Wikileaks Reveals Boring Stuff About Japan [ #cablegate ]
The whole internet is abuzz about WikiLeaks’ releasing thousands of secret American diplomatic cables. The leak has led to juicy stories about rude and vulgar British royals and China acting as a conduit for North Korea’s arms sales.
The leaked stash contains a huge number of cables from the U.S. embassy in Tokyo, so we can expect some big Japan news stories soon. At the moment, however, journalists are still busy trying to read all the cables, so only a few rather dull tidbids about Japan have made their way into the papers. Here are three links that I found this morning.
We’ve got Masami Ito of the Japan Times writing about a classified transmission between the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and the State Department from May 2009, with Taro Aso’s views on China’s leadership:
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was “very tired and seemed under a lot of pressure,” in the eyes of former Prime Minister Taro Aso when they met in Beijing in April 2009, according to a classified cable exposed by WikiLeaks…..Aso attributed his description of Wen to the fallout from the global economic crisis, while President Hu Jintao seemed “confident and relaxed.”
And the WSJ finding a 2010 transmission with vague statements about how North Korea attempted to reach out to the DPJ government:
Kim [South Korea's National Security Adviser Kim Sung-hwan] concurred with Campbell’s [Kurt M. Campbell, U.S. Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs] assessment that the DPJ was “completely different” from the LDP and agreed it was important for the DJP to coordinate with Seoul and Washington as it made preliminary overtures to Pyongyang. The North Koreans, Kim said, were clearly using several different channels to “knock on the DPJ’s door.” Kim acknowledged Campbell’s point that it was important to reach out directly to key DPJ officials like Foreign Minister Okada and Finance Minister Naoto Kan.
Iain Martin of the WSJ found made up a parody cable about how life is dull for U.S. embassy staff in Tokyo:
“Television is very big in Japan, as is anything else that involves technology. So we watch a lot of Japanese TV. There also isn’t much else for the staff here to do of an evening, frankly. And it helps keep up the language skills. Occasionally we go for a walk, and on Thanksgiving we took in one of those karaoke bars. Roger’s rendition of Living on a Prayer was scored a success by the locals. But they were less impressed by the impersonation of Lady Gaga, performed by (redacted) from the industrial espionage department. So in the evening we tend to watch television. They have this show where…” (continues for 200 words, before moving into an in-depth analysis of lessons that can be learned from Japan’s botched attempts to deal with its long-running deflation problem, and its impact on Japanese political culture.)
- Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
- Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
