Congratulations to Joshua Walker who leaves the presidency of the New York Japan Society at the end of July 2026 to become head of the US Chamber of Commerce's international affairs department. He has also been appointed the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress' David M. Abshire Chair. The Center works closely with many Japanese organizations researching trade and security issues. Expect Joshua to acquire many more honors and board appointments while at the Chamber.
He is joining Jay Sapsford, the Chamber's Senior Vice President for Global Intelligence. Jay worked as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and as the chief of staff to the Morgan Stanley's Japan's country head. He was the Journal's Washington Deputy Bureau Chief prior to joining the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Like Joshua, Jay grew up in Japan as the son of Christian missionaries. Both men are fluent in Japanese.
The Chamber has a history of hiring Japan hands for its senior leadership positions. The best known example was Stanton Anderson who was a close friend of the Chamber's longtime president Thomas J. Donohue (d. 2024). The New York Times identified Anderson as "Japan's most influential lobbyist in Washington." As an adviser to Donohue, Anderson helped shape the Chamber’s pro-free trade policies and strong stand on tort reform. Both remain important interests of Japanese companies in the U.S. He served as the Chamber’s executive vice president and chief legal officer from 2003 to 2010 as well as chairman of the Chamber’s Campaign for Free Enterprise. Never during his tenure as a Chamber official did he resign or recuse himself from his consulting firm, his law firm, or his Japanese clients. He remained of counsel to the DC law firm McDermott Will & Emery and on the board of consulting firm Global U.S.A. Mr. Anderson, 84, passed away on Sunday, January 12, 2025, at his home in Santa Barbara, California.
On March 19, 2026, the White House held a dinner honoring Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. The menu was carrot ginger velouté, Maine lobster au gratin with corn puree and asparagus, and strawberry and vanilla cream gateau.
Only one celebrity attended. This was Japanese golf legend Mr. Hideki Matsuyama, Otherwise attendees were CEOs of major American companies, senior government officials, and two full-time lobbyists who are Trump loyalists. Only three Japanese CEOs of American operations were at the dinner: Mitsubishi, Hitachi, and Toyota. Masayoshi Son, SoftBank Group CEO and founder, was the only corporate head leading from Japan.
Notably, there was not one State, Defense or Commerce official tasked with or expert in Japan or the Indo-Pacific. There were no American second tier officials to match with their Japanese counterparts who were present at the dinner.
Scholars, think tankers, and nonprofit executives expert on Japan who "manage" the relationship were also not present. It is very unusual to have such a dinner without attendees familiar with Japanese politics, economy, culture, and history.
Takaichi cleverly used a male interpreter to project power to Trump. He heard a strong male voice in "her" comments. The President had a woman interpreter, whose high-pitched voice subtly diminished him to the Japanese. She was, however, likely to have made Trump more understandable to Takaichi.
Another notable feature of the dinner, and indeed the visit ,is that Trump never once said the Prime Minister's name. "Takaichi" was just too much to say for the President.
Full guest list for White House dinner for the Japanese prime minister
1 The President of the United States Donald Trump
2 Her Excellency TAKAICHI Sanae, Prime Minister of Japan
3 Mr. Andrew Abboud, Las Vegas Sands Corp. Vice President of Government Affairs
4 Dr. Miriam Adelson, spouse of the late Sheldon Adelson, founder Las Vegas Sands Corp
5 Mr. AKAHORI Takeshi, Senior Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs
6 His Excellency AKAZAWA Ryosei, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry
7 Mr. Jim Allen, chairman of Hard Rock International
8 Mr. Cristiano Amon, CEO and president, Qualcomm
9 Mr. ARAI Masayoshi, Director-General, Trade Policy Bureau, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry
10 Mr. ARIMA Yutaka, Director-General, Foreign Policy Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
11 The Honorable Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury
12 The Honorable James Blair, White House, Deputy Chief of Staff for Legislative, Political and Public Affairs
13 The Honorable Pam Bondi, Attorney General
14 Mr. Greg Brockman and Mrs. Anna Brockman, OpenAI co-founder.
15 The Honorable Doug Burgum, Secretary of the Interior
16 The Honorable Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Secretary of Labor
17 The Honorable Sean Duffy, Secretary of Transportation
18 Mr. Larry Fink, BlackRock CEO;
19 The Honorable George Glass, Ambassador of the United States to Japan and Mrs. Amy Glass
20 Mr. David Goeckeler, Sandisk CEO;
21 The Honorable Jamieson Greer, United States Trade Representative
22 The Honorable Bill Hagerty, United States Senator from Tennessee and Mrs. Christine Hagerty
23 Mr. HAYASHI Makoto, Executive Secretary to the Prime Minister
24 The Honorable Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War
25 Mr. ICHIKAWA Keiichi, National Security Advisor
26 Mr. IIDA Yuji, Executive Secretary to the Prime Minister
27 Mr. IIJIMA Isao [飯島勲], Special Advisor to the Cabinet, noted Japanese political fixer
28 Mr. Takajiro Ishikawa, President & CEO of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America
29 Mr. KANO Koji, Vice Minister of Defense for International Affairs
30 Dr. Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir
31 Mr. Arvind Krishna, IBM CEO
32 Mr. KUMAGAI Naoki, Director General of the North American Affairs Bureau in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
33 The Honorable Kelly Loeffler, Administrator of the Small Business Administration
34 Mr. Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril
35 The Honorable Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce
36 Mr. MATANO Motosada, Director-General, Economic Affairs Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
37 Mr. Hideki Matsuyama, Japanese golf pro, first Asian to win the Masters
38 The Honorable Linda McMahon, Secretary of Education
On February 5, 2025, Representative Andy Barr (R-KY) kicked off his campaign for the U.S. Senate to replace retiring Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) reminding people of his MAGA credentials.
In his first TV campaign ad, Andy railed against DEI and declared that "it is not a sin to be white."
This phrase used by Barr is a variation of “It’s OK to be white,” which has been adopted by white supremacists. It has been designated as a “hate slogan“ by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The phrase surfaced in 2017 on racist message boards, often abbreviated as IOTBW.
Barr's top Republican primary opponent, former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron is Black. One of his top potential Democratic opponents, former state representative Charles Booker, is as well.
According to campaign finance records reviewed by the nonprofit Popular Information, Barr’s campaign ad is being bankrolled by dozens of major corporations, including General Motors, State Farm, JPMorgan Chase, Delta, and Microsoft. They identify 67 corporations. As he is a member of the powerful House Financial Services Committee and Chair of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and a member of the Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institutions, he is supported by all major banks, securities and insurance companies. His membership on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific is likely an added attraction to Aflac that has substantial investment in Japan.
There were also two Japanese companies among the Barr donors. Both have substantial investments in Kentucky. Toyota gave $8,500 and Suntory that makes Jim Beam and Maker's Mark gave $10,000.
Throughout the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump touted the financial windfall to be reaped if the United States were to impose a series of revenue-raising tariffs. Since returning to office, the president has followed through on that promise — but has rescinded or reduced some tariffs and faced multiple court challenges threatening to derail his economic agenda.
As companies, investors and trading partners grapple to keep up with the constantly shifting tariff landscape, one industry has seen a big boost to its bottom line: the lobbying sector, which experienced a surge in tariff-related work in the first quarter of 2025.
In the first three months of this year, lobbyists represented 215 clients on tariff issues, according to lobbying disclosure reports studied by OpenSecrets. In all of 2024, lobbyists handled tariff work for just 120 clients. And it’s not just the number of clients signed — lobbyists stepped up their work on those contracts, filing 1,707 reports on tariff work in the first quarter of 2025. That puts them on track to surpass last year’s total of 5,679.
If they keep up that pace, they would surpass the number of reports filed in 2018 and come closer to the 2019 total, when Trump implemented tariffs in his first term.
Most active lobbyists
One of the industries that has had a difficult time navigating the strategy behind Trump’s trade war has been pharmaceuticals. In recent weeks, Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on medicines as part of a broader strategy to manufacture more drugs domestically. As a result, amongst the companies that have increased their lobbying spending the most from Q1 2024 to Q1 2025 we can find major organizations like the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacture of America, Ely Lilly and Apotex. PhRMA increased its spending from $9.8 million to almost $13 million. Ely Lilly boosted its spending from $1.9 million to $3.5 million. Apotex’s expenses surged from $140,000 to $810,000, as the company spent more in Q1 2025 than all of 2024.
The three companies have lobbied on significantly different issues. Apotex has lobbied to exempt pharmaceutical products from becoming part of the broader trade war launched by the Trump administration. Eli Lilly has lobbied mostly on intellectual property, access to markets through trade negotiations and general issues related to tariffs and trade talks with Japan, the European Union, China, India, the United Kingdom and Brazil. Some of the issues PhRMA has been focusing on regard intellectual property as well tariffs policy related to the pharmaceutical sector and section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which gives the president powers to take actions against unfair trade practices.
One of the companies more active on lobbying on tariffs has been Hawaii Gas, which had not reported any lobbying activity in previous years. The company lobbied on issues related to the imports of propane from Canada. Propane and energy products are protected by the USMCA (U.S.-Mexico-Canada) trade agreement. It spent $40,000 in Q1 2025 on that and more general issues related to tariffs on Canada.
Apple has been a target for Trump for some time, as he tries to compel the tech giant to bring its manufacturing to the United States, saying recently that he has “a little problem with Tim Cook.” Trade-related issues has been one of the main focuses for the company, filing three reports regarding trade in the first quarter of 2025. Reports touch on different issues such as U.S. competitiveness in global markets and reintroduction of the American Innovation and Choice Act and/or the Open App Markets Act. The company, headquartered in Cupertino, California, has increased its lobbying efforts from $2.1 million in Q1 2024 to $2.5 million in Q1 2025.
Paper Excellence, a North-American pulp and paper company, has increased its lobbying expenses on tariffs by 237 percent between Q1 2024 and Q1 2025. The company went from $80,000 in the first quarter of last year to $270,000 in the first quarter of this year. It filed different reports on tariffs: one regarding the miscellaneous tariff bill, one regarding general discussions on the impact of tariffs and one regarding section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.
Two aluminum companies — Century Aluminum and Aluminum Association — also reported a spike in lobbying on tariffs. The latter went from $80,000 in Q1 2024 to $230,000 in Q1 2025, lobbying mostly on aluminum trade and tariffs issues. Century Aluminum went from $119,000 to $229,000. It lobbied on section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which gives the president powers to adjust imports of certain goods if there’s a concern for national security. Century Aluminum also lobbied to support the effort of the administration to increase tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum from China. In June 2025, Trump announced an increase of tariffs on those products from 25 percent to 50 percent.
Why does it matter?
U.S. and international companies are trying to keep up with the administration’s shifting tariff policies, knowing any changes would impact supply chains, production lines, the cost of putting together a product or offering a service, and therefore the final cost consumers will pay.
According to the Budget Lab at Yale University “the price level from all 2025 tariffs rises by 2.3% in the short-run, the equivalent of an average per household consumer loss of $3,800 in 2024$. Annual losses for households at the bottom of the income distribution are $1,700.”
And it’s not just big companies and their consumers that are going to pay the price of Trump’s decisions. Small businesses are also affected by the scale of these measures and the on-again, off-again policies.
CARNEGIE GLOBAL DIALOGUE: CHINA AND EUROPE. 2/26, 8:00-9:00am (EST), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Carnegie. Speakers: Lizza Bomassi, Deputy Director of Carnegie Europe; Yifan Ding, President of China Society for France Studies; Alice Ekman, Senior analyst, European Union Institute for Security Studies.
U.S.-JAPAN ALLIANCE IN THE INDO-PACIFIC: UNILATERAL, BILATERAL & MULTILATERAL CAPABILITIES. 2/26, 5:30-8:00pm (EST), HYBRID. Sponsors: Japan-America Society of Washington; National War College — National War College Alumni Association; Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA. Speakers: Chip Gregson, Lieutenant General USMC (Ret), Distinguished Senior Fellow, Sasakawa USA; Motosada Matano, Political Minister, Embassy of Japan.
By Richard Katz, Senior Fellow, Carnegie Council For Ethics in International Affairs, APP member Tokyo Business Today, February 26,2021
The start of real action on climate change or just nice-sounding goals? That was the first question raised when on October 29 Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga targeted net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
While there is no guarantee, the likelihood of real action has been raised by rise of new lobbies like the Japan Climate Initiative (JCI), which, so far, includes 394 of Japan’s largest corporations. JCI has forged links with powerful leaders in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), including two who may one day become Prime Minister: Administrative Reform Minister Taro Kono and Environment Minister Shujiro Koizumi.
When CEOs from four JCI companies—SONY, Ricoh, Kao, and Nissay Asset Management—met with Kono in November, SONY chieftain Kenichiro Yoshida delivered a troubling alert, Kono told the Financial Times. Unless Japan upped its renewables-based electricity generation to 40% or more by 2030, SONY and other companies could be forced by its customers to shift much production offshore.
Apple, for example, will eliminate by 2030 suppliers who don’t use 100% renewable electricity. SONY’s facilities in Europe can meet this demand, but not those in Japan. Only 19% of Japan’s electricity now comes from renewables, and the government’s current goal for 2030 is just 24%.
The question is the degree to which companies urging rapid action can overcome resistance by a powerful axis of companies linked to fossil fuels and nuclear power, the Keidanren business federation, and the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI).
The JCI—which also includes environmentalists and local governments—was created in 2018 to make sure that Japan fulfilled the Paris Accord goals. This January, 92 JCI member companies—those at the meeting with Kono, as well as heavy-hitters like Nissan, Softbank, Aeon, Fujifilm, Mitsubishi Estate, NEC, Nippon Life, Seven and i, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust, and Toshiba—urged that Japan achieve 40-50% renewables by 2030.
Last summer Keizai Doyukai, a federation of executives from 1,000 leading corporations, targeted renewables at 40%. “We can reach that level of renewables by 2030 with today’s technology,” explained Mika Ohbayashi, a member of the JCI secretariat and a director of Japan’s Renewable Energy Institute (REI).
“What is needed through 2030 are policy actions, such as changing land use laws so that abandoned farmland and other areas can be used for renewables, upgrading the electrical grid, and making sure that renewables have access to it.”
Even without such policy changes, the REI calculates that current trends will cause renewables to grow from 17% of electricity generated in 2018 to 32% by 2030 if electricity demand remains the same. Policy changes could boost it further to at least 39%, and even higher with more conservation of demand. However, to hit zero emissions by 2050, policy changes alone are not enough, added Ohbayashi. “For that, we will need revolutionary technologies.”
Kono told the executives he’d push for regulatory reforms regarding both land use and grid access. Under current rules, Japan’s ten regional utilities can still give their own plants priority access to transmission lines.
This is not a new issue for Kono. In 2008, according to Wikileaks, Kono complained in private that the utilities were not letting new companies transport wind-generated electricity from Hokkaido to Honshu even on unused transmission lines.
In December, it was Koizumi’s turn to meet with JCI execs. He upped the ante, by calling on them to support carbon pricing, considered the most effective way of changing behavior by consumers and companies.
Currently, Japan has one of the lowest effective rates of carbon taxation, just $3 per ton of CO2 emissions, compared to $22 in the UK, $33 in France, and $126 in Sweden. While Ricoh is pushing for carbon pricing, few other companies are doing the same. Ohbayashi believes that, if the government introduced a carbon price mechanism, then companies would accept it.
The shift in business attitudes has shown up in the behavior of many firms. Japan’s three megabanks have been regularly providing a third of all global financing for power plants using coal, the deadliest fossil fuel. Last spring, they said they would stop financing any new coal projects, although they will continue financing existing plants, perhaps until 2050.
Trading companies like Marubeni, Itochu, Mitsubishi, and Sojitz have said they will stop investing in coal mines and new coal plants. Toshiba stopped taking orders to build new coal-fired plants. It is notable that stock prices of Japanese firms engaging in proactive emission reduction measures have outperformed those without credible plans.
Not surprisingly, JCI and others find themselves struggling with other powerful corporate forces who oppose what they call hasty moves. Within weeks of Suga’s announcement, Toyota chieftain Akio Toyoda railed against the notion that Tokyo might end sales of gasoline cars by the mid-2030s. He warned of electricity shortfalls in the summer as well as the “collapse” of the current automotive business model.
While Keidanren supports the 2050 net zero as a worthy goal, it opposes many of the measures that experts say are needed to reach that goal. For example, Suga wants to phase out coal, which now fuels 31% of electricity generation, but Keidanren insists that coal is necessary until new technologies like reliable battery storage and hydrogen fuel are ready.
“Energy security means Japan must have diverse sources of energy, including coal, at least in short term,” argued Masami Hasegawa, a director at Keidanren. Keidanren emphasizes the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) for “clean coal.”
Replacing coal-fired plants with natural gas as a bridging technology, as done elsewhere, could halve each plant’s emissions, but Hasegawa contended that storage issues would expose Japan to periodic electricity shortages if it were too reliant on LNG, as occurred briefly in January.
Keidanren also opposes a carbon tax, saying this would deprive companies of the funds needed develop indispensable revolutionary technologies, like hydrogen fuel and CCS. Unfortunately, a 2020 report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) speaks of two or three decades before these technologies become commercially feasible on a mass scale. To wait for them is a recipe for failure.
There are lots of ways to reduce emissions using today’s technologies. Steel in Japan produces about 10% of Japan’s total carbon emissions. The reason is that 80% of Japan’s crude steel output is still made in coal-fired blast furnaces, compared to 33% in the US. A stunning 35% of Japan’s houses have no insulation.
While Nissan, under Carlos Ghosn in 2010, put out the Leaf, the world’s best-selling electric vehicle (EV) until 2020, Toyota remains focused hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell cars. The latter barely sell. Akio Toyoda even asserted that, “the more EVs we build, the worse carbon dioxide gets.”
While Keidanren claims to speak for business, its approach actually contradicts the interests of the majority of Japanese companies, according to a 2020 report by InfluenceMap. Among the top 100 companies on the stock market, says the report, 61% would prefer to buy renewable-based electricity if enough were available.
InfluenceMap report asserts that just a few sectors tied to fossil fuels and nuclear energy dominate Keidanren policymaking, and firms from those sectors are the ones chosen to serve on METI’s advisory councils on energy. Hasegawa called InfluenceMap’s report inaccurate, saying that Keidanren’s Chair and 17 Vice Chairs are “well-balanced” among different sectors.
When asked why so many of these men were from companies that made coal plants, invested in coal mines, or financed coal projects, he replied that these firms also invested in renewables.
As for METI, consider its “green growth” agenda released two months after Suga’s speech. Without naming a goal for 2030, it set a 2050 goal of 60% renewables and for the remaining 40% to be generated from nuclear power, coal with CCS, and hydrogen.
While many experts, including the IEA, see restarting the closed nuclear power plants as necessary to reach net zero, nuclear has become unacceptable to voters due to the 2011 Fukushima disaster, an avoidable calamity caused by mismanagement by the TEPCO utility and poor oversight by METI. When METI speaks of eliminating gasoline-fueled cars by the mid-2030s, it includes hybrids as non-gasoline vehicles.
It calls for reducing Japan’s carbon emissions from 1.2 billion tons in 2019 to 930 million tons by 2030, the same disappointing goal set in 2018. By contrast, says REI, Japan must reduce emissions to 650 million tons by 2030 if it wants to reach net zero by 2050.
Suga’s own skills are critical to pushing METI to do better. When Suga was Shinzo Abe’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, he engineered changes that gave the Prime Minister unprecedented leverage over elite bureaucrats, including the power to approve as well as fire the top 600 officials.
The notion of pledging net zero by 2050 was originally intended to be announced by Abe in response to the expected election of Joseph Biden, but Abe resigned for health reasons. Unfortunately, Abe often announced lofty goals with little strategy to achieve them.
Suga is more decisive on economic issues but he suffers a very poor approval rating. Can he impose his policies on resistant bureaucrats if the latter think he may have to step down by autumn? One signal will be whether the companies advising METI on the new Strategic Energy Plan due in June include more like those in the JCI.
There’s nothing new about corporate resistance to aggressive action on climate change. What is new is strong business lobbying on behalf of robust measures. The balance of power between the two factions will be pivotal in whether announced goals lead to effective actions.
Who are the frequent visitors to the Prime Minister's Office
By 北川開, Nikkei Shimbun Reporter
Originally published in Japanese in Nikkei Shimbun (1/29/2017)
[面会多い相手は?安倍首相の４年間、データで解剖 ] Provisional translation by APP interns for scholarly exchange.
How does Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spend the day as the head of the government? A look at the prime minister’s tightly scheduled meetings throughout the day will give us a picture of where the administration’s priorities lie, as well as Abe’s relationship with people surrounding him. Using data accumulated for the Nikkei Shimbun’s column “Prime Minister’s Office [Shusho Kantei]” that appears daily in the paper’s Politics section, we have done an analysis of Prime Minister Abe’s four years since his return to the premiership.
“Abe’s most frequent visitor” in the past four years has been the cabinet’s top intelligence official, Director of Cabinet Intelligence Shigeru Kitamura. Kitamura reports to Abe on confidential matters ranging from diplomacy and security to elections that the cabinet intelligence and research office compiles. Kitamura is often seen visiting Abe multiple times a day. Occasionally, he carries necessary information to the PM at his vacation home in Yamanashi Prefecture. Kitamura had worked under the first Abe administration as an executive secretary to the prime minister and supported Abe through that challenging period.
At the Center is “2A+S”
A reporter, who is assigned to cover the prime minister’s daily activities, waits at the door to the Prime Minister’s Office [Kantei] and ask everyone who goes through the door whether he/she met with Abe. Kitamura always tells the reporter “yes” but nothing else.
The second most frequent visitor has been the former vice-minister for foreign affairs Akitaka Saiki. Abe has known Saiki well ever since he served as an English-language interpreter for Abe’s father Shintaro Abe when the senior Abe was foreign minister. Saiki, the foreign ministry’s top administrative official, frequently visited the Kantei to keep Abe abreast of events and receive instructions. In this way, the Abe administration emphasizes Abe’s direct control of the foreign ministry. Abe’s weight in negotiations with foreign counterparts has been increasing, and Japanese diplomats, more than ever, cannot take actions without Abe’s instructions.
The third was Secretary General of the National Security Secretariat Shotaro Yachi. He served under the first Abe administration as a foreign vice-minister and is described as Abe’s brain in diplomacy. In the U.S., Russian, and Chinese governments the organization that reports direct to the head of the state wields influence. One example is the U.S. National Security Council. Yachi has acted as the counterpart to these organizations, and has arranged Abe’s summit diplomacy from behind the scenes.
Meetings between Abe, Kitamura, Yachi, and senior officials from the foreign and defense ministries are held regularly, generally twice a month. The highest-ranking uniformed officer of the SDF, Joint Chief of Staff Katsutoshi Kawano has also been a member of that group. The meetings provide a framework for discussing matters significant to the country’s security policy.
Among politicians, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga has been the fourth most frequent visitor, followed by Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Taro Aso. Suga is often in attendance when Abe meets with important visitors. Aso comes with senior officials from the finance ministry for reporting, then usually stays behind to talk with the prime minister alone. While the ministry officials are there, the meeting revolves around the government’s financial policy. During their private conversation, Abe and Aso likely discuss and exchange opinions about political decision making.
Abe, Aso, Suga and the former Minister of Economic Revitalization, Economic and Fiscal Policy Akira Amari, the so-called 3A+S, were the core of the Abe administration. Since Amari resigned the ministerial post in 2016 as a result of a political-fund scandal, the “2A+S” has been in charge of running the administration.
The sixth most frequent visitor, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Hiroshige Seko (former deputy chief cabinet secretary, Upper House) and the eighth, Minister in Charge of Empowerment of All Citizens Katsunobu Kato (former deputy chief cabinet secretary, Lower House) had been regulars at the prime minister’s office during their terms as deputy CCS. On mornings of the day Abe is scheduled to go to the Diet, both houses’ deputy CCSs participate, without fail, in a Diet preparation session for the prime minister.
Unknowable Inner Meetings inside Kantei
News reporters in charge of the prime minister must remain near the entrance to the Kantei when talking to people and are not allowed to go inside rooms. Therefore, if a person who works inside the Kantei meets and talks with the prime minister, that meeting may not appear in the “Prime Minister’s Office.” According to a high-ranking government official, a meeting is held every day between the prime minister, the chief cabinet secretary, deputy chief cabinet secretary, and executive secretary to the prime minister in charge of policies. By meeting every day, the core members of the administration at the Kantei confirm basic policy directions and avoid inconsistent remarks. Even without a particular agenda, just meeting with each other regularly gives a sense of unity.
Abe’s office is on the same floor as Suga’s, increasing the chances they meet much more often than what is reported.
Among agencies, senior officials from the ministry of foreign affairs, the ministry of finance, the ministry of defense, the ministry of economy, trade and industry, and the cabinet office have been the ones frequenting the Kantei. As for annual visits by officials above the level of director-general of each ministry, the number of visits by senior officials of the foreign and defense ministries greatly increased in 2016 compared with the previous three years.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs had the highest number by far of visits to the prime minister’s office, due to the many significant diplomatic exchanges that occurred in 2016, including the Ise-Shima G7 Summit in May and the Japan-Russia summit meetings.
If we only look at the Administration’s fourth year, the defense ministry’s Director General for Defense Policy Satoshi Maeda was the fifth most frequent visitor. It reflects the weight the administration placed on managing the threats posed by an escalation of North Korean nuclear missile development and Chinese maritime advancement in the South and the East China Seas.
Meetings held with finance ministry officials have been slightly fewer than in past administrations, according to a source close to the prime minister. Although METI officials did not come to the Kantei as much, Takaya Imai, an executive secretary to the prime minister (policy) and a former METI bureaucrat, has likely been acting as a bridge between Abe and the ministry and helped Abe exert his influence. Meanwhile, the cabinet office is taking the initiative in the policy of the dynamic engagement of all citizens and work-style reform to increase its leadership presence.
Discuss Policy Over Noodles
Lunch and dinner meetings are good for developing friendly relationships. Besides the Kantei visitors, the Nikkei Shimbun looked into the prime minister’s favorite restaurants and dinner partners.
The most frequently used restaurant has been “ORIGAMI”, a restaurant in the Capitol Hotel Tokyu. So far during the second Abe administration, the prime minister has dined at the restaurant a total of 40 times. A majority of his dining partners have been people close to Abe such as executive secretaries and Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga. It seems he uses ORIGAMI when he wants to have a casual dinner meeting.
The prime minister’s favorite choice from the menu is pork rib ramen noodles, priced at 2,730 yen including tax. Last December, former Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto, currently a legal and policy advisor to the Nippon Ishin no Kai, joined Abe for a steak lunch. The hotel has many exits for vehicles, making it easy for a guest to leave without being seen by the press.
Traditional Japanese-style restaurants [ryotei] have generally been chosen for meetings with business leaders. One of the venues is Arisugawa Shimizu, a Japanese restaurant in Minamiazabu, where members of Sakurakai, a high-powered business group, frequently gather. Yoshiyuki Kasai, the chairman emeritus of JR Tokai, and Shigetaka Furumori, the chairman and CEO of Fujifilm Holdings, belong to Sakurakai. The group has been a loyal supporter of Abe since before his first premiership.
Fukudaya, a Japanese restaurant in Kioicho, is where the prime minister regularly meets with Takashi Imai and Hiroshi Okuda, the chairmen emeritus of Keidanren.
When meeting with people from the entertainment industry, the prime minister often chooses more fashionable venues. He and actor Masahiko Tsugawa are friends who celebrate each other’s birthdays. They eat together with other people from the industry at Italian restaurants and the like. Abe is said to enjoy hearing stories from a community with which he has less frequent contact.
Dinner with Tsugawa often can last for hours. On Jan. 5, they talked for as long as three hours and 25 minutes. The prime minister’s dinner meetings generally end within a couple of hours. But when Abe is with close friends and family, the gathering tends to last much longer.
Weekend’s Activities
Before his return to the premiership, Abe has determined to accomplish three things every month--conduct an overseas visit, visit affected areas of the Great East Japan Earthquake and play golf.
Keeping the pace of almost once a month, Abe has conducted totally 50 times overseas visits under the banner of “diplomacy that takes a panoramic perspective of the world map”. As many as 66 countries and regions has been visited. He takes full advantage of the Golden week and summer during the Diet recess.
Weekends are often used for visits to the affected areas of the Great East Japan Earthquake. Abe has visited 31 times in total so far, once in every 48 days after his return to premiership. If the visits to affected areas of Kumamoto Earthquake and typhoons are included, the number adds up to 42 times in total, which means he has visited once in every 36 days. He has mostly achieved his own goal to visit the disaster affected areas “once in a month”.
Concerning his hobby golf, Abe plays it several days in a row during vacations and so far has played 56 times. Though his score of Golf has not been revealed as a state secret, a person who played with him said it was “91”. Chairman of Japan Business Federation (Keidanren), Sadayuki Sakakibara, who often plays with Abe, is said to be better at golf than him. The prime minister has two favorite golf courses, one located in Chiba prefecture and the other in Kanagawa prefecture, and three favorite courses in Yamanashi prefecture, where Abe has his villa.
Abe goes to have hair cut almost once in a month. The prime minister’s favorite beauty salon is “HAIR GUEST” (Tokyo, Shibuya). Originally, “Barber Shop MURAGI” was his favorite, but it is said that he started to commute to “HAIR GUEST” thanks to his wife Akie’s recommendation. Though he had a stylist part his hair on the side at “Barber Shop MURAGI”, he asks a stylist at “HAIR GUEST” to make fluffy hair style.
Spending Year-end and New Year’s holidays at Grand Hyatt Tokyo in Roppongi with his relatives is a standard routine every year. Abe is a regular customer of “Nagomi Spa and Fitness”, and has been there 67 times since his second term. Therefore it is understood that he does his health management there once in 22 days.
Abe never fails to ensure health check. He gets a full medical check in Spring and Autumn every year, and sees a dentist almost once in a month. Mostly he goes to the dentist in the first Congressman Hall of the House of Representatives during the intervals between weekday official duties.
Abe cherishes his friendship with old friends. He frequently participates in the gathering of Keisei Gakuen, which he commuted to from elementary school to university. He frequently meets with friends he made during his study in the U.S. after graduation from university. He tends to relax during mealtime with his family and friends, and sometimes greets reporters, who are assigned to cover the prime minister’s daily activities, by saying “Otsukaresama”.
Beyond the Right to Know
Regarding media coverage of the prime minister’s daily activities such as meeting opponents, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike has pointed out “it’s beyond the public’s right to know” when she was a Member of the House of Representatives. The U.S. media don’t seem to have detailed schedules of the President Trump. Also, President Xi Jinping is doing what or where right now is confidential information in China. Reporting the prime minister’s movement with high transparency is significant for monitoring power. We would like to continue to keep track of the prime minister.
The Sankei Shimbun advocates a more aggressive diplomatic stance on history issues and this dovetails with the mission of Japan Conference, a reactionary organization that includes numerous lawmakers. From their perspective, Japan has been too reticent and polite on the world stage and the gloves need to come off.
It never seems to occur to them that this might be a counterproductive strategy and that on history issues it leaves Japan vulnerable to criticisms of promoting an exonerating narrative that glorifies wartime and colonial excesses.
But Japan is not exactly a public-diplomacy wallflower. The Japanese government, foundations and firms have developed an influential network in the United States that dates back to the 1970s. That era of acrimonious trade frictions spawned what American scholar Robert Angel has dubbed the “Japan Lobby,” a multipronged public- and private-sector effort to shape U.S. policy and attitudes. ProPublica estimates that total Japanese spending on lobbying and public relations was a whopping $4.2 billion in 2008, putting Japan third behind the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom, while South Korea ranked eighth with $2.9 billion.
Like many of my university colleagues in Japan and the U.S., in September I was sent copies of two books from Liberal Democratic Party Upper House lawmaker Kuniko Inoguchi — “History Wars: Japan — False Indictment of the Century,” which was compiled and published by the Sankei Shimbun [and written by Yoshihisa Komori, Sankei reporter-at-large in Washington, DC], and “Getting Over It! Why Korea Needs to Stop Bashing Japan,” by Takushoku University professor Sonfa Oh. It turns out that this thinly veiled attempt at propaganda was also sent to the foreign press corps in Tokyo, but it’s not clear which organization paid for this extravagant gesture. The U.S.-registered nonprofit Global Alliance for Historical Truth, however, claims credit for the distribution of “History Wars” on its website.
It is unlikely that these polemical jeremiads will convince anyone to change their mind. The tone of the Sankei book is closer to unhinged ranting rather than reasoned argumentation and stretches credulity in asking to be taken seriously. It trots out the familiar assertion that there is no documentary proof of coerced recruitment of “comfort women,” but undermines its own case by acknowledging that Dutch women were coercively recruited by force. The soldiers involved were convicted solely on the testimony of these white comfort women while testimony by Korean comfort women about coercive recruitment is dismissed outright — an unseemly double-standard that speaks volumes about Sankei’s bias.
The Sankei book also points out that in 1993 when the Kono statement acknowledging state responsibility for coercive recruitment of comfort women was issued, the government clearly defined coercion as including threats and intimidation. This is an awkward point given the Sankei’s disingenuous efforts to downplay the comfort women issue by focusing exclusively on denying coercive recruitment involving physical force. The Sankei apparently thinks that if it can redefine coercion and convince everyone that there were no comfort women recruited at bayonet point, then Japan can wriggle off this hook of history as if the entire sordid system is not the issue.
Korean scholar Park Yu-ha, who is often cited by Japanese conservatives, refers to archival documents that prove private recruiters, including Japanese civilians dressed in military uniform, recruited comfort women through intimidation and deception at the behest of Japanese military authorities. She believes the Korean women who testify that they were coercively recruited, and also maintains that Chinese women and others across Asia were pressed into sexual service through coercion. Park also wants the Diet to issue an apology to the comfort women.
Moreover, scholar C. Sarah Soh also found that in battlefront areas wherever Japanese troops were stationed, local women were forced to serve in improvised comfort stations. It is also documented that the military transported the comfort women to the comfort stations on military bases where they were denied freedom of movement. So what exactly is the Sankei’s point?
The Sankei is also up in arms about China’s alleged backing of a comfort woman statue and Pacific War Museum in San Francisco [WWII Pacific War Memorial Hall, the first overseas anti-Japanese war memorial, VIDEO], apparently misunderstanding the local politics that drive these initiatives. It conveniently overlooks how, in 2013, Toru Hashimoto, as mayor of Osaka, sister city of San Francisco, drew the ire of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and city residents with his apologist comments about the comfort women system.
Raising the alarm about ongoing “History Wars” being waged in the United States, the Sankei asserts that China is orchestrating discord between the U.S. and Japan over history. If so, Beijing is doing a lousy job as more Americans by far distrust China: Only 38 percent of Americans have a high opinion of China while 74 percent have a favorable view of Japan. Tokyo’s best bet here is just to get out of the way and enjoy China’s self-inflicted wounds. It’s time Tokyo grasped that attacking criticism of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his historical views as anti-Japanese, makes it look both paranoid and malicious.
San Francisco Bay Area activists assert that before the board unanimously approved the comfort women memorial in September, the Japan Lobby was vigorously working behind the scenes to kill the resolution. Locals privately assert that there was an anti-statue campaign of disinformation, and that local Japanese-American organizations were pressured to lobby against the resolution, with continued Japanese corporate funding hanging in the balance.
The board disregarded allegations about incidents of discrimination and bullying targeting ethnic Japanese children in Glendale, California, after a comfort woman statue was erected there. Glendale authorities dismissed these unsubstantiated claims by opponents to the statue, pointing out there were no reports to schools or police at the time. It seems that Japan would do better to shrug off these comfort women statue and memorial initiatives because intervention seems to backfire, throwing fuel on the fires of recrimination over the shared East Asian past thereby ensuring that more will be built.
So what should we make of the newly established organization Voices of Vietnam, a well-funded group that has hired former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman [lobbyist with Hogan Lovells, Embassy of Japan's longtime lobbying firm] to serve as point-man in demanding President Park Geun-hye apologize for Vietnamese comfort women who served some 320,000 South Korean soldiers fighting at the behest of Washington in the Vietnam War? This organization held a press conference on Oct. 15 in connection with Park’s summit with U.S. President Barack Obama. In a Fox News op-ed published on the eve of the summit [President Park should publicly apologize for South Korea's sexual violence in Vietnam], Coleman demanded Park apologize to the Vietnamese victims of Korean sexual predations: “Failing to make such an unequivocal apology would only undermine President Park’s moral authority as she presses Japan to apologize for the sexual violence perpetrated against South Korean ‘comfort women’ during World War II.”
Apparently whacking Park is the main mission of an organization that seems, rather curiously, to have sprung up out of nowhere, according to sources in the Vietnamese diaspora in the U.S.
Certainly, amends to these women — there are an estimated 800 survivors — and the thousands of children of mixed ancestry born to them, are in order, but why hasn’t Coleman spoken out about the far larger, similar problem involving U.S. soldiers? And, given the expense of hiring ex-senators to be lobbyists, as the Japanese government has already done with Tom Daschle, who is paying the bills here?
BY Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan and APP member
