By The Economist
From The Economist
Published: August 28, 2013
Aug 24th 2013 | TOKYO |From the print edition
The Fukushima nightmare lingers.
THE agonising efforts to clean up the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi
nuclear power plant hit new obstacles this week. On August 21st the
Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said that leaks of radioactive water
were a level three, or "serious", incident on a scale that goes up to
seven. Some help from American experts aside, Japan has been dealing
with the disaster itself. Now, even Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), the
plant's owner, would welcome foreign help.
TEPCO is under intense fire at home. It "has no sense of crisis at
all", grumbled Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the NRA, as the leaks
worsened. Another NRA commissioner questioned whether TEPCO's data could
even be trusted. After months of denial, the firm has only just
admitted that contaminated water is leaking into the Pacific. China and
South Korea have both expressed concern.
The plant's melted reactor cores are tainting both the hundreds of
tonnes of water pumped into them each day and the groundwater, producing
vast quantities of radioactive liquid. After underground pools leaked,
TEPCO has hastily built around 1,000 surface storage tanks. Several are
leaking from joints sealed with plastic. The most recent leak, of 300
tonnes, prompted the NRA alert. Experts say many more tanks are at risk.
A shortage of cash may have heightened the crisis. TEPCO faces
massive bills for replacement fuels and compensating evacuees. It failed
to install even the most basic system to monitor water leaks. Its
workers stand on tanks and memorise water levels. The NRA this week
ordered TEPCO to install water gauges at once. "What's needed is tanks
with stainless-steel seals, but that would take time and money," says
Neil Hyatt, professor of radioactive-waste management at the University
of Sheffield.
Another explanation for the neglect at Fukushima Dai-ichi is that
Japan, under the pro-nuclear Liberal Democratic Party, is rushing to
turn its nuclear reactors back on. All but two are now closed. Importing
energy hits Japan's trade balance as well as TEPCO. Instead of
scrutinising the operator's jerry-rigged water tanks, the NRA has been
busy drafting new safety regulations. Public opposition already meant
that restarting reactors would cause a big fight. With Fukushima
Dai-ichi ever more visibly out of control, Japan's energy conundrum just
got worse.
Japan's Abe battles doctors' lobby over "Third Arrow" reform
By Linda Sieg
TOKYO |
Sun Aug 25, 2013 5:56am IST
Aug 25 (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
wants to promote the advanced medical technology industry as
part of a plan to breathe new life into the economy - but the
country's doctors' lobby is opposing what they say is risky
surgery. Health care has become the latest battleground in Abe's
efforts to craft a strategy to engineer growth in the world's
third biggest economy, the so-called "Third Arrow" of his
economic turnaround plan.
The plans include changes to the country's universal health
insurance system - as cherished in Japan as the National Health
Service is in Britain - in order to boost growth by increasing
demand for innovative drugs and medical devices.
The debate is being cast as a litmus test of Abe's
commitment to deregulation as he attempts to revitalise Japan's
stagnant economy. It also illustrates the opposition that Abe,
who returned to power after his Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP)
big election win in December, faces from within his own camp.
"The idea of the growth strategy is ... for the private and
public sectors to get together and promote innovation, We agree
with that," Takashi Hanyuda, an LDP lawmaker who is also vice
president of a powerful doctors' lobby, told Reuters.
The growth strategy also aims to promote exports of advanced
medical technology and speed approval of new drugs and devices.
"But we have to protect the universal health insurance
system to which everyone belongs," said the 65-year-old
ophthalmologist, elected to parliament last month after running
with the support of the Japan Medical Association (JMA).
"If the system starts to break down a little, it will turn
into a flood and it would be extremely hard to halt the trend."
On one side of the argument is the 165,000-member JMA and
health ministry officials, who say they want to protect the
cherished principle of universality in a system that has been
the envy of much of the developed world.
Lined up against them, and pushing Abe to go further, are
advocates of more radical reform who accuse the small family
doctors who make up the bulk of the JMA's membership of wanting
protection from competition from larger clinics and hospitals.
Reformers say the changes would give patients more choice
and allow doctors more discretion.
The JMA, the health ministry and some experts counter that
the reforms would widen healthcare gaps between rich and poor.
Critics also question just how much economic growth the changes
proposed in a growth strategy unveiled in June would generate.
The JMA also worries that Abe's push for Tokyo to join the
U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade pact would
give impetus to such changes if Washington pushes in
negotiations for market-oriented reforms to healthcare, although
U.S. officials deny they have such an agenda in mind.
RETURN OF THE "TRIBES"
Organised interest groups and the "zoku giin" ("tribal
lawmakers") who represent them have staged a comeback since the
LDP returned to power in December after a three-years gap and
cemented its grip on government in a July upper house poll.
So although opposition parties have been badly weakened, Abe
faces tough policy battles with forces inside his own party.
"The organised vote is definitely making its presence known.
The 'zoku giin' are feeling empowered," said Steven Reed, a
political science professor at Chuo University in Tokyo.
At first blush, the proposed reform hardly appears the stuff
of a political battle royal.
All Japanese are enrolled in one of four health insurance
schemes that provide the same level of cover at the same prices.
But because of a ban unique to Japan, patients who want to
combine a new drug or treatment not included in the official
health insurance package with a treatment that is ordinarily
covered must pay out of their own pocket for both.
That means they are faced with an "all-or-nothing" choice -
relatively low-cost treatment inside the public insurance scheme
or relatively high-cost treatment without any public cover.
That ban on so-called "mixed medical treatment" was imposed
because the system, whose roots stretch back before World War
Two, is based on the premise of ensuring equal access for all
Japanese to the full range of safe and effective treatments.
Exceptions have been made for some advanced treatments -
such as cancer drugs approved overseas but not yet in Japan - on
the assumption that effective drugs and devices will eventually
be covered by public insurance.
Critics say the system is too slow and exceptions too few.
"HOLY GRAIL" OF HEALTHCARE
Abe returned to power for a rare second term pledging to
revive Japan with a radical economic policy - known as
"Abenomics" - comprising the "Three Arrows" of drastic monetary
easing, fiscal stimulus and a growth strategy that includes
structural reforms such as deregulation.
Unveiling his "Third Arrow" in June, Abe promised to
"dramatically" expand mixed care in health by increasing the
range of treatments included and reducing approval times. On
Thursday he reiterated that the change should be a top priority.
Advocates of more radical change want a complete end to the
ban.
"The current system is unfair," said Haruo Shimada,
president of the Chiba University of Commerce and a former an
adviser to then-premier Junichiro Koizumi, a privatisation fan,
during his 2001-2006 term. "It's an institutional defect."
Some even want to deregulate public health insurance and
widen the scope for private providers, reducing the burden on
public finances already heavily strained by Japan's ageing
population and spurring growth of innovative medical treatments.
"The government should abandon 100 percent control over the
medical industry, especially insurance," Shimada said.
"Liberalization of the differential in terms of quality and
price would give tremendous growth power for the medical
industry."
Doctors at large hospitals that would benefit most from the
change also favour a complete end to the ban, pitting them
against self-employed physicians operating small clinics.
"The JMA says they are protecting patients' interests, but
in fact, it is the patients who are crying," said former surgeon
Ryosuke Tsuchiya, a member of the board at the Japanese
Foundation for Cancer Research and an expert adviser to Abe's
panel on regulatory reform, who wants the ban lifted entirely.
Critics say the doctors' group is trying to protect the
interests of its members who won't be able to compete against
bigger hospitals offering advanced care in a deregulated system,
while health ministry officials want to maintain their control.
"They are protecting their turf, power and influence,"
Shimada said.
Health ministry officials counter that leaving healthcare
to market forces threatens both quality and equal access.
Some outside experts agree that lifting the ban, or even
easing it, would be a move towards creating a two-tiered medical
insurance system in which expensive, advanced treatments would
increasingly be left outside universal coverage.
"Universality of access is the 'holy grail' of healthcare in
Japan and they (the JMA and health ministry) don't want to see
anything that would fundamentally undermine that commitment to
universal access," said one foreign medical industry expert.
Given the tangle of conflicting interests, the outlook for
drastic reform is dim. The prime minister already faces a
politically fraught decision on whether to implement a planned
sales tax rise next year and is pushing controversial changes to
Japan's security policies, so may have little political capital
to spend on deregulation, those involved in the process said.
Still, with no election set until 2016, the next three years
may offer the best chance to push deregulation.
"If we want to promote growth, we need to deregulate where
possible since the scope for fiscal measures is limited," said
Yuri Okina, a Japan Research Institute economist and member of
Abe's regulatory reform panel."For deregulation, now is our only
chance."
(Editing by Alex Richardson)
How Japan's Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Went From Bad To Worse
Adam Taylor, provided by
Published 10:44 am, Wednesday, August 21, 2013
More than two years down the line after the disastrous
Japanese tsunami, things would appear to be getting worse at the
Fukushima nuclear power plant again.
Japan's nuclear agency has raised the severity level of a leak at the plant from one to three on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), the BBC reports.
For a little sense of what that means, check out this chart:
While the level of radiation has gone from an "anomaly" to a "serious
incident," that's still a long way off from a "major accident" — only
the original Fukushima disaster and the Chernobyl meltdown have reached
that height.
Even so, it's still a hundred-fold increase in severity. That's
certainly noteworthy, and it's the worst level at Fukushima since
the tsunami.
So far the rating change is only a proposal — Japan's Nuclear
Regulation Authority have to get the AEA, the UN's nuclear agency, to
confirm it — but people are recognizing its importance: Immediately
after the news came out, a recent Nikkei rally came to a sudden halt.
The issue is centered around contaminated water currently leaking
from the plant that was discovered on Monday. The water is being used to
cool the reactors, but over 300 tons of radioactive water have leaked
into the soil. In the picture below, taken on August 20, you can see
plant workers trying to stop the leak:
Masayuki Ono, an official at Tepco’s plant siting department, told reporters that radiation levels as high as 100 millisieverts per hour were detected near the tank,
according to Bloomberg. To put that in perspective, under government
regulations plant workers should only be exposed to 100 millisieverts
over the course of five years. The water had beta radiation of 80 million becquerels per liter — 8 million times the limit for drinking water.
It gets worse: Not only has this water been leaking into the soil, it may have been leaking into the sea for weeks.
Perhaps the biggest issue is that the situation seems to confirm many
people's suspicion that Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), the group that operates the plant, is unable to cope with the scale of the problem and needs help.
If there's one positive, it may be that Tepco now seem to admit that.
“We will revamp contaminated-water management to tackle the issue at
the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant and seek expertise from within and outside
of the country,” Zengo Aizawa, a vice president at Tepco, said last night. “There is much experience in decommissioning reactors outside of Japan. We need that knowledge and support.”
(Reuters) - Contaminated water with dangerously high levels of radiation
is leaking from a storage tank at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear
plant, the most serious setback to the cleanup of the worst nuclear
accident since Chernobyl. The storage tank breach of
about 300 metric tons of water is separate from contaminated water leaks
reported in recent weeks, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said
on Tuesday.
The latest leak is so
contaminated that a person standing half a meter (1 ft 8 inches) away
would, within an hour, receive a radiation dose five times the average
annual global limit for nuclear workers.
After
10 hours, a worker in that proximity to the leak would develop
radiation sickness with symptoms including nausea and a drop in white
blood cells.
"That is a huge amount
of radiation. The situation is getting worse," said Michiaki Furukawa,
who is professor emeritus at Nagoya University and a nuclear chemist.
The
embattled utility Tokyo Electric has struggled to keep the Fukushima
site under control since an earthquake and tsunami caused three reactor
meltdowns in March 2011.
Japan's
Nuclear Regulation Authority has classified the latest leak as a level 1
incident, the second lowest on an international scale for radiological
releases, a spokesman told Reuters on Tuesday.
It is the first time Japan
has issued a so-called INES rating for Fukushima since the meltdowns.
Following the quake and tsunami, Fukushima was assigned the highest
rating of 7, when it was hit by explosions after a loss of power and
cooling.
A Tokyo Electric official
said workers who were monitoring storage tanks appeared to have failed
to detect the leak of water, which pooled up around the tank.
"We
failed to discover the leak at an early stage and we need to review not
only the tanks but also our monitoring system," he said.
Tokyo
Electric, also known as Tepco, said it did not believe water from the
latest leak had reached the Pacific Ocean, about 500 meters (550 yards)
away. Nonetheless, continued leaks have alarmed Japan's neighbors South Korea and China.
CRITICISM
Tepco
has been criticized for its failure to prepare for the disaster and
been accused of covering up the extent of the problems at the plant.
In
recent months, the plant has been beset with power outages and other
problems that have led outside experts to question whether Tepco is
qualified to handle the clean up, which is unprecedented due to the
amount of radioactive material on the site and its coastal location.
The
government said this month it will step up its involvement in the
cleanup, following Tepco's admission, after months of denial, that
leaked contaminated water had previously reached the ocean.
Fukushima
Governor Yuhei Sato told an emergency meeting of prefectural officials
on Tuesday it was a "national emergency", and that the local government
would monitor the situation more strictly and seek additional steps as
needed.
Massive amounts of
radioactive fluids are accumulating at the plant as Tepco floods reactor
cores via an improvised system to keep melted uranium fuel rods cool
and stable.
The water in the cooling system then flows into basements and trenches that have been leaking since the disaster.
Highly contaminated excess water is pumped out and stored in steel tanks on elevated ground away from the reactors. About 400 metric tons of radioactive water a day has been stored at Fukushima.
In
order to keep up with the pace of the flow, Tepco has mostly relied on
tanks bolted together with plastic sealing around the joints. Those
tanks are less robust - but quicker to assemble - than the welded tanks
it has started installing.
The
latest leak came from the more fragile tank, which Tepco plans to carry
on using, although it is looking at ways to improve their strength, said
Tepco official Masayuki Ono.
A
puddle that formed near the leaking tank is emitting a radiation dose of
100 millisieverts an hour about 50 cm above the water surface, Ono told
reporters at a news briefing
Tepco
has also struggled with worker safety. This month, 12 workers
decommissioning the plant were found to have been contaminated by
radiation. The utility has not yet identified what caused those
incidents, which only came to its notice when alarms sounded as the
workers prepared to leave the job site.
A
South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said Seoul had asked Japanese
officials to explain what they were doing to stop contaminated water
reaching the ocean and fishing grounds.
"They
also need to make the information available to the public, all over the
world, given this is the first case in history where contaminated water
from a nuclear plant is flowing into the ocean at this magnitude," he
said.
(Reporting by Yuka Obayashi,
Yoko Kubota; Additional reporting by Linda Sieg, Kiyoshi Takenaka;
Writing by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Alison Williams)
For more than two years, tons of radioactive water has been seeping daily into the ocean from Japan's crippled nuclear plant in Fukushima. Experts examine the impact on fish stocks and how the leaks could be stopped.
In an interview with Reuters news agency, an official from Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority called it an "emergency." An estimated 300 tons of radioactive water has been leaking every day into the Pacific Ocean since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant suffered a meltdown following a massive earthquake and ensuing tsunami that hit Japan on March, 11, 2011. The amount of water leaking into the sea is enough to fill one Olympic-size swimming pool in about a week. The announcement came shortly after plant operator TEPCO stated the protective barriers installed to prevent toxic water from spilling into the ocean were no longer coping with the groundwater levels.
The statement confirmed long-held suspicions that the sea was being contaminated. Local fishermen and independent researchers had already suspected a leak, but Japan's largest utility continued to deny the claims until it finally conceded last month. But even more worryingly, the company also admitted that groundwater and soil samples taken at the plant were showing high levels of potentially cancer-causing isotopes, including cesium-137, tritium and strontium-90. Now TEPCO has started pumping out radioactive groundwater from a pit to reduce the leakage.
Fukushima fish still contaminated
In Japan, where eating fish is a vital part of the nation's culture, people are anxious about seafood safety. There seems to be a consensus among experts that the fish off the coast of the crippled nuclear plant are contaminated, as they are still being exposed to cesium-137, a small portion of which is believed to be trapped in the sediment in coastal waters.
Scientists agreee that the fish dwelling in the vicinity of the plant are still contaminated
According to Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the US-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, periodical measurements conducted by the Japanese government have revealed that cesium-137 levels in bottom-dwelling fish, including many important commercial species, are highest off Fukushima.
These monitoring results are also used to keep fisheries near the stricken reactor closed and to keep an eye on neighboring areas where levels are approaching the regulatory limits. "Fishing for many species is currently banned off Fukushima," the expert told DW.
No immediate risk for humans
But Buesseler also pointed out that fish rapidly lose the cesium accumulated in their muscles after exposure stops. "Fish that migrate to less affected waters will gradually lose much of their Fukushima-derived cesium," he said, adding that there was no immediate risk for humans eating fish from outside the contaminated areas off the Japanese coast.
This is corroborated by Günter Kanisch from the Hamburg-based Thünen Institute of Fisheries Ecology. The expert states that since January 2013, more than 90 percent of all cesium values measured in fish in the Fukushima area have been below the Japanese regulation value for food consumption of 100 becquerels per kilogram. "Moreover, since May 2013, 90 percent of the fish sampled were even below 50 Bq/kg, " he told DW.
However, scientists remain concerned about the contamination of marine life in the long run. Both Buesseler and M. V. Ramana, a scientist and researcher at the Nuclear Futures Laboratory, Princeton University, warn that while some of the radioactive materials leaked will mix with the ocean water and become diluted, others, like Strontium-90 will get bound up in ocean sediments or accumulate in living creatures at concentrations greater than the surrounding water.
"Strontium-90 behaves just like calcium and tends to concentrate in the bone rather than being cleared out of the body," Ramana explained.
Impact on fisheries
Jota Kanda, a professor at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, says that most of the contamination found today in the seafloor did not occur recently but rather during the first couple of months after the nuclear disaster. He told DW that the current input of radioactivity is far smaller than that stemming from the major leaks that followed soon after the meltdown. Kanda stresses, nonetheless, that it could take decades for elements like cesium to dissipate from the seabed, thus posing a long-term challenge to coastal fisheries.
According to Shunsuke Managi, environmental expert at Tohoku University, Japanese fisheries reported a $10.5 billion loss in infrastructural damages in 2011. On top of that, Managi told DW he estimates that the local fisheries lost up to $2.6 billion in revenue that same year and at least one billion more in 2012.
Japan's fisheries have suffered billions of dollars in losses
A frozen wall of earth
It remains unclear whether Tepco will be able to prevent radioactive water from seeping into the ocean anytime soon, especially since the company doesn't seem to know where exactly the leakage is taking place. In light of the urgency of the situation, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged deeper public involvement in the clean-up of the stricken plant. An initial sum of 40 billion yen ($400 million) is being discussed by the government.
The money is to be used for a project to surround the reactor buildings with a wall of frozen earth to block underground water from entering the contaminated buildings, an idea which Michael Golay, professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believes is worth trying. "This is a common technique used in civil projects to try to stabilize the soil."
However the technology, used in subway construction, has yet to be tested in this context. Further, Ramana pointed out, there are questions about how this structure, set to be completed by July 2015, would behave in the event of another earthquake or even if there was a temporary loss of electric power supply.
Running out of storage space
But the Fukushima plant is also facing a storage problem. The reactors need hundreds of tons of water daily to cool the radioactive fuel. This water becomes contaminated and is difficult to store in the quantities in which it is produced..
TEPCO has built more than 1,000 tanks to store the mixed water, but the firm could soon run out of space
Workers have built more than 1,000 tanks to store the mixed water, but with more than 85 percent of the 380,000 tons of storage capacity already filled, critics fear the company could soon run out of storage space.
The groundwater leaks are bound to worsen if TEPCO and the Japanese government don't manage to contain the problem soon. Kanda therefore argues that the careful assessment of leak source may enable the plant operators to reduce the leakage substantially.
The expert in marine science makes clear, however, that the major effort should be aimed at preventing another large leakage, since there is a "substantial amount of radioactive water" in the basement of reactor housings, underground trenches, and temporal storage tanks on the ground. "The proper management of these waters should be given the highest priority," Kanda emphasized.
Shaping history: Portraits of
the late Lt. Gen. Teiichi Suzuki are seen in this photo taken by his
grandson, Mitsunori Suzuki. | COURTESY OF MITSUNORI SUZUKI
The key was lost and the safe remained locked for 22 years
after the 1989 death of its owner, former Lt. Gen. Teiichi Suzuki of the
Imperial Japanese Army, who had been the last surviving Class-A war
criminal of World War II.
Suzuki, who died at the age of 100 in Shibayama, Chiba Prefecture,
was among key Cabinet members when Japan started the Pacific War with
the Dec. 7, 1941, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
Two years ago, Suzuki’s relatives had NHK open the safe. Inside were
diaries, notebooks and other documents, including a 16-page typed
manuscript that the general had read out in front of Emperor Hirohito
and national leaders at an Imperial Conference on Nov. 5, 1941, to
detail Japan’s logistical strengths.
Suzuki, who headed the Planning Board, a government body in charge of
allocating resources for the army, navy and civilians, concluded that
Japan, which was already at war in China, would be able to still wage
war against the United States, Britain and the Netherlands.
This conclusion may have helped seal the fate of Japan as well as that of millions of victims of the Pacific War.
Some key numbers described in the manuscript were apparently padded.
Using those cooked-up figures, Suzuki was able to convince undecided
leaders that Japan could secure the logistical supplies needed to wage
war against the U.S., said Atsushi Moriyama, associate professor at the
University of Shizuoka, noting this argument helped persuade Japan to
embark on a hopeless fight.
“This is the first time (Suzuki) revealed his official view (on
Japan’s wartime logistical capacity). So this was very critical,” said
Moriyama, a noted expert on modern Japanese political history.
Experts have known the contents of the document Suzuki read out, but
it wasn’t until NHK broke open the safe that the actual paper he used
during the Imperial Conference was discovered.
The safe also contained nine essays Suzuki wrote in the closing days
of World War II that to date have been examined only by a few experts.
The Japan Times is the first media outlet to report on those essays.
In one of them, Suzuki explained how awestruck he was by his first
one-on-one conversation with Emperor Hirohito to detail a national
resource mobilization plan for fiscal 1941 on July 5, 1941.
The Emperor asked Suzuki if the 1941 resource plan would still work
if a war between Japan and the United States broke out, according to the
essay.
“If such a war actually takes place, it would mean big trouble, though,” the Emperor was quoted as saying in the essay.
In the essay, Suzuki wrote that he responded by saying the plan is
based on an expanded wartime scenario. The Emperor said, “Then that
would be fine.”
Moriyama noted, however, that no contemporary materials, including
diaries of the Emperor’s aides, make mention of Suzuki’s meeting with
the monarch on that date.
If the meeting actually took place on that date, it is a new
discovery.But Suzuki’s memory could have been off, as he wrote the essay
more than three years after the meeting supposedly occurred, Moriyama
said.
Suzuki kept his essays and the 16-page document together in his safe,
apparently aware of the historic meaning of the incidents he was
involved in as a Cabinet member during the war.
In the postwar military tribunal, Suzuki was sentenced to life in prison, but was freed in 1956.
The cover of the 16-page document bore “Top-Secret” in red, and many
red lines were drawn along key words and phrases, which Suzuki probably
emphasized during his presentation in front of the Emperor and other
attendants, including Prime Minister Gen. Hideki Tojo.
The manipulated figures in Suzuki’s document were those of projected
wartime losses of transport ships to carry oil and other strategic
materials from areas in Southeast Asia that Japan planned to occupy if
it went to war with the U.S.
Before July 1941, Japan depended on the U.S. for 70 percent of its
oil imports. But on Aug. 1 of that year, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
cut Japan off after Imperial forces advanced into southern French
Indochina ostensibly at the request of France’s puppet Vichy government
that the Nazis established. By then, Japan had joined Hitler’s
tripartite Axis alliance.
Japan had more than 7 million tons of oil stockpiled as of July 1941,
but with daily consumption of 10,000 tons, the nation would be left
with no oil by the end of December 1942.
With no alternative sources, Japan was facing the tough choice of
whether to launch a desperate war against the Allied Powers in a bid to
occupy oil-rich Southeast Asia or pull its troops out of China as
demanded by the U.S.
A critical question for leaders at the Imperial Conference was
whether Japan would be able to ship vast amounts of oil from occupied
Southeast Asia, particularly the Dutch East Indies, to sustain a war
against the U.S.
Suzuki’s paper concluded that Japan would be able to maintain enough
transport ships in a conflict against the U.S. But according to the
paper, the loss of ships was estimated at 800,000 tons to 1 million tons
a year, and annual ship production capacity was estimated to be 600,000
tons a year.
Given those figures, Japan would eventually lose all its transport
ships, but Suzuki concluded otherwise, without providing an explanation.
“(Suzuki) didn’t make sense,” Moriyama said.
None of the national leaders at the Imperial Conference, however,
pointed out the apparent contradiction and simply accepted Suzuki’s
conclusion, taking a significant step toward war against the U.S. during
the gathering.
According to Moriyama, Suzuki apparently adopted an earlier
optimistic simulation provided by the navy that assumed that as the war
continued, fewer transport ships would be sunk. The simulation was based
on outdated World War I ship-loss data and didn’t assume any damage
from enemy aircraft.
“Whether Japan would be able to continue the war depended on how much
(shipping) we would lose,” Gen. Kenryo Sato, the army’s military
affairs chief in the 1940s, wrote in a memoir published in 1976.
“In reality, the estimated amount turned out to be far off the mark.
This was the biggest cause of our defeat” in the Pacific War, Sato
wrote.
Suzuki was well aware of the huge gap between the industrial strength
of the U.S. and that of Japan, and was among a few members who
initially openly argued against a war with the United States.
In 1941, the gross national product of the U.S. was 12 times greater
than that of Japan and the U.S. produced 12 times more crude steel and
five times more aircraft and ships than Japan.
But after being pressured by a senior army officer, Suzuki made an
about-face on Oct. 30, 1941, and started siding with those national
leaders who advocated war, Moriyama said.
“Suzuki’s about-face was a big factor” in pushing participants in the Imperial Conference to opt for war, he said.
If Suzuki had maintained his earlier stance against the war, the Tojo
Cabinet may not have started the war against the U.S., Moriyama said.
Under the 1889 Meiji Constitution, no national leader — even the
prime minister — had the power to sack other members of the Cabinet. If
one minister kept resisting the prime minister, the Cabinet would have
no choice but to resign en masse.
Also under the Meiji Constitution, the Emperor appointed Cabinet
ministers, based on recommendations from the prime minister. But the
Emperor was not supposed to officially intervene in Cabinet decisions,
although Emperor Hirohito’s attitude sometimes affected key political
figures during the war.
This meant all key decisions would have to appear to be unanimous agreements by the Cabinet.
According to studies by experts, many top leaders — including those
from the army and navy, were, like Suzuki, reluctant to wage war with
the U.S., as they were well aware of how strong it was compared with
Japan.
But key government officials, including top brass in the army and
navy, both feared losing face and had sectional interests to protect,
thus they never expressed their “honne” (true feelings) during top
decision-making meetings, Moriyama said.
Top naval leaders could not openly argue against war because the navy
had earlier kept winning huge budgets by emphasizing it had to prepare
to take on America. Army leaders meanwhile refused to withdraw their
troops from occupied China as demanded by Washington as a precondition
for the U.S. lifting its oil embargo and improving relations with Japan.
Pressure from the army and navy, which put their interests above
those of the nation, eventually pushed indecisive national leaders to
gamble on war with the Allies. And Suzuki’s paper helped provide a
reason for those leaders to launch the Pacific War.
Moriyama is well-known for his studies on this “indecisive” political
process and the sectionalism that eventually led Japan to doom in the
Pacific War. Many Japanese who read his book on this theme say the
organizations they belong to have very similar problems with indecisive,
irresponsible leaders, Moriyama said.
“Many of my readers interpreted (the book) as that of contemporary
history. A book like this should be read as a story of the past, but
it’s not,” he said. “That means (Japanese) society has serious problems.
That’s scary.”
Japan paid dearly for waging war with the Allies.
Most of Japan’s major cities — including Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka —
were flattened by massive U.S. bombing raids. In the March 11, 1945,
Great Tokyo Air Raid alone, more than 100,000 citizens were killed
overnight.
In total, more than 3.1 million Japanese, including 800,000
civilians, were killed during the war, which ultimately cost tens of
millions of lives.
安倍晉三是日本核項目的堅定支持者，他似乎已經作出判斷，
自己需要予以干預，來重建公眾信心，拯救他的經濟復蘇計劃的部分核心內容：重啟許多處於閑置狀態的核電廠。侵蝕信心的不只是最初的災難，還有電廠運營商東
京電力公司（Tokyo Electric Power
Company，簡稱東電）在這兩年半里時不時犯下的一些危險的錯誤。在很多日本人看來，這家公司一直在試圖誤導公眾，以掩蓋電廠狀況日趨惡化的事實。
山口榮一和其他人表示，政府干預是否能解決地下水問題很難
說。這件事可能會由日本經濟產業省(Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and
Industry)來牽頭，自從日本的第一個商業核反應堆在20世紀60年代併網運行以來，經濟產業省就跟東電公司以及它扶持的其他核產業公司關係密切，
而且也因此遭到了詬病。涉及拆除福島核電站的其他事務，也一直被日本的「原子力村」(nuclear
village)里互相勾結的其他成員把持着。人們將這一稱謂賦予成員關係緊密的核產業，其中包括反應堆製造商和跟政界走得很近的大型建築公司。
Japanese Government to Help Stabilize Nuclear Plant After Leaks
ByMARTIN FACKLERAugust 08, 2013
TOKYO — First, a rat gnawed through exposed wiring,
setting off a scramble to end yet another blackout of vital cooling
systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Then, hastily built pits
for a flood of contaminated water sprang leaks themselves. Now, a new
rush of radioactive water has breached a barrier built to stop it,
allowing heavily contaminated water to spill daily into the Pacific.
As the scope of the latest
crisis became clearer on Wednesday, Japan’s popular prime minister,
Shinzo Abe, ordered his government to intervene in the cleanup of the
plant — taking a more direct role than any government since the triple
meltdowns in 2011 qualified Fukushima as the world’s second worst
nuclear disaster.
Mr. Abe, a staunch defender of the country’s
nuclear program, appears to have calculated that he needed to intervene
to rebuild public trust and salvage a pillar of his economic revival
plan: the restarting of many idled nuclear plants. That trust has been
eroded not only by the original catastrophe, but also by two and a half
years of sometimes dangerous missteps by the plant’s operator, Tokyo
Electric Power Company, or Tepco, and what many Japanese see as the
company’s continuing attempts to mislead the public and cover up
deteriorating conditions at the plant.
“This is not an issue we
can let Tepco take complete responsibility of,” Mr. Abe told a group of
cabinet ministers gathered to discuss the water problem that has swiftly
emerged as the biggest challenge at the plant and that appears to be
spiraling out of control. “We must deal with this at the national
level.”
But taking a bigger role in
a vast and unprecedented cleanup may also be a political gamble for Mr.
Abe, especially if the government proves as unable as Tepco to contain
the unending leaks of radioactive materials from the devastated plant.
Many analysts said Mr.
Abe’s move was an admission that previous governments had erred by
entrusting the 40-year, $11 billion cleanup to the same company that
many blame for allowing the catastrophe to happen in the first place.
Tepco’s leadership has been particularly worrisome, critics say, since
it remains enmeshed in the collusive ties between the government and the
industry that many say made the plant vulnerable.
“This is an admission by
the government that Tepco has mismanaged the cleanup and misinformed the
public,” said Eiji Yamaguchi, a professor of science and technology
policy at Doshisha University in Kyoto. “The government has no choice
but to end two years of Tepco obfuscating the actual condition of the
plant.”
The groundwater problems at
the plant started soon after the disaster, when Tepco realized that
tons of water flowing from the mountains and toward the sea were pouring
into the contaminated reactor buildings, filling their basements with
water that had to be pumped out. But the company was slow to come up
with longer-term solutions, like digging wells to draw out the water
before it reached the buildings. Then, in May, Tepco realized it had a
new problem, with contaminants apparently leaking from a maze of
conduits near the wrecked reactors causing a spike in radiation levels
in groundwater elsewhere in the plant.
It began to build an
underground “wall” created by injected hardening chemicals into the soil
— even as it denied there was a threat to the ocean — but the barrier
created a dam and water pooled behind it eventually began to flow over.
On Wednesday, government officials said they believed 300 tons, or
75,000 gallons, of the tainted water was entering the ocean daily.
The amounts of some
radioactive materials, like cancer-causing strontium, flowing into the
ocean are above safety limits, but experts say that given the size of
the plant’s previous releases, the new ones are relatively minor.
Some experts suggested
Wednesday that the government’s intervention may be the first step in
attempts to win public acceptance for what they say is an increasing
inevitability: the dumping into the ocean of some of the less
contaminated of the huge amount of water being stored in hulking tanks
that are overwhelming the plant. At a news conference last week,
Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority,
seemed to lay the groundwork, saying that eventually “it will be
necessary to discharge water,” a possible solution likely to raise
concerns not only in Japan but in other Pacific Rim countries.
Whether the government
intervention will help remedy the groundwater issue is an open question,
Mr. Yamaguchi and others said. The government’s expanded role will
probably be led by the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry, or
METI, which has been criticized as having close ties to Tepco and the
rest of the nuclear industry which it nurtured since before Japan’s
first commercial reactor went online in the 1960s. Other aspects of the
Fukushima plant’s decommissioning have also been dominated by other
members of Japan’s collusive “nuclear village,” as the close-knit
industry is called, including reactor makers and politically connected
large construction companies.
Experts have long worried
that the government erred early on by refusing to bring in Japanese and
foreign companies in leading roles, including American companies with
experience in nuclear cleanups from Three Mile Island.
Experts like Yamaguchi said
the only way to increase transparency at the plant is to bring in true
outsiders, either Japanese companies from other industries like waste
management that could contribute to the cleanup, or U.S. and other
foreign companies with expertise in decommissioning reactors.
“Without involving
outsiders, there will be no way to know for sure what is really
happening at Fukushima Daiichi,” Yamaguchi said.
Japan unveils new carrier-like warship, the largest in its navy since World War II
Kyodo News/Associated Press -
Japan’s new warship “Izumo”, which has a flight deck that is
nearly 250 meters (820 feet) long, is unveiled in Yokohama, south of
Tokyo, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2013. Japan on Tuesday unveiled its biggest
warship since World War II, a huge flat-top destroyer that has raised
eyebrows in China and elsewhere because it bears a strong resemblance to
a conventional aircraft carrier. Izumo is designed to carry up to 14
helicopters.
By Associated Press,
YOKOHAMA, Japan — Japan on Tuesday
unveiled its biggest warship since World War II, a huge flat-top
destroyer that has raised eyebrows in China and elsewhere because it
bears a strong resemblance to a conventional aircraft carrier.
The ship, which has a flight deck that is nearly 250 meters
(820 feet) long, is designed to carry up to 14 helicopters. Japanese
officials say it will be used in national defense — particularly in
anti-submarine warfare and border-area surveillance missions — and to
bolster the nation’s ability to transport personnel and supplies in
response to large-scale natural disasters, like the devastating
earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
Though the ship — dubbed “Izumo” — has been in the works since
2009, its unveiling comes as Japan and China are locked in a dispute
over several small islands located between southern Japan and Taiwan.
For months, ships from both countries have been conducting patrols
around the isles, called the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyutai in
China.
The tensions over the islands, along with China’s heavy
spending on defense and military modernization, have heightened calls in
Japan for beefed-up naval and air forces. China recently began
operating an aircraft carrier that it refurbished after purchasing from
Russia, and is reportedly moving forward with the construction of
another that is domestically built.
Japan, China and Taiwan all claim the islands.
Though
technically a destroyer, some experts believe the new Japanese ship
could potentially be used in the future to launch fighter jets or other
aircraft that have the ability to take off vertically. That would be a
departure for Japan, which has one of the best equipped and best trained
naval forces in the Pacific but which has not sought to build aircraft
carriers of its own because of constitutional restrictions that limit
its military forces to a defensive role.
Japan says it has no plans to use the ship in that manner.
The
Izumo does not have catapults for launching fighters, nor does it have a
“ski-jump” ramp on its flight deck for fixed-wing aircraft launches.
Copyright
2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not
be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
NEC of Japan Is Exiting Market for SmartphonesBy ERIC PFANNER August 01, 2013創新乏力，NEC宣布退出智能手機領域ERIC PFANNER 2013年08月01日 NEC,
once the leading cellphone maker in Japan, said on Wednesday that it
would quit making smartphones, acknowledging that it had failed to keep
pace with the likes of Apple and Samsung Electronics. 週三，曾經是日本手機製造業領軍者的日本電氣(NEC)稱，它將不再生產智能手機，並承認不敵蘋果公司(Apple)及三星電子(Samsung Electronics)等公司。 The
retreat in the face of competition from an American and a South Korean
company highlighted the country's shift from electronics industry leader
to laggard over the course of the last decade. 面對一家美國公司及一家韓國公司的競爭而退縮，這突顯了日本在過去10年已經從電子產業的領導者變成落後者。 “We
were late to enter the smartphone market, and we were unable to develop
attractive products,” Isamu Kawashima, the chief financial officer of
NEC, said at a news conference here. “That's what it comes down to.” NEC首席財務長川島勇(Isamu Kawashima)在日本的一次新聞發布會上說，“我們在智能手機市場上是後來者，我們沒能開發出具有吸引力的產品。這就是根本原因。” Like
other Japanese phone makers, NEC clung to old-fashioned flip phones —
great for making phone calls, taking pictures or playing simple games,
but not for much else — as rivals elsewhere were developing smartphones
that put the entire Internet and more in users' pockets. The first NEC smartphone did not appear until 2011, four years after Apple's iPhone. NEC和其他日本手機製造商一樣，仍然堅持製造老式的翻蓋手機。打電話、拍照、玩簡單遊戲都很棒，但是要做更多的就不行了。而別國競爭對手開發的智能手機，卻把整個互聯網以及更多東西都裝到了用戶的口袋裡。 2011年，NEC才推出了第一部智能手機，比蘋果的iPhone晚了四年。 The
strategic failure left NEC with hundreds of millions of dollars in
losses as its share of the Japanese cellphone market slipped into the
single digits. It also landed yet another blow to corporate Japan's once
vaunted reputation for innovation. NEC因為這一戰略失誤，損失了數億美元，在日本手機市場所佔份額也跌至個位數。這也再次打擊了日本企業界曾經自誇的創新聲譽。 “NEC
was like the face of the Japanese phone industry,” said Nobuyuki
Hayashi, a technology consultant and writer. “Losing them will be very
upsetting for those who take pride in Japanese manufacturing.” 科技顧問及作者林信行(Nobuyuki Hayashi)說，“NEC就像是日本手機產業的招牌。失去它們將會讓那些以日本製造業為豪的人感到非常失望。” NEC's
surrender is the latest consolidation in the country's cellphone
industry. In 2010, NEC absorbed the remnants of the mobile phone
divisions of two other Japanese stalwarts, Casio and Hitachi, with NEC
holding a controlling stake. In 2008, Kyocera acquired the phone-making arm
of Sanyo. In 2010, Fujitsu and Toshiba combined their handset
businesses; Fujitsu bought out its partner last year. Mitsubishi,
another big electronics company, got out of the phone business entirely. NEC放棄製造智能手機，是日本手機業最近的一次整合。 2010年，NEC吸收了日本另外兩家骨幹企業卡西歐(Casio)和日立(Hitachi)在手機領域所剩的資產，NEC取得控股權。 2008年，京瓷公司(Kyocera)收購了三洋電機(Sanyo)的手機製造業務。 2010年，富士通(Fujitsu)和東芝(Toshiba)合併了他們的手機業務；富士通於去年買下了其合作者。另一家大電子公司三菱(Mitsubishi)則徹底放棄了手機業務。 Analysts
say NEC and other Japanese cellphone makers were tied too closely to
Japanese network operators, developing what has come to be known in that
country as a “Galápagos” effect; devices were cut off from the
evolution of the phone business elsewhere. As a result , the makers failed to grasp the significance of the rise of the smartphone. 分析人士稱，NEC及其他日本手機製造商與日本網絡運營商捆綁過緊，形成了日本所謂的“加拉帕戈斯效應”（Galápagos effect，指某種產業或者產品只在某國國內佔有較大市場份額，並形成孤立市場——譯註）。日本的手機完全隔絕於別國手機業務的進化。所以，日本手機製造商沒能意識到智能手機崛起的重要性。 As
Japanese consumers embraced the smartphone in a big way, the companies
had nothing to offer. Although flip phones from NEC and other Japanese
makers are still in wide use in the country, smartphones now make up a
majority of new sales. Japanese brands struggle to compete with imported smartphones, especially the iPhone. 當日本消費者大舉擁抱智能手機的時候，日本這些公司卻拿不出任何產品。儘管很多日本人仍然在使用NEC及其他日本生產商的翻蓋手機，但智能手機現在已占到新銷售額的大部分。日本品牌努力與進口的智能手機競爭，尤其是iPhone。 “As
the market for mobile phone handsets, including the rapid spread of
smartphones, has dramatically changed, economies of scale have become
increasingly important for the maintenance and strengthening of
competitiveness,” NEC said in a frank statement. “However, NEC's mobile
phone handset shipments are following a downward trend, and it is difficult to foresee improved performance in the future.” NEC在一份坦誠的聲明中說，“隨著手機市場發生翻天覆地的變化，包括智能手機迅速普及，對於保持和加強競爭力，規模經濟已變得越來越重要。然而，NEC的手機發貨量卻一直在下降，而且很難說將來會有所改善。” By
last year, Apple had become the market leader in Japan, where the
iPhone had won 25.5 percent of overall cellphone sales, according to the
MM Research Institute. Even Samsung, which has been slower to establish
a foothold in Japan than elsewhere, surpassed NEC last year, with a 7.2 percent market share. MM總研株式會社(MM Research Institute)稱，到去年，蘋果已經變成了日本手機市場的領軍者。 iPhone已贏得日本手機總銷售量的25.5%。三星在日本取得穩固地位的過程要比在其他國家慢，但是也在去年以7.2%的市場份額超過了NEC。 In
smartphones, Apple is even more dominant, with 40 percent of the
Japanese market in the first quarter, according to another research
firm, IDC. 另外一家研究公司IDC稱，在智能手機市場，蘋果的佔有率更高。在第一季度，占到日本市場的40%。 “There
will be further consolidation in the industry,” said Jean-Philippe
Biragnet, a partner at the Bain & Company consulting firm in Tokyo.
“There is not space for more than two or three of these players. The
question is, Who? ” 東京的貝恩諮詢公司(Bain & Company)合夥人讓-菲利普·比拉涅(Jean-Philippe Biragnet)說，“該行業會進一步整合，沒有空間容納超過兩到三家這樣的公司。問題是，究竟是哪幾家？” Among
the domestic brands, the leaders last year, according to MM, were
Fujitsu, with a 14.4 percent share of the overall mobile phone market;
Sharp, with 14 percent; and Sony, with 9.8 percent. MM稱，去年國內品牌的翹楚是富士通，占到了整個手機市場的14.4%；夏普(Sharp)佔14%；索尼(Sony)佔9.8%。 Panasonic
and Kyocera are much weaker, though they were slightly ahead of NEC,
whose share of the business had fallen to about 5 percent last year from
nearly 28 percent in 2001, according to MM. MM稱，松下(Panasonic)和京瓷的市場份額更小，儘管他們比NEC略微領先；NEC的市場份額由2001年的近28%,跌到了去年的約5%。 Among
the remaining contenders, only Sony has a significant presence outside
Japan. The other Japanese phone makers have been outflanked at the high
end of the smartphone business by Apple, Samsung and others, and at the
low end by a growing number of Chinese manufacturers. 在剩下的競爭者中，只有索尼在日本之外的市場上佔有重要份額。其餘日本手機製造商在高端智能手機市場上被蘋果、三星等公司赶超，在低端機市場上被越來越多的中國生產商超越。 NEC
was in talks with one of the Chinese companies, Lenovo, about a
partnership aimed at saving the smartphone business, but the
negotiations broke down several weeks ago, making the company's
announcement Wednesday inevitable, analysts said. 分析人士稱，NEC曾經與其中一家中國公司聯想商談合作，旨在拯救NEC的智能手機業務。但是幾週前談判破裂，公司不得不於週三做出那份聲明。 For
fans of retro-styled Japanese flip phones, which have come to be known
here as “gara-kei,” short for “Galápagos phone,” there was at least one
saving grace in NEC's announcement. The company said that even though it
was quitting the smartphone business, it would continue “developing and producing conventional mobile handsets.” 復古樣式的日本翻蓋手機在這裡被稱為“加拉機”(gara-kei)，是“加拉帕戈斯手機”(Galápagos phone)的簡稱。對於這種手機的追捧者來說，NEC的聲明還不算一無是處。公司稱，儘管不再製造智能手機，還是會繼續“開發並生產傳統手機”。 Joshua Hunt contributed reporting.
