...has been dealing with the recent calamity. Japan’s newspapers indulge in routine criticism of politicians in government, no matter what. Unfortunately, foreign reporters and commentators, including those of the Financial Times and the New York Times, fall back on copying their tone and opinion, for lack of independent knowledge. The Japanese business newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun, to take just one example, lamented the shortcomings of current government action, emphasizing the poor lines of command running from responsible politicians to the officials carrying out rescue and supply operations. This was perfectly true. But the paper failed to mention that the feebleness of such coordination was precisely the number one weakness of Japan’s political system that the founders of the DPJ had focussed on as something to be repaired. And it is indeed trying hard to overcome bureaucratic rigidity and untested chains of command and lines of communication. Those who have impatiently decided that the DPJ taking over from LDP has been Tweedledee replacing Tweedledum ought to pause and bring bring to mind how after the previous catastrophic earthquake, which struck Kobe in 1995, the central government appeared to be washing its hands of the miseries of the victims. The contrast could...

...supreme importance. Competence may mean different things for different people. One very common interpretation of the term is akin to that for professionalism. A combination of one’s education, specialised training, and thorough experience, is brought to the fore as the standard to be applied. Looking at the members of Obama’s cabinet with such a standard in mind, we are likely to conclude that in general terms they’re pretty competent. But I like to measure competence against the task at hand. My dentist is very competent, and he probably knows enough even to help me get over minor ailments: he has had medical training. But then it is time to have my heart checked, or other vital organs, I won’t go to my dentist. He is not competent to do that; in other words, he is not specifically competent. To be sure, certain specific skills can serve you in an adjoining area of activity. At a concert given years ago in Tokyo by a Dutch woodwind ensemble, the musicians delighted the audience as they produced string instruments from under their chairs with which to play an encore, and they brought the house down when together they sang a motet for their...

I have said it elsewhere on this site: the notion of a ‘marketplace of ideas’ is nonsensical (jotting 24). Ideas are not traded, and are not scarce. They infect you, may cause intellectual and emotional fever and have frequently enough brought about epidemics that changed history. For the right metaphor in this case we should stick to the field of medicine, especially now a new epidemic, also known as the ‘austerity craze’, has been spreading in three of the most important industrial areas of the world; after having been allowed, in a chronic process in Africa and Latin America, to keep poor countries poor. Today, the very efficacious political command that belts must be tightened, budgets slashed, and welfare provisions thrown overboard is threatening to help make the future of Europeans, Americans and Japanese dimmer and more miserable. Before saying anything else about it we must be clear about the fact that the seductive power of the political/economic recipes that come with the craze does not derive from historical proof that these have been successful. Quite the contrary; starving the state of the means to cater to the common good has often enough lead to the kind of social unrest...

the column this jotting refers to New crises inevitably dim older ones. Bits of the past that a nation was half-digesting intellectually may then remain undigested for a long time, perhaps forever. The current financial crisis has pushed the moral crises caused by warcrimes committed by a part of what since World War II proudly called itself “the free world” well down the memory holes in several countries. We should remember that the state of things resulting directly from the American government’s response to the terrorist attacks of the 11th of September 2001, led to lingering moral and intellectual crises on both sides of the Atlantic. Probably none of the Westpoint cadets who flung their caps into the air, after listening to their president announcing his right to attack any country that he decided was an enemy, could have imagined one of the grisly outcomes of what he had said; that perhaps several among them and certainly many soldiers serving under them would kill themselves within two, three, four or five years. One calculation arrived at in 2005 indicated that some 120 veterans would did so every week at the time. Advanced medical technology allows fifteen wounded to survive against...

...expect anonymous rumours to emerge from certain bureaucratic quarters, and they may well be amplified into a scandal to undermine the about to be formed government. In some parts of the bureaucracy there is considerable ambivalence about the need for Japan to have a political steering wheel. As I myself have found in numerous conversations over the years with Japanese officials, quite a few of them have for some time realised that the national interest is not served by the rudderless political system as a whole, and by the absence of guidance for some of their ministries in particular. But the belief is ingrained with many of these officials, and shared by important newspaper editors and commentators, that Japanese politicians are simply not competent enough to run the show. No wonder if they have rarely had an opportunity to try their hands at it. The Japanese who have been frustrated with unfulfilled expectations prompted by 16 years of promised fundamental change can only hope that their new government is given much time (and peace from scandal mongers) to work out an effective and productive collaboration between elected and career officials – simply the single greatest political problem of modern Japan....

...matters. The other one, America’s Tragedy and the Blind Free World, appeared in Japanese last autumn. It is awaiting publication in the rest of the world. These jottings are not about my personal life, but as George Orwell (and many others) reminded us, general rules are to be broken when the need seems to arise. The lives of my wife and me have been very much enriched by the birth of our son, Sebastian van Wolferen. As any author with children will probably agree, such an experience is infinitely more rewarding than seeing a book published. Here he is, at the age of 55 minutes with his first wink. The Japanese language has an expression, oya baka, for parents who annoy others with news and pictures of their children. I promise to restrain myself on this site. An article published in February 2010 by ChuoKoron On Political Rebirth, Proportion and Power about the sabotage faced by Japan’s new ruling party, and the attempt (successful as it turned out) to get rid of its first cabinet formed by Hatoyama Yukio. An article that appeared in the April and May 2011 issues of Bungei Shunju on The Dangerous Fantasy of American Leadership....