That means “lets go home”, in Japanese.
Which is exactly what JMSDF oilers are doing now-because Japan is still at logger heads over renewing the special anti-terrorism law. Accordingly, until the issue can be resolved the ships have been ordered home.
Although the leaders are to meet again at the end of the week, Mr Fukuda all but conceded defeat. “I asked for his party’s cooperation regarding the new anti-terrorism bill and explained the situation, but today we did not reach any agreement,” he said.
Two things have not helped the government’s position to date. First, the revelation that Defense Ministry and officers in the JSDF under reported fuel numbers in 2003 have given the opposition party a big opening to make the point that the government is trying to exceed its authority. As I blogged before there has been a big deal made of the fact that fuel from JMSDF ships went into USS Kitty Hawk on her way to the Gulf to participate in the opening phase of OIF.
Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is scrambling to address concerns about civilian control over the military after recent revelations that the Maritime Self-Defense Force mishandled data in February 2003 during its controversial refueling mission in the Indian Ocean.
 |
| The Tokiwa (right), a Maritime Self-Defense Force supply ship, provides oil to a Pakistani destroyer in the Arabian Sea on Monday. KYODO PHOTO |
The fiasco led key Cabinet members at the time to make false public statements about the amount of oil supplied in the mission. It is a politically sensitive issue in light of recent allegations that Japan’s fuel may have been illegally used for U.S.-led operations in Iraq. The law authorizing the refueling mission expires at midnight Thursday.
Experts warn that it will be difficult for the prime minister to shed light on the problem because the head of the MSDF’s highly influential Plans and Programs Division played a key role in the scandal.
Military analyst Kazuhisa Ogawa suggested it is easy to imagine that the high-flying division chief downplayed the magnitude of the mistake and decided to keep silent without consulting anybody.
“The division is super elite. . . . Its chief could think the post is the center of the whole (Self-Defense Forces) operations,” Ogawa said.
The other thing that is not making the job any easier is an ongoing scandal involving former Vice Defense Minister Takemasa Moriya who is accused of taking all kinds of goodies from contractors that the Defense Ministry was doing business with-a practice explicitly banned under Japanese law. The opposition DPJ has been having a field day with this in the special question sessions during Diet meetings.
Former Vice Defense Minister Takemasa Moriya testified in the Diet on Monday that politicians, including an ex-Defense Agency chief, were wined and dined by a former executive of defense equipment trader Yamada Corp.
Former vice Defense Minister Takemasa Moriya appears as a sworn witness before a special House of Representatives committee on Monday. Moriya also admitted under oath that he had played golf more than 200 times with the executive, Motonobu Miyazaki, 69, over the past 12 years. Miyazaki left Yamada and founded the defense-aerospace contractor Nihon Mirise Corp., reportedly taking sales staff of the trader in tow in a bid to win military procurement contracts.
But Moriya, appearing before a special House of Representatives committee on anti-terrorism affairs, denied that he performed any favors for Miyazaki because of their cozy ties.
Moriya said the politicians partook in the entertainment outings on more than one occasion in the last year or two.
The order bringing the ships home will probably impact the liaison officers at the NAVCENT headquarters in Bahrain as well. The real question will be whether this will be the issue that finally forces Fukuda-san to call an early election. That’s something DPJ wants and Fukuda wants to avoid.
In the meantime the US Ambassador to Japan was on TV yesterday holding a press conference where he stated that this refueling issue affects more than Japan. Its a multi-national commitment.
All well and good Mr Ambassador, but that matters not a whit to the Japanese. At least if watching the S.O.’s glee at seeing DPJ move ahead is any judge of overall Japanese political sentiment.
Stay tuned………………