shiboritate comments

Dear JT, I really like your coverage, but I agree with abe and gobshite that out of respect for the young pilot I really would prefer not to see him in the cage. If I want to se the video I'm sure it's out there. I also think showing such images makes JT a tool of or a medium for DAESH since one of their weapons is spreading terror and fear among all people. By visually showing their disgusting disrespect for life you act as a mouthpiece for their barbaric ways.

@Hollis - your analysis is spot on. I actually never thought Abe was that hawkish, but the sequence of events here show him to be either very stupid or a crafty manipulator, and I'm pretty sure it's the latter.

@harvey - gee thanks, I guess the sniper is already dead. No spoiler alert?

I had the impression that Okinawa was receiving development budget as an incentive to relocate the base to Henoko. If the governor is opposed to that relocation it is only logical to remove that incentive. I was surprised that it was down only 4.6%. I thought it would be seriously slashed. The Okinawans need to do some soul searching. My guess is they'd be happier with Tokyo rule plus 50,000 Americans than be a Chinese colony.

Interesting that it seems in this case neither side brought up WWII atonement. Nakatani said that China has been committing dangerous actions - which seems accurate to me - and China said no, it's legitimate, and raised it's usual smoke and mirrors, saying we should not worry about Chinese military threat. Just personally, I find this threat very worrying.

The whole atonement discussion arose from editorial comments in the article, as the press likes to keep poking the bear so to speak.

Amari and Abe intend to get real wages (and inflation) to rise by convincing companies to raise wages. Good luck with that. Plan B: if the majority can win the lottery that would also solve the problem. I suppose the odds are about the same as Plan A.

FXGAI - always the optimist - at least that's a pleasant way to start the year! But please excuse me while I predict the opposite - that Abe will only continue to screw things up. By this I mean fail to achieve real wage growth and a meaningful recovery in household consumption (getting just back to flat does not count.)

It is appalling that Francis won't meet the Dalai Lama. Step aside Vatican bureaucrats, the new daddy in Rome is Mr Xi.

@serrano - why is it not cost effective? Are you a member of the finance team at JR Tokai and know something we don't?

@mrsynik - please feel free to sue JR Tokai - I'm sure they'll be deeply troubled that you don't agree with them.

@jake - yes, it's electric - which means it could be ultimately powered by coal, gas, nuclear, solar, hydro, etc. But JR Tokai is not a power company so it's not up to them, right? If you don't like electricity stop complaining and get off the grid and get off whatever train you're riding now. Taxes? No, as samurai pointed out, JR Tokai is paying, not you.

Gogogo, I appreciate your comment. None of the Americans I know had ever heard of Hayabusa despite being the first in many areas, especially first sample retrieval from a non-terrestrial object other than the moon! There are no less than 3 feature length films on hayabusa 1 - they are all good, but my favorite is called simply HAYABUSA and stars Takeuchi Yuko. The achievement is phenomenal for all humans, but this movie also partially tells the development of space exploration in Japan. Must see. Congratulations Hayabusa 2 team!!!!

The comment about nuclear reactors is totally irrelevant and absurd.

The year on year household spending numbers remain negative. As this is 60％ of GDP it's a big deal. Take a look at the graph in this link - http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/kakei/156.htm

from April on every month has been in the gutter. The tax hike, together with wage deflation and price inflation, has killed consumption. As I had previously stated, those with lower income have cut their consumption in an amount proportional to the tax hike.

Best scenario would be to lower the consumption tax, raise income tax progressively, cut government spending, and create family friendly programs. Doubt it will ever happen though.

@fxgai - in your sep 30 posts on the same topic you were betting your humble pride that GDP would be positive in the third quarter ending September despite the downturn in household spending in July and August that I cited. Are you still promoting more consumption tax at this point?

The anime actually is pretty accurate in representing a beach in Japan in summer. I guess this might be disturbing to Puritans, the Taliban, and Islamic State, but I think it's quite a bit closer to heaven than to hell.

You can see the video on you tube. It's great! I have no idea what the issue is here. Haven't y'all ever seen anime before? This one's pretty innocent, pure, and sweet. The male protagonist seems to be roghly the same age as the it girl. What the hell is the problem here? Puritans shouldn't be watching anime or music videos and expressing unrealistic views on humans.

Greenleaf - nuclear power is awesome, TEPCO sucks. You need to distinguish the two. France gets 70% of its electricity from nuclear (and even sells nuclear power to the hypocritical Germans) and it is clean and safe there because it is properly regulated and controlled.

It sounds as though you espouse "green" energy, are you aware that now that nuclear power has paused in Japan TEPCO is restarting and even building new coal fired plants? How green is that?

It sounds as though you would prefer green only (I would too, FWIW), but let me ask you this - do you own a refrigerator, a washing machine, a computer? Do you ride a train to work? What powers these things at nighttime? Or on non-windy or cloudy days? Solar? Wind? Coal? Nuclear? Among those, I would gladly choose nuclear. Unless you are willing to cut your dependence on the grid it seems to me hypocritical to criticize others by asking them to fix something you (and 99% of the population) aren't willing to do yourself.

Totally agree with strangerland and Zichi. Zichi, I read somewhere that their first study (following the enormous tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2004) concluded there could be a 15 meter tsunami at Daiichi. A later study (I think it was 2008) concluded that they could build a sea wall adequate to withstand such a tsunami for 8bn yen (about $80 million). Seeing as the cost has turned out to be 1,000 or 10,000 times larger (or more) it would seem that from a cost/benefit analysis this is a no-brainer. Unless you assume that if it happens you can just evacuate from Tokyo (like the CEO of TEPCO apparently did) and then get re-assigned in some other cushy job and hide behind the corporate veil. Shimazaki, I agee that the regulator is also culpable here, including government officials. That is why nothing is going to happen.

They are guilty of gross negligence resulting in an enormous disaster that affects millions of people. Their internal study indicated in 2006 that they could be hit by a large tsunami. They willfully chose not to spend the 8 billion yen to make defensive improvements. But I agree with the other posters - nothing will happen. Not least because the gov and METI are also to blame for lax regulatory standards.

Yubaru - I used the word "bonus" because he was suing nichia for 20billion compared to his 20k bonus. I should have put it in quotes, thanks for the quibble.

Hate to tell you this, but pretty much no country that respects contracts or the rule of law would see an employee walk away with an 8million dollar payout, so he was arguably well served by the courts. http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/who-owns-patent-rights-employer-inventor.html

So you think 1.2 billion is a "million times more than he was EVER paid"?? In other words you think he only made 1,200 yen - about 11 dollars - during his career at nichia? That's pretty funny.

Jersey and mennonite and others - what exactly did Japan do to him? Provided him with most of his education, no? Provided a legal system through which Nakamura received maybe the biggest bonus any salaryman has ever received? If you feel he was wronged on the blue led blame Nichia, not Japan. Do you not understand the difference?

@hawkeye - do you live in tokyo? If so, you are living beside japan's tallest active volcano. Why climb a volcano? I don't know - why cross the road? You are more likely to get hit by a car than you are to die in a volcano erupting accident.

Nice head fake - we are discussing consumption tax, right? GDP is not an indicator of consumer spending, household spending is, and I am betting you that that number will be negative in the third quarter. Also, note that I am discussing year on year comparisons.

GDP, by contrast, is quarter on quarter - after falling an annualized -7.1% in the second quarter I would not be surprised if it was positive in the third quarter, but my guess is that it will be down year on year - and it has other components including govt spending (perversely, the govt suggested stimulus to support the declining economy following the tax hike) and net exports/imports (which is related to the FX rate which Japan periodically intervenes in).

fxgai, actually I was talking about the third quarter. Household spending was down -5.9% in July vs last year and -4.7% in August. Do you want to make a bet on whether this quarter will end up positive or negative?

@fxgai - of course there's no rule that says poor people can't make more money - I certainly didn't say that. My point was only that the consumption tax is regressive and therefore hurts people with less income than those with more. You say you haven't seen people on the streets, but do you know what has happened to consumption patterns in Japan since the tax hike? You can deny it as much as you want and theorize about poor peoples' options but in the aggregate Japanese household spending is down about 5-6% from the previous year in each of the months following the tax hike. I don't think that's a coincidence.

@fxgai - you are saying there shouldn't be any poor people because they can all get better jobs? I guess you don't understand the concept of a regressive tax, which is all I was trying to illustrate in my reply to sengetsu. So you think not raising the tax to 10% will cause something analogous to the Lehman shock? Of course those on fixed rate mortgages are sheltered and those on variable rate like me can easily switch to fixed. So despite the fact that I think a rate spike is highly unlikely, I think the impact of such an event on the average person would be quite limited.

@fxgai - why do you assume interest rates would rise if the consumption tax is not increased to 10%? You're worried about roiled markets? First, who do you think would be the victim of roiled markets? Second, if the consumption tax were instead lowered is it possible people might consume more? And if they consumed more wouldn't markets rally? I agree with you though about cutting govt spending. @Sangetsu - the rich pay the tax as well, but consumption of daily goods is a smaller percentage of their total pie so it impacts them less. For a poor person daily consumption could be 100% of their after tax income, so 3% extra means they have to cut spending by 3%. The same items might be 10% or 1% for a rich person - the extra 3% on 10% of there pie is a change of only 0.3%.

Yoda, tmarie, brainiac, etc - not sure if you live in Japan or not, but in Japan it is not only very common, in fact it is a daily event that 6yr old kids (first grade) go out and about outside on their own. All students are expected to walk to and from school. Ideally they walk in pairs or groups, but it does not always work out that way. From the time I was 5 and on in rural America it was the same. After school not strange at all to go out to play with friends. What is wrong with that? Be vigilant, keep an eye out for little ones and for potential bad people, but don't blame kids or families for not escorting kids everywhere they go. Nobody should have to live in such a messed up world. Encourage neighborhood awareness but let the children look on their neighborhood as a kind gentle place.

Just FYI - the long tunnel will go under the Southern Alps (known as the Akaishi Sanmyaku in Japanese), not the Northern Alps. I thought this was very newsworthy - I've been waiting years to take a test ride! You can visit the test site but until now no rides offered to the general public. JR was asked to get it ready by the Olympics in 2020 but apparently the massive construction will take longer. Something like 80 to 90% will be underground. The route has already been decided - it is pretty near to a straight line (just a gentle arc) from Shinagawa to Nagoya.

Liar liar pants on fire

Raising consumption tax was an enormous mistake and was not an "arrow" anyway. First of all, even 10% consumption tax is not enough to even start to make the debt smaller. And it does so at the expense of the lower income households - the tax applies to all, but disproportionately affects those with the lowest income. Why make the poor pay for these problems? And when the economy slumped due to the tax hike what was proposed? More stimulus! I.e. take on more debt to support the tax hike designed to cut the debt!?!?! Absurd. Reducing the sovereign debt would require raising income taxes (progressively), cutting government waste, and providing daycare and cultural support for families to have both parents working, including getting the parents home by reducing face-time / unproductive work until midnight every day. More productive, wealthier families would revive the economy, provide more tax income, spend more, and possibly kick start inflation AFTER wage inflation has begun.

Nice they waited to tell us AFTER they raised the consumption tax...