then Japan might, through the eyes of some, come to be viewed as an unpredictable and unreliable partner.
There are elements in Japan who are opposed to what they see as being the nation’s excessively liberal drift and who would like to see a more autocratic form of central government established.
It is tempting to see their machinations as being behind the continuing attempt (supported it seems by certain organs of the national press) to discredit and undermine the government of current prime minister, Fumio Kishida.
The government has come under savage attack on its integrity via charges of corruption against key members of the parliamentary faction of former prime minister Shinzo Abe who hold key positions in the Kishida administration.
If the government were to fall, in the face of a general election (due to be held at latest in 2025 and likely before that) there is only a disparate collection of opposition parties - nor a viable coalition force - to replace it.
This is where the intervention scenario becomes credible and not fantastical. But it could be launched only on the premise that suspension of civilian rule is temporary and that a viable new administration could be formed.
In those circumstances, the emergence of former political kingmaker Ozawa becomes less improbable. Now a member of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, he has already demonstrated his mettle.
In 1993, he achieved his ambition to create what seemed like a workable two-party democracy in Japan by forging alliances among opposing factions. In 2009, that helped interrupt the postwar monopoly on power of the Liberal Democratic Party.
Given the events of recent weeks, Ozawa’s belief that single-party dominance lends itself to corruption is looking more convincing now than ever.
Karyn Nishimura
I generally do not believe in predictions or make any of my own, but based on the situation in Japan 2023, I am not very optimistic about the country’s politics. For sure, there will be big change, as it will be impossible for the Kishida administration to continue for another year. Who will come next? I would like to see a snap election won by a different party, but that is unlikely. That being the case, I would like to see if Shigeru Ishiba could be as frank a prime minister as he has been as a voice of dissent inside the Liberal Democrat Party.
Unfortunately, I don’t think Japanese voters will suddenly take a keener interest in politics and prove that political participation is about more than just voting in elections. Japan is a “paper democracy”, not a “living democracy”. My hope is that the current funding scandal involving the LDP will lead to a fundamental change in public sentiment towards politics.
As a journalist who has become deeply involved in reporting on the criminal justice system, I would sincerely like 2024 to be the year that the nightmare ends for Isao Hakamada, who was condemned to death decades ago for a murder he did not commit. This should be the year the courts declare him innocent. It should also be an opportunity for Japan to have a serious debate about ending its use of the death penalty.
Justin McCurry
Will 2024 user in a period of turmoil in Japanese politics? Most probably. But precedent suggests that any optimism that the contagion from the factional funding scandal that enveloped the Liberal Democratic Party at the end of last year will translate into support for opposition candidates at the next general election is probably misdirected. We have been here before: fallout from the Unification Church scandal failed to inflict significant harm on the LDP at local elections held in April 2023, despite predictions to the contrary. For all its many faults, the LDP's prowess as a vote-winning machine is unlikely to flounder to a degree that will have foreign correspondents scrambling to write profiles of would-be prime ministers who are not associated with the party that has governed Japan for much of the postwar period. That said, once the osechi ryōri and nigorizake have been digested, it might be time to prepare notes for Fumio Kishida’s political obituary.
