China's Legitimacy Problem

By now the statistics of China’s rise are well-known. It has the world’s second largest gross domestic product (GDP). It will likely overtake U.S. GDP in the next decade. It is the world’s second largest spender on defense. It aims to build a blue-water navy, including aircraft carriers. It likely already has the missile and drone ability to deny the U.S. Navy the ability to operate inside the “first island chain” (from southern Japan south through Taiwan and the Philippines to the South China Sea) without unacceptable losses. It has the world’s largest population: one in seven persons today is a Chinese national.

As Hugh White has argued, the U.S. has never faced a greater challenger in its history as a world power. The U.S. roughly emerged as a great power in the 1880s. In that time, it has faced four major challengers: German nationalism in WWI, fascism in World War II, communism in the Cold War, and millenarian jihadism in the war on terror. Only the Soviet challenger ever came close to the U.S. in terms of power resources. Hitler and bin Laden were arguably the most terrifying, but Stalinist power was much greater, and even that collapsed. China however exceeds all these in the resources it can muster. It is vastly better governed than the U.S.S.R. was, and far larger economically than Germany, Japan, and various Islamist states and groups. China is catching up, fast.

Chinese hegemony in the western Pacific is not inevitable. For one thing, it has many opponents. But for all sorts of reasons, a full-blown containment line from India east and north to Japan is increasingly unlikely. India is hesitant. Southeast Asia desperately wants to trade with China and be pulled up along with its rise, not balance against it. South Korea is as likely to align with Beijing against Japan as vice versa. That leaves Japan, Taiwan, and the U.S. This might be enough to deter Chinese ambition, but Japan has been struggling for decades, and the U.S. is overextended. White’s prediction that some kind of Sino-U.S. compromise is the best shot to avoid a disastrous Sino-U.S. conflict seems ever more likely. Chinese power in East Asia will likely have to be recognized at some point in the next two decades.

The follow-on question then for China is whether it can legitimate its incipient regional hegemony. Can it demonstrate to other local players that Chinese regional dominance does not simply mean tyranny? It is often suggested that China today seeks an updated tribute system. If so, this is not as bad as it sounds (assuming there is no alternative to Chinese hegemony). The tribute system demanded formal hierarchy but permitted informal near-equality. Specifically, it left the tributaries’ domestic politics alone (even in the closest tributary, Korea), and exerted only mild influence over foreign policy. That sounds an awful lot like what the U.S. already does in Latin America and Europe.

But American hegemony is moderated by a reasonably liberal ideology that gives participant states a say in the larger framework. States like Germany or Japan are not subjects of the United States, they are allies, and their exit option is real. If the U.S. is an “empire,” it is rather soft one. When France withdrew from NATO’s military integration in 1966, and when the Philippines voted the Americans out of their bases in 1992, the U.S. did nothing. When Soviet “allies” tried to exit the Warsaw Pact, they were crushed. In turn then, the Eastern European allies-turned-subjects gave up, slacked on their contribution to “socialist fraternity,” and became a burden for the Soviet Empire rather than an asset.

This should be a cautionary lesson for China. China is indeed powerful. That power will gain it regional fear and a grudging respect. To cross China is risky. But for power to last through the ups-and-downs of history, it must be more than just bullying. As Richard Armitage once said, “China will never be great until it stands for something more than itself.” Today, China is little more than that. Instead, as David Shambaugh put it: “China is, in essence, a very narrow-minded, self-interested, realist state, seeking only to maximize its own national interests and power. It cares little for global governance and enforcing global standards of behavior (except its much-vaunted doctrine of noninterference in the internal affairs of countries). Its economic policies are mercantilist and its diplomacy is passive. China is also a lonely strategic power, with no allies and experiencing distrust and strained relationships with much of the world.

This strategy is a recipe for short-term success (free-riding on the U.S. to continue to rise cheaply), medium-term regional discomfort (nearby states bristle at selfish “leadership”), and long-term decline (those nearby countries, upset at their poor treatment earlier, abandon China later in its time of need). As China rises dramatically over its neighbors, they will look for input into its choices, a sense of rules that give them some kind of place in a system, rather than serfdom in an extra-territorial despotism, and a language of power, a legitimating ideology that places restraints on Chinese power rather than simply exalting it. China’s current behavior in Xinxiang and Tibet, where Han nationalism and strict central control are being pushed onto a resistant periphery, are not good signs. China needs to build something more conciliatory and appealing to non-Chinese, akin to the U.S. liberal order that has netted the U.S. so many allies around the world.

This legitimating ideology must be some kind of intellectual framework, not raw ethnocentrism. Nationalism is not enough, even if it appeals to more than a billion people. Much as Putin’s aggressive Russian nationalism has alienated much of the Russian and post-Soviet periphery, so will China’s current ideology of nationalist grievance and resentment. Even North Korea and Myanmar, precisely the kind of repressive autocracies that should be comfortable with Beijing, have tacked away from it as they have increasingly realized that “alliance” with China means subordination in practice. Something more positive and supra-national is necessary.

Marxism, of course, sought to be this. It laid out an ideology of formal equality, and “socialist fraternity” might not have been a fraud if the Soviet Union had been more genuinely communist and less a cover for Russian nationalism and imperialism. But that is gone now of course. Liberalism too offers such a language of legitimated power that might re-assure others. U.S. liberalism has ensured reasonably good treatment of Canada and Mexico over the years: both have more or less stuck with the U.S. despite a huge power imbalance. But domestic liberalism is a non-starter for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

China’s own history suggests a neo-tribute system perhaps. That was indeed supra-ethnic. It was based a general willingness of peripheral states to accept the cultural superiority of Chinese Confucianism and the suzerainty of the emperor. While leaving peripheral states more or less free from intervention, it did require what would be today an unacceptable level of humiliation and groveling. Prestige-accrual was the central Chinese reward of the tribute system – the recognition and exaltation by others of China as the “Middle Kingdom” and center of civilization, even if the tributaries didn’t really believe that. But modern Asia is both highly nationalistic and post-Confucian in its international relations. China would struggle mightily to bring back such a feudal order convincingly. It would be asking Asia to swallow a lot of nationalist pride to re-introduce the old hierarchy and therefore strikes me as unlikely.

In brief, as Chinese power over Asia rises, it will increasingly need to define its position as more than just realpolitik and nationalist glory-seeking. If it cannot voluntarily win over its neighbors to cooperation, Chinese hegemony will be little more than a despotism. Perhaps that is all that Chinese leaders care for, but I doubt it. Most of us wish to be loved more than feared; China’s soft power exertions suggest that the CCP feels that too. But to date, the CCP has no real legitimating language of power for its neighborhood. Hence, for all its might, it continues to stand alone. Finding that legitimating framework, lifting China above just being a grievance-fueled regional bully, is the next large debate in Chinese foreign policy: the floor is open to suggestions.

Robert Kelly

TEPCO Contaminated Water Disposal Plan

The operator of Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant on Thursday unveiled a plan to dump scrubbed water directly into the ocean, sparking concerns over whether it would be properly decontaminated.

The plan, which still needs approval from the nuclear agency and local residents, comes as workers are locked in a daily struggle to safely store radioactive water used to cool reactors that went into meltdown after Japan’s 2011 quake-tsunami disaster.

The tainted water is stored in hundreds of on-site tanks but operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) has admitted that it’s running out of space.

It is also fighting to contain contaminated groundwater around the plant from seeping into the ocean, more than three years after the worst atomic crisis in a generation.

The vast utility said it now wants to start pumping out the underground water, purify it with a state-of-the-art cleaning system and then release it back into the ocean.

“But we know we have to get an agreement from the relevant government authorities, the prefecture and local fishing unions,” a company spokesman said.

The firm says it would significantly cut down on the amount of tainted groundwater flowing under the plant, after announcing earlier this year that it was building an “ice wall”—freezing the ground around the plant—to staunch the flow.

But the firm has long faced criticism over delays in disclosing key information and for continued safety problems at the crippled facility.

“We’ve not been told about details of this plan to release water into the ocean… but I think most of the fishermen will be against it,” said Kenji Nakada, an official at the Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations.

Hisayo Takada from Greenpeace Japan questioned the plan’s safety.

“I also wonder if TEPCO has a backup plan for the worst case scenario, such as the purification facility not working effectively,” she said.

The plant’s current purification system—Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS)—has been hit by a series of glitches since trial operations began last year. 

 AFP

Shinzo Abe's Military Coup

Posing in a fighter

 The Abe regime's reinterpretation of the constitution, to put it bluntly, Japan has suffered a military coup. Abe has boasted that what he did was comparable to the Meiji revolution. Even The Asahi Newspaper editorialized that black is now officially white. 

A constitution that clearly and forever renounced war and preparations for war is now said to mean that the Japanese military can join Washington in its wars for oil and natural gas in the Middle East or in the South China Sea under the guise of protecting Japan's essential energy supplies. Japanese military operations need not be limited to collaborations - termed collective security - with the US.  Japanese military operations can also now be launched with nations with which Japan is deemed to close relations, for example the Philippines, Vietnam or India - independent of the United States. 

A Cabinet decision also can clear the way for first-strike Japanese attacks against China or North Korea has been opened. Further, we now read that Abe plans to seek the right to dispatch Japanese military forces anywhere in the world without consulting the Diet. 

Japan appears no longer to be a constitutional democracy. The "reinterpretation" reflects total disregard not only for the Constitution, but for democracy itself.  The Constitution was functionally amended by fiat, rather than by the democratic process required by Article 96 - and it is being imposed despite the opposition of the majority of Japanese people.  There was no bill created in the House of Representatives and voted on by the whole Diet.  There was then no mandate to the Japanese citizenry by way of ballot.  Instead the Abe regime simply by demand changed the Constitution.  Abe is leading a coup.

One day after the Constitution was trashed

 In addition to its further opening the way for Japanese militarism, this autocratic reinterpretation means that in the future the constitutional commitments to human rights could be equally vulnerable. We need to take the mainstream Japanese press seriously when it writes that Abe is "imitating" the early Showa Era, when the military intelligence protection act left "the public feeling unable to speak freely."  

Abe's disrespect for the law is not limited to the Constitution. He is apparently also acting illegally as he presses construction of the massive new US Marine Air Base at Henoko.

Despite Abe's nationalist credentials, the reinterpretation needs also to be understood in the context of Japan's client state role.  In the last Armitage-Nye report, issued as Abe returned to power, we saw the US stepping up the pressure for Japan's leaders to revise the Constitution. Why?  Because as it works to compensate for the relative decline of the United States, Washington is demanding more of its allies. 

All of this helps to explain why, immediately after the reinterpretation, it was announced that a Maritime Self Defense officer was being dispatched to serve at the Pentagon with the US Chief of Naval Operations to "enhanc[e] the operational integration of the US Navy and the MSDF [Japan's Maritime Self Defense Force].

Dr. Joseph Gerson

Aiwa Matsuo's Killer Kept Cat Head In Fridge

Hearse Leaves Ceremony Hall With Matsuo's Body

 

A 16-year-old Japanese schoolgirl who allegedly confessed to decapitating a classmate kept a severed cat head in her refrigerator, a report said Tuesday.

The teen was arrested last week on suspicion of murdering fellow student Aiwa Matsuo, 15, after police discovered her dismembered body on a bed in the suspect’s home in the western Japanese city of Sasebo.

The grisly case has attracted major media attention in a country with one of the world’s lowest crime rates, as commentators search for answers to explain the teenager’s pattern of increasingly violent behaviour.

Some reports have suggested the parents of the girl—who wasn’t named because she is a minor—desperately sought to have her hospitalised but were rebuffed.

On Tuesday, the Mainichi newspaper said investigators found a severed cat head in a refrigerator and about one million yen ($10,000) in cash at the apartment where the girl lived alone.

She had reportedly been living there since April on the advice of psychiatrists after she battered her father with a baseball bat.

Her father—who remarried about three months ago after the girl’s mother died of cancer last year—is believed to have given the cash to his daughter, who reportedly told investigators that she “wanted to dissect someone”.

The man has been quoted as saying that “my daughter’s act can never be forgiven”.

Also Tuesday, the Mainichi and Jiji Press news agency reported that the suspect told her stepmother that she planned to murder a person after growing bored of killing animals.

A day before the incident, her parents consulted with a psychiatrist and tried to get the girl hospitalised but the request was turned down due to lack of space at the facility, Jiji said.

The father then called a local child welfare office, but a security guard told him to telephone back after the weekend. 

Jiji

Rice Contaminated 12 Miles From Fukushima Daiichi

Rice Rejected at JA center in Minami Soma, Miyagi Prefecture

 

Officials from the agriculture ministry told reporters on Tuesday that efforts to clean up debris at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant may have been the source of cesium that contaminated rice crops about twelve and a half miles away in the city of Minami Soma since last year.

The officials suggested that the radioactive materials were transported by winds during debris removal work conducted in August 2013 at the Unit 3 reactor building and called for TEPCO, operator of the plant, to take measures to address the contamination.

According to the agriculture ministry in 2013 rice harvested from 14 paddies in Minami Soma contained cesium levels exceeding the 100 becquerels per kilogram safety limit set by the Japanese government. Investigations found that the contamination was found on the outside of the husks.

NHK is reporting that TEPCO told the agriculture ministry that it will begin using chemicals to suppress dust from spreading during future debris removal operations at the Unit 1 reactor building.

TEPCO plans to conduct debris removal operations at the Unit 1 reactor after they disassemble the covers that were installed to help stem the continuous release of radioactive materials from the crippled building from escaping.

NHK

The Coming Failure Of Abenomics

Kiyoshi Okonogi

People who have placed high expectations on Abenomics to move Japan out of its deflationary state will soon be tasting bitter disappointment.

A major reason is that a huge injection of funds into the economy through monetary and fiscal measures has propped up Japan’s gross domestic product. However, that course cannot last for long.

The Abe administration’s package of economic policies is designed in part to raise prices and end the deflationary trend that has long hampered the economy.

On that point, the Bank of Japan’s unprecedented monetary easing along with the weakening of the yen against foreign currencies have improved the profit picture of export industries as well as increased Tokyo stock prices.

The problem, however, goes beyond simply pushing up consumer prices.

If concerns about jobs and social security subside, personal consumption and capital investment would recover. That, in turn, would push up overall demand. Although that is the desired course in achieving a recovery of consumer prices, the scenario is not unfolding in Japan, as witnessed by the decline in wages in real terms.

When the International Monetary Fund released its world economic outlook last week, Olivier Blanchard, director of the Research Department, told a news conference that Japan’s “growth has come largely from fiscal stimulus and from exports. For growth to be sustained, which it will need to be, consumption and investment have to take the relay.” He went on later to report, “Japan is teetering on the brink of recession.”

Expressing concerns about the possibility that growth could slow, Blanchard added: “The Japanese government will continue to face the challenge of achieving enough fiscal consolidation to reassure debt holders while not slowing down the recovery. And that’s going to be--for many years to come--a difficult challenge.”

The IMF forecast was readjusted as well last week to a 1.7 percent real growth rate for Japan in 2014, but that was predicted to fall to below 1 percent in 2015.

The forecast means that growth will eventually slow down even if a supplementary budget on the scale of about 5.5 trillion yen ($54 billion) can overcome the negative effects of the consumption tax hike which took place April 1.

Even defenders of Abenomics are raising concerns that economic growth cannot be maintained unless additional stimulus measures are implemented through large-scale public works projects and deregulation.

If Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decides to raise the consumption tax rate even further to 10 percent in autumn 2015, a chorus of calls will rise from within the ruling coalition and the business sector pleading for another round of huge economic stimulation measures in the form of public works projects.

However, economic resuscitation cannot be achieved if comprehensive measures to strengthen the jobs and welfare situation and to push energy policy away from nuclear power generation are placed on the back burner to concentrate on further dependence on huge outlays of BOJ funds and fiscal measures.

Even if additional deregulation measures are included, they will likely be mere copies of the measures implemented when Junichiro Koizumi was prime minister. And these steps only produced an economic recovery with no concrete results for the general public.

On the diplomatic front, the worsening of ties with China and South Korea has cast a dark shadow over the future of the Japanese economy.

If Japan continues a stance that leads to further disappointment expressed by the United States, as happened when Abe visited Yasukuni Shrine in December, political leaders will only end up hurting the economy and bringing unhappiness to the people.

TEPCO Proving A Failure With Fukushima Daiichi

Speaking on a NHK Sunday news program, Kyoto University assistant professor Hiroaki Koide commented that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has become like a swamp filled with radioactive material.

Koide was referring to the fact that, ever since the meltdowns triggered by a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has been relying on a constant influx of water to keep the plant cool. The process of flowing past the reactors renders the water radioactive, however, so radioactive water has been accumulating at the plant for years. In that time, multiple leaks have caused the contaminated water to spill into the surrounding area, creating a sort of radioactive swamp.

Koide said that he has been calling on TEPCO for a year to shift from using water for cooling to using air. The company insists that that is impossible, as it does not know the exact locations of the melted down fuel rods inside the plant.

Water has been at the heart of TEPCO's problems keeping the failed plant shut down since day one. During the initial meltdown, the company funneled large amounts of seawater past the melting down reactors as an emergency cooling mechanism. This corroded sensitive equipment and many of the valves and pipes used for cooling the plant. Leaks have been springing up ever since.

In addition to the radioactive cooling water, groundwater has also started seeping into the basements of the reactors, where it, too, becomes radioactive. TEPCO has been pumping the contaminated water out of these basements and storing it in giant tanks, or simply ejecting it into the Pacific Ocean. Although TEPCO claims that the radiation levels in the water are low enough that dumping it in the ocean will not cause any harm, the company's own tests have shown radiation levels above the safe exposure threshold set by TEPCO.

The vast quantities of radioactive water accumulating on-site are a significant threat to the health of workers attempting to clean up the plant. They are also interfering with the cleanup operation itself. For example, a series of underground trenches connecting the turbine buildings for reactors 2 and 3 have been filling up with contaminated water leaking into them from nearby containment vessels. Eventually, these trenches will fill up, and the water will spill into the surrounding environment. The Nuclear Regulation Authority called this possibility the "most serious source of concern" and has ordered TEPCO to remove all the water from these trenches.

But 11,000 tons of radioactive water are not easy to move, and the amount of water in the trenches is growing every day. To address both of these problems, TEPCO has attempted to construct an "ice wall": a network of pipes surrounding the trenches, through which a subzero coolant will be piped, in order to freeze the trenches solid.

Coolant began flowing on April 28 and was supposed to freeze the trenches within a month. As of Saturday, August 2, no ice walls had yet formed only a slushy goo. TEPCO claims that the procedure is failing because too much water is flowing around the connecting joints of the pipes.

The failure to freeze the trenches is widely viewed as an ominous sign for TEPCO's much more ambitious plans for a 1.5 km (0.93 mile) -long, 30 m (100 ft) -deep ice wall completely encircling the number 1 and 4 reactors, to prevent any more groundwater from flowing down into the buildings' basements.

The larger ice wall is intended to be operational in March, but work is proceeding slowly. Due to their heavy radiation-proof clothing, workers can only be out between 5 pm and 11 pm without risking heat stroke.

Kyodo

Okunoshima

Ōkunoshima is a small island located in the Inland Sea of Japan between Hiroshima and Shikoku. During World War II the island used to be a top-secret military site manufacturing poison gas for chemical warfare. Today, it’s completely overrun with cute, fluffy bunnies who are the island’s main inhabitants.

Between 1929 and 1945, Okunoshima Island was a chemical warfare production site for the Imperial Japanese Army that produced over six kilotons of mustard gas. The island was chosen for its isolation, conducive to security, and because it was far enough from Tokyo and other areas in case of disaster. The program was shrouded in secrecy and during its 16 years of operation, Okunoshima was even erased from maps. Residents and potential employees were not told what the plant was manufacturing and everything was kept secret.

With the end of the war, documents concerning the plant were burned and Allied Occupation Forces disposed of the gas either by dumping, burning, or burying it, and people were told to be silent about the project. 

According to some sources, the rabbits were brought to Okunoshima to test the effects of the poison and released by workers when World War II ended. Others sources claim that a group of schoolchildren were on a field trip, when they released eight rabbits in 1971. Regardless, the original bunnies of Okunoshima and their successive generations of offspring thrived in their predator-free environment.

Today the 700,000 square-meter island is home to more than 300 rabbits that roam freely, earning the nickname of Usagi Shima, or Rabbit Island. Though wild, the rabbits on the island are used to humans and will approach visitors in search of a snack, and hop on to laps. Visitors are allowed to pet and feed the animals, but in an effort to preserve the bunny population, dogs and cats are not allowed on the island. Pellets of rabbit food are sold for ¥100 a cup at the Kyukamura Okunoshima resort hotel located on the island. The hotel has recently seen a steep increase in visitors to the island since knowledge of the island’s furry residents spread on the Internet.

 

Although most visitors to the island come here to see the bunnies, Rabbit Island’s poison gas legacy isn’t over. Okunoshima is also home to the Poison Gas Museum opened in 1988, in order to alert as many people as possible to the dreadful truths about poison gas.

Some argue the island might not be completely safe as there has never been any major decontamination of the whole island. It’s rumoured that there are several sealed locations on the island where workers reportedly buried gas when the war ended.

Three TEPCO Executives Could Be Prosecuted

TEPCO Execs Could Be Prosecuted

A July 31 judgment by the Tokyo No. 5 Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution that three former executives of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) merit indictment over the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster not only prods prosecutors to review their decision not to indict for their criminal responsibility, but is also a sharp rebuke to TEPCO and regulatory authorities for neglecting safety.

The committee composed of regular citizens voted in favor of indicting former TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata and two former vice presidents, Sakae Muto and Ichiro Takekuro. The recommendation made clear the perception gap between experts and ordinary citizens about nuclear safety as well as the double standards vis-a-vis prosecution concerning decisions to indict nor not.

''This kind of judgment was possible,'' a senior prosecutor said.

The citizens' committee strongly denounced TEPCO executives at the time of the nuclear crisis triggered by the March 11, 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, and requested prosecutors to reinvestigate the case. The committee pointed out that electric power companies and regulatory authorities probably shared the view that nuclear power plants were safe. It also stressed that the former TEPCO executives cannot shirk their responsibility for the Fukushima disaster simply because they had held fast to the nuclear safety myth.

What divided opinions between prosecutors and the independent judicial panel was the issue of preparedness for an accident caused by an unpredictable killer tsunami. There is an enormous perception gap between citizens who had sought every preparatory step imaginable, and prosecution and courts with conventional thinking.

The prosecution must substantiate how foreseeable a disaster is if looking to build a case for criminal negligence. It is not enough simply to recognize an abstract danger, but prosecutors are required to prove that the accused could specifically predict the disaster. The former TEPCO executives had maintained that they could not foresee the nuclear disaster because of an unanticipated huge tsunami.

In the course of the prosecution's investigations, the focal point was on how to overturn TEPCO's argument after revealing the state of research on earthquakes and tsunami. They focused on two findings, the first a governmental earthquake study task force announcement in 2002 that tsunami triggered by an earthquake may occur off Fukushima Prefecture; and second, a 2008 TEPCO forecast shows that a tsunami as high as 15.7 meters could strike in a worst case scenario.

Prosecutors determined that researchers for the 2002 study could not imagine a natural disaster comparable to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, and the 2008 forecast outlined the most severe scenario, such that TEPCO could not predict the huge tsunami that devastated the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

On the other hand, the Tokyo No. 5 Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution said damage from a nuclear plant accident would be heavy and effects from such an accident would be long-lasting. Nuclear power plant operator executives are required to pay extremely careful attention and shoulder personal responsibility for the safety of nuclear power plants, the committee said.

The panel went on to criticize TEPCO for failing to predict a huge tsunami as one requiring preparatory steps and neglecting to follow through on the 2008 forecast. TEPCO could have avoided damage or at least minimized it had the utility installed power generators on higher ground, updated the emergency manual and conducted drills, the panel said.

Prosecutors will question Katsumata and other former TEPCO executives. But a senior prosecutor says the case has been investigated in accordance with standards permitted under previous trials. The prosecution inquest panel, however, is demanding more than that, the prosecution source said, adding the planned reinvestigation would be tough. 

Mainichi

Psychiatrist Warned Police Teen Could Kill

Murder Victim Aiwa Matsuo

A psychiatrist who examined the 16-year-old girl suspected of killing and dismembering her classmate in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, called a child consultation center in the city in June to warn that she might commit murder, but prefectural officials failed to take any action, it was learned Thursday.

Nagasaki prefectural officials said the center staff judged it would be difficult to take any measures because the psychiatrist declined to identify the girl due to privacy reasons, but the prefectural government and the prefectural assembly said they are investigating whether the center’s decision was appropriate.

The psychiatrist, whose name was known to the center, told staff there that the girl had put poisonous substances in classmates’ school lunches when she was an elementary school student, hit her father with a baseball bat when she was a junior high student and had dissected a small animal.

“If she is left as she is, she could kill someone,” the psychiatrist reportedly told center officials.

After the slaying last weekend, center officials contacted the psychiatrist and found out that the girl mentioned by the doctor was the one who was arrested for killing 15-year-old Aiwa Matsuo. The suspect’s name is being withheld because she is a minor.

A meeting of the prefectural assembly’s education and welfare committee confirmed Thursday that the phone call was made June 10 to the child consultation center.

Police on Thursday night searched the home of the suspect’s father, where the girl lived until April.

The police are looking into the arrested girl’s upbringing to determine a possible motive. According to the high school that both girls attended, the police have interviewed two first-year students.

The police have also collected information from people close to the suspect’s elementary school classmates about the allegations she had mixed a bleaching agent and other substances into school lunches.

One high-ranking Sasebo official, who declined to be named, said the municipal government did not report the incident to the city’s board of education or the municipal assembly when it occurred, thinking the elementary school’s staff would handle the matter.

AFP

Airborne Radiation Levels Soar In Miyagi

Airborne radioactive materials released during debris-clearing work at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant were found in a town 60 kilometers away on seven occasions since March 25.

Led by Teruyuki Nakajima, a professor of atmospheric physics at the University of Tokyo’s Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, the team noted a surge in concentration of airborne radioactive cesium during clean-up activities that reached the town of Marumori in neighboring Miyagi Prefecture.

The researchers said the findings show that radioactive materials were repeatedly released into the environment and reached extensive areas during debris-clearing operations.

They called on Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima plant, to take more care to prevent the spread of radioactive materials during debris-clearing operations, even if it requires implementing more costly methods.

In conducting its research, the team placed a device to collect airborne dust at the town office of Marumori, 59 kilometers north-northwest of the stricken Fukushima plant. The device collected the samples at four- or five-day intervals between December 2011 and July 2014.

The team determined that there were eight cases in which the amount of radioactive cesium in the samples were at least 10 times higher than normal levels and the material likely originated from the Fukushima plant because of wind direction and speed.

The highest level of contamination was recorded in a sample collected between July 15 to 18, last month, reaching 50 to 100 times higher than normal levels.

TEPCO began large-scale debris-clearing work at the plant on July 15. Previous research by the farm ministry and Kyoto University also showed that radioactive dust released during the work reached locations 27 km and 48 km from the plant.

In seven other cases, the amount of radioactive materials in the samples was about 10 times higher than normal. The research team reported the results of its findings to the farm ministry in May.

According to TEPCO, seven of the eight cases were recorded during the same period when the utility was doing debris-clearing work at the No. 3 reactor building.

The remaining case involved samples collected between Nov. 16-20, 2012, coinciding with an accidental water leak from a vent pipe of a cesium-absorption device at the plant.

A TEPCO official said it was unlikely that the accident caused a major release of radioactive materials like the August 2013 incident.

The utility had planned to dismantle a shroud over the No. 1 reactor building this month to start full-scale debris-clearing work around the reactor, but postponed the plan in order to strengthen measures to prevent the spread of radioactive materials during clean-up activities.

A worker at the Fukushima plant said that TEPCO has not discussed any drastic measures, such as covering the reactor with a container.

“It will likely resume debris cleanup when criticism calms down,” the worker said.

Asahi