William Pesek on the Slow Vaccine Rollout

The Washington Post has published a badly titled William Pesek opinion piece: "Why Japan is failing so badly on vaccinations?" While I sympathize with editorial need for a punchy title of reasonable brevity, describing the current vaccination effort as a "failure" is both premature and presumptuous. It is indeed not sustainable, for Pesek quickly and nakedly swerves off into trying to answer another question, "With the Olympics only three months away, only 2% of Japanese are vaccinated for Covid-19. Why?" -- which is a fair, but far less exciting topic. [With a derogatory title and a quote from my boss, Jeff Kingston, the piece seems tailor made to set off poor, old Earl Kinmonth.] The second, longer more specifc question is a good one. Japan's Covid-19 vaccination rate is dramatically lower at this point in time than the vaccination rate of other OECD countries. This is peculiar as Japan, contrary to what Pesek asserts, has only a fragmented and inconsistent anti-vaxxer movement. Japanese citizens and most foreign residents have also been excellent in carrying out masking and other preventative measures on a voluntary basis. The country's government is also reputed to be highly organized (it is) and Japan's public health system sound (ditto). There is also the vaccination imperative Pesek notes of the country's elites not wanting Japan to fall on its face in hosting the Olympics. Regulations, such as the requirement that only doctors do vaccinations, might be bottlenecks slowing the process down -- though these regulations have heretofore have not interfered with annual mass vaccinations for influenza. The Japanese government's preference for Japan-produced (kokusan) everything and the lack of a domestic supplier of a Covid-19 vaccine could be another cause of the slow ramp up. However, the Government of Japan went on a buying spree of vaccines early on to address the lack of progress on the domestic front. So what is happening -- or not happening, as the case may be? I will offer some thoughts tomorrow.

Sussing Out Abe's Next Move

Yesterday's resignation of Democratic Party leader Renho only days after a major DP victory in the Sendai mayoral election, together with the resignation of Cabinet-support sapping Inada Tomomi as Minister of Defense opens up to Prime Minister Abe Shinzo an opportunity to initiate what 24 hours ago would have been considered political suicide: dissolve the Diet and call a House of Representatives election. Indeed, this decision may already have been made -- it certainly makes the Inada resignation more comprehensible ("Why now? She is about to be let go in the Cabinet reshuffle!" was a natural, immediate reaction to yesterday's announcement).

As the results of the July 2 Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly elections have shown, the LDP's recent dominance has been all about the absence of a centrist opposition with a clear pathway to victory. Offer a ruthless alternative, one that leaps over the structural impediments and clientalism designed to return the LDP to power time after time, and the resentment of the voters will lift you to victory. Koike Yuriko, with her amazing ability to tear away the Komeito from its coalition with the LDP at the same time as dog whistling to the Tamogami Right (too quickly forgotten is her calculated dissing of the South Koreans) provided Tokyo voters with just such an alternative.

The obvious decision for Abe, who faces declining poll numbers and obvious factional maneuvering against him, is dissolve the Diet, proclaiming, "I am asking for the judgment of my performance from the voters" or something like that. With the DP leaderless and no national Koike party as yet, the chances are fairly good that Abe's LDP will march to another victory under his command. Perhaps one which fails to return a Constitution revision-capable 2/3rds majority in the House of Representatives for the ruling coalition -- but still a simple LDP majority (take that, Komeito!) in the lower house.

At least, that's the way it looks.

Speculating About The Renho Resignation

Let us keep this simple: the explanations Renho has offered for her resignation as leader of the Democratic Party make zero sense.

"The very best would be for a stronger DP that can be built by a new directorate"

NONSENSE - the DP has no obvious list of successors the current leadership group. The conservative wing, which should be the logical alternative, is depleted by defections to Koike Yuriko's Tokyoites First movement. The election of a left wing leader and the selection of a left directorate would cause the party to implode.

"I tried to think of a way of transform the centrifugal force into a centripetal force. I realized that this would not come from personnel changes but through a reexamination of myself."

NONSENSE - Please do not tell me you have been reading Wang Yangming's Instructions for Practical Living. Or any other Neo-Confucian philosophers, for that matter.

Oh, and another thing: you cannot have either a centripetal or a centrifugal force without a center. That center is/was you.

"I would like that a party be built that can respond to the insecurities the people are feeling"

NONSENSE - Where is the agent of change? Who is going to do this building of which you speak, if not you?


The real story, as outlined in this Business Journal article, is a simple matter: Renho cannot keep a fundamental campaign promise.

The Constitution allows for members of the House of Councillors to become prime minister. However, no prime minister of the postwar era has ever been elected from the upper house. This is in part due to a logjam-breaking provision of the Constitution: when the two houses of the Diet hold elections for PM and each elects a different Diet member, the choice of the House of Representatives becomes the PM.

This traditional and technical preeminence of the House of Representatives prompted Renho to promised that in the event of a general election she would resign from the House of Councillors to run for a House of Representatives seat. Not out of a technical necessity, just a political one.

Hence the emergence of a new problem: for which HoR district seat would she run? It would have to be a safe DP seat; the party would suffer a huge loss of face if the party leader were defeated in her district race. If there were not one available, a sitting DP member would have to give up his/her seat to accommodate Renho's candidacy.

Unfortunately, the current map of Tokyo's electoral districts has no open, reasonable district for a Renho run for a House of Representatives seat. Furthermore, after the loss of DP seats in the July 2 assembly elections, Renho has none of the authority necessary to tell any DP HoR Tokyo district hopeful to move aside for the good of the party.

Renho had tried horse trading for a new mantle of authority in the party. She found, however, that not even offering up the resignation of her eminense grise Noda Yoshihiko, the party secretary-general, bought her a winnable district in Tokyo.

Facing a climb down from her promise to take the fight to the LDP in the House of Representatives, Renho decided to cut her losses by folding up her tent now.

At least, that is the way it looks.

Quietly Fading Away

Yesterday (January 5) was the last day for candidate registrations for the Yamagata Prefectural governor's race.

By the end of the workday only the incumbent, Yoshimura Mieko, had registered.

Without an opponent with whom to grapple Yoshimura immediately, without the expense and bother of an election, began her third term as governor. (Link)

Yoshimura's case is somewhat special. Unlike most local officials, she has strong backing from Democrats, Socialists and Communists, rather than main Liberal Democratic Party/Komeito alliance running much of the country. She also has members of the Yamagata prefecture LDP establishment supporting her. As a consequence, her being reelected without an election is a reflection of her popularity across the political spectrum.

However, having incumbents being returned to office without election is becoming a saddening habit in Japanese local politics (Link). Running for office costs money (starting with the kyotakukin candidate deposit) and can alienate you from the victorious candidate and his/her supporters in the local community. If one is, by some circumstance, elected to office over an incumbent, being forced to lead a local government saddled with precipitous declines in the social and economic environment must be no fun at all.

So it is not just through hyperpartisanship or authoritarianism that democracy can wither. Depopulation and genteel decline are effective as demoralizers, too.

Democratic election of local government -- one of the key reforms of the U.S. Occupation -- becomes just one more aspect of that which was Japan that is fading away. (Link)

Trust Is A Word I Believe In, Yes

First off and foremost, my utter admiration for Prime Minister Abe Shinzo for making his lightning, naked visit to the Trump residence to meet with President-elect Donald Trump. The usual mechanisms of managing the asymmetric Japan-U.S. relationship were broken -- the U.S. Japan Hands were all violently pro-Clinton (for good reason, mind you) leaving Japan with almost zero contacts in the Trump organization post-election. Abe himself, on the advice of the relationship managers, had doubled down on the mistake, meeting Clinton but not Trump during the campaign. By going into a one-on-many meeting with the Trump family brain trust with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs kicking and screaming at him not to (read Yuki Tatsumi's post for a taste of the toned down version of this kicking and screaming) Abe personally rescued Japan's place in the U.S. orbit and possibly put in a few good blows for a rule-based, rather than a power-based, world order on the side.

Now about Abe saying that he has established a relationship of trust with Trump, as many in the non-Japanese speaking news biz have reported, it is important to know exactly what the prime minister said after his meeting with the Trumps.

In prepared introductory remarks, the prime minister said this about trust:

共に信頼関係を築いていくことができる、そう確信の持てる会談でありました。中身につきましては、私は私の基本的な考え方についてはお話をさせていただきました。様々な課題についてお話をいたしました。

That we together could build a relationship of trust, we had a conversation that could confirm this. As for the internal details, he let me relate to him my basic way of thinking. I talked about a range of subjects.

In this opening statement Abe does not say that he trusts Trump. What he says is that he went into their conversation with a purpose of building a relationship of trust and that the president-elect allowed him to express his own views. As to what he thought of what Donald Trump said in the meeting, nothing.

It was in response to a reporter's question (smart reporter) that Abe had to make a second, unprepared statement about trusting Trump:

個別具体的なことについてはお答えできませんが、同盟というのは信頼がなければ機能しません。私は、トランプ次期大統領は正に信頼できる指導者であると、このように確信しました.

I cannot answer your question concretely as regards the views of each but without trust an alliance cannot function. As for me, as for whether or not President-Elect Trump is a leader one can truly trust, I was able to confirm this.

For me, the intrusion of the adverbials masa ni ("truly, really, actually") and kono yo ni ("in this manner") makes this response sing. These phrase hint that Abe is making a case rather than responding in earnest.

Thanks to the vagaries of Japanese sentence structure the PM never says he trusts the President-elect. What he says he has confirmed is whether or not he can truly trust him -- to which the answer is yes, he has confirmed it -- it being "whether or not he can truly trust him."

To which, if Abe is asked later by someone interested in what transpired in that first meeting, he can in all honesty reply:

Oh yes, I did confirm whether or not I could truly trust him, and the answer to that question was, "No, I could not."

So yes, Abe did confirm something about Trump and trust. But the door is open on just what that something is.

And that ambiguity is in everyone's interest right now.


Later - In comment, David Littleboy offers a possible and highly likely explanation of kono yo ni that would strengthen the case of those saying that Abe has declared Trump trustworthy.

The Japan News, which is translated from the pro-government Yomiuri Shimbun's reports, takes the circumspect route (Link).

The always problematic official-yet-only-provisional Prime Minister's Residence translation is, by contrast, emphatic (Link).

Consider My Mind Blown

Just in case anyone is missing the significance of Abe Shinzo's sudden rush to meet with Donald Trump, try recalling who Abe is, or at least who is supposed to be according to his domestic critics and elements of the international news media and non-Japanese academia.

Come with me on a short walk-through what seems to be Ultimate Irony Town:

Abe Shinzo

Is traveling to the United States

To plead with the incipient leader of the United States

To foster and preserve a liberal, rules-based order in the Asia-Pacific

And ask him to not indulge himself in facile, nationalist posturing,

Lashing out based on a dated and embarrassing worldview.

Do you need to hear that again?

Abe Shinzo

Is traveling to the United States

To plead with the incipient leader of the United States

To foster and preserve a liberal, rules-based order in the Asia-Pacific

And ask him to not indulge himself in facile, nationalist posturing,

Lashing out based on a dated and embarrassing worldview.

Now some links to commentary by folks I admire:

On the Trump victory’s implication for American leadership in East Asia, Daniel Sneider

http://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/144829

On the importance of TPP, Mireya Solis

https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-trans-pacific-partnership-the-politics-of-openness-and-leadership-in-the-asia-pacific-2/

James D. J. Brown on the implications of the Trump victory for Japan-Russia relations

http://asia.nikkei.com/Viewpoints/Viewpoints/James-D.J.-Brown-Japan-s-Abe-eyes-Trump-factor-in-Russia-policy

On the Abe visit with Trump, Robert Dujarric

http://thediplomat.com/2016/11/what-should-shinzo-abe-say-to-donald-trump/

As I have been saying for a long while, though hardly believing it myself:

Abe Shinzo = liberal icon


Later -

I would endorse Funabashi Yoichi's op-ed for The New York Times but the judgmental "should" appears too often for my tastes. Perhaps others would benefit from reading it, nonetheless:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/opinion/the-trump-effect-on-tokyo.html?_r=1

The Three States Solution - an immoderate suggestion

Shisaku readers: This has little or nothing to do with Japanese politics. However, this is my blog and I needed to get this off my chest. Thanks.

MTC

___________________________________


The Three States Solution

People of the United States of America: there is a way out of this.

Imagine if in the first week of January in 2017, newly elected and returning members of Congress gather as they do in Washington. However, in an agreed-to change, the Representatives and Senators of the North Atlantic and Pacific Coast states are not present. Instead the members of Congress from those regions gather elsewhere – the members from the North Atlantic states in Boston and the members of Pacific Coast states in Salem, Oregon. They all swear oaths to uphold the Constitution. However, in Boston and in Salem, the name of the country is changed. The Boston group swears allegiance to the Union of North Atlantic States (Nordlantica). The Salem group swears allegiance to the Union of Pacific States (Pacifica).

On January 20th, three presidents are sworn into office. In Washington D.C. President Donald Trump is sworn into office without incident. In Boston President Hillary Clinton is sworn in (as is Vice-President Bernard Sanders). In Salem Hawaii-born President Barack Obama takes his third oath of office as president.

The divorce is peaceful: there are no border fences; commercial, transportation links stay open. The U.S. dollar remains the common currency for the interim as the New York and San Francisco Federal Reserve banks take over the role of central bank for the two new countries. Persons and corporations in the two new nations receive instructions on where to send their Internal Revenue Service checks by April 15. Elements of the Federal Government in each region remain in place and functioning, with the photos on the walls of the president and vice-president being the only initial indication of the new situation.

In security and foreign policy, the new states divide up the assets and responsibilities of the pre-2017 United States of America. The tanks, planes, aircraft carriers and submarines are apportioned equally. Nordlantica automatically becomes a member of NATO and takes up U.S. responsibilities there. Pacifica similarly takes up all current U.S.A. alliances with Asian countries – allowing President Trump and members of his administration to decide whether to involve their nation in world affairs or not.

Another major change comes in the matter of nuclear weapons. In order to maintain world balances and in line with the presumed preferences of their publics, Nordlantica and Pacifica turn over all nuclear weapons in their possession to the U.S. of A. (the new formal acronym, to distinguish the remainder state from the pre-2017 U.S.A). They join the United Nations and the world community as declared non-nuclear weapons states.

In time, the physical differences between the three countries emerge. New passports and currencies are issued, new national anthems and national flags are chosen. The G7 becomes the G9. Pacifica joins the TPP; Nordlantica the TTIP; the U.S. of A. joins neither. Instead, U.S. of A. commentators weigh the pros and cons of their nation joining OPEC.

To be sure the divorce may not be painless. Post-breakup Nordlantica and Pacifica may face a surges in residency and citizenship requests, even refugee flows, from persons seeking to flee an unhealthy human and civil rights climate in the U.S. of A. Presidents Clinton and Obama may be calling on the citizens of their respective nations to be as inclusive toward immigrants as they currently claim to be. 

* * *

Too fanciful? The Soviet Union broke up peaceably. The Czech Republic and Slovakia divorced without acrimony. Trying to hold culturally and politically divided countries like Yugoslavia and Russia, by contrast, led to catastrophic human/civil rights abuses and war.

A common theme in recent years is how divided the U.S.A. has become. Indeed, like the War of the Roses or the Gempei wars, the division is color-coded: Red America versus Blue America. The mystery is why Americans keep trying, election after punishing election, to stay together. Certainly they live with the legacy of the Civil War, with a stern marble Abraham Lincoln and his “A House divided against itself cannot stand” looming over their heads. However, the current situation – of mutual loathing, street protests, alliances of convenience with foreign powers, plotting and counterplotting to game the Electoral College, depression and anger -- cannot stand either.

So as regards the "united" part of the United States of America, why not, as a rather popular tune of recent years advised, just let it go? As three nations, indivisible, Americans would be a lot happier.

On The Meaning Of Yasukuni Today

Over the next few hours a herd of Diet members will march through the confines of Yasukuni Shrine, participating in an annual political and personal rite. The march will offend many inside Japan and many outside of it. The governments of China and South Korea will offer critical comment.

One focus of attention attention today will be on the number of Diet members who show up (we should expect an uptick from last year's numbers as newly elected members of the House of Councillors make their debuts). Another will be a will she/won't she as regards newly-elected governor of Tokyo Koike Yuriko, whose heretofore staunch nationalist posture now clashes with her task of leading a cosmopolitan metropole.

The greatest emphasis, however, will be on visitations by members of the Cabinet. One, Minister of Reconstruction Imamura Masahiro, already paid his visit to the shrine on Thursday the 11th. Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Takaichi Sanae has vowed to pay a visit today. Minister of Defense Inada Tomomi, who leads a special group within the LDP dedicated to visiting Yasukuni, was suddenly dispatched a study tour of SDF operations in Djibouti. Her gleeful departure from the airport on Friday left little doubt that the purpose of of her trip was the government's trying to keep her away from the shrine on the end-of-war day.

In light of Minister Inada's bubbly egress from Japan it is not inappropriate to revisit a point I have made previously about the August 15 Yasukuni sampai.

For some of the 210,000 or so who visit the shrine on a typical August 15, a visit on the end of war day is an act of REVERENCE, a time to reflect upon and pay tribute to the sacrifices of those died in service to the nation.

For many, including those who arrive in various kinds of dress up – black suits and ties, phony military uniforms or Hawaiian shirts (a favorite of gangster bosses) – the visit to Yasukuni on August 15 is an opportunity to TRANSGRESS, to engage in an activity notable only for being in very bad taste. It is the same delicious sense of being stupid and bad in public, of violating the rules of good society along with one's equally transgressive peers, which is the foundation of the current political support for Donald Trump or the hero worship of Vladimir Putin.

The qualitative difference between the two can be summed up by the difference, in English, between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism is (and for this definition, I am indebted to my TUJ Summer Semester student T. S.) when one loves one's country enough to die for it. Nationalism is (and for this definition, I am indebted to my TUJ Summer Semester student L. K.) is when one loves one country so much one one hates others for it.

For too many showing up today at Yasukuni today it will be nationalism, not patriotism, which propels them through the torii.

The Grand Illusion

Dr. Noah Smith has been one of the great defenders of Abenomics, that amorphous mass of Keynesian stimulus, Friedmanesque monetary policy and Nice Words About Structural Reform, particularly changes in work-life balance allowing women greater access to executive and management positions.

Dr. Smith, however, seems to have undergone a change of heart about the economics of the prime minister. Either that or he has a particular onus against one particular recent seemingly huge announcement: a 28 trillion yen stimulus package, the details of which will be examined in the Diet this Fall (the overal plan received Cabinet approval this week).

Japan's New Stimulus Is Just the Same Old Thing
Bloomberg

Japanese growth is still sluggish. Consumers aren't consuming much, and businesses aren't investing. The government doesn't have many options to remedy this, and the Bank of Japan, which has sent both long-term and short-term interest rates into negative territory, has basically no more room to maneuver.

The dreaded Zero Lower Bound is starting to bite. The BOJ is buying more stocks, but this too has its limits -- eventually companies become de facto nationalized, as the government becomes the majority shareholder. That's scary both because it would affect corporate governance, and because it would be politically unpopular. It's also unclear how much of an economic boost the stock-purchasing program has given the country anyway. The BOJ could resort to policies like a higher inflation target or the much-discussed "helicopter money" approach, but so far it has been afraid to take these steps.

With the BOJ seemingly out of the game, demand-side macroeconomic policy is up to the parliament. So this week the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proposed a new fiscal stimulus package. It is moderately sized: about $45 billion in U.S. dollars this year, and about $60 billion in low-interest loans, to be followed by slightly less next year.

That move might win a few halfhearted cheers from Japan's battered consumers, but it's unlikely to have much of an effect...

(Click here to read more)

Later today (inshallah) Langley Esquire will be posting to YouTube a conversation Timothy Langley and I had yesterday on exactly the same subject.

(For the Langley Esquire YouTube channel, click here)

What should be setting everyone's teeth on edge about both the stimulus package and Abe's recent Cabinet picks, aside from the knowledge that both are in-your-face I-got-mine-suckers giveaways to cronies, is that with majorities in both houses of the Diet, a prostrate opposition, an emasculated bureaucracy, a totally compromised bond market, increasingly compromised equities markets and no rival power centers within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, the Abe government has failed to pass a single fundamental structural reform of consequence. No other G7 or OECD leader enjoys the freedom and dominance of Abe Shinzo and his LDP. Abe & Friends nevertheless remain timid and/or clueless.

Amaterasu Omikami, save this blessed land from these poseurs and legacy turkeys.

Friends Of Shinzo Cabinet, Take Two

For the first three years of his second premiership, Abe Shinzo surprised many with his restraint and balance. His Cabinets, with a few exceptions, displayed with a mixture of scandal-free operations, diligent policy implementation and submersion of factional and personal rivalries. A deft hand at personnel and calendar management was evident.

Which is what is making the runup to today's announcement of a new Cabinet lineup such a downer. There are too many returnees, too many members of the Seiwakai (Mr. Abe's own faction), too many non-experts being placed as window dressing in posts requiring expertise and too few unfledged MPs getting their first shot at leading a ministry. Most of the first timers will be doubly hobbled because they will not even have a ministry behind them. Instead they will be state ministers shepherded around by the Cabinet Office.

Staying in place are Suga Yoshihide at Chief Cabinet Secretary, Takaichi Sanae at General Affairs, Aso Taro at Finance, Kishida Fumio at Foreign Affairs, Shiozaki Yasuhisa at Health/Pensions/Labor and the Komeito's Ishii Keichi at Infrastructure & Tourism.

Suga Yoshihide is the heart and soul of the Abe administration. Lacking the prerequisites for leadership of the modern LDP and without a thirst for the premiership, he returns to 1) being charge of the bureaucracy, including the recruitment and advancement of the top 600 bureaucrats, 2) being in charge of the Cabinet's work flow and 3) being the chief government spokesman.

Enough for anybody, really.

Takaichi and Shiozaki are Abe loyalists. Both served Abe as cabinet ministers in his first term (2006-07). Aso is something an Abe frenemy. He needs to be kept close even though 1) he cannot fundamentally be trusted and 2) his tongue repeatedly creates controversy.

Entering the Cabinet are Inada Tomomi and Seko Hiroshige. Both are more than mere Abe loyalists: they are sycophants. Seko indeed has played Mini-Me to Abe these past three years (Link), traveling with him around the world, making a particular spectacle of himself in dealings with Vladimir Putin. Both are largely amateurs in the policy areas they will be managing.

The inclusion of Inada and Seko in the Cabinet, combined with the retention of Takaichi and the rumored slide of Abe personal retainer Furuya Kenji into the vacant party post of elections chairman sends a distrubing message -- that Abe, post-House of Councillors 2016, is not in a mood to share with other factions and forces within the LDP. Closeness or service to the party president will be rewarded; all others will just have to lump it.

Loyalty is of course important for rulers. However, so are knowledge and perspective - neither of which sycophants and/or personal debtors can provide. Leadership demands that one restrain oneself, not take all one can, convincing those not in the inner circle that the system has rewards, not just humiliations, for them.

Abe's seeming abandonment of magnanimity and restraint has me worried. Abe put together a similar team of loyalist and fellow travelers in 2006, one which the news media dubbed the "Friends of Shinzo" Cabinet. Their calamitous performances individually and as a Cabinet make me worried about their echo today.


[For my earlier take on the proposed new lineup of the LDP secretariat, click here.]

The New Abe Lineup At Party Central

In few hours Prime Minister Abe Shinzo will unveil his new lineup for the top party posts of the Liberal Democratic Party and a new Cabinet. From hints that have been leaked to the new agencies so far, Abe seems to be proceeding on the assumption that loyalty and closeness to him, not competence, experience or judgment, should be his main selection criteria.

LDP Party Secretariat

Replacing the seriously injured Tanigaki Sadakazu at Secretary-General will be Nikai Toshihiro. Leader of a medium-sized faction, Nikai was long seen as a potential rival of the Prime Minister. During his stint as chairman of the Diet Budget Committee Nikai was extremely solicitous of opposition members pounding away at the Abe government and the prime minister himself. In the last year or so, however, Abe has made a special effort to woo Nikai, kicking him upstairs into the special post of Chairman of the General Council and visiting him in his home district. The Wakayama legislator has reciprocated with pledges of loyalty and friendship, the most dramatic of which was his recent post-election expression of support for an extension of Abe's presidential term past the party rules-determined 6 years.

[For those with issues as regards Japan's killing of cetaceans, it's panic time. The whaling fleet's mother ship is homeported in Abe's district. The Taiji dolphin-killing "cove" is in Nikai's.]

The appointment of Nikai means that once again the LDP's day-to-day management will be in the hands of a politician with links to China. Tanigaki's ties were largely emotional, his affection for Chinese poetry being one of his remarked-upon traits. Nikai's ties, however, are much more nuts-and-bolts. He is probably the active legislator with the deepest and broadest network of ties with officials and politicians of China. His appointment will likely both please and pain the CCP. If Nikai asks to come across the water and meet with a few old friends, how can the Chinese government refuse?

Ostensibly keeping an eye on Nikai will be Hosoda Hiroyuki, who will take over Nikai's chairmanship of the LDP General Council. Hosoda is the leader of the Seiwakai, the largest faction and the faction to which Abe belongs. It is a measure of Abe's respect for and wariness of Nikai that he has asked his faction leader to step in and run the party’s main meetings.

Moving out of her party position of policy chief and into the Cabinet is Inada Tomomi, a protégé of the Prime Minister's and a fellow Seiwakai member. She will be taking over the defense portfolio – a symbolic, not substantive choice, as Inada has heretofore not been seen as taking a particular interest in defense issues (her own interests can be gleaned from the name of her personal Diet member group, "The Tradition and Innovation Association"). She is also something of an arriviste in party circles, having only served four terms in the Diet. She will be leapfrogging over some 70 LDP legislators who 1) have more elections to the Diet than her and 2) have never served in a Cabinet post.

Taking over her spot as chairman of the Policy Research Council and rising ever so slightly in party rank will be Motegi Toshimitsu. Motegi was the chairman of the party's elections strategy committee and thus nominally the architect of the party's wins in the Hokkaido #5 by-election and the July 10 House of Councillors election this year. However, since the LDP is fighting what is still a prostrate and disarmed opposition, Motegi's actual motivational and organizational strengths remain in question.

Motegi seems to be one of Abe's most important cultivated allies. The Harvard master's degree holder and former McKinsey consultant is a frequent guest and golf partner of the PM. He also has as many elections to the Diet (8) as the PM. Motegi would seem a possible a dark horse candidate to step in to the premiership, should the PM need to suddenly step down. However, Motegi did not start out his political career in the LDP, having first won his seat as a member of the opposition Japan New Party (Nihon Shinto).

Tokyo Gubernatorial Election 2016 - A Last Look

In a few minutes voting starts for the governorship of the Tokyo Metropolitan District(1). Twenty-one names are on the ballot but only a few are worth mentioning. Even fewer have a chance at making a splash.

The prize is a heck of a job - essentially the presidency of the world's 16th largest economy -- the part of Japan that generates, rather than immolates, revenues.

At this writing it looks like Koike Yuriko's Big Decision -- to defy the Liberal Democratic Party's national and Tokyo establishments by offering herself as a candidate -- will pay off with a big electoral win. The Iron Butterfly - my name for her given her hardline realist security policy views and her penchant of flitting from party to party as political expediency dictates -- is leading in the polls. Her main rivals -- former newscaster Torigoe Shuntaro and former Iwate Governor Masuda Hiroya -- have been trying to keep up with on the one hand crippled and the other tepid campaigns.

One has to be appalled by the Torigoe situation. A last minute choice of the four party electoral alliance of the Democratic Party, the Japan Communist Party and micro-party twins the Socialists and Livelihood (made after an inexplicable second-to-last minute dalliance with Abe Shinzo critic and major fruitcake Koga Shigeaki) Torigoe's hopes for victory were immediately torpedoed by tabloid tales of his having seduced an innocent 20 year old a decade ago. Torigoe did what his lawyers told him to do -- say nothing, prepare to sue, threaten with a police complaint of obstruction of an election -- which made him look like he was trying to bury the story. He had an obligation to save himself from extortion and possible prosecutorial misconduct over an incident he thought resolved years ago. Trying to run for governor – and get others excited about his run for the governorship -- at the same time has proven a titanic struggle.

LDP and Komeito's candidate Masuda Hiroya is probably one of Japan’s top thinkers on local administration. He has competently run Iwate Prefecture, shaking off the influence of his mentor Ozawa Ichiro in the process. He has been Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications. His May 2014 report on immanent catastrophic population declines in rural areas shook off decades of complacency about the "genteel decline" of Japan exurban environment.

Which is why it is both terrible and wonderful that his candidacy has failed to catch fire even with The Establishment. Terrible in that of all the persons seeking the governorship Masuda is the only one with even an inkling of how local administration works, what it is good at, what it must abandon and what, if anything, Tokyo can do to help revive the rest of Japan. Wonderful in that failure will mean that the poisoned chalice of the Tokyo Governorship will not devastate the career and reputation of a third of Japan's reformers. The snakepit of Shinjuku Ward devoured and then spat out Inose Naoki and Masuzoe Yo'ichi for non-criminal financial indiscretions. Losing Masuda as well to local Tokyo's politics would be Brechtian farce.

Down the ticket, the Tokyo election has attracted this year more than its usual share of right wing nut jobs courting the Empire Should Strike Back vote (a not-to-be ignored and not insignificant constituency, given soon-to-be-felon General Tamogami Toshio's stunning capture 600,000 votes in 2014). Chief among these awful crackpots is Sakurai Makoto (not his real name) the former chairman of the anti-Korean, anti-Chinese hate group the Zaitokukai. One hopes (OK, I hope) the plethora of wacky alternatives and a cooling of Sino-Japanese tensions over the Senkakus (credit to both Abe Shinzo and Xi Jinping for this) keeps him below 100,000 votes.

Turnout is expected to be light. Normally, low turnout would favor the LDP/Komeito candidate, backed as he is by the political machines of both parties. Not even low turnout, however, looks to derail Koike Yuriko’s bid to become the first woman to lead Tokyo.



-------------------------------------
1) a neologism - the actual English name of Tokyo-to is "the Tokyo Metropolitan Government." I will try to convince the new governor to change the name as calling a geographical area a "government" makes zero sense.

Explaining The House Of Councillors Election - On The Lack Of A Viable Centrist Opposition

In the most recent set of public opinion polls, conducted over the weekend following the Ise-Shima G7 summit, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its leader Abe Shinzo had much to smile about. Most polls showed a leap in Cabinet approval ratings of about 5%, adding on to what are at historic levels of public acceptance of a Cabinet, at least for a prime minister in his fourth in office (not that there have been, historically, many of these creatures). The ruling party's dispiriting four-to-one advantage in support over its centrist rival, the Democratic Party remained unchanged or improved.

Certainly the atmospherics of President Barack Obama's visit to Hiroshima, which pleased an astonishing 98% of respondents in the Kyodo poll (the first time I have ever seen such a polling number anywhere outside the DPRK) have added to the luster of Prime Minister Abe and his government.

Nevertheless, the public's attitude toward the policies of the Abe administration and the LDP remains at best grudging and at worst hostile. A majority of the population does not believe the government's economic policies are a success or likely to succeed. A majority of the voters do not want the government to consider a revision of the Constitution. A majority indeed do even not want the ruling coalition to win the necessary number of seats giving it the potential to alter the Constitution.

So what is going on? Why has the opposition been unable to translate the public dissatisfaction with the current policy directions or potential policy directions of the LDP and the Cabinet into support?

A considerable amount of the blame for the Democratic Party's inability to capitalize on a favorable policy environment has to be laid at the door of party leader Okada Katsuya. He is a bland and earnest individual with poor charisma and paltry appreciation of the value of political symbols. With his wooden speeches and leaden demeanor he practically begs the news media to belittle him. That journalists are recording his words and his image not because he has anything to say but because he is the leader of the opposition bothers him not enough. If not for the sheen of the leadership post, the news media and the public would ignore him.

However, it is facile to attribute the major part of anti-LDP opposition's unpopularity to the current leader of DP. Replacing Okada with someone else (a prospect the DP faces following the drubbing they will receive in July) cannot fix the fundamental problems of the opposition, even if the opposition were to recruit a magnetar like Koizumi Shinjiro, the only current rival to Prime Minister Abe.

For a viable opposition to be both viable and an opposition it has to 1) oppose and 2) have a place upon which to make its stand.

In the current political environment, both internal and external, neither is possible.

In terms of policy stance, the LDP is incorrectly classified as a center-right party. It is in fact a center-left party or even leftist party, with a nationalist/patriotic veneer of ersatz, sheepish rightism. The LDP's current economic policies are the interventionist dreams of European and North American liberals, with not a shred left of the small-government and market-driven drives of the Hashimoto and Koizumi (pere) eras. As for security policy, Japan's politico-military establishment under Abe is as cautious and rule-bound as it has ever been, at least as compared with counterparts in other OECD countries. As for its promises of constant expansion of social spending, only the Japan Communist Party holds a candle to the LDP.

So where is Japan's so-called "liberal" opposition to stand? Yes, it can oppose last year's security legislation on procedural grounds. However, if one looks for concrete difference, one finds that when the DPJ, the precursor to today's DP, was in power, its security plans were identical to those of the current government. On the economy and social welfare, to the immediate left of the LDP is the JCP, with only a micrometer of space between them.

Rob the electorate of the illusion that a change in political parties will in and of itself better Japan, as the DPJ's turn in power did, and you have an impossibly narrow base on which to build a challenge to the current ruling coalition and its leader.


Later - For a review of the latest polling numbers, check out the most recent Sasakawa Foundation post by Tobias Harris (Link)

Some Nice Things About the Minshinto

This past weekend the Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) and the Ishin no To (Japan Innovation Party) merged, forming a new named party, the Minshinto (which in English could be "the Democratic Progressive Party”but in order to avoid confusion with the Taiwan ruling party of the same name is being called the "Democratic Party"). The so far mild public reaction to the event has prompted the small English language Japan commentariat to offer only a tiny burst of mostly negative reviews. Yuki Tatsumi at Stimson is the most scathing, dismissing the new party as merely the old party, with all the same negatives as before (Link1). Tobias Harris, writing for the Sasakawa Foundation, is a bit nicer but still dwells upon the lack so far of a positive public reaction to the new party’s formation. (Link2)

As hard as it may be to believe, there are some nice things one can say about the Minshinto.

1) DP leader Okada Katsuya headed off a potentially catastrophic split of his own party prior to a House of Councillors election. DP conservatives/Matsushita Seikei products (often both) like Maehara Seiji, Nagashima Akihisa and Hosono Goshi are unhappy at the Okada secretariat's steps toward electoral collaboration with the Japan Communist Party. They have been threatening to leave, joining members of the rump Ishin no To in a new conservative opposition party. With brought their JIP conservative buddies now in their party, the DP conservatives are less likely to depart. The price for this unity was accepting a stupid name change.

2) Japan's largest opposition party got larger, not smaller. That alone is something. DP has 96 seats in the House of Representatives; 60 seats in the House of Councillors. Not bad.

3) The party secretariat is the DPJ's secretariat with a few tweaks. Tatsumi sees reappointment of the DPJ leadership as a weakness, with too few new faces to generate excitement (the one new face in the bunch, attack dog Policy Research Chair YAMAO Shiori, has been slapped back with a financial scandal). One could also turn the analysis around and see a merger where one team's members kept all the important posts and the other team's members, including some with titanic egos (Eda Kenji) got essentially nothing as a pretty sweet deal for that first team.

Representative
OKADA Katsuya (DPJ)

Acting Representatives
EDA Kenji (JIP)
NAGATSUMA Akira (DPJ)
RENHO (DPJ)

Secretary-General
EDANA Yukio (DPJ)

Policy Research Chair
YAMAO Shiori (DPJ)

Elections Council Chair
GEMBA Koichiro (DPJ)

Diet Affairs Council Chair
AZUMI Jun (DPJ)

House of Councillors Chair
GUNJI Akira (DPJ)

4) With the Will They/Won't They/Why Don't They phase completed, the opposition can now turn to the important business of coordinating Diet and electoral actions against the still immensely powerful but increasingly less likable Liberal Democratic Party of Abe Shinzo.

On A House of Representatives Election in April

I hate writing about stupid things...and a Diet dissolution after the passage of the Budget is a very stupid thing.

However, everyone is speculating about an early House of Representatives election, how it will allow Prime Minister Abe to take advantage ofhis  excellent Cabinet and party support poll numbers, how it will allow him to renew the employment contracts of his HoR colleagues well before the next rise of the consumption tax, how it will set up a knockout blow to the opposition in the mandated Summer  2016 House of Councillors election.

Assuming he and his party win big...which is an assumption.

The issue is turnout...and holding a snap election in April could increase turnout -- which could lead to a reversal of fortune (though probably not a loss of the majority) in the currently very accommodating House of Representatives.

Losing seats in a House of Representatives election could set up a reversal in the current scenario for the House of Councillors. The operative plan is to ride the current popularity of the Liberal Democratic Party (it is outpolling the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan 4 to 1) to a repetition of the wholesale larceny of seats seen in 2013, driving the DPJ to marginal status and possibly securing enough seats for an assault on the Constitution -- though that latter goal may require the cooperation of Hashimoto Toru's Osaka Ishin no Kai seat holders  -- and who in his/her right mind wants to associate/negotiate with the volatile Mr. Hashimoto?

We have to remember Fall 2014, when Mr. Abe blew everyone away with his sudden, duplicitously packaged (Reed, Pekkanen and Scheiner called it a "bait-and-switch") dissolution and general election. The DPJ was caught flat-footed in that instance by the dissolution (as was yours truly). It and the other opposition parties never really got a campaign going before the election day was upon them. Nevertheless, the DPJ managed to claw back seats it had lost in 2012 to Hashimoto's Japan Innovation Party and Watanabe's Your Party, while LDP stayed stuck in place.

This time:

1) the DPJ is not waiting for Abe Shinzo to surprise it: the party apparatus seems to have selected House of Representatives candidates and seems to be sending them out on pre-emptive, campaign-like encounters with the voters.

2) Unlike in 2014, Abe does not have a clear referendum issue in his docket, as he had with delaying of the rise in the consumption tax. Discussion of Trans Pacific Partnership legislation will take months, not weeks. Meanwhile, the shock of the Bank of Japan's latest extreme gesture of imposing negative interest rates seems to have already worn off.

Abe could, of course, announce a further delay of the rise in the consumption tax and make that his new referendum issue for an April dissolution. Somehow the adage "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me" pops into the head when I think of Abe trying to pull off the same trick twice.

If we could add to this 3) a return to some of the enthusiasm the electorate used to have for gleeful punishment of the LDP for being the LDP -- an springtime dissolution could be disastrous for Abe Shinzo's hopes of climbing past Nakasone and Koizumi in the list of longest-serving prime ministers.

However, considering the contempt Abe is displaying toward the opposition (check out his introductory paragraphs of his Policy Speech on January 22 or his smart ass replies to question in the Diet regarding a revision of political donation laws), maybe he really is prepped and primed to pull the plug on this Diet come April Fools Day.

Surprise!

Does The Seoul Comfort Women Agreement Exist?

A technical question...but one with implications as to the conduct of foreign policy and the behavior of elites in elective democracies: does the Seoul agreement "finally and irreversibly" ending the comfort women dispute between Japan and the Republic of Korea actually exist?

By "exist" I mean in the way an English speaker would understand an agreement existing, as in "Is there an actual text on paper, parchment, stone tablet or pdf which both sides have signed -- with a pen, a brush, a mouse or a stamp? Is there some object, real or virtual, with the names of representatives of both sides on it?"

And if so, can we see it?

My current thinking is that there is no actual, signed agreement between the two nations containing the details announced at the press conference on December 28. The lack of a signed agreement would explain some of the odder bits of Monday's announcement, including

- why the announcement was not accompanied by a printout (Link)

- why the Japanese government promises in section 1(iii) of the announcement to do what it said it would do in sections 1(i) and 1(ii), with the government of the ROK repeating the assumption ("on the premise that the Government of Japan will steadily implement the measures specified in 1. (1) (ii)above") in 2(i). Under normal circumstances governments making declarations do not immediately double check themselves.

- why a Japanese embassy official in Washington has said the current agreement would not need to be approved by the Cabinet and

- last but not least that stunning adverb "approximately" in the English language version of the agreement, as in "approximately 1 billion yen". In the Japanese version, the numeral is modified not once but twice (omune ni 10 oku en teido - "roughly in the vicinity of 1 billion yen") -- not your everyday binding agreement figure of speech, to put it mildly.

Of course, that the Japanese press describes Monday's announcement as introducing to the world a go'i ( 合意 - "our meanings are in sync") rather than a kyotei (協定 - "formal agreement") should be probably be seen as prima facie evidence there is no document underpinning this supposed final and irreversible settlement.

If no actual document exists perhaps one will be produced later, possibly as a requirement of legalization of the transfer of "approximately one billion yen" from the government of Japan to a special account created by the government of the ROK.

I hope I am wrong in all this: I hope there is an actual signed agreement. I very much like signed agreements when the goal is to end a bitter, longstanding dispute.

However, if there is not one and the two countries end their animosity on the issue with proper restitution and respect being paid to the women, I am not going to niggle about a technicality.

Not today at least.

Looking at the So-Called Comfort Women Agreement

First, read the announcement of the agreement on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. (Link)

Second, read what Tatsumi Yuki of the Stimson Center has dashed out (she is a wonderworker). She nails down the implications of the main points of the agreement like no one else can. (Link)

A few additional thoughts:

- Over the weekend the Japanese news media reported a blizzard of leaked details about the agreement. Many of these reported details turned out to have been wrong.

a) the reported size of the fund was 100 million yen. The actual fund will be TEN TIMES that amount

(Hey, it is Japanese taxpayer money, so who cares, right? It is not as if those who poured oil on the fire of the comfort women issue all these years had to personally pony up.)

b) South Korea is not contributing to the fund. Instead, all it is doing is opening the account in its name.

c) The comfort woman statue in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul is not being removed or moved. The South Korean government has merely agreed to talk to the private interests who built it, keeping in mind Japanese government concerns about the statue.

A forensic look at the reporting over the weekend would determine which news organization reported which false assertion when. However, in general, by Monday morning, all the major news outlets, ideological cant notwithstanding, had at least a couple details about the agreement wrong. As a result, on Monday morning, the agreement being described in the news media was unbelievable.

Now just how it was that so many false leads were planted, and by whom for what purpose, is largely an academic exercise. However, a cavalier treatment of reporters, burning them with fake leaks, may have more serious consequences down the road for the perpetrators. The reporters will simply not trust their sources anymore, making the news media less likely to play along with whatever mischief or agenda shaping the leaker may wish to perpetrate in the future.

- Now we have a very good reason for why Inada Tomomi was passed over for a Cabinet post in the October Cabinet reshuffle. A Cabinet Decision (kakugi kettei) by the full Cabinet is necessary for the agreement to become official government policy. In light of Inada's longtime, vehement assertions that the South Korean position on the comfort women is "all too many lies" (Link - J) her vote on the Seoul agreement would have been uncertain. Most likely than not, she would have had to resign rather than vote in favor of what was announced yesterday, damaging both her career and any image of sincere Japanese government remorse.

So Abe kept her out of the Cabinet, avoiding a certain clash. Smart.

- Aside from the limp ROK promise to talk to private parties on the statue issue, most of the wording of the announcement favors the Japanese side.

Take the first line of yesterday's agreement, with the seemingly missing "its" after the conjunction:

(i) The issue of comfort women, with an involvement of the Japanese military authorities at that time, was a grave affront to the honor and dignity of large numbers of women, and the Government of Japan is painfully aware of responsibilities from this perspective.

The Japanese military gets off the hook here, with the procurement of women for its officers and enlisted men downgraded to "an involvement" in the trafficking. The Japanese text is actually a bit more forceful, saying that activities took place "under the umbrella of" (kanyo no shita ni) of the Imperial Army. However, the Japanese is also more legalistic, quarantining the military as being not the Imperial Army but "the army of that time" (toji no gun).

As for what might be called "the missing 'its" as in "the Government of Japan is painfully aware of its responsibilities" it is also missing in the Japanese text. When I was reading the first reports of the agreement in Japanese, I wondered whether the lack of a clear recognition of the government's being responsible was the result of a stylistic or an intentional vagueness. The awkward English translation seems to confirm an intentional fudging, again very much to the benefit of the GOJ, of just whose responsibilities are being discussed.

- Is it just me, or does the announcement seem a lot like an agreement struck between children? Both sides agree to fulfill their part of the bargain as long as the other side fulfills theirs first. Adults do not demand these kind of chronologically impossible guarantees, do they?

- Trying to make sense of what was being reported in the news, I came to an incorrect conclusion in my post of yesterday. However, I wrote to a friend:

"I find Abe's diplomacy refreshingly amoral -- never seeking to do what is right, only that which incrementally increases leverage, knocks opponents off balance and fulfills the minimum requirement."

A few days back I also tweeted:

@Giappugliese Abe foreign policy specializes in mediocre results. It forces diplomatic partners to be complicit in their own dissatisfaction

— Michael Thomas Cucek (@MichaelTCucek) December 25, 2015

I believe yesterday's announcement not inconsistent with these statements.

As a result of yesterday Abe Shinzo is being hailed as "Japan's Nixon," cutting the deal only he can cut as in "only Nixon can go China."

Uhmmm...please tell me something I did not already know...a year ago.

After careers as arsonists on the comfort women issue, Prime Minister Abe and President Park had their surrogates show up on the scene with fire extinguishers. We will see if the current geopolitical environment allows the pair of hereditary rulers of their respective countries to simply waltz away from their suddenly unfriended extremists.

The So-Called So-Called Comfort Women Issue Resolution Proposal

There is nuts. Then there is full blown, hair-askew, pants-on-backwards insane.

From news reports, the proposal on resolution of the comfort women issue Foreign Minister Kishida Fumio will be offering to his South Korean counterpart in a few hours's time is the latter.

According to news reports, Kishida is going to ask the ROK side to accept:

1) a fund of 100 million yen (currently about USD $825,000) for the medical, welfare and income needs of the surviving Korean comfort women

2) a request that the ROK government also contribute to the fund

3) letters from Prime Minister Abe Shinzo to all the survivors expressing his remorse at their pain, deprivation and humiliation

4) the ROK government's declaring that the government of Japan bears no legal responsibility for acts done to the comfort women, i.e. that the repudiation of ROK legal claims in the 1965 normalization treaty apply also to the comfort women's claims

5) that the ROK government will agree to remove or move the statue of the seated young girl installed by private interests in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul

6) that the two governments sign a binding agreement declaring the comfort women issue resolved.

I am not making any of the above up. (Link - J video)

I know very little about contemporary South Korean politics (it is hard enough to keep track of the politics of Japan, thank you very much) but my cursory knowledge still tells me there is virtually nothing in the above that the Park Geun-hye government can accept, given its level of popularity with the voters.

With unacceptability as the assumption, two alternative explanations have been bandied about:

A) That the above is actually not the proposal, and that the news media of Japan have been quoting sources who are voicing their virulent opposition to whatever the Abe administration is actually proposing, or

B) The above is really what the Abe Administration is offering, fully cognizant that the ROK will reject it, allowing Abe and Company to shrug their shoulders and say, "Look, we made an offer and they turned us down flat. Next."

Of course, there is always:

C) the ROK through gritted teeth accepts the above.

The reason for (C) even being remotely plausible is pressure from the United States, ally of both of these headstrong governments. According to the Asahi Shimbun " numerous persons in the loop of Japan-ROK relations" have confirmed that if an accord is reached the U.S. government will immediately issue a statement of congratulating its allies for resolving this difficult bilateral issue. (Link - J)

A statement of congratulations...oh whoop-de-doo.

As persons following my tweets on Twitter know I am firmly in the (B) camp. My reading is that key members of the Abe government are certain the current ROK government and a large chunk of the South Korean public have no intention of ever letting Japan and the Japanese off the hook for the colonial era -- and why should they, as resolution of historical/territorial issues would open the door for closer Japan-US-ROK military cooperation, upsetting China?

As a consequence, any realistic Japanese attempt at a rapprochement would be pointless, leaving Japan looking like a rejected beggar.

Japan's main interest in these talks seems to be the pleasing of U.S.A. policy makers, putting on a show of seeking resolution so that the Japan Hands can check off the "a more concerted effort toward resolving the comfort women issue" box on the U.S. list of "Things the Abe Government Needs to Do."

In a few hours' time we will know better.

As Heresies Go, Mine's Not Going To Make Me Too Popular

Let me just toss this out, as it has been annoying me for a while.

"Womenomics" -- the precise term invented by Goldman Sachs analyst Kathy Matsui (Link) and the Abe Government's fluffier set of programs intent on improving the status and numbers of women in corporations and government -- promise(s) to increase the size of Japan's GDP per capita and in total. By injecting the talents of women into the established sectors of the economy, corporations will have greater sales and government will become more responsive, bettering people's lives.

Really?

When since the beginning of the Meiji Period has Japan's problem been a lack of talent? Put another way, when since those very few decades after the Restoration has there been a massive need to import skilled labor?

Has not the problem in Japan been, and acutely so since the collapse in the Bubble, corporations and government sitting on talent, misapplying it or allowing it to wither?

If so, how will luring more women into the corporate and career government paths improve the performance of these entities? Without a fundamental reform in the way labor is used -- with workers allowed to flow toward more profitable and efficient enterprise -- having more women in the corporate management and government might mean only women will be gaining an equal chance at having their talents go to waste.

As for society at large, the triumph of "Womenomics" could significantly decrease public welfare. A consequences of the poor uptake of women into career path Japanese corporate and government positions has been a surplus of talented women seeking to become professionals (doctors and lawyers), working for non-Japanese corporations and establishing their own businesses and NGOs. By increasing the percentage of the women gaining access to higher level positions in The Establishment one would be shrinking the pool of talent available for these often much more socially constructive courses.

Already improving opportunities for women in corporations and government could be one of the factors behind the trend identified in a hard-to-read but still fascinating recent graph from plotted//grundriss. Entrepreneurship, rather than equalizing in between the sexes, has become an increasingly male activity. (Link)

While other factors may be in play -- the large lump of mostly male Baby Boom retirees looking for something to do with the last two decades of their active lives, for example -- the decreasing percentage of women entrepreneurs corresponds with the expected outcome from greater opportunities opening up for women in government and established corporations.

In a broader and less fair sense, should we not be more skeptical about ideas hatched in the Goldman Sachs fun factory? Kathy Matsui may be a fine human being (I cannot say, having only chatted with her that one time at that bizarre conference) but any analysis finding "the world would be a better place if more persons were able to become like us" has to be seen as at least potentially unsound -- especially if the definition of "better" is "that which allows us to sell more of our precisely targeted investment instruments."

I get it that in the aggregate having more women working increases the number of wage earners and thus the size of the economy. However, that "Womenomics" has never been shy about being a nakedly regressive nationalist social policy, pushing Japanese women into the workforce to take up mostly the sorts of jobs other societies have immigrants do -- receiving thunderous applause from international circles in the process -- that I do not get.

Me-ish Stuff, Of Cabbages And Kings

- The announcement of my press luncheon at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan on December 17 (Link)

- The announcement for my open-to-the-public talk at Temple University Japan's Azabu Campus on January 7 (Link)

- My most recent essay in the FCCJ's in-house magazine on Abe Shinzo's ichi oku so katsuyaku rigmarole (Link)

- Rikkyo University's A. J. Sutter's rendition of our discussion on this blog (Link A) into a Japan Times article. (Link B)

"Respected scholar and blogger" - something to add to the sidebar?