Koike-san's Not So Great Obon Adventure...

Shiozaki Yasuhisa, the almost-certainly-doomed Chief Cabinet Secretary, has stirred himself from a post-election semi-sulk to deliver a swift, sharp response to Defense Minister Koike Yuriko's attempt to replace the overripe Defense Vice Minister Moriya Takemasa with her own favorite Nishikawa Testuya:

"You must be out of your mind."

Well, maybe Shiozaki did not say exactly that, but would you have not loved to sit in on that meeting at the Kantei?

It seems that Minister Koike was not clear on the concept as to how Vice Ministers get appointed--either that or somebody decided it would be just the very most wonderful thing if the public learned about Koike's wish to appoint a Police Agency bureaucrat as her lieutenant at Defense before the Appointments Committee did.

Now all her plans are down the drain:

防衛次官人事を凍結　内閣改造後政府判断　西川氏の起用撤回も
東京新聞

政府は十三日、防衛省の事務次官人事を一時凍結し、二十七日に予定される内閣改造後に判断する方針を固めた。次官人事をめぐっては、小池百合子防衛相が守屋武昌次官を九月一日付で退任させ、後任に西川徹矢官房長を充てる意向を固めたが、事前に相談がなかったと守屋氏が抗議する異例の事態となっていた。内閣改造での小池氏の去就によっては、当初の案が白紙に戻る可能性が出てきた...

So Moriya stays on through the to the selection of the new Cabinet; Nishikawa's candidacy is withdrawn; the Defense Ministry bureaucracy scores against its own Minister; and the Abe Cabinet suffers another black eye.

Well, at least somebody came to a rules-based decision quickly.

Though the slap stings, Koike will likely survive it. Her indiscretion left the government little choice. If Shiozaki--and by extension Abe--had acquiesced Koike's appointment of her favorite to a ministry so spanking new and so high on itself, then the resulting internal rebellion would have made the Tanaka Makiko-MOFA war look like infatuation.

If Shiozaki had only had the vulpine ruthlessness to punish every foolishness committed by any of the Friends of Shinzō over the last ten months--or to tell off the media when it obsessed about trivialities! Rather than looking like the man from yesterday, Prime Minister Abe could right now be reigning over a constitutionally acceptable near-dictatorship.

To think after learning such hard lessons, Shiozaki's days too are numbered--as all reports having him handing the reins of the Cabinet to the man with biggest pipes in the Diet, Mr. Excitement, Nikai Toshihirō.

Oh it is just all so unfair!

Okumura Jun provides further detail and analysis over at Global Talk 21.