The New York Times (3/17/11) presents a look at the Japanese government's lack of candor about the Fukushima nuclear disaster. At first we're given the impression that this is something cultural: "The less-than-straight talk is rooted in a conflict-averse culture that avoids direct references to unpleasantness." We don't have that problem, I guess.

Then, we're told, Japanese media are to blame: 

Left-leaning news outlets have long been skeptical of nuclear power and of its backers, and the mutual mistrust led power companies and their regulators to tightly control the flow of information about nuclear operations so as not to inflame a spectrum of opponents that includes pacifists and environmentalists.

So the too-critical media helped create this crisis of  "mutual mistrust"? The Times had previously led me to believe that the problem with Japanese media was that it was too cozy with powerful institutions.  Now I'm being told they're too critical, which makes them part of the problem.

Finally we come to this:

The close links between politicians and business executives have further complicated the management of the nuclear crisis.

Powerful bureaucrats retire to better-paid jobs in the very industries they once oversaw, in a practice known as "amakudari." Perhaps no sector had closer relations with regulators than the country’s utilities; regulators and the regulated worked hand in hand to promote nuclear energy, since both were keen to reduce Japan’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels.

Now hold on a second. They live in a country where there is a revolving door between corporations and the regulators who oversee their industries?

I'm glad the Times gives us the  Japanese word for this, since most U.S. readers have no frame of reference with which to comprehend such a bizarre practice.

Today's New York Times piece (11/29/10) on the re-election of a governor of Okinawa who opposes the U.S. military base there seems to treat the views of the People Who Live There as one thing to maybe think about, and an annoying, in-the-way thing at that, with residents' resistance  described, variously, as a "wrench," a "thorn" and a "headache".  (Overall, the piece reads a bit like the reaction of the Japanese national government to Hirokazu Nakaima's re-election as "one manifestation of public opinion." Yes, elections are that.)

Majority local opposition to the base is noted second, after the Japanese prime minister's view that the base is "a critical deterrent against regional security threats--a message driven home by North Korea's deadly artillery strike on a South Korean islet on Tuesday." Can you "drive home" something that isn't true? Sounds more like the Times thinks the deterrence capability's crucialness is a fact, not a "message," and that the artillery strike just proves it. One could just as easily point out that the U.S. presence there could be part of what keeps North Korea on edge. The fact that South Korea can conduct mock invasions and war games with the assistance of the most powerful military on the planet might not seem like peacekeeping to everyone.

Also, I guess the Okinawan governor's opponent's proposal that the base be moved out of Japan altogether is "strident" by definition, since the paper doesn't point out any way he was particularly loud or shrill about it. He has the wrong opinion; that makes him a screamer.

The New York Times (11/21/09) describes Japan's elite "press clubs" as

a century-old, cartel-like arrangement in which reporters from major news media outlets are stationed inside government offices and enjoy close, constant access to officials. The system has long been criticized as antidemocratic by both foreign and Japanese analysts, who charge that it has produced a relatively spineless press that feels more accountable to its official sources than to the public. In their apparent reluctance to criticize the government, the critics say, the news media fail to serve as an effective check on authority.

The mind reels.

A September 7 Washington Post report on Japanese healthcare claims that "more than one-third of the workers' premiums are used to transfer wealth from the young, healthy and rich to the old, unhealthy and poor." Which Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 9/7/09) understatedly calls "a striking statement":

Fire insurance transfers wealth from people who don't have house fires to people who do. Car insurance transfers money from people who don't have car accidents to people who do. This is the basic concept of insurance. It protects people from bad events, transferring money from people who don't have bad events to those who do. In other words, this quote is telling us that Japan's health insurance system is operating like a health insurance system.

The article is also quick to tell readers that Japan's system may be unsustainable. Its subhead is: "Aging population could strain system." It is worth noting that Japan's population is already far older than the U.S. population.

"If the United States had the same age distribution as Japan," writes Baker, "its healthcare costs would almost certainly already be above 20 percent of GDP, compared to the current 17 percent." Listen to the FAIR radio program CounterSpin: "Trudy Lieberman on Healthcare Reform" (8/14/09).

According to today's New York Times (5/29/09), there's a scandal brewing in the Japanese media. Apparently in its coverage of a current political scandal, the Japanese press has "reported at face value a stream of anonymous allegations, some of them thinly veiled leaks from within the investigation."

The Times goes on to note that "big news organizations here have long been accused of being too cozy with centers of power"; the end result is "bland reporting that adheres to the official line. " For their part, journalists "say government officials sometimes try to force them to toe the line with threats of losing access to information. "

Bland reporting that toes the government line and relies on leaks that are not properly vetted. It sounds terrible over there.

Economics blogger Dean Baker asserts that "about the only thing that readers can learn from an article on Japan in the business section today" is that "The New York Times Doesn't Like Japan" (Beat the Press, 2/22/09). Among the piece's "variety of complaints about Japan's economy, many of which are contradictory," is "the standard line about people not spending because deflation means that goods will be cheaper in the future if they wait"--which Baker debunks by noting that, with "deflation...generally less than 1.0 percent," a Japanese shopper "considering buying a $600 television would save approximately 50 cents by delaying the purchase a month." Finding this motivation "unlikely" to make many "delay purchases of big-ticket items," Baker also examines a "chart accompanying the article [that] complains that consumers are 'neither spending nor saving'":

This is bizarre, because saving simply means not spending, so, if consumers are not spending, then by definition they are saving. In fact, this chart shows a big increase in consumption over the last 20 years, with the saving rate having fallen from more than 15 percent in 1985 to about 4 percent in 2005. The article later complains that consumers are not spending because they don't have confidence in the country's pension system (which it tells us is a warning to the United States), but it is not clear how much lower they would want the saving rate to go.

That "the chart shows that nominal consumption has fallen by more than household income" has Baker explaining that this "implies that either taxes have increased or the data in the chart is inaccurate."