By The Way, Okada Katsuya Is Still Dull

"I see you have brought a card with you, Mr. Okada. Please tell us about your card."

The Democratic Party of Japan, the once and possibly future alternative to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, will today be having a joint meeting of its members of both Houses of the Diet.

The party has some big issues to face - existential ones. (Link)

Though the agenda may have other items on it, there is really only one major topic of discussion: should the current party leader Kaieda Banri be forced to hold an early leadership election? A year ago, after the party's defeat in the House of Councillors election giving Abe Shinzo and his party control of both Houses, Kaieda asked to be given a year to turn party fortunes around. By any measure, he has failed to make even minor progress in that direction. The DPJ is the main opposition party again but only because its potential rivals - the Japan Restoration Party of Hashimoto Toru and Ishihara Shintaro and the Your Party of Watanabe Yoshimi -- have fissioned into ever more strangely-named pieces. Kaieda gained a slight boost from the victory of the anti-Liberal Democratic Party, former DPJ MP candidate Mikatsuki Taizo in the Shiga governor's race two weeks ago. However, in order to win that race Mikatsuki and his many DPJ helpmates pointedly avoiding mentioning the candidate's DPJ ties, worrying that association with the DPJ would torpedo his chances.

Sincere and learned, Kaieda has failed to inspire as a party leader. He has little aptitude in playing to the public's or the news media's expectations and foibles. He has also failed to chart the party a new ideological course, choosing instead to peddle the traditional DPJ solutions to Japan's problems -- as though the Global Financial Crisis and Abenomics had not reshuffled the world's and Japan's decks.

The problem with replacing Kaieda with someone else is...who is going to be that someone else? If the party is going to press him to go, it has to make a clear, clean break -- or else the exercise will look like what it is, a desperate attempt to generate interest in the party through a coup. Kaieda comes from the DPJ's liberal wing, so reasonably the pendulum must now swing the other way, with a new leader selected from out of the party's conservative wing.

Unfortunately, none of the handful of top conservative candidates for the party leadership -- Noda Yoshihiko, Maehara Seiji, Edano Yukio, Gemba Ko'ichiro, Azumi Jun and Okada Katsuya: a collectivity the Yomiuri Shimbun refers to "The Gang of Six" -- has significantly greater electoral appeal, intellectual flexibility or party support than Kaieda. Former prime minister Noda has the gravitas. He has not, however, shed the status of "Class A War Criminal" he earned throught his inexplicable calling of the House of Representatives election of December 2012. Maehara is derided as an LDP clone and is always reminded, when he makes noises about challenging the leadership, of a little incident involving a fake email. The younger or at least younger-seeming trio of Edano, Gemba and Azumi have failed, over Kaieda's year of trial, to create the impression they are more than just former ministers and power brokers of the DPJ's fat years.

This leaves Okada, the stolid and fabulously wealthy (Link) veteran who led the party to ignominious and overwhelming defeat in the 2005 summer snap House of Representatives. To be fair, Okada had the misfortune of being asked to outsmart and outmaneuver the greatest political wizard of the age, Koizumi Jun'ichiro. This Okada failed to do -- even though Koizumi, by expelling the postal reform rebels from the LDP and running candidates against them, was fighting the election on two fronts. Like a white Toyota Corolla, Okada was sensible and dependable and safety conscious and simply got blown off the road by the red Ferrari that is Koizumi.

Okada has been feisty and crisp, however, in recent appearances. He forcefully pinned down the prime minister, for example, in the debate over collective self defense (Link). He has for the past few weeks been making a lot of reasonable-sounding noises about the necessity for a change in the party leadership, creating the impression he has decided he should be Kaieda's replacement.

In something of a dress rehearsal for a leadership challenge, Okada appeared this last Saturday on Tahara So'ichiro BS (not what you think) program to debate the Cabinet Decision on collective self defense. His debate opponent was Watanabe Tsuneo -- not the all powerful Abe-supporting media emperor Watanabe Tsuneo, the Japan Foundation's quiet researcher Watanabe Tsuneo -- who is also the son of DPJ elder statesman and legendary quote machine Watanabe Kozo.

The bad news from Saturday's debate? Even against a friendly or at least neutral opponent (Watanabe has no political ambitions -- he refused to take over his father's seat in the Diet after his father retired) Okada could not debate the issues effectively. Time after time Okada would toss up a point only to sit morosely and watch Watanabe swat it back.

Losing a debate on a minor cable channel against a researcher would not be such a big deal. However, Okada's talking points were for the most part spot on correct. Watanabe's were, by contrast, largely non-sequiturs. If one cannot smash an avuncular BS (what you are thinking) spewing individual who feels no particular emnity toward you, then you are not ready for prime time.

Okada has got to be hoping his friends and allies were not watching on Saturday. From the Twitter feeds of DPJ types and unfortunately for Okada, it seems that they were.

So don't be surprised if the big development at the DPJ headquarters today is Kaieda surviving what should be a lethal general meeting. Kaieda is terrible...but his potential replacements are not much better. Instead of Kaieda offering himself up for the good of the party, it is party secretary-general Obata Akihiro who offing himself (Link - J) ostensibly to try to make amends for what a lousy leader Kaieda has been.

Okada Katsuya's being still dull opens the door a bit wider, however, for an eventual run for the top post by Hosono "Get Lucky" Goshi -- whom we know is anything but boring. (Link)


Later - The editors of the Mainichi Shimbun largely concur. (Link)

The DPJ Goes To The Four Corners

Yesterday, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko had a first face-to-face good-fellow-well-met confab between himself and the recently elected Liberal Democratic Party President Abe Shinzo.

By "recently elected" I mean 16 days ago.

Accompanying both men were the main members of their new party secretariats.

By "new" I mean appointed 14 days ago.

The delay in getting the two party leaderships together is understandable. Noda had to reshuffle the Cabinet: that happened on October 1st. Then the new Cabinet ministers had to get comfortable in their new chairs. Then there was the Sports Day three day weekend...

OK, so the scheduling may not have been done with any degree of expeditiousness.

However, yesterday, the two lineups of men (and yes, it was all men...sigh...is this really an advanced post-industrial society?) got together over a table and got down to work.

And, after an eventful and likely exhausting five minutes, they ended their meeting.

Prime Minister Noda, with a dramatic flourish, told Abe that the two of them really have to together soon with Yamaguchi Natsuo, the leader of the New Komeito, to discuss the extraordinary Diet session. (J)

Meanwhile, in another part of the Diet Building, six members of the Administrative Oversight Subcommittee of the House of Representatives Committee on Audit and Administrative Oversight sat twiddling their thumbs.

The six members of the subcommittee -- four from the Liberal Democratic Party, one from Ozawa Ichiro's People's Life Party and one from the New Komeito, had responded to a call from the subcommittee's chairman, a member of the LDP*, to an emergency, extra-Diet Session meeting to examine dereliction of duty in the disbursal of the funds from the supplementary budget for the recovery and reconstruction in the disaster zones of the Tohoku and Fukushima Prefecture.

The reason the six members of the subcommittee were hard at work developing their thumb muscles was that none of the eight Democratic Party of Japan members of the subcommittee showed up to the emergency meeting. Had even a single member of the DPJ showed, the committee would have had a quorum, and could set to work investigating the allegations of fraud and mismanagement. (J)

Or at least they might have tried to do so, only to be stymied by the DPJ-led government's having told the summoned relevant ministry officials not to leave their offices to appear at a meeting that was not going to happen.

The DPJ had an explanation for not responding to the chairman's call. The lengthy process of winnowing through the appointments of new senior vice ministers/state ministers and parliamentary vice-ministers after a Cabinet reshuffle had turned out to be just that, lengthy, and the DPJ secretariat had not had the time to select a new Ranking Member for the subcommittee. Without a Ranking Member how could any of the other members show up?

You know how it is...

Tick, tick, tick...

Funny thing that Abe and Yamaguchi are learning about Noda. If, following your election, or in Yamaguchi's case reelection, to the position leader of your party the first thing you promise to your followers is that you will bring them the head of the current government on a platter, that head is not terribly inclined to facilitate your delivering on that promise. Indeed, however he might not want to embarrass you in front of your peers, he has an incentive to stall, delay, prevaricate, stonewall -- all to keep his head right where it is.

Noda Yoshihiko promised the hapless former LDP president Tanigaki Sadakazu in a private one-on-one meeting that in return for cooperation on the package of social welfare reforms bills including the consumption tax bill, the bond issuance bill and a bill reforming the electoral districts, he, Noda, would dissolve the Diet "soon" (chikai uchi ni).

Both Houses of the Diet passed the package of bills on social welfare reform, including the consumption tax bill.

However, when it became clear that Noda and the DPJ were stalling on the submission of the two additional bills, this in order that the two bills would fail to wend their way through the relevant Diet committees and plenary sessions before the September 8 end of the regular Diet session, Tanigaki lost his nerve. He tried, ex post facto, to get Noda to commit to a date certain for the Diet dissolution. He failed to bullrush the stolid Noda. At which point all hell broke loose: a fumbled no-confidence motion; the DPJ's ramming through the House of Representatives its versions of the two bills; the LDP voting in the House of Councillors for a motion of censure condemning its own actions; and the crashing to a halt of the House of Councillors session well before the deadline, leading to the death on the doorstep of the House of Councillors of the bond issuance and electoral reform bills.

Quite an interesting summer.

Anyway, with the two bills dead and Tanigaki gone as LDP president, the seemingly imperturbable Noda is now looking to Abe and Yamaguchi to forget all about that silly "soon" business.

As for Azumi Jun, the former minister of finance, who went about the halls of the Diet sweating and writhing throughout the month of August, it seems possible he may have lied exaggerated about the extent to which Japan faces fiscal disaster should the bond issuance bill fail to be passed this month.

Oh, the duplicitous knave -- I mean, DPJ Acting Secretary-General!

Certainly no one is doing now the panic dance he was doing just two months ago.

So what's bottom line? When will the Noda and DPJ stop their delaying tactics and start playing ball?

Oh, how Abe and Yamaguchi would love to know the answer to that question.

Perhaps they will find out when the two of them have their têtes-à-tête with the prime minister.

Sometime soon, just like he said.

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* While the committee chairs in the House of Representatives are all held by members of the ruling coalition, subcommittee chairmanships are distributed to members of the opposition out of courtesy.