Okay, you know, this Cool Biz stuff? Seriously working on my last nerve. I’ve almost, in a way, gotten used to seeing top-ranking cabinet ministers show up on television looking as if they’d been yanked out of a golf game for an emergency press conference. It doesn’t exactly give you the sense that the government is proceeding with sober, formal, rule-of-law predictability; but I guess it does save on air conditioning, which is good for the Earth and other stuff.

However, someone (Mrs. Takebe, are you listening?) needs to tell LDP Secretary General Tsutomu Takebe what 半透明 (hantoumei: “translucent”) means. I didn’t need to see that the undergarment he uses to rein in those man-boobs beneath his white-on-white sport shirts is a narrow-strapped tank-top. I really didn’t.

When you live in Japan, you get used to thinking of catastrophic natural events as normal. It’s not that villages are wiped out weekly, or anything; but what with the regularity of earthquakes, typhoons, tidal waves, simmering volcanoes, and drenching rains with the attendant mudslides, it’s no surprise that the Japanese latched onto evanescence as a major aesthetic and philosophical principle. The raw, craggy landscape has its effect, too.

This week, the reminders of our frailty have come from the water department. The rainy season has been pretty dry here in the Kanto region, but places in Western Japan are getting a good pummeling:

Heavy rain pounded the western Japan regions of Chugoku and Shikoku for the second straight day Saturday, leaving one person missing, 2 slightly injured and more than 300 homes submerged, local officials said.

Another Kyodo report put the total number of flooded houses at 1000.

Then today, we had this item from Iwo Jima:

Ships have been warned to avoid traveling near Iwo Jima after the Japan Coast Guard said Sunday that an underwater volcanic eruption was the cause of the mysterious plume of vapor that shot 1 kilometer into the sky.

Coast Guard officials found gray mud was rising from beneath the water, which had turned to a reddish color.

The red water apparently indicates volcanic activity, but no signs of volcanic gases have yet been detected. Smoke billowed into the sky in the area.

BTW, the name Iwo Jima, known to most Americans as the site of the famous WWII battle, means “sulfur island.”

Wow. This is totally through-the-looking-glass:

Lowering the cost of public works projects through competitive bidding does not reduce the quality of the work, 10 prefectural governments have concluded.

The finding was made in a recent Yomiuri Shimbun survey of such projects across the country.

The result casts doubt on the Construction and Transport Ministry’s assertion that a system of completely open bidding to eliminate bid-rigging would cause a deterioration in the quality of construction work. [Yes, you read that correctly.--SRK]

The 10 prefectural governments reached the conclusion by analyzing the relationship between the quality of completed work and also actual contract prices compared with local governments’ initial estimates.

The prefectural governments’ findings indicate that if contract prices fell through open bidding, it would not negatively affect the quality of construction.

The ministry applies open bidding for only 2 percent of public works contracts, arguing that intensified price-cutting competition may result in shoddy construction work. The remainder have been arranged through bidding by designated companies, sparking criticism that the system is a hotbed for bid-rigging practices.

Ya’ think? Now, of course, the big-guns companies have an incentive not to do sub-standard work even if they’re awarded jobs through the usual rigged bids. If only because of the resultant bad publicity, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries doesn’t want a bridge with its name on it, big as life, collapsing. (The Yomiuri piece goes on to explain how the quality of work for projects was assessed and compared to cost.) Whether the Ministry of Land, Transport, and Infrastructure is acting on saintly scruples regarding public safety is debatable, to put it mildly. What is not debatable is the flood of bennies that well-placed officials get for playing along with the bid-rigging game, particularly the connections that lead to a plum job after retirement.

The main practice, in case you haven’t run into it in your previous Japan studies, is called 天下り (ama-kudari: “descent from heaven,” or what we in the States would usually call “the revolving door” between civil service and private sector/lobbying jobs in which one’s Rolodex can be used to advantage). Problems with the incestuous relationships thus produced have grown so visible that the Nippon Keidanren announced this weekend that it was looking into the possibility of suspending its practice of hiring retiring civil servants. The Keidanren is the largest and most influential federation of businesses in Japan, with about 1600 member enterprises. Of course, the body cannot force its members not to hire 天下り officials, but even its “encouragement” sends a message that would have been unimaginable until very recently. The Keidanren’s public statements all endorse private-sector economic development–that’s what the entity exists for–but they’ve also implicitly recognized how the game is played.

How much of a sea change these new statements represent–on the part of either the Keidanren or the prefectural governments–remains to be seen; but that they’re being made at all is cause for cautious optimism.