August 18 2009

I've been waiting for an english translation of PM Tokugawa's speech and question period transcript, so please excuse the wait.

I won't say much on it, but I thought she started off well by declaring she was looking for a way forward, and planning to do it with the consent of her Chinese and Korean counter-parts.

As the Q/A period began though, she fell into the same trap as previous PM's, pandering to Japan's right by refusing to acknowledge any of atrocities that have become central to the shrine controversy. It would have been refreshing for the PM to openly admit to wanting to create a dialogue, but once again it was down to semantics("I won't comment on something that may or may not have happened...").

As for the Shrine incident, I found that the police let the politcal right get away with far more violence as compared to other observers. For instance, there was a moment when the right started to charge the left, and police weren't really concerned with getting in the way. At the same time, I witnessed at least 2 or 3 brutal beatings of some homeless people, and some poor treatment of some of Japan's elderly.

To be sure, this controversy wasn't solved today, and I'm not sure much progress actually took place at all. I guess we'll have to wait until August 15 2010...