Kan's defamation suit against Abe over Fukushima crisis thrown out

In his ruling, presiding judge Norio Nagaya said that what Abe wrote was “within the arena of opinion and commentary”, according to Jiji Press.

Which means; "Don't screw with Dear Leader", you gonna lose!

How much history is PM Abe trying to rewrite. Everybody knows that TEPCO plant manager said to not pour seawater into the reactors but the supervisor guy on the ground giving orders disobeyed this and thankfully poured seawater into the reactors. Ex PM Kan was really brave to me going up to Fukushima Daiichi NPP and personally getting an assessment of what was going on before the triple meltdown occurred. PM Abe looks not so good with his comment of truth.

If I recall correctly, Kan was yelling at anyone who was trying to give him information, some were saying seawater could cause the reactors to explode, and so the TEPCO bosses told the plant manager, Youshida-San, to stop pumping seawater into the reactor.

So, Kan did not say to stop using seawater, but his childish behavior caused the order to be given.

Wow! "Within the arena of opinion and commentary"! Even though it is a lie and defames the then leader. Doesn't this judge even realise how this is going to seem politically motivated? The Japanese justice system gets more suspect everyday.

Nobody pays attention to the former prime minister Kan. Forget about him and DPJ. Abe is a strong leader and has a support of people for that reason. But he has to be careful about slippings of his tongue. His comment about Kan appears to be made based on newspaper reportings.

Abe, truth and honesty don't belong in the same sentence.

I distinctly remember Kan screaming at the TEPCO boss to give him some answers. Kan was scapegoated for all the other dithering cronies that mishandled the catastrophe. Abe should be made to retract his statement and apologise, simply because it is not true.

this country is officially a dictatorship

How insular and small minded Japanese politicians seem to be when they can devote their time to nonsense such as this...

Whether he gave an order to stop pouring seawater is not really an "opinion." He either did or didn't, and to say that he didn't without any evidence seems like defamation to me. “A victory of truth...” What a tool.

Kan’s suit alleged that Abe made the claims in his e-magazine two months after the nuclear accident.

Wait WOT?! E-MAGAZINE!?!?! omg. Please send a link to this! I'm sure it is a goldmine of great quotes that can be put to T-shirts and worn in an ironic fashion in the Mad Max-esque wasteland that will be Japan in a few short years!

We all know Abe and the LDP own the courts. If they didn't, the wonky election system that always favours the LDP would be declared illegal.

This is just diversion. The more important and still unresolved matter is how the government at the time and TEPCO went on TV night after night and lied to us that everything was OK when they knew that three nuclear meltdowns were in process. Since then, the present administration has kept on with the lies.

Of all the revolving door Prime Ministers, always liked Kan the most. He came from a Labor/Social activist background. Just his bad luck that Fukushima happened on his shift. He tried to take a hands-on approach to it at the time but hey bureaucracy rules!

Big surprise. Definitely defamation, but no way it would ever go through.

article: Kan faced significant criticism at the time of the accident over his clumsy handling of the crisis, but did not issue such an order to TEPCO.

He did not issue a written order. At least, such an order has not been preserved in the archives. In one of his conversations with the person in charge of handling the crisis at Dai ichi though, Kan tried to issue such an order over the telephone fearing (presumably) the worsening of the situation and damaging the reactors further due to the corrosive effect of sea water. Fortunately, Yoshida’s judgement of going ahead with the sea water plan was successful in preventing the crisis from going from bad to worse.

Kan was unlucky to be a PM at the time which called for decisiveness and prompt actions (two things which he did not have in sufficient supply). This, however, does not excuse him or change the fact that he was unprepared and did handle the crisis in the lousiest possible manner. No matter what he says to save face, people will remember him for the obvious incompetence in dealing with the disaster and his deplorable attitude to the people in the shelters he visited before he eventually quit as PM.

If Kan had not been the prime minister, we would have had to try and evacuate Tokyo. I was amazed at how the (former LDP) members of his own party joined with the LDP to start playing political power games at a time when there was serious risk.

No one can bring a lawsuit against our dictator. He is above the law

Moderator: If you had lived under a real dictatorship, you would know how offensive and inaccurate your statement is. Once again, a poor contribution from you.

@Just his bad luck that Fukushima happened on his shift. He tried to take a hands-on approach to it at the time but hey bureaucracy rules!

Wish you had been closer to the people who got involved in solving the crisis. Kan was unprepared. The METI division in charge of the crisis was unprepared at the time the disaster occurred. This resulted in a nightmare for the general public and failure to collect factual information, in release of mistaken information, in lack of communication of information when most needed and in lack of proper communication between the government and METI at least during the first several days of the crisis. Blaming the bureaucrats is a well reversed line and it is justified when we think about the terrible handling of the crisis in March. But it is not only them. The PM and his cabinet are equally guilty of incompetence. However, thanks to the efforts of the team which took over in April and their work with the interim cabinet of Noda, a lot of information and data about the disaster was collected and released and many problems were dealt so that they did not get worse than they already were. Unfortunately, the data release came too late for the people in the disaster-hit areas and the general public and once again proved that nobody was prepared to deal with the crisis, not the government, not the relevant ministries. Hopefully, they have learned their lesson but it is better not to hold your breath.

@marcelito: Kan did his best during the crisis and wanted the reactors cooled despite Tepco,s incompetent upper management in Tepco worried about sea water corrosion and the potential cost and ordering a halt.

Only that it was Yoshida, the professional who had enough knowledge and experience to be aware of the guaranteed corrosion and the possible worsening of the disaster if the reactors were not cooled at whatever price stood his ground against Kan’s histeric reaction over the phone. Kan was too afraid of later criticism by TEPCO’s HQ and the industry in general for rendering them unusable by pouring over sea.

@marcelito:Anyone who believes that LDP with Tanigaki at helm could have done any better during those days is delusional. The same LDP whose corrupt rule created the culture of cover ups and shortcuts that contributed to the Daily ichi fiasco.

I do not think anybody believes that. The point though is that people who say that Kan handled the crisis much better than LDP would have, does not mean that just because LDP would not have handled the crisis better, Kan’s actions were good or his lousy handling of the crisis could be justified.

@marcelito: The same LDP whose corrupt rule created the culture of cover ups and shortcuts that contributed to the Daily ichi fiasco.

True. Yet, let us not get idealistic and give in to the belief that Kan and his party are as innocent as a new born baby. Politics is a d---y business and everybody who believes that there are any politicians without skeletons in the closet, is delusional.

JaneM were you on JapanToday during the Fukushima Daiichi incident?? Because what you are saying and what really occurred do not seem to match everyone else's memory

The behaviour of the whole LDP, especially Tanigaki who was at the helm and refused to co operate with DPJ in the face of the greatest crisis Japan has faced since WW2 was an absolute disgrace. Demanding Kan,s resignation in exchange for co operation in the Diet interested middle of the crisis was beyond belief.

This - the refusal of the LDP to cooperate in saving a large part of the country until their own political demands were met - is one of the things I remember most vividly from the crisis. I was appalled.

Maybe Kan was unprepared to deal with a threefold nuclear meltdown. Who of us outside the nuclear industry (or, we now know, within) would be prepared? If two or more nuclear 'experts' give conflicting advice, which to take?

As for the court buyout I mean ruling, Abe wouldn't know a real 'victory of truth' if one came up and kicked him in the stomach.

I still regard Kan as one of the betrayers in DPJ to their voters and he was pro-nuclear power plant before 311 but I think he did quite well during the critical stage of the accident (cf http://japanfocus.org/events/view/141). Not surprisingly, these documentaries are not broadcasted on any of Japanese TV although especially ZDF one clearly shows how Japanese crime syndicates or yakuza, cooperation, (namely TEPCO and media syndicate), politicians and faceless bureaucrats. It goes without saying that these sets work together with US geopolitics with and without nuclear. The tendency had been already there but Abe administration accelerated it in expense of the lives and the proprieties of the majority of the Japanese even further.

@Utrack:

Yes, I was on JT and I was in Japan during the crisis and the months after it. Being on JT at the time has nothing to do with what happened and what I got to know from the people who worked without break to solve the crisis after Kan quit. I was reading the Japanese and foreign newspapers and listening to the Japanese news. I can guarantee that what we read in the media did not cover the fact that (despite the information released by relative ministries) several teams were working night and day and many of the problems would have gotten much worse and even out of control had they not put pressure on TEPCO’s management or cooperated closely with Noda’s caretaker government.

And though I do not like LDP, I would not use my dislike for them to make conclusions like “Kan’s being a good PM and doing really well in dealing with the disaster.” I prefer to form my opinion while taking into account also what I know from first-hand accounts of the events.

@cleo: This - the refusal of the LDP to cooperate in saving a large part of the country until their own political demands were met - is one of the things I remember most vividly from the crisis. I was appalled.

Me too.

Mu-da,

Abe, truth and honesty don't belong in the same sentence.

Unless the sentence is interrogative or negative.

All the while the lying b§€£¥*s at Tepco kept telling the govt and public there was "no meltdown " and situation was under control even after the explosions happend, radiation was spreading and cores melting. Lies they kept telling for weeks.

I keep hearing this repeated, but within a few days of the accident, TEPCO said they had estimated that 70% of the fuel in Unit 1 had melted, and 33% in Unit 2. I don't recall anyone saying that fuel hadn't melted. There may have been confusion of the use of the word "meltdown" which is not a clearly defined term. At the time, my understanding of the word was that it referred to melted fuel falling through the bottom of the reactor vessel. However, it seems the term is more casually used to describe any melting of fuel.

@Marcelito, I think so, too. Just a pity that the Fukushima incident happened. Otherwise, nobody knows what good things could have happened. We just have to accept that every leadership has good points. Making the citizenry more aware of an active military is part of any nation. It's not just for war alone. And despite all the bashing, PM Abe must be commended for this. Though, of course, I will always think of PM Kan with both respect and sadness. he surely did the best he could .

Utrack,

Everybody knows that TEPCO plant manager said to not pour seawater into the reactors but the supervisor guy on the ground giving orders disobeyed this

Err...

No. Plant Manager Yoshida ignored the order to stop using seawater. The order came from TEPCO Headquarters.

Contrary to public opinion, Kan was the one that in fact saved Japan from a much, much bigger catastrophe. He got the president of TEPCO (Yoshida, was it?) into his office at 4am and ordered him to get the workers back in to bring the place under control. The president was just going to let the plant go into total meltdown!

sighclops,

He got the president of TEPCO (Yoshida, was it?) into his office at 4am and ordered him to get the workers back in to bring the place under control. The president was just going to let the plant go into total meltdown!

No. The plant manager was Yoshida. How easy we forget him and the Fukushima 50.

Yoshida-san wanted to evacuate non-essential workers.

Ira-Kan did not know that the evacuation involved non-essential workers. He could not have known this, because he foolishly forgot to actually ask about the plans, because he was too busy losing his temper.

As he is from Yamaguchi pref., maybe he deserves a 2nd term as are serving Shinzo Abe and Taro Aso at the moment.