Bruce Chatwin comments

Never mind the gender equality problem, the J govt has announced that athletes participating in the Tokyo Olympics will not need to be vaccinated against Covid: "We are putting together a number of comprehensive measures to realize a safe and secure event without needing vaccinations to be a prerequisite," Tamayo Marukawa, Olympics minister.

Japan's vaccination program is hobbled by delays, which makes it unlikely that Japanese athletes can receive their jabs in time for the Olympics. This creates the unpleasant scenario where foreign competitors may be vaccinated while Japanese athletes are not.

Hiroshige Seko is yet another of the many dynastic politicians that Japan is cursed with.

No intelligence or common sense is required for these creatures as it is family connections not competence that assure their positions.

Another male dinosaur to replace the previous male dinosaur. The senior executive board of the Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games does not have one woman amongst its eleven members; not one. on the committee. The committee continues to be completely out of touch with reality.

https://tokyo2020.org/en/organising-committee/officer/

Perhaps Mr. Mori's remarks were taken out of context and not clearly representative of his real feelings towards all women in public service but simply came out the wrong way in expressing his words.

Perhaps the moon really is made of cheese.

Was it really that sexist what Mori said?

Women on average do speak 13,000 more words than men. It's a scientific fact.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2281891/Women-really-talk-men-13-000-words-day-precise.html

From the article: "It has been claimed that women speak about 20,000 words a day - 13,000 more than the average man"

Note the word "claimed". It's a claim, not a fact.

Again from the article: "Based on our observations, we postulate higher levels of Foxp2 in girls and higher levels of Foxp2 in male rats is an indication that Foxp2 protein levels are associated with the more communicative sex."

Note the term "postulate"; it's a theory, not a fact.

"one of the Oxford team (of researchers behind the report) ... cautioned against drawing big conclusions from a study of such a small number of children."

Even the researchers who produced the report caution against making too much of it.

kohakuebisuToday  12:04 pm JST

Here's a poll on Yahoo Japan that has nearly half a million votes on whether Mori should resign. Yahoo is still very popular in Japan, where people like pages crammed with info. It is way more popular than change.org where the oft-quoted petition is.

90% of the 500K respondents to the Yahoo Japan poll want Mori to resign. Only 8.5% of respondents say resignation is not necessary.

Not to worry. LDP grand poohbah #2 Toshihiro Nikai says that Mori's comments are "not a problem".

Mori made an insincere non-apology; he will not do the right thing by resigning nor will the LDP mandarins do the right thing and demand his resignation. It is the LDP old boys club after all.

Well done Kirin for doing the right thing, even if a little late. Unfortunately, Kirin is a comparatively small player in Myanmar; investment by the Japanese government and other companies dwarfs the Kirin investment.

The Japanese government has encouraged Japanese companies to invest in the Thilawa Special Economic Zone, a project to develop a huge site south-east of Yangon into a base for foreign investment in factories. In 2013 three of Japan's largest trading companies joined the project. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), a government development assistance organisation (funded with your taxes), holds a 10% stake in the project, while the Japanese firms hold a combined 39% stake and Myanmar firms hold 51%.

A large Yokohama corporation won a tender in 2014 to build a $1.4bn new airport north-east of Yangon.

A major Japanese trading company and an airport operator won a tender in 2014 to renovate and operate Mandalay’s airport.

Three of Japan's biggest banks paid $75m each to obtain licences to serve foreign investors in Myanmar.

A large Japanese private equity firm is a partner with Singapore and Myanmar firms in the proposed $1.7bn Paluzawa coal mine and power plant project, and a large Japanese trading company is partnering with Thai and Myanmar firms in the proposed $3.5bn Myeik coal power plant. In real estate, a large Japanese trading company is investing with Hong Kong, Singapore and Myanmar firms in a $350m mixed-used development in downtown Yangon called The Landmark Development.

Japan's largest retailer is in a joint venture with plans to open a huge mall in Yangon.

We are confused. Are you saying Mori & AsianNikkei were more complimentary to the women on his staff??

NHK's reporting echoes that of Reuters and Japan Today. Nikkei is the outlier in this case; Nikkei's reporting seems to be distorting Mori's comments. The NHK reporting in Japanese is at the link below:

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20210203/k10012848591000.html

その上で、自身が会長や名誉会長を歴任した日本ラグビー協会で女性の理事が増えていることを例にあげ「今までの倍、時間がかかる。女性というのは競争意識が強い。誰か1人が手をあげて言うと自分も言わなきゃいけないと思うのだろう。それでみんな発言する」などと述べました。

For China, Myanmar is the important corridor open to the Indian Ocean.

Meanwhile, Japan is busy building a highway linking Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam in order to provide transport infrastructure to all the Japanese corporations that have left Japan to set up offshore in Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Jax

Japan today;

"We have about seven women at the organizing committee but everyone understands their place."

Asian Nikkei:

"We have about seven women on our (Olympic) committee," Mori said. "They are experienced in international arenas. That's why their talk is sophisticated, gets to the point, and they are very useful."

Me: somebody is crossing the line with free translation.

NHK's (Japanese) reporting seems to be far more in line with the JT article than with the Nikkei's.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20210203/k10012848591000.html

When it comes to idiotic comments by Japanese politicians, Aso and Mori are in a class by themselves.

A majority of all foreign investment in the country is Japanese. For decades, they've been quite happy to work with the various brutal dictatorships that have ruled the country.

Indeed. The site below lists in sad detail Japanese government and corporate investment in the general's Myanmar:

https://oxfordbusinessgroup.com/analysis/japanese-investment-flowing-range-sectors

To be fair, European countries, especially the UK and France, and the US and Canada, are more than happy to do business with nasty regimes such as Saudi Arabia.

Japan's second largest brewer Kirin is a majority shareholder in Myanmar Brewery Ltd. and Mandalay Brewery Ltd. in partnership with the Myanmar military-owned-and-operated Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd. In 2015, Kirin bought 55 percent of Myanmar Brewery Ltd., 4 percent of which it later transferred to Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd. In 2017, Kirin acquired 51 percent of Mandalay Brewery Ltd. in a separate joint venture with tthe Myanmar military-owned-and-operated Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd.

Given the military coup in Myanmar, Kirin will certainly dissolve its partnership with the Myanmar military. /s

970 is up over the January 4th report of 884 new cases. January 4th was the first day back after the New Year holiday.

Still, the number of 970 would have more meaning if the context of the number of cases was available.

Suga is dithering while according to Daisuke Kurai, professor of infectious diseases at Kyorin University Hospital in Tokyo, "the medical care system is already in a state of collapse".

At the same time, Suga and the denizens of Kasumigaseki don't have to worry about access to timely medical care. And so they focus on maintaining a facade of normalcy.

(Osaka) case numbers have been going down for months 

Osaka Prefecture is facing record daily infections and record numbers of seriously ill COVID-19 patients.

The occupancy rate of hospital beds for those suffering serious cases in Osaka has been hovering around 70 percent since December, with the western prefecture logging a record 171 such patients earlier this month. (it's 168 such patients today.)

Hospitals have been moving to increase their coronavirus wards, including Osaka City General Hospital, which closed four wings last spring and reassigned doctors and nurses to support medical care for COVID-19 patients.

However, the surge in cases continues to grow and the prefecture has been unable to secure necessary beds. "We don't have any more staff to spare and are barely dealing (with the pandemic). It is even becoming increasingly difficult to accept people in need of emergency care" for other reasons, said Michinori Shirano, the head doctor at Osaka City General Hospital.

https://japantoday.com/category/national/focus-coronavirus-third-wave-puts-many-japanese-hospitals-on-overload

Being considered?

Yet more dithering by the inept lot of "professional" politicians in Kasumigaseki.

Nationwide, the number of reported cases was 7,490.

That is a 25% increase from January 6's reported total of 6,000 new cases.

Time for the politicians to get their collective act in order.

Does this mean that Trump and Melania will not be attending the next debate?

What an unfortunate choice for a name.

Why not just call it Grenfell Tower II?

Can anyone say ONE good thing of his 8 years tenure?

He left before it got to nine years?

Alfie Noakes, very well said!

Agreed.

Kono seems to be the best of a very bad lot, so the LDP will probably pass on him...

Not to mention some of the compelling speakers we have heard, especially Ann Dorn talking about her husband, who was brutally murdered by looters.

After Ann Dorn was announced as one of the speakers for the RNC, David Dorn’s daughters publicly opposed her decision to speak and said they were against their late father’s name or death being used for political purposes. “Our father did not agree with many policies and actions of this president that are aimed at disenfranchising many Black and Brown people. Our father was a registered Democrat. He thought Trump is doing many things to ruin our country.”

Very interesting article.

I wonder how many of the doctors have backgrounds in epidemiology, virology, or immunology.

It would also be interesting to know how many of the doctors are under 40, that is how many of the doctors have training that is relatively up-to-date.

Suga has never had a job outside of politics. Suga is completely divorced from the reality that working people face every day.

It seems Kono and Noda are the only candidates not affiliated with the revisionist Nippon Kaigi.

The Tokyo metropolitan government on Monday reported 95 new cases of the coronavirus, down from 212 on Sunday.

What day is this data from? The Mainichi reports that there is a a three-day lag for Tokyo reporting its data:

*It takes one to two days to obtain results from the virus-detecting polymerase chain reaction tests. A time lag occurs as medical institutions then create reports on new infections and fax them to public health centers in the capital, and the metropolitan government compiles the data sent in by each public health center.*

You can't feel anything else but disheartened when you look at Japanese politics, its the same old club of scumbags that push for policies that benefit themselves or their big businesses counterparts.

They should clear the whole diet and start again.

Sadly, the new guard is not so very different from the old guard. IMO, the system of dynastic politics that permeates Japanese politics needs to be done away with before there can be real change, but that seems unlikely to happen.