Nuclear Freeze

Japan us fast approaching its second summer since the disastrous meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, and the first one in which the country may have to make do without the output of any nuclear power station.

Other countries have frozen the building of new nuclear plants or declared moratoriums, but no country historically so dependent on nuclear power as Japan has gone virtually cold turkey. The last operational nuclear plant, a station in northern Hokkaido, flickered out in early May.

Just two years ago at this time, Japan could draw on 54 nuclear plants (not all operating at the same time) supplying about 30 per cent of the country’s electric power. At this time one year ago, even after the disaster at Fukushima, the country still had about a dozen plants on operation.

The Japanese word setsuden, meaning electricity conservation, was the byword in 2011. Tokyo Electric Power Co. owners of the Fukushima plants, was still projecting rolling blackouts. Households were urged to conserve energy; factories were ordered to cut back. Overhead lights were removed in hallways escalators were shutdown.

So far there are few signs of setsuden, this summer, at least in Tokyo. The newest addition to the capital’s skyline, the 600+ meter Sky Tree., the world’s tallest edifice which opened May 22, gleams a bright red from a thousand electric lights in the evening.

Of course, a projected 10 percent hike in electric rates for homeowners to cover the fast rising costs of importing alternative fossil fuels, mainly natural gas,  might go a long way toward encouraging more conservation. Large-energy industrial users in Tokyo have already been slapped with a 17 percent electric rates hike.

Most of the concern about possible electricity shortages is focused on the Kansai region to the west of Tokyo, including the large cities of Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto. This area is historically very dependent on nuclear power. The Kansai Electric Power Co. (Kepco) got about half its electric power from 11 nuclear reactors, all of them clustered in Fukui prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast.

Unless at least two of its reactors located in the village of Oi are restarted, the region could suffer energy shortfall of as much as 16 percent if this summer turns out to be as hot as record-breaking 2010 says the utility. That figure is hotly disputed by various sides in the nuclear debate.

But even if the summer is only average, there are peaks that could seriously strain the utility. Such a situation occurred in South Korea late last summer when parts of the country experienced major blackouts as the surplus was not enough to cover the sudden demand for electricity. Korea has 20 nuclear plants and Fukushima has wavered from reliance on nuclear power.

It should be noted that most of the reactors were in good working condition when they went off line in accordance to Japan’s national requirement that every plant shut down to undergo safety checks at 13-month intervals. By strong custom, local officials sign off on any restart. This used to be a formality but in post-Fukushima atmosphere, many local officials have been reluctant to move.

In mid-April Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and his top cabinet advisors declared the two Oi reactors were “safe enough” to resume operations, not exactly an overwhelming endorsement. The focus is on the Oi pair as they were the first to pass “stress tests” a computer simulation exercise ordered by former Prime Minister Naoto Kan in the immediate aftermath of the crisis.

The local village council in Fukui gave Oi the green light to restart the two units, subject to the endorsement by the mayor and the governor of Fukui prefecture. Ordinarily this would be enough, but the governors of neighboring prefectures have asserted themselves into the situation, claiming, they too need to be convinced of their safety.

Most prominent among them is Toru Hashimoto, the mayor of Osaka, who has taken a strong stand against nuclear power and has demanded that every locality within 100 km of the Oi plants have a say in the decision to restart. The city of Osaka is the largest shareholder in Kepco, so can make things difficult at upcoming stockholders meeting.

Noda wants to see the plants restarted to help avoid potential power blackout in this vital region. But his priorities are primarily focused on passing a bill to raise the consumption tax and fending off opposition from former party president Ichiro Ozawa, recently acquitted of campaign financing violations. Neither raising taxes nor restarting nuclear power plants is very popular, and it is a question how much political capital Noda wants to expend on two unpopular causes.

Hashimoto represents a threat that has to be handled carefully. He is widely expected to field a new political party, which some pundits think could win as many as 50 seats in parliament in any new election, effectively wiping out the Democratic Party of Japan in this region. If there are blackouts this summer, the DPJ may claim that Hashimoto’s intransigence on restarts is the reason.

“Hashimoto is not responsible for the Oi reactors; the government and Kepco are,” counters Tetsunari Iida head of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policy, and a key advisor to the Osaka mayo. He has challenged Kepco’s assessments of the projected power shortages if the Oi reactors remain off line.

Time is moving on. It takes roughly one month for an idled reactor to power up, once they have been given the go-ahead. So even if the restart order were given tomorrow, they would not be available until July at the earliest. And of course, additional delays in the restart could push things back to late summer, if in fact they contribute to the power needs of this summer at all.

Japan Goes Ballistic

Anyone watching the morning news in Tokyo might be forgiven in believing Japan is preparing to go to war. News clips show Aegis missile destroyers steaming out of port and trucks pulling boxy-looking PAC3 missiles covered with tarpaulin. Some are deployed in Tokyo in order, we’re told, “to defend the capital”.

For the fourth time in fourteen years Japan is girding for a major North Korean ballistic missile test. For several weeks Pyongyang has proclaimed its intention of launching a missile and putting a satellite into orbit on or about the 100^th birthday on April 1a5 of North Korea’s founding president Kim Il-sung.

The naval ships are headed for the East China Sea, and the missile batteries are being deployed to Okinawa, as the announced trajectory appears to be due south from its launching point on North Korea’s eastern coastline, probably skirting the big island of Kyushu and passing over Japan’s southern chain of islands.

There is a considerable amount of PR bluff associated with these high-profile deployments, as it is very unlikely that any one of these missile will be actually fired, either to bring down the North Korean satellite missile itself or to knock out one or more of the booster stages should they seem about to fall on Japanese soil.

The last time Pyongyang launched an intercontinental ballistic missile in 2009, the trajectory carried the missile due east across northern Japan. At that time too, Tokyo made a big show of moving PAC3 missiles to the region of northern Honshu to shoot down any falling debris.

In that case Tokyo’s announced intentions, were somewhat plausible as the distance over water separating the two countries was shorter and the land mass on which debris could to fall was larger. In the event, the first booster stage fell harmlessly in the ocean about 170 miles short of land, the second stage in the ocean on the far side of Japan.

Thus there was no need to launch any PAC-3, which is probably what Japanese leaders calculated. The last thing that they really want to do is actually shoot down a North Korean missile, something that Pyongyang has labeled an “act of war”. They may not want to risk the embarrassment that an unsuccessful interception might undermine the credibility of its deterrence.

The latest missile test regime will take a far more southerly flight path, over a larger area of water and a much smaller land area in Japan, which reduces the likelihood that any remnant of the missile might threaten to fall on Japan. The deployment of PAC3 batteries in Tokyo itself must be symbolic as the capital is not even close to  the launch trajectory.

A look at the map shows that North Korea doesn’t have many options or firing off a long-range missile without violating some important country’s air space. They must figure if anybody is to be discomforted by the missile launch, it might was well be Japan, with which it has absolutely no current official relationship.

The 1998 test flight came as a surprise, but in 2009 the North at least advised the International Maritime Organization of the anticipated splashdown points of the first and second booster stages (the third was supposed to go into orbit, it but also fell into the North Pacific). This year they have gone further by inviting people, including some international press, to witness the launch.

In a way North Korea is the one taking the risk that the vaunted technological achievement will not turn out to be a another dud. North Korea’s history of long-range missile launches (as opposed to more successful medium and short range missiles) is poor. Of course, the people of North Korean know nothing about the failures.

Its first launch in 1998 failed to put a satellite in orbit. Pyongyang claimed one was circling the Earth broadcasting patriotic songs, but organizations that keep watch on these things, such as the North American Air Defense Command, said they could not verify that anything was put in orbit.

Another purported launch on 2006 ended quickly when the missile explored, or was deliberately blown up only minutes after launch. The 2009 test launch also failed to put a satellite in orbit. Some experts even doubt that validity of its purported 2006 nuclear bomb test, the yield being so low as to suggest that it fizzled out.

Nonetheless, North Korea’s long-range missile program has had consequences both in Japan and the U.S. The 1998 test shocked Japan and prompted Tokyo to increase its defense measures. In 2003 it launched the first of two satellites to garner intelligence on North Korea and agreed to allow Washington to deploy Patriot missile interceptors at U.S. bases in Japan.

Some more conservative Japanese politicians argued that Japan needed to obtain cruise missiles, and that a preemptive strike on North Korean missile site would be within the parameters of self-defense as its war-renouncing constitution is interpreted. American leaders, especially in the second Bush administration, have used the North’s ballistic missile threat to argue for the need to develop and deploy anti-missile defenses.

Over the years, Japan has tightened its bilateral sanctions on the north, such as ending regular ferry services, to the point where it has few if any real options left. Many of these Japanese sanctions stem from a more parochial dispute over kidnapped citizens. North Korea is the only UN member with which Japan has no formal relations.

The past three long-range missile launches have had certain things in common. They all took place while negotiations were underway. In 1998 North Korean diplomats were actually in New York. This launch comes after it appeared there was some progress with Pyongyang agreeing in principle to allow nuclear inspectors back in the country.

They have also occurred on near important elections in the U.S. and South Korea. This one, of course, takes place during a year when both the U.S. and South Korea will be choosing presidents. And the South’s National Assembly election takes place within a week of the purported launch date. It may be a part of North’s patented one-step forward, two steps backwards negotiating style.

Then again it may equally simply be a way of honoring the legendary founder who is North Korea’s “eternal president”. What better birthday president than a satellite orbiting the world broadcasting to “Song of Kim Il-sung” as if emanating from heaven. All they have to do is get the blessed thing in orbit.

China's Quiet "Invasion"

Hong Kong held two elections over the past weekend. One on Friday drew more than 200,000 voters to several polling places. The second one on Sunday involved fewer than 2,000 electors in one location. Only the second one counted.

Three people were vying　to become Hong Kong’s third Chief Executive since the former British Crown Colony returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Only two of them had a chance of winning. The victor, Leung Chun-ying garnered 689 of the 1,132 votes cast by the territory’s Election Committee. He takes office July 1.

The same three candidate names appeared on the ballots of a mock election held two days earlier and organized by the Hong Kong University to demonstrate the need for more direct elections. In this instance “none of the above” (technically blank ballots) won 55 percent of the votes, an indicator of how the general population viewed both the candidates and the election process.

It has been fifteen years since handover, and the territory has made relatively little progress toward a more open and democratic government. Half of the 60-member legislature is directly elected by universal suffrage. But the Chief Executive is still chosen every five years by an electoral college made up mainly of tycoons.

The previous two “selections” since the contested first one in 1996  had been quiet, uneventful ratifications of a candidate acceptable to Beijing and to the territory’s generally pro-Beijing business classes and the civil service. This year’s establishment candidate, Chief Secretary Henry Tang, had the usual attributes for electoral success in Hong Kong.

He was, as Chief Secretary, the territory’s highest-ranking civil servant (like his predecessor Donald Tsang). He came from the upper business classes, as his family owned a textile concern. He even born in had roots in Shanghai, usually a valuable attribute with the rulers in Beijing.

Unfortunately, Tang got into trouble when local newspapers uncovered how he had lavished millions on building an apparently illegal luxury complex under his estate. His clumsy management of this scandal evidently shook Beijing’s confidence in him. In the latter days Beijing made known its preference for Leung through such means as flattering profiles in pro-Beijing newspapers. The committee members got the message.

Many segments of Hong Kong population have reasons to be uneasy with the new Chief. The city’s property tycoons worry that Leung’s call for building more public housing will cut into their profitable real estate holdings. Democrats and people who fret about civil liberties think Leung is a closet communist who may try to curtail Hong Kong’s freedoms.

Strange as it may seem the Chinese Communist Party is still banned (or more accurately not specifically made legal) in Hong Kong. Under the concept “one country, two systems” the territory sends delegates to the National People’s Congress, a government organ, but not the Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, at least not officially.

The election was held against a backdrop of tensions and irritations that are running higher than at any time since the 1997 handover. Increasing numbers of people are taking to the streets in protest, not just for greater democracy, a common goal in the past, but other issues, especially the fast growing income divide and ballooning property  prices.

Since the handover, and especially since Beijing permitted Chinese people to visit Hong Kong as individuals instead of in tour groups, the two Chinese peoples, Hong Kongers and mainlanders, have been getting on each other’s nerves. This is especially true as mainland Chinese are becoming richer.

Some of the incidents, fairly trivial in themselves, have taken on outsized meaning. A couple months ago the Italian luxury garment retailer Dolse & Gabbana opened a smart new retail shop on busy Canton road in Kowloon. It got into trouble when the management forbid locals from taking pictures of the window displays while allowing Chinese tourists to do so. More than 1,000 people gathered outside the store to protest.

Another irritation is the large numbers of pregnant Chinese women coming into the territory to have  “anchor babies” in the territory, taking up limited hospital space. Last year some 40,000 Chinese women gave birth in Kong Hong. One Hong Kong woman said she is afraid to get pregnant since she isn’t sure she could find a bed in a Hong Kong hospital.

Some 40 percent of real estate transactions are now said to involve mainland buyers, helping boost the profits of landlords but pricing average Hong Kong people, especially those in the “sandwich class” (too well off for public housing, too poor to buy apartments) out of the market. Locals find that their favorite noodle shop has closed to make way for a store selling imported watches for the Chinese tourist trade.

“Wealthy mainland tourists have spoiled big businesses so much that they don’t even realize they are stepping over the line and discriminating against locals,” says Hong Kong commentator Alice Poon.

Adding to this is the now notorious “locusts” ad published in the territory’s leading Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily. The full page advertisement showed a huge locust, presumably representing mainland Chinese, perched on a mountain top overlooking Hong Kong with the word, “Hong Kong people have had enough.”

Hong King people have a patronizing term, ah choon that they often applied to new immigrants from mainland China derived from a bumpkin-like character in a popular television series. It was illustrative of the way Hong Kongers looked down on their poorer mainland “compatriots” in the years immediately preceding and after the 1997 handover.

With the growing prosperity on mainland China and Beijing’s decision to permit individuals to visit the territory as individuals, friction has increased, especially as tourists flaunt their wealth and buy up real estate, helping to inflate property prices. They still consider mainlanders country bumpkins, only rich country bumpkins.

Japan is Not Greece

Japan’s public debt is fast approaching one quadrillion yen, a figure roughly equivalent to U.S. $14 trillion. It is a number that one does not often see outside of the science fiction. It is equivalent of a numeral one followed by twelve zeros.

The gross public debt is said to be equal to about 218 percent of gross domestic product, the heaviest in the world. Put another way, the debt is nearly equal to the $14 billion total indebtedness of the U.S. with but in a country with half of the gross domestic product  and 40 percent of the population.

In the coming year about 45 percent of the national budget will be covered through borrowing, a figure that has increased this year because of the imperative to raise money to help rebuild the regions devastated by last year’s earthquake and tsunami and compensate people injured in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant crisis.

Yet there are no riots in the streets, no calls for international bailouts, no calls for belt-tightening, no draconian cuts in public services. On the  contrary, in the past year the Diet, as Japan’s bicameral parliament is called in the West, has passed three supplementary budgets all of which are covered by selling additional government bonds.

“I’m not worried,” says Eisaku Sakakibara serenely. The former vice minister at the Finance Ministry (the top civil servant) is now a professor at Aoyama University in Tokyo. His frequent comments on high finance has earned him the sobriquet “Mr Yen”.

Sakakibara is confident that Japan can avoid a debt crisis at least in a four-to-five year horizon. That should give Tokyo time to take necessary steps to ameliorate the situation. “The solution is very clear cut – raise taxes”, he says. In the meantime, continued domestic demand for government securities will cover deficits.

Recently Bloomberg published a short article under the simple heading:  0.94%  in huge letters. That represents the interest that the Japanese government now pays on 10-year government  bonds, the second lowest interest rate in the world, behind only Switzerland, but well ahead of Italy (7 per cent) and 35 per cent for Greece.

“The rate is so low as to suggest that if there is a real crisis in Japanese government finances, a lot of major investors have not noticed it,” says Eamonn Fingleton, author of several books on the Japanese economy, most recently In the Jaws of the Dragon.

He points out that much of the money the government borrows from Japanese savers goes to fund other governments’ spending, including that of the United States, Japan currently holds about $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds, slightly behind those held by China.

Indeed only a couple years ago Tokyo had the wherewithal to loan $100 billion to the International Monetary Fund to help keep that institution afloat (even though the director continues to be a European). “The Japanese government is actually the world’s lender of last resort,” Fingleton argues.

Japanese saver have about 15 trillion yen stashed away in postal savings accounts, or more than the total combined borrowing of national and local governments. They can essentially finance whatever the government needs for a long time to come.

Roughly 95 percent of Japanese government bonds are said to be held by Japanese themselves, which is sort of like children borrowing from their parents (or perhaps the other way around) “It’s in the family,” says Fingleton. “There would be no net sacrifice in paying off the debt, as there would be in the U.S. or other debtor nation.”

Some pundits have gone so far as to argue that, in a pinch, the government would simply ask the bondholders to forgive their debt in the interests of the nation as a whole. In that case, the large borrowing might become simply another form of taxation, albeit one where the government pays the taxpayer a small amount of interest.

Fingleton warns against taking the Japanese debt numbers at face value. “The figures that are bandied about are not properly sourced.” he maintains. Moreover,  he says Tokyo has a long-time habit of putting out exaggerated stories about its economic problems -  helped along by the Western media’s incessant harping on the country supposed “lost decades” - because it helps fend off trade sanctions.

This is not to say that Japan has no fiscal problems. In 2011 Japan experienced its first trade deficit in more than 20 years. The deficit was, of course, more than offset by a healthy current account surplus based on returns on foreign investments. Was it a fluke, occasioned by natural disasters in Japan and Thailand, or a harbinger of things to come?

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, a former finance minister, has made fiscal reform the main goal of his administration. Indeed, it is fair to say he is staking his government and the future of his party on the proposition that he can get a rise in the consumption (ie sales) tax through parliament this spring.

A five-percent consumption tax was first enacted in 1995, but has long been considered inadequate to meet the needs of an aging society and continue to cover the gaps in the costs of social security. Noda proposes to raise the tax incrementally to 10 percent by 2015.

Japanese are no more interested in paying higher taxes than anybody else, so it is not surprising that raising the consumption tax is kind of a “third rail” in Japanese politics. Former prime minister Naoto Kan proposed such a tax rise last year and lost the election to the upper house of parliament. His administration never really recovered.

“In the past there are few examples of a party raising the flag of a tax increase winning an election, but the cold truth is that this is the only way for Japan, with its quadrillion yen national debt ,to avoid its own ‘europe-ification’,” says Takao Toshikawa, chief correspondent for the Oriental Economist newsletter.

Public opinion polls show (surprise surprise) that about 60 percent of the public opposes raising the consumption tax, although a nearly equal number agree that something must be done. Noda has, in effect bet the future of his government and party on that the latter view will ultimately make itself felt as the bills move through parliament.

We Almost Lost Tokyo

Bad as it was, the Fukushima nuclear power plant crisis could have been much worse. According to a 15- page report delivered to then Prime Minister Naoto Kan on March 25, two weeks after the massive earthquake and resulting tsunami in northeast Japan, the resulting meltdowns could have forced the evacuation of Tokyo.

The report was made public in early January by Japan’s minister for Fukushima recovery, Goshi Hosono. In it the government had drawn up a contingency plan that envisioned the possibility of having to evacuate much of Tokyo, the world’s largest city, and everyone else within a 250-km radius of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The plan was prepared after the March 11, earthquake and tsunami set in motion circumstances leading to fuel meltdown at three of the reactors and fears of exposed radioactive fuel stored at a fourth unit. It was prepared by Shunsuke Kondo, chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission. Hosono, then a special advisor to premier Naoto Kan, asked for the plan at Kan’s request.

The contingency plan envisioned a 170-km-radius mandatory evacuation zone from the stricken plant and a 250-km voluntary zone which would have brought the disaster to Tokyo’s doorstep. The report said that high radiation levels might have extended beyond 250-km, and people beyond that limit might have to evacuate.

In fact, the government held fast to the evacuation regime imposed in the early days. It ordered full evacuation of an area 20-km around the plant site and voluntary evacuation up to 30 km. Tokyo is about 250 miles away from the plant site (depending on how one defines “Tokyo”). The government maintained in public then that Tokyo was safe and urged people and businesses to stay.

Nevertheless, several foreign governments, led by France, advised their citizens to leave Tokyo. More than 30 legations moved temporarily to Osaka, and many other expatriates also left on their own accord. Japanese called them “fly-jin” a play on the word for foreigner, gaijin. The U.S. did not go so far as to move its embassy but announced a 50-mile, 80-km evacuation zone for Americans.

Hosono said in January that the report submitted on March 25 was not revealed to the public because of concern about spreading panic. Such a report if made public would he caused “excessive and unnecessary worry,” Hosono said. But Kan later talked freely about his fears for Japan in interviews he made immediately after he resigned in September.

 “It was a crucial moment when I wasn’t sure whether Japan could function as a state,” he said. Since departing office, Kan has reinvented himself as a kind of global anti-nuclear power activist.  “I think we should create a world where people do not need to depend on nuclear power,” he said while attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.  He also inspected alternative energy providers in Spain and Germany.

There were several points in the early days of the crisis when things could have really spun out of control. One scenario envisioned the melting of the 1,535 fuel assemblies contained in the spent fuel pool at Unit-4. That is the equivalent of two full reactor cores as Unit-4 was shut down for refueling when the earthquake struck. The roof had been blown off in a hydrogen explosion leaving no barrier between the pool and the atmosphere.

Another imponderable in the immediate wake of the tsunami was whether workers could have opened the vents on Unit-1 to relieve steam pressure building up. That meant releasing some radiation into the atmosphere. But not to vent steam to relieve pressure buildup might have led to further explosions severely cracking the containment and resulting in uncontrolled released of radiation.

It was no simple matter to open the vent on Unit 1.The workers were hampered by high radiation dose rates, lack of lighting, lack of contingency plans and equipment needed to vent in the event of power blackout and indecision by the utility head office. The vents were successfully opened about 24 hours after the earthquake struck. By then much of the fuel was exposed and melting.

The government and utility feared more hydrogen explosions and more release of radiation might cause the workers to flee and suspend recovery efforts entirely. In one worst case, the authorities estimated that the areas within the 170 km mandatory zone would have been contaminated with 1,480 kilo becquerels of radiation per square meter. As a last resort, the government would have smothered damaged reactors with tons of sand dropped from aircraft or helicopters.

Eventually, after much trouble, the vents were opened relieving pressure. It was too late to prevent a hydrogen explosion caused by the chemical reaction of steam and exposed fuel, but the damage was mainly confined to the building superstructure and not to the containment vessel itself.

There was much initial anxiety over the condition of the pools in all four plants, especially Unit-4, sparking frantic water drops by helicopters and then the use ground-based water sprayers to keep the fuel assemblies under water. Later it was evident that the fears were exaggerated. The pools were mostly undamaged and cooling is now working properly.

However, it is probably no coincidence that the new 40-year road map to recovery, announced in mid-December, places the priority on removing fuel from the Unit-4 pool, well ahead of dealing with the “fuel debris” or melted fuel, an operation that won’t even begin for another decade, according to the latest planning document.

Although the most serious worries have abated, the severely damaged reactors remain in a precarious state officially described as the “equivalent of a cold shutdown’.” It means that the remains of the fuel are below, in most cases well below, 100 degrees C. But it is dependent a jury-rigged cooling system, which is suffering from leaking frozen pipes in the cold weather that has gripped Japan.

Just Say No

 The latest round of economic sanctions is supposed to put pressure on Iran, but they may be putting just as much pressure on America’s key Asian allies, Japan and South Korea, both of whom are dependent on Middle East for the vast bulk of their petroleum imports.

In the past, under pressure from Washington, Tokyo and Seoul have reluctantly fallen in line and cut back on doing business with Iran. Just a little more than one year ago, Japan ended its last major investment in Iran. Now Washington is back with more demands, and both countries are balking.

After meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Timothy Geithner earlier this month, Japan’s finance minister, Jun Azumi said Japan would reduce petroleum imports from Iran in line with the American policy. He was almost immediately slapped down by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, who he said he was speaking for himself. The government has not formulated a position.

An American delegation arrived in Tokyo Jan. 17 for further talks, which were said to be inconclusive so far. The two sides are haggling over how far Tokyo has to go in meeting demands to receive an exemption from the main enforcing mechanism, a ban on Japanese banks working in the U.S. that do business with Iran’s central bank.

Robert Einhorn, U.S State Department special advisor on arms control, was in Seoul trying to convince South Korea to cut its petroleum imports and unwind their business dealings with the Central Bank of Iran . No immediate agreement was made. Deputy foreign minister Kim Jae shin said many Koreans worry that reducing oil imports will harm the economy.

South Korea, the world’s fifth largest oil importer, buys roughly 10 percent of its petroleum needs from Iran, or about 200,000 barrels of crude per day. Seoul is currently dealing with Iran’s Central Band to clear payments. Indeed, it has said it would actually increase imports slightly in 2012

Both countries have been down this road before. Azumi noted that Japan once imported about 40 percent of its petroleum supplies from Iran. It is now down to roughly ten percent, or about 260,000 b/d, with the likely hood that, in time, it will be reduced even more.

A little more than a year ago, Japanese oil explorer Inpex, under severe pressure from Washington and from Tokyo, totally divested its minority interest in the huge, new Azadegan oil field in Iran at a considerable loss. It was the cornerstone of Japan’s “hinomaru (rising son flag) oil” policy of securing energy supplies by investing in Japanese owned -energy deposits in the Middle East.

At one time Inpex owned 75 percent of the Azadegan field; it cut its stake to 10 percent in 2006. Company officials argued that their minority stake was a passive investment, not a case of “doing business” with Iran and sought an exemption, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.

The pressure on Japan concerning Iran tends to wax and wane depending on how much Washington values Japan’s symbolic support of its Middle East military adventures. It eased up when Japan sent a symbolic battalion of troops to Iraq during the height of the Iraq War and naval oilers to refuel allied ships in the Indian Ocean.

But Washington has hardened its stance in recent years, especially after Mahmoud Ahmadinejan was elected president in 2005. At the same time, it has not needed Japanese cooperation in Middle East adventures. The one battalion was withdrawn a few years ago and refueling operating ended by the new government in 2009.

The latest pressure comes just as Japan is trying to recover from the “triple disaster” of the March 11 Earthquake, tsunami and multiple nuclear power meltdowns. The later naturally spawned  concerns over safety that have shuttered all but a handful of the country’s nuclear power plants that used to supply more than a quarter of electric power.

This has necessitated some increased petroleum imports, although the main replacement fuel for power generation has been natural gas. Hardly surprising that the affected ministries, especially Economy, Trade and Industry, worried over impact of fuel prices on the economy immediately urged Azumi to move cautiously as they assess Washington’s intentions and explore avenues for replacements imports.

Both Japan and South Korea go to great pains to support the abstract goal of pressuring pressure Tehran into seriously negotiating over its suspected nuclear weapons program. However, it is fair to say they do not have the visceral concern over Iran that seems to animate Washington. The concerns really come down to several issues of realpolitik.

How far can Japan go in opposing pressure from Washington without damaging relations with the country on whom they depend for ultimate defense? What would be the damage to the economy by reducing oil imports weighed against the damage to banking interests if the country’s banks are locked out of the U.S.? “If the law is implemented the effect on Japan’s banks would be quite severe,” says Azumi

And of course, looming in the background is the remote chance that the that the current shadow war now being waged against Iran might explode into open war fare, which would obviously hurt countries so dependent on steady and secure Middle East supplies.

Given stakes involved neither country can afford to just say no to the American pressure. But it is equally clear that neither is going to easily bend to Washington’s demands. The negotiations will go on for some extended period. In the end they will probably reduce imports to some extent. Washington will declare it satisfied and grant the necessary waivers.

To Boldly Go ...

Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, 47, was carried out of his Russian-made Soyuz space capsule on the plains of Kazakhstan last week with a big grin on his face. After spending five and a half weightless months at the International Space Station without feeling the pull of gravity, he was, understandably a little unsteady on his feet after landing.

Furukawa got his few hours of local fame, but the notion of Japanese astronauts – and other Asians for that matter – piggybacking on American or Russian space vehicles is hardly big news any more. Nevertheless, Asians are doing more than begging rides. They are making many often unheralded strides in developing independent space programs of their own.

The two Asian nations with their own space programs are, of course, the two biggest and richest among them, China and Japan. But both countries have gone their own different ways, China focused overwhelmingly on manned space travel, Japan going in mainly for unmanned probes to distant corners of the solar system, such as asteroids.

Only a few weeks before Furukawa returned to earth, the Chinese successfully docked two unmanned space craft about 200 miles above the Earth, an important step in China’s unofficial goal of establishing a space station by 2020 and eventually landing a man on the moon .

What the Chinese call the Shenzhou-8 space capsule docked with the Tiangon-1 module that had been launched from Earth a few weeks earlier. In the coming year, if all goes well, the Chinese plan to repeat the exercise with manned space craft, leading to the establishment of an orbiting space station about the time that International Space Station goes into retirement.

The Chinese have, in fact, now placed six taikongnauts into Earth orbit since Yang Liwei orbited the earth in 2003 on the Shenzhou-5, thus making China only the third country in the world to place a man in orbit  through its own indigenous program. Since then it has successfully launched three manned mission into Earth orbit, including one that involved  a extravehicular space walk.

China is following a path blazed 40 years ago by the U.S. and Russian space programs that culminated in the first Apollo moon flight in 1968. Yet it has relied entirely on its own aerospace engineering in the face of some restrictions Washington placed on scientific exchanges and exports of space-related technology in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Incident.

This success made through own engineering efforts hasn’t been lost on strategic planners in Washington, who were shocked when in 2007 Beijing successfully tested an anti-satellite missile which destroyed an aging orbiting Chinese weather satellite, proving a capability to render other country’s  satellites useless.

Japan has taken a different path into space from China eschewing manned flight in favor of deep-space probes. Their biggest accomplishment came in 2010 when the space probe Hayabusa landed in the wastes of Western Australia following a seven-year, 300 million km voyage to the asteroid Itokawa – and back.

It is not certain if even the Japanese, much less the rest of the non-scientific world, fully appreciated the what their space probe had accomplished It was, after all, the first space vehicle to voyage to another  world and return to earth since the Apollo moon flights of the 1970s.  It was also the deepest round-trip space voyage by any country.

Hayabusa’s main mission was to land on the asteroid, a peanut shaped world no bigger than downtown Hibiya Park in Tokyo (500 meters long and 200 wide), retrieve some of the asteroid rocks and return them to earth to be examined by scientists seeking clues to the origin of the solar system. Itokawa was born more than 6 billion year ago, making it older than the Earth.

Unfortunately, the mechanism for gathering asteroid rocks failed in this mission, although the landing and lift off stirred up enough asteroid dust to give the scientists a t the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and other laboratories something to study.

Technicians had to overcome numerous other set-backs during the long voyage of Hayabusa. Three of the four ion thrusters stopped working during the trip, a fuel leak rendered the chemical engine inoperable two of the three attitude control antennas broke down and communication was lost for 50 days after the landing.

Despite this, JAXA is planning a Hayabusa-2 mission scheduled to lift off next May, assuming budgetary approval. This probe is aimed at an object simply known as 1999JU3. With a host of technologies that were not aboard the original space craft but developed to answer many of the problems the original probe experienced, scientists hope to gather much more material to examine when the probe returns to earth in 2018.

That of course assumes that the mission isn’t overshadowed by an American mission to the asteroid belt. The US NASA space agency us planning to send one in 2016, which is a strong indication that even though the Space Shuttles flew their last missions this year and were farmed out to museums, the U.S. too is still very much in the space game.

In November the Americans launched an enormous space probe to Mars carrying a vehicle as big as an SUV. It is specifically equipped and targeted to uncover any evidence of life on the red planet.  It would not be the first probe to land on Mars. Russia and the U.S. between them have sent 13 probes to Mars, about half of them successfully. The current “Curiosity” probe is the most sophisticated one yet.

But as the Martian score card indicates, not every space initiative meets with success. The U.S. has had its failures, and  just a few weeks ago a Russian probe aimed at one of Mar’s two planets failed to break out of the earth orbit.

 Japan too has had its share of misadventures. Last year Japan launched Akatsuki on a voyage to Venus specifically to study its turbulent climate to understand global warming better, but it failed to enter the plants orbit.