A new variation of the blue tarp has emerged! The president of TEPCO was last seen on television wearing "a blue company uniform instead of his normal business suit." Apparently this functions as a cloak of invisibility (kakuremino) because he hasn't been seen since. See:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/vanishing-act-by-japanese-executive-during-nuclear-crisis-raises-questions/2011/03/28/AFDnHNpB_story.html "Vanishing act by Japanese executive during nuclear crisis raises questions" QUOTES: TOKYO — In normal times, Masataka Shimizu lives in The Tower, a luxury high rise in the same upscale Tokyo district as the U.S. Embassy. But he hasn’t been there for more than two weeks, according to a uniformed doorman. The Japanese public hasn’t seen much of him recently either. Shimizu, the president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, the company that owns a haywire nuclear power plant just 150 miles from the capital, is the most invisible — and also most reviled — chief executive in Japan. Amid rumors that Shimizu had fled the country, checked into hospital or even committed suicide, company officials said Monday that their boss suffered an unspecified “small illness” due to overwork after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake sent a tsunami crashing onto his company’s Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station. After a short break to recuperate, they said, Shimizu, 66, is back at work directing an emergency command center on the second floor of Tepco’s central Tokyo headquarters. Still, company officials are vague about whether they’ve actually seen their boss: “I’ll have to check on that,” said spokesman Ryo Shimitsu, who is not related to the president. Another staffer, Hiro Hasegawa, said he’d seen the president regularly but couldn’t provide details. Vanishing in times of crisis is something of a tradition among Japan’s industrial and political elite. . . . . . . Shimizu’s vanishing act “is not so much extremely strange as inexcusable,” said Takeo Nishioka, the chairman of the upper house of Japan’s Diet, or parliament. Speaking to reporters, Nishioka described as “mysterious” Shimizu’s refusal to join the head of the nuclear safety agency at a briefing on the crisis for parliament. “I cannot understand this,” fumed Nishioka. . . . - Jed
