Chris:

I was a little surprised that Noda chose Hirano as his lower house point man, given Hirano's unimaginative and insensitive performance on Futenma during the Hatoyama administration. But with regard to Yamaoka, Noda obviously felt that he needed to assuage Ozawa without compromising himself on policy issues, and I think he did just that be appointing Yamaoka to a "safe"
portfolio. Taking money from Amway wannabies was not the best of public relation moves, but at least it's legal. I mean, the multilayered whatchmacallit business. Noda will take his lumps one way or other, but at the end of the day, he needs to rope in Komeito while keeping the DPJ in one piece. These are not mutually exclusive objectives, but sometimes, they will clash, like defense and offense.

As for Hachiro, I've looked over the publicly available evidence and am convinced that he was railroaded.
Again, this in nothing new, like Gore allegedly inventing the internet. I won't bother you with my somewhat lengthy thoughts around this matter, but I'll be happy to share with anyone who wants a memo that I wrote in the course of my work and subsequently edited for a foreign correspondent.

Jun