Category Archives: Japan

Government, Health, Japan, Society

Tokyo Olympics: Can the Games still go ahead?

OLYMPIC GAMES

IN ten weeks, the rescheduled Olympic Games are set to get underway. Yet, as the days count down, the opposition grows. A state of emergency in Japan’s capital city has been extended until the end of the month, with citizens there increasingly angry and hostile towards staging what they believe will be a “superspreader” event.

The plans of the organisers appear foolhardy rather than foolproof, with the playbooks of coronavirus protocols raising more questions than answers – the greatest of them being: Can the Olympics really go ahead?

Many residents in Tokyo have expressed disquiet and feel their views have been neglected by organisers. They have said it is a “recipe for disaster” if the Games go ahead and feel scared for their fellow citizens as the virus remains virulent and extremely dangerous.

While comprehensive playbooks have been published for athletes, officials and media, volunteers have received just a two-page pamphlet encouraging them to wear masks, use hand sanitiser and stay socially distanced.

Volunteers and residents are not expected to be subjected to the same level of coronavirus testing as other participants and will not be deemed as being in the “bubble”, so will be able to use public transport and visit restaurants and bars.

There is a firm belief that there is a significant risk for volunteers who have contact with people in the Olympic bubble, then go home to their families on public transport, who could very well be the ones who are contributing to this superspreader event.

From a moral standpoint, it is inconceivable that the Games should be held during a global pandemic, wasting money when so many people in the world are still dying.

What is really worrying the Japanese public is that little more than two per cent of the population have received the vaccine so far. Alarm bells are ringing that the Olympics are taking a priority over the vaccination programme.

A recent opinion poll showed 72 per cent of Japanese citizens want the Games to be cancelled or postponed again. Meanwhile, an online petition headlined, “Stop Tokyo Olympics”, has garnered more than 300,000 signatures since it launched last week.

Expert opinion

Professor Kentaro Iwata, who heads the division of infectious diseases at Kobe University Hospital, said: “This is not the right time and place to hold the Olympic Games. Some nations such as India are completely out of control. Many lives of people are at stake. Putting it altogether, this is not the right time to celebrate a huge human sport activity.”

Professor Iwata shot to prominence at the start of the pandemic when he boarded the coronavirus-hit Diamond Princess cruise ship and posted a YouTube video highlighting the poor infection control measures. Now he is similarly critical of the measures in place for Tokyo 2020.

“The measures are fairly sufficient to protect the athletes but the security of the surrounding people – such as coaches, drivers, media – are not really guaranteed under these measures,” says Iwata, who believes all spectators should be banned from the Games, not just those from overseas.

It recently emerged that Tokyo 2020 organisers had asked for 500 extra nurses to leave their hospitals and volunteer at the Games, with 10,000 medical professionals needed at the event overall.

Professor Iwata added: “They are trying to hold the Games and not minding the health of people because of the financial incentives.”

Holding the Games could set back the global fight against Covid-19. A risk of new variants of concern emerging and of infections being taken back to other countries should be of real concern, and particularly what happens after the Olympics.

Team GB athletes

Team GB’s top talent seemingly have no such concerns about how secure their bubble might be.

Olympic champion swimmer Adam Peaty says, “You are only as safe as your own behaviour… I don’t think it’s any different from being here. It’s about trusting the organisers but really it comes down to your own behaviour and making sure you are doing everything possible to not get Covid-19.”

Athletes will not have to quarantine when they arrive in Tokyo, but they will have daily coronavirus tests. They must wear masks except when eating, drinking, sleeping, training, or competing, and their movement will be restricted to their accommodation, training and competition venues.

Team GB have asked the Government if their athletes can receive both doses of the vaccine before they go to Japan, but they also have the option of using Pfizer jabs donated to the International Olympic Committee.

Team GB insists they are a very conditioned team in terms of Covid mitigation and have said they have every confidence that all 370 Team GB athletes will be on the start line fit and well and 100 per cent ready to compete.

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Asia, China, Government, History, Japan, North Korea, Politics, United Nations, United States

Essay: North Korea’s revenge for Japan’s forced occupation of Korea (pre-1945)

ASIA

THE North Korean regime of Kim Jong-un very deliberately chose Japan for its greatest act of provocation to date.

Crucially, it wanted to demonstrate the vulnerability of America’s key ally in East Asia – though Kim was playing on North Koreans’ savagely bitter memories of Imperial Japan’s 35-year occupation of Korea until 1945.

Japanese was imposed as the only permitted language in schools, but few Koreans were able to master it well enough to get good jobs.

Any new businesses were owned and run by the Japanese. Only a handful of Koreans were allowed to go on to higher education.

The Thirties were the height of Emperor Hirohito’s Great East Asia Co-Prosperity sphere, an initiative that purported to benefit all of East Asia but which, in reality, had the Japanese installed as the master race and ultimate beneficiaries.

Koreans were dragooned for forced labour and to be cannon fodder in Hirohito’s armies, while some 200,000 women were turned into sex slaves.

At that time Japan’s armies occupied a vast swathe of territory from Korea to New Guinea, and the troops needed company on garrison duty.

So-called ‘comfort women’ were provided by their caring imperial government – Korean women who were shipped around Hirohito’s Pacific Empire as well as into occupied China. They were not only degraded into forced prostitution, but faced the risk of being bombed by the Allies when they attacked Japanese bases.

After World War II, the ‘comfort women’ were deplorably treated by their own people.

They were regarded as collaborators and shunned. In North Korea – Korea was divided into North and South in the aftermath of the war – a charge of collaboration with the Japanese could mean death.

Imperial Japan neither apologised nor paid compensation. In South Korea today, the legacy of this exploitation is still seen as a humiliation for which Japan has not made amends.

Stoking more than a century of Korean-Japanese antagonism is part of Kim’s plan to split America’s allies. At the same time, he is bolstering his dynasty and ramping up national feeling by reminding North Koreans of the potent myth of his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, as a resistance hero, defying the Japanese.

In response to the North Korean threat, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is trying to push through changes to his country’s post-war ‘pacifist’ constitution which renounces war and ‘the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.’ And while other players in the regions such as South Korea, China and the Philippines don’t like Kim’s aggression either, they have lurking fears of Japanese rearmament.

What is most alarming for Abe is North Korea’s ability to overfly Japan. Japan’s Patriot missile defence didn’t intercept Kim’s rocket – but it was not because Tokyo chose restraint.

It couldn’t have stopped the missile if it wanted to, because it was launched from a new site in North Korea, most likely from a mobile launcher, and in a very unexpected direction.

This brought the issue of Japan acquiring a nuclear deterrent to the fore.

For millions of Japanese, the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, destroyed by atomic bombs in 1945, is the only argument needed against going nuclear. The Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in 2011 has made even civil nuclear power controversial.

But North Korea’s apparent impunity and America’s dithering have brought out Japanese hawks who say their country must go nuclear. Washington is against such a move, but after events earlier this week Japan can legitimately ask if it can really rely on its ally to deter an attack.

 

JAPAN’S role in the world economy is huge and its forces – for the purposes of self-defence under that post-war constitution – are impressive. Since 1945, it has built up a large army and air force, and one of the biggest navies in the world (although the U.S. has made sure Japan lacks aircraft carriers capable of offensive action).

Given Japan’s mix of high-tech industry and nuclear power stations, it could make a nuclear bomb quickly. But there is another player in the region – China’s reaction to such a development would be off the scale.

In Europe, in the seven decades since the end of World War II, the idea of a war between the old enemies seems incredible. But in East Asia, while American power has kept the peace between Japan and her old foes, the deep-rooted enmity between the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese is never far from the surface. Disputes over sea borders, for instance, are just one symptom of the distrust between these nations.

So, while there is method and history attached to Kim’s madness, it does leave the Japanese government facing a huge dilemma. Whether the U.S. will still be able to bear influence over the direction that Japan’s military will take – in being able to properly defend itself –  is likely to be an issue that will gain increasing traction in the weeks and months ahead.

  • Appendage

Koreas Timeline

Koreas: Historical timeline

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China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, United Nations, United States

The United States warns: ‘be prepared for military action against North Korea’

NORTH KOREA

south-korea-us-military-drill

The United States is prepared for military action against the threat posed by North Korea.

America’s National Security Adviser, Lieutenant General HR McMaster, has said America should be “prepared” to take military action against North Korea.

McMaster has called on other world powers to prevent the rebellious regime from developing a nuclear arsenal, saying the state was acting in “open defiance of the international community”.

Although he said the Trump administration would prefer to “work with others” to resolve the issue “short of military action”, he said the US must be prepared for its armed forces to intervene.

“North Korea poses a grave threat to the United States, our great allies in the region, South Korea and Japan … but also to China and others. And so, it’s important, I think, for all of us to confront this regime,” he said.

He added: “This regime is pursuing the weaponisation of a missile with a nuclear weapon. This is something that we know we cannot tolerate … The President has made clear that he is going to resolve this issue one way or another.”

“It may mean ratcheting up those sanctions even further and it also means being prepared for military operations if necessary.”

President Donald Trump has said he would “not be happy” if North Korea carried out another missile test, adding that his Chinese counterpart President Xi Jinping would likely feel the same.

He refused to say whether this meant military action, saying: “We shouldn’t be announcing all our moves. It is a chess game. I just don’t want people to know what my thinking is.”

Mr Trump also called the North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un “a pretty smart cookie” for being able to hang onto power after taking over the isolationist state at a young age.

On Saturday, a North Korean mid-range ballistic missile appeared to fail shortly after launch, the third such failure this month.

North Korean ballistic missile tests are banned by the United Nations because they are seen as part of the North’s drive to produce a nuclear-armed missile that could reach the US mainland.

  • 02 May 2017

– Japan sends its biggest warship to defend U.S. supply vessel in the Korean peninsula

Japan is to deploy its biggest warship to help protect the threat posed by North Korea. It will accompany a U.S. supply vessel as tensions continue to mount in neighbouring waters over North Korea’s missile tests. This will be the first Japanese operation since the East Asian country relaxed laws limiting its military activity. Japan is at serious risk of being attacked by North Korea, not least because it is now a close US ally.

The U.S. supply vessel has been dispatched to refuel American naval forces in the region, including the Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group that North Korea has threatened to sink.

Under conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan has been gradually expanding the role of its heavily-regulated military. The country’s post-World War II constitution means it can only use force in cases of self-defence.

A 2015 update expanded this to cover some acts of “collective self-defence,” such as protecting the equipment of an ally who is defending Japan.

Japan’s helicopter carrier, the Izumo, is 249 meters long and can carry up to nine helicopters, according to military records.

It will depart from Yokosuka, south of Tokyo, to join the U.S. ship, and protect it on its journey to the sea off Shikoku in western Japan.

North Korea launched a missile test on Saturday. U.S. and South Korean officials said the test, from an area north of the North Korean capital Pyongyang, appeared to have failed, in what would be the North’s fourth consecutive unsuccessful missile test since March.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said he would not rule out the possibility of military action against the dictatorship. Mr Trump said Americans should not underestimate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s intelligence, and added: “We have a situation that we just cannot let — we cannot let what’s been going on for a long period of years continue.”

The Korean War between the capitalist South and communist North, which paused in 1953 with a ceasefire, has never formally ended. U.S. troops were embroiled in the conflict.

– North Korea warns of nuclear test ‘at any time’

North Korea Fifth Nuclear Test

Pyongyang has promised to test its nuclear and ballistic missile capability on a regular basis. The United States says it is ready to attack North Korea if it conducts another nuclear test.

North Korea has warned today that it will carry out a nuclear test “at any time and at any location” set by its leadership, in the latest rhetoric to fuel jitters in the region.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula have been running high for weeks, with signs that the North might be preparing a long-range missile launch or a sixth nuclear test – and with Washington refusing to rule out a military strike in response.

A spokesman for the North’s foreign ministry said Pyongyang was “fully ready to respond to any option taken by the US”.

The regime will continue bolstering its “pre-emptive nuclear attack” capabilities unless Washington scrapped its hostile policies, he said in a statement carried by the state-run KCNA news agency.

“The DPRK’s measures for bolstering the nuclear force to the maximum will be taken in a consecutive and successive way at any moment and any place decided by its supreme leadership,” the spokesman added, apparently referring to a sixth nuclear test and using the North’s official name, the Democratic Republic of Korea.

The North has carried out five nuclear tests in the last 11 years and is widely believed to be making progress towards its dream of building a missile capable of delivering a warhead to the continental United States.

It raises the tone of its warnings every spring, when Washington and Seoul carry out joint exercises it condemns as rehearsals for invasion, but this time fears of conflict have been fuelled by a cycle of threats from both sides.

The joint drills have just ended, but naval exercises are continuing in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) with a US strike group led by the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson.

The Pyongyang foreign ministry spokesman said if the North was not armed with “the powerful nuclear force”, Washington would have “committed without hesitation the same brigandish aggression act in Korea as what it committed against other countries”.

The statement reasserts the North’s long-running rhetoric on its military capabilities.

Seoul also regularly warns that Pyongyang can carry out a test whenever it decides to do so.

Pyongyang’s latest attempted show of force was a failed missile test on Saturday that came just hours after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pressed the UN Security Council to do more to push the North into abandoning its weapons programme.

Tillerson warned the UN Security Council last week of “catastrophic consequences” if the world does not act and said that military options for dealing with the North were still “on the table”.

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