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.

The Yasukuni Shuffle

For Langley Esquire, a blog post by yours truly -- "Feeling Festive" -- on the Yasukuni Autumn Festival and the prospects for a repeat of Abe Shinzo's sanpai sometime before December 27.

Surprisingly, Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Takaichi Sanae did not take part in the mass 110 Diet member assault upon the halls of Yasukuni Shrine today. Her traditional spot in the troika of marching solons seem to have been snapped up by Aizawa Ichiro (Link) who with his 9 elections to the Diet is the most experienced LDP Diet member to have never been a Cabinet minister. That his fellow classmate in the first graduating class of the Matsushita Institute of Management and Goverment (Minister Takaichi is one of the Institute's few female grads) Democratic Party member Noda Yoshihiko has already been prime minister must make Aizawa's status of eternal bridesmaid even more galling.

Nothing can fluff up an appeal for a cabinet post like a front row appearance at Yasukuni, I guess.

Takaichi's not showing up on for the march does not mean she has abandoned her pattern of jut-jawed Yasukuni visits. The Autumn Festival lasts until the 20th so she still has plenty of time to tuck in her promised visit.

What will be interesting will be to see whether other Cabinet ministers pay their respects at Yasukuni over the weekend. I am still holding out hope that Women's Empowerment Minister Arimura Haruko (A.K.A. "the McDonald's lady") will show up. Come on, Admiral Togo Heihachiro is one of Arimura's ancestors.

Despite the international fascination of Yasukuni, the struggles of Minister of Economics, Trade and Industry Obuchi Yuko's with allegations of multiple small violations of public campaign finance laws and political funds laws (Link) is the focus of the domestic news media attention right now, to the exclusion of much else.

So it is deja vu all over again in Japan Political News Reporting.


Later - Takaichi, Arimura and National Safety Commissioner Yamatani Eriko all paid their respects at Yasukuni on Saturday, October 18. (Link)

Obuchi Yuko's position has seemingly grown untenable, with the mid-careers in the party calling for her resignation (Link - J). That her parentage and cuteness allowed her to vault to the head of the line in ministerial appointments among her peers did not cause any resentment among those left bereft. None at all.

A spectacular, flaming failure of the Nukaga Faction's marquee appointment to the reshuffled Abe Cabinet 2.0 will shake the faction to the core. The Nukaga faction's accomodation with the Machimura superfaction contributed to former Health, Welfare and Labour Minister Tamura Norihisa's and former House of Councillor Diet Affairs Chair Waki Masashi's decisions to turn in their faction badges. The sudden shuddering halt to the rise of the faction's princess, whom intemperate voices were proclaiming the "next prime minister after Abe but one" and "the favorite to be the first female prime minister of Japan" after the reshuffle, will very likely lead to further defections -- maybe even the faction's complete breakdown.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Longtime readers might recall that I have predicted the end of Tanakaism before. (Link)

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)

In My Reptile Mind

A year ago, in a response to Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide's first submissions to what has become a lengthy list of things the Abe Cabinet is NOT thinking of doing, (e.g., NOT thinking of revising the Murayama Statement, NOT thinking of rescinding the Kono Statement) I posed a question about the nature of the beast doing the talking:

When a snake tells you it is not thinking of biting you, what matters more? That a snake told you, "I'm not thinking of biting you" -- or that it is a snake?

Over the first year and half of the second coming of Abe Shinzo and Friends, the answer to my question has been, astonishingly, "The former."

Which has me, a year later, composing another serpentine metaphor as regards militant-nationalist-revisionist-Sinophobe-conservative-right-wing-hawk Abe Shinzo:

In order for a snake to grow larger, it must shed its skin.

----------------

Lest anyone think that my use of snake metaphors is pejorative, be aware that:

1) I love snakes, particularly the big bad aodaisho (Japanese rat snake - Elaphe climacophora - Link)

and

2) I admiringly referred to former Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko as "The Anaconda" -- at least until he betrayed himself, his party and the electorate with his still unexplained offer to Abe to dissolve the House of Representatives.

Photo: Abe Shinzo arriving at the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan's conference "Women in Business" on 27 May 2014

Photo credit: Jonathan Kushner on Facebook (Link)

The Eternal Sunshine Of Noda Yoshihiko’s Spotty Recollection

The DPJ's Gang of Six

Former Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, who inexplicably called an election last December which led to his party's extirpation, is now doing P.R. for himself under the Bold, Mature and Sober labels.

Noda 'chose tax hike over being premier'
The Japan News

Former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said in a recent interview that he placed more importance on raising the consumption tax rate than remaining prime minister when he decided last August to approve the increase.

As head of the then ruling party, Noda agreed with the then two opposition parties on comprehensive social security and tax system reforms, including the consumption tax hike.

[Snip]

Noda said he had intended to resign from his Diet seat if he could not pave the way for raising the consumption tax.

"At the time I thought I might have to choose between the consumption tax hike or my post as prime minister," Noda said. "After also considering that I would have to choose between the tax increase and my own party [many members of which opposed the increase], I said I was willing to bet my political life. I meant that I intended to resign as a Diet member."

During the meeting of the leaders of the three parties last August, Noda was urged by then LDP President Sadakazu Tanigaki to specify when he, as the prime minister, would dissolve the lower house. At the time, the LDP wanted the lower house election to be held soon as it expected to score a major victory in the election, while the DPJ leadership wanted to delay the election as much as possible.

Noda said he replied: "I'll use an abstract expression but in a way that is as clear as possible. Both 'in the near future' and 'sometime soon' are all right with me."

After Tanigaki said, "I prefer 'sometime soon,'" Noda agreed to use that expression to describe when his administration would call an election, he said in the interview.

About the meaning of "sometime soon," Noda revealed that he had been determined to dissolve the lower house by the year-end.
“The only choice was [dissolution] by year-end. That was the bottom line. It was better for the nation considering the effects on preparing and implementing the budget," he said.

(Link)

No.

No, no, no, no and no.

That Abe Shinzo with his assault on the Bank of Japan and his profligate budgets would be reviving the animal spirits of the Japanese economy in 2013 was not something Noda could even vaguely foresee in mid-2012. Abe Shinzo was not the president of the LDP at the time. Noda was negotiating with Abe's hapless predecessor Tanigaki Sadakazu -- a mark demanding a double cross* if there ever was one -- whose economic policies were as no more expansionist than the DPJ's were. "LDP president Abe" to whom Noda would ultimately surrender, was still only a gleam in the eyes of revisionist and fantabulist members of the business establishment.

As for the excuse Noda makes for a November dissolution followed by a mid-December election, it does not hold water. An orderly process of compiling a budget is important, yes. However, is a sideshow if the DPJ has, as it did, a majority in the House of Representatives. The Constitution makes it clear that whatever the hell else happens, Japan's budget cannot be held hostage to a minority (the relevant passages are in Article 60, in case you are wondering).

What Noda did achieve, through his sobriety and iron-willed determination, was the electoral destruction of his party, the upending of a two-decade long process of building up a two-major-parties-alternating-as-the-party-of-government system and the short-circuiting the redrawing of the House of Representatives electoral map so as to reflect the Supreme Court's rulings on disproportionate representation -- all this, into the dumpster, in order to get the LDP to vote in favor of an LDP policy manifesto item. Furthermore, by calling the election in December, Noda made sure that the DPJ would suffer a huge cut in its 2013 government subsidy, making the financing of a return to power any time soon all the harder. Had Noda simply waited until January 2 for his announcement, his party, even if it lost a lot of seats in the subsequent elections, would still be on a decent financial footing.

Noda did not twist the LDP's arm, they twisted his, and his mind too. Snapping the spine of the DPJ was their job and Noda did it for them. If, as Noda indicates in this interview, it was either win the LDP's and the New Komeito's support for raising the consumption tax or resign from the Diet, I can think of hundreds if not millions of persons ready to cry, "Why the heck did you not resign from the Diet then?"

Furthermore, the Democrats cannot rid themselves of their portly DINO. He won his district handily last December by a greater margin than in August 2009. In addition, of all the members of the so-called "Gang of Six" of neither-entirely-cooperative-nor-entirely-helpful center-right leaders of the party (Noda, Edano Yukio, Azumi Jun, Okada Katsuya, Gemba Ko'ichiro and Maehara Seiji - Link - J), only Noda was able to bask in the glow of a DPJ candidate winning a seat in his home prefecture this past July.

Since the Democrats (and the rest of us) are stuck with Noda, the least we can ask for is that news organizations assign reporters willing to corner him on his dunderheaded management of the DPJ.

---------------
* How hapless was Tanigaki Sadakazu? He could be lulled into a debate over whether the House of Representatives should be dissolved "sometime soon" or "in the near future" and into choosing one of the two alternatives, allowing him to walk out of the building thinking he had extracted a concession from out of Noda.

Original image courtesy: Sankei Shimbun

Across The Board

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, whose economics is beloved of liberal economists Joseph Stiglitz (Link) and Paul Krugman (Link), is about become the first non-American to receive the hardline conservative Hudson Institute's Herman Kahn Award. (Link).

Dig it.


Responses to the question "Which party do you support?"
NHK News poll of September 8-9, 2013

In just a year since Abe's election as president of the LDP, he and his Liberal Democratic Party have become the unexpected colossus, spanning the ideological spectrum. Only the thin ultra-liberal, anti-business left end of the political stick is left open for the Communists to hang onto. Otherwise, the LDP and its coalition partner the New Komeito are everywhere.

Public opinion polls find a majority of voters supporting the idea a vigorous alternative to the LDP. However refreshing such a faith in politics-as-renewed-by-the-possibility-of-electoral-defeat, after Abe and his party move into the room, there is precious little oxygen left to breathe.

And the struggle for breath has become oh, so ironic in the case of the party whose campaign slogan for the July election was "We will be the power to protect livelihoods" (Kurashi o mamoru chikara ni naru) -- a.k.a., the Democratic Party of Japan. The DPJ now finds itself in dire straits if it cannot somehow find a way to lay off a big chunk of its own workforce. (Link)

Oops-a-daisy! (Hey former prime minister Noda, how's that manly sudden dissolution offer working out for ya?)

As for the Japan Restoration Party, with all the crud that Ishihara Shintaro has been saying the past few months about his co-leader Hashimoto Toru and Hashimoto's core program of converting Osaka from a prefecture to a metropolitan district, is it correct to even label that mad vessel a party?

The members of LDP certainly could still blow this sweet deal they have right now. They could get greedy and start pocketing some of the money they have tossed into economy through fiscal irresponsibility and monetary slaternliness. They could start fighting ordinary citizens to push through mega-projects making little economic or environmental sense (completing the capital ring roads, digging the Linear Motor Car Line from Shinagawa to Nagoya, restarting nuclear power plants in of questionable geomorphology). They could mess up the march of economy policy out of an inability to sacrifice some of their supporters.

Right now, however, they are on a roll -- right over every other party except the JCP.

Reflections On The Prime Minister's Award In Truck Driving

All politicians, even those in non-democratic states, have to participate on a regular basis in some strange photo opportunities.

This, I put to the readers, is one:

The Prime Minister Receives a Courtesy Call from the Winners of the National Truck Driver Contest

Thursday, May 30, 2013

(Source)

With the Prime Minister is Mr. Tetsuya Takashima of Himeiji, Hyogo Prefecture. Mr. Takashima won both the 11 Ton Division and the Overall Title in the 44th annual National Truck Driver Contest. He and the Prime Minister are holding the Prime Minister's Cup, one of many, many such awards bearing the Prime Minister's imprimatur.

Not all Prime Minister's Awards are backed up with a trip to the Prime Minister's Residence to meet with the prime minister -- who, in a linguistic tussle, never resides in the Residence. This particular prime minister, who officially hails from Yamaguchi Prefecture, does not even reside in the Prime Minister's Residential Quarters, preferring to live in his actual home in his actual hometown of Tokyo -- prompting the ineffectually puckish Democratic Party of Japan to ask for an official government determination on whether or not the prime minister is too afraid of ghosts to live in the supposedly haunted Residential Quarters, a jibe that has played well internationally (Link) but has failed to hit home in the domestic media.

Returning to the subject of truck driving, it is one of the few tests of skill graced with an actual Prime Ministerial photo op.

However, this has not been the case for most of the contest's history. It was only during the premiership of Koizumi Jun'ichiro that a Prime Minister's Award winner in truck driving actually received his award from the hands of a prime minister.

According to the conventional wisdom, the trucking industry has been a vital constituency for the Liberal Democratic Party, supposedly pushing the LDP in the direction (there was not much resistance) of overenthusiasm for costly and under-used high-speed toll roads. It is also a part of the conventional wisdom that Ozawa Ichiro's desire to capture the trucking industry's votes led to the DPJ to promise it would eliminate tolls on the toll roads, despite the ruinous effect such an abolition would have had on government finances and the credibility of government pledges to reduce carbon emissions. The promises to eliminate highway tolls in order to "buy" the trucking industry vote became a big fat target for the LDP to shoot at after the LDP was dumped into the opposition. The promised reductions, which the public knew were dubious, were never carried out, serving in the end only as examples of the DPJ's tendency to promise more than it could deliver.

Despite the importance of trucking votes in Japanese politics it took 33 years of Prime Minister's Awards before the contest winners were let into the Residence.

Part of the reason may be the contest's unusual pedigree. The sponsor of the first two contests was The Science Museum (Kagaku gijutsukan -- I am sorry but that is the organization's actual English name), presumably as a means of promoting truck technology.

After two years under the control of the national museum, sponsorship of the contest was taken over, and I am not making this up, by the Yomiuriland amusement park.

There is a story there that I have no time to look into.

After 10 years of being a part of the weird and wonderful world that is the Yomiuri entertainment and media empire, sponsorship of the contest was transferred -- and again, I an not making this up -- to the Japan Youth Center (Nippon Seinenkan) -- an organization established as a system of social control by the Home Ministry and the Ministry of Education in the 1920s. (Link)

It was not until 1995 that the national truck driving contest landed in the lap of the organization that now controls it, the Central Training Academy for Safe Driving (Anzen unten chuo kenshujo -- Link J) -- where, among other things, the national police go to learn their vehicle　handling skills. The Diet established the national Safe Driving Center in 1975. However, it seems the Center was not deemed the proper administrator of the national contest of safe truck driving until a score of years later. (Link - J)

Interestingly, the year after the contest winners were first received at the Residence, the government privatized the Central Training Academy for Safe Driving.

Coincidental? Hmmm...having some contest winners meet the PM for a few minutes for a photo op at the Residence hardly seems compensatory for being thrust into the cold world of the private sector.

Why look into all of this, aside from the inadvertent deadpan hilarity of the title of the event on May 30?

The National Truck Driver Contest took place in the beginning of November. It has been over six months since the winners were announced.

When did previous prime ministers meet the contest winners?

Noda Yoshihiko - 1 February 2012

Kan Naoto - no meeting recorded on Kantei website

Hatoyama Yukio - 23 February 2010

Aso Taro - 15 January 2009

Fukuda Yasuo - no meeting recorded on Kantei website

Abe Shinzo - no meeting recorded on Kantei website

Koizumi Jun'ichiro met the contest winners more than once, and each time within weeks of the contest.

At least from the evidence in the Kantei's photo pages, Prime Minister Abe is not alone among his predecessors in not letting the trucking association bask in his glow. Prime ministers Kan and Fukuda did not receive the truckers at all (though a meeting may have been in Kan's calendar for March 2011 -- who knows?).

When prime ministers have hosted the truck driving contest winners, however, they have done so in a timely fashion -- not six months after the fact.

What can be read from this tardy reception?

The pragmatists might say that Abe has been so preoccupied with the revival of the animal spirits of Japan's economy that he could not find the time to meet the truckers before now.

The strategist might say that the truckers have never been an important constituency for Abe. He has met them but only as a gesture on behalf of his party a month before the House of Councillors election.

The cynic might say that Abe's meeting the winners six month's late is an example of a profound lassitude, another instance of an item getting pushed down the domestic political calendar, like the startling delay until May 15 of the passage of the national budget.

One should perhaps be cynical. When one checks the legislation the Abe Cabinet has managed to push through the Diet, bearing in mind that the ruling coalition has a supermajority in the House of Representatives, one should probably come away unimpressed.

Even less impressive is the rhetoric of the current administration. It may be difficult to find a clearer demonstration of the contrast between a commitment to normalcy after 3/11 and exploitation of tragedy than Prime Minister Noda's remarks to the truck driving contest winners in 2012 (Link - J) and Prime Minister Abe's remarks on Thursday. (Link - J)

Grist for the mills of those who believe in a substantive difference between the parties.

Later - I have to be careful. Any more of this kind of archeology of the banal -- following the threads leading out of the apparently trivial, arriving at all kinds of unexpected destinations -- and I will drive away all of my readers.

Image courtesy: Prime Minister's Residence

The Hyperactive Mr. Abe

I was asked to provide comment on the Prime Minister’s visit to Myanmar. In the course of looking at articles and background reports, I found myself feeling a bit annoyed at the PM. "What are you doing in Myanmar? Didn't you just get off the plane in Russia and Saudi Arabia?"

This set me to thinking that it is not just Abe's foreign travel that is excessive – it is his EVERYTHING that is excessive. Half of the 30 minute-long 7 p.m. NHK news broadcasts seems composed of "Prime Minister Abe did this...and Prime Minister Abe did that...and the Prime Minister also did this...and in a surprise, Prime Minister Abe did something yet again..."

I accepted that the most likely explanation for my feelings of being beset by news of Abe's activities came from being "one of the fiercest critics of the reborn Abe regime" (Michael Penn's characterization, not my own - Link).

However, I suspected there was substance to my annoyance – that Abe's near omnipresence was more than just a notion buzzing around in my head.

So I decided to do a little bit of counting.

The data set is the accounts of the PM's activities posted on the Prime Minister's Residence website under Sori no ichi nichi (literally "The Prime Minister's Day" but translated into on the website as "The Prime Minister in Action" ).

What gets reported through Sori no ichi nichi is not everything the PM did during the day. Instead only the activities the prime minister's support staff and the ministries think we should hear about receive write-ups. As such, Sori no ichi nichi is a picture of the prime minister's day not as it is but as his subordinates want us to see it – which is, in a media-drenched modern post-industrial democracy, probably more important. Rather than actual achievement what is important is presence, at least as far as the molding of perceptions of the prime minister's interest in his work.

So what happens when you look at the prime minister's calendar as his people want us to see it? And how does Abe in this second term compare to his predecessors in terms of doing visible business?

Taking as a comparison the reports filed in Sori no ichi nichi for Abe's predecessor Noda Yoshihiko, and looking at the same span of time (Jan 1 – May 24) in 2012 and 2013, we get:



Looking at the graph, it sure looks as though there is more red than blue. The number of Noda postings only clearly exceeds those for Abe once in late May – the time when Noda was hosting a summit of Pacific island nations.

Looking at the monthly totals, we see that indeed for at least the two months, Abe's posts outnumber Noda's, with Noda's numbers in May getting goosed by the slew of posts showing Noda holding the hands of heads of state from countries that are dots in the middle of the ocean.



As for making sure that the public has the PM is on the job, the Abe crowd can be said to be twice as assiduous as the previous administration. Here are the graphs comparing the number of days during the period when nothing was posted to Sori no ichi nichi:



There might be only one posting on some days – but that one post goes a long way to maintaining an illusion of diligence.

However, it is in state visits and foreign travel the differences in between Abe's and Noda's administrations seems most stark.

Here is the list of overseas trips Prime Minister Noda took in between January 1, 2012 and May 24, 2012:

Jan 2012 – none

Feb 2012 – none

March – Security Summit (South Korea)

April – none

May – China/Japan/South Korea Trilateral Summit (Beijing)
G8 Summit (U.S.A.)

------
Total countries visited = 3
Total bilateral visits = 0

Here, by contrast, is the overseas travel of Prime Minister Abe during the same span( January 1 to May 24) this year.

Jan 2013 – Vietnam
Thailand
Indonesia

February 2013 – U.S.A

March 2013 – Mongolia

April 2013 – Russia

May – Saudi Arabia
U.A.E.
Turkey
Myanmar

------
Total countries visited = 10
Total bilateral visits = 10

OK to be fair, the time spans are perhaps not commensurate in terms of their situation within each PM's term in office.

So here is a second listing, of Prime Minister Noda's overseas travels during his first five months in office:

Sep 2011 – none

Oct 2011 – South Korea

Nov 2011 – APEC summit (U.S.A.)
East Asian Summit (Indonesia)

Dec 2011 – China
India

Jan 2012 – none

------------------------------
Total countries visited = 5
Total bilateral visits = 2

A better record than Jan-May 2012 but still not comparable to Abe's record of gregariousness.

Looking at both lists for Noda, we find his use foreign travel was rote. After his first five months in office, his only travels were second visits to South Korea, China and the U.S.A. -- and these only to attend multilateral forums.

Noda did not use foreign travel, as Abe is doing, to as a means of resetting both the political and media agendas.

Was Noda a prisoner of political gridlock and the ongoing recovery from 3/11? Or was his lack of overseas travel a signal that his perception of the office of prime minister was consuming him?

Be True To Your School

Entrance to the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management
Image courtesy: Google Street View

Yesterday when I typed, again and again, "Matsushita Institute for Government and Management" as a part of the bios of those attending Sunday's unofficial Return of Sovereignty Day ceremony, two thoughts kept running through my mind:

1) "Wow, for a school with only 256 graduates, these folks are ubiquitous."

and

2) "What the heck do they teach these people?"

The Matsushita Seikei Juku churns out conservative politicians and corporate executives, though only four at a time now. Despite its fame it remains a pretty mysterious place. Some journalists and commentators have taken a look at the school, sometimes with embarrassing results (link withheld to protect the guilty).

Looking at the graduates who became politicians, most prominent of whom is former Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, two themes stand out. The views that

a) the rules governing the lives of ordinary mortals do not apply to us

a belief that led Noda to call an election that led to the collapse of the Democratic Party of Japan as a force in the House of Representatives, and

b) success is confidence plus a social network.

Other attributes humans tend to find of value, such as self-awareness and deep knowledge, do not play an obvious role in the Matsushita Way.

Perhaps persons destined to be leaders do not need them...until they do, of course.

About That Revolution You Are Fearing

The insurgency began
And you missed it...

- REM, Begin the Begin (1986)

On April March 15, this summer's House of Councillors election became irrelevant. On that Friday, the House of Councillors approved, with coalitions shifting on every vote, the appointments of Kuroda Haruhiko as Governor of the Bank of Japan and Iwata Kikuo and Nakaso Hiroshi as deputy governors.

With these nods, the House of Councillors ceased to have a part to play in governing Japan. High appointments are the only matters requiring the approval of both Houses of the Diet. All other governance issues can pass into law via the supermajority the ruling Liberal Democratic Party/New Komeito coalition holds in the House of Representatives.

The only function the House of Councillors now serves is as a brake upon constitutional revision. The LDP and the Japan Restoration Association will be campaigning hard on the issue of revision in July. However, it is impossible for the two parties to win the necessary 2/3rds of the seats in the House of Councillors.

The existing state of legislative tyranny creates the conditions for some strange requests. Last week, Prime Minister Abe had a meeting with Osaka City mayor and JRA co-leader Hashimoto Toru at the Prime Minister’s Residence. In the course of the meeting, the prime minister asked Hashimoto for JRA support of the government’s budget, stating:

"If the JRA supports the budget bill, we will earn the public’s approval, even if the bill is rejected by the House of Councillors and has to be passed using the override."

(Link - J video)

Put into less convoluted terms, the prime minister's request reads, "We are going to pass the budget using our 2/3rds majority in the House of Representatives if the House of Councillors rejects it. Can you provide the political cover for our steamrolling of the legislation?"

What is the really weird part about Abe's gambit? Not that Abe is asking the Hashist to provide a fig leaf for the ruling coalition's naked use of power. No, what is weird is that under Article 60 of the Constitution, the passage of a budget does not require an override – the budget becomes law effective 30 days after the House of Representatives gives its approval, no matter what.

True, Abe could be talking about the full package of the budget and its enabling legislation, particularly the bond issuance bills to which Democratic Party of Japan prime ministers Kan Naoto and Noda Yoshihiko both had to sacrifice their premierships. Passing the enabling legislation will require the approval of both Houses, and barring the approval of the House of Councillors, the use of the 2/3rds override majority in the House of Representatives.

Of course, that Abe even asked Hashimoto for cover reveals an interesting lack of self-confidence on the part of the prime minister and his party. This could be because the use of the override is constitutionally suspect, the product of the LDP's and the New Komeito's margin of victory in the tainted December 2012 election.

However, reticence toward use of the override extends back before the courts made clear their disgust with the inequalities of the House of Representatives voting districts. Back in 2007-08, prime minister Fukuda Yasuo and the LDP embarrassed themselves repeatedly by failing to use the override majority to keep vital pieces of legislation from becoming defunct.

Some have argued a cultural distaste for the bald use of constitutional powers. Such a proclivity may indeed exists.

A self-interest explanation for earlier restraint would be that the smart elements of the LDP sensed that the party could not use the override without triggering questions about the legitimacy of House of Representatives elections. Had earlier LDP governments used supermajorities again and again to railroad controversial or blatantly self-serving legislation through the Diet, the courts might have stepped in earlier to rectify imbalances in the sizes of the districts -- something the LDP really wanted to avoid.

Later - Thanks to reader PW for alerting me to the error in the first line.

Out Of My Brain

Why should I care?
Why should I care?

- The Who, "5:15" (1973)

Having seemingly lost the readership of Janne Morén to my obsession with surface values and trivia, I ask the readership for a favor: allow me to offer an explanation of my zeroing in on the pronunciation of the country's name, in the form of a translation of a paragraph from an article published in Nihon Keizai Shimbun's electronic edition of 4 January 2012:

[snip]

Over history, the prime ministers: "Nihon" or "Nippon"?

When Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko gave his inaugural press conference as prime minister, he said, "in order to make Nihon healthy and strong." However, in the Democratic Party of Japan's campaign commercial he said, with force, "We will encourage the revival of a healthy Nippon!" Former Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro would use both Nippon and Nihon. For every time that he would shout Nippon with force in the Diet, he would repeatedly say Nihon when he would be giving a press conference about his visits to Yasukuni Shrine. Prime Minister Aso Taro, who decided that "either pronunciation is acceptable" would say Nippon in commercials but called his own book Totsute mo nai Nihon. It seems that for former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, the overwhelming majority of utterances seem to have been Nippon. [My underline]

If, according to the Nikkei, Koizumi Jun'ichiro would choose which pronunciation of the country's name to use based upon whether he wanted to rouse an audience or calm it down, I am going to wonder/pay attention when NHK without explanation shifts 100% to the rousing version -- especially when the shift seems to happen when Abe Shinzo returns in glory from his own private Siberia.

Fair And Balanced

Reckless, provocative, incompetent, amateurish!

Uh....no. (Link)

Against the baying of the Hallelujah Chorus, the Democratic Party of Japan never stood a half-a-chance...

Reality, What A Concept

Reuters takes a look at the Abe promises regarding fiscal stimulus through public works, a big par of the first arros of the "Three Arrows" of Abenomics. (Link)

The argument regarding the Yamba Dam is weak. Then again, an explanation of the Yamba Dam project and the difficulties folks have had in killing it requires an tour through the relationship between the central government and the prefectural governments.

It is also refreshing someone giving the Democratic Party of Japan -- at least the pre-Noda Yoshihiko premiership version of the DPJ -- some credit in trying to put a leash on Japan's love affair with concrete.

The Senkakus Debate - A Look At An Essay By Sourabh Gupta

Sourabh Gupta is a terribly smart fellow. He is probably the third most effective agenda sweeper I know, behind Unnamed and Our Man in Abiko.

However, the essays he has written for the East Asia Forum have left me feeling flat. I find myself asking, "Is this the best he can do?"

The latest essay, "Japan–China relations: a grand bargain over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands" (Link) is the latest disappointment. It starts out with a whimper, then slumps over for a long, painful slouch toward a fantasy dressed in reason's clothing.

The downward spiral in Sino–Japanese relations that was unleashed by the Noda government's purchase last September of three of five uninhabited islands of the Senkaku chain shows no sign of abating.

Arrggggghhhh.

Having regained one’s senses after being bludgeoned by such an opening, one has to ask, "Are the assertions in the above valid?"

The downward spiral shows little signs of abating -- if one disregards the one-on-one meeting New Komeito leader Yamaguchi Natsuo had with Xi Xinping as well as formal visits to China by former prime ministers Hatoyama Yukio and Murayama Tomiichi.

Assigning the onset of the downward spiral to the Noda government's purchase of three islands in September is rich. The Noda government's decision sought to prevent private actors from provoking a bilateral incident, as was the case in the Chinese trawler’s ramming of Japan Coast Guard vessels in 2010. The reactions of the Chinese government and proxies in response to the arrest of the trawler captain were outlandish, with China lauding the captain's piratical behavior. Keeping private actors out of the picture was the obvious impetus for the Japanese government preemptive purchase, after Ishihara Shintaro began collecting funds to buy the islands from their private owner.

Propulsion of the downward trajectory in relations has furthermore been rather one sided. Under normal circumstances, relations deteriorate as two parties trade tit-for-tat actions. Since the island purchase, however, the Japanese government has had to endure a tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-for-tat situation -- albeit not without not ancillary public relations benefits.

Beijing is channelling its annoyance at America’s military entanglement into provocative acts against Japanese forces, including the recent training of fire-control radar on a MSDF warship and a helicopter in the East China Sea, an action which China has denied.

How does Gupta know the deep psychological impulses driving of Chinese behavior? Has he been receiving information from the psychiatrists of Chinese naval commanders and their civilian controllers, in violation of doctor-patient confidentiality?

Politically, Beijing seeks a long-term bilateral understanding that shelves the question of ultimate sovereignty of the Senkakus to an indefinite future.

Beijing already has this understanding. It even has a collaborator in the act of shelving: the United States, which, even though Japan is a treaty ally, refuses to acknowledge Japan as having a definitive claim on the Senkakus.

Rather than let yet another dangerously repetitive farce play out at the time of expiration or buy-out of that lease —held incidentally by a relative of the ex-owner of the three islands — Beijing appears prepared to force the issue of the islands' future dispensation at this time.

Is Gupta arguing we should in some way be thankful for China's provocations coming now rather than later? Probably not...but is that not the implication of the above?

One has wonder what is so dangerous about something being repetitive...and from whose Olympian viewpoint is the Sino-Japanese struggle over the Senkakus "farcical"? The two governments are damn serious about the fight; we should be serious too.

That a dispute exists with regard to the status of the Senkakus should be obvious to all but the unbending.

I do not know what those serving in Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs feel about such language. I would be insulted by an outsider trying to insinuate himself into a discussion with a "we are all reasonable men and women here" gambit.

The anonymous slap at the position held by the Government of Japan is particularly unfortunate, as the rest of the paragraph contains useful information.

The essay reaches its nadir in the succeeding paragraph, here presented with the original links:

In the eyes of international law, neither party has a water-tight case. Japan can confidently assert that, in displaying peaceful and continuous exercise of jurisdiction, it has assiduously protected its claim of evidence of title. Besides, it may be reasonably sure that no international court will have the gumption to strip a sovereign of (disputed) territory that it has administered from a point of time that predates the court's establishment itself. Set against this argument is the fraudulent basis of Tokyo's incorporation of the islands as ‘unclaimed territory’ despite clear knowledge to the contrary, as well as the illegal basis of its formalisation, which was done in secrecy and without public notice. An international court may well hold that an incorporation conducted in the de facto shadow of imperial war victory was exactly that, de jure. That no international case law precedent exists with regard to a territorial dispute between a state and its erstwhile imperial master adds to the unpredictability of the verdict. China’s inability to press, and thereby protect, its claim during the crucial early-1950s to late-1960s period must likewise be seen as a grievous failing.

Let us take on this meal morsel by morsel.

1) "In the eyes of international law, neither party has a water-tight case."

Unfortunately, this is not even wrong. In dispute arbitration, one does not need a water-tight case – just one better than the one the other side has. Japanese diplomats, if you scratch them, will say: "If the Chinese have a case, why do they not take it to the International Court of Justice?"

The answer is, of course, because the Chinese would lose as they have

a) insufficiently pursued refutations of Japan's claim and
b) no evidence of effective administrative control for over 120 years.

2) "Set against this argument is the fraudulent basis of Tokyo's incorporation of the islands as 'unclaimed territory' despite clear knowledge to the contrary..."

Whoa, smile when you say that, pardner.

"Fraudulent" is a word on the precipice. When you say it, you probably should not have as your anchor point a New Zealand university master’s thesis by a Chinese-speaking German law student whose argument hinges upon an extension of a 1998 decision on the borders of Eritrea and Yemen to include the Sino-centric world order as explained to us by John K. Fairbank and others in the 1960s.

3) "as well as illegal basis of its formalisation, which was done in secrecy and without public notice."

"Illegal basis" -- another provocative turn of phrase.

One would wish to know from whence Gupta derived this assertion. Unfortunately the linked article is behind the Wall Street Journal's pay wall.

The author of the WSJ article has submitted a post to Nicholas Kristof's blog making the same claims (Link). Unfortunately the evidence presented in the post is inconclusive. Allusive to be sure, but not conclusive.

If I had the full text of Wall Street Journal article, my lack of enthusiasm might be cured.

4) "An international court may well hold that an incorporation conducted in the de facto shadow of imperial war victory was exactly that, de jure."

If anyone can make head or tails of this sentence, please leave an explanatory comment.

5) "That no international case law precedent exists with regard to a territorial dispute between a state and its erstwhile imperial master…"

At no time in history was Japan the imperial master of China. This sentence is therefore an an unexpected and unannounced irruption of the narrow Taiwan-Japan contretemps, unless there is a new meaning for the word "erstwhile" that I am not privy to.

Gupta's prescription for cooling the fires of nationalism -- Japan's throwing open a discussion over sovereignty by admitting the existence of a dispute -- has a number of highly reputable advocates. The initial popularizer of the idea seems to have been the formidable Togo Katsuhiko. The almost always correct Gerald Curtis, in an brilliant essay he circulated yesterday, concurs with the proposal. (Link)

I hold the extreme view that Japan should concede nothing. Beyond the principle that democracies should never make concessions to tyrannies, China is unlikely to stand by any agreements, gentlemanly or not.

In his conclusion, Gupta tells us:

These elements of a settlement are not too much to hope for. The East China Sea has been an arena of peace and cooperation in the post-normalisation era and bilateral, principles-based arrangements have been concluded in the areas of fisheries, marine scientific research and joint development of oil and gas resources. China's and Japan's friends and alliance partners have every incentive to quietly encourage a similar outcome on the vexed Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute.

I am afraid I am about to rain upon a parade.

The collapse of the joint development of oil and gas is fairly well-known (Link). What is less well-known is the effective collapse of the fisheries agreement.

Last week NHK aired a report on the joint fisheries area. It was an eye-opener.

Have a look at this pair of NASA images, here presented with some snarky overlays.





The area inside the orange line is the joint fisheries area. Japanese fisherman, in an effort to preserve the resource, do not use arc lights. However, Chinese vessels use every means including the luring the fish with giant arc lights -- and by doing so have depleted the resource in the joint area. These giant vessels have little recourse but to congregate along the border of the joint area, seeking schools of fish make the unfortunate decision to swim in from inside Japan's EEZ.

In effect, there is nothing joint about the joint fisheries area. Japanese fisherman have given up trying to secure their share of the catch -- a catch that at present probably only exists in the imaginations of diplomats. (Link – J)

It's All Right

My hometown newspaper lost its bearings this year. It got so mad at Noda Yoshihiko and the Democratic Party of Japan over the consumption tax bill that it forgot, when election time came around, to remind itself and its readers that for those who love Japan as it is, a trip to the election site for a vote for the DPJ and its candidates was the only way to avoid a reactionary regime change.

However, I love my dead tree news provider for all the good news it brings me...and for its publication of the work of Sato Masaaki, this blessed land's one truly clever political cartoonist.

Sato has a huge, full-color end-of-the year panel on the front page of this, the last newspaper for the year. In honor of omisoka it is a take on the Kohaku Uta Gassen (紅白歌合戦 - "Red-White Song Battle") to be broadcast tonight on NHK from 19:15 to 23:45. (Link)

Sato's Kohaku Uta Gassen is of a different character.

Two characters actually. Instead of "Red-White" (kohaku), Sato's version is "'This Is The Way To Cough It Up' (こう吐く - ko haku) Song Battle."

The star attraction, leading off, none other than newly reminted Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, singing his theme song of rebirth:

Yes, it's "Here Comes the Sun" -- the first song, side two of the Beatles' famous last recorded album...Abe Road.

Badum, badum (cymbal crash).

For fans of the actual song, the prettiest version I know. (Link)

Yoi o toshi o

The Fleet Sails Burning The Midnight Oil

As expected (Link) the pelagic JARPA II whaling fleet departed on Friday from ports in Hiroshima and Yamaguchi Prefectures. It was a close run thing for the whalers: Friday was the last day of regular business prior to the New Year holidays. Departing after New Years would have curtailed the hunt in the southern oceans.

The Yomiuri Shimbun's coverage of the departure focused on the fears of the families of the whalers. The sailors aboard the whaling vessels face meeting, in the dark, cold waters of the Antarctic, the stink-bombing tossing pirates of the Sea Shepherd Society. (Link - J)

It was left to the reporters of the less slavishly pro-Liberal Democratic Party and pro-leader (the catcher boats are homeported in Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's district) Sankei Shimbun and Asahi Shimbun to point out that, just like last year, all the ships have Japan Coast Guard officers on board. (Link - J and Link - J) These JCG (the one branch of Japan's international defense forces that actually shoots folks) officers are purportedly armed. (Link)

Furthermore, the fleet this year is supplemented by the dispatch of an additional vessel with crew and equipment meant to thwart attempts to interfere with whaling activities.

The whaling fleet is also ostensibly protected by a U.S. court injunction. Issued against Sea Shepherd, the injuction prohibits the group from approaching within 500 yards of any of the whaling ships.

The oddity: the injunction was issued by the granola-crunching Ninth Circuit, which holds its hearings in the famously pro-whaling bastions of Seattle, Portand, San Francisco and Pasadena.

That the fleet is sailing out at all this year is a result of bad decisions by a number of political players.

First is former Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko and the leaders of the Democratic Party of Japan. In a rollback of pressure for reform of the bureaucracy, they allowed bureaucrats to compile the Third Supplementary Budget for Disaster Relief (Link) with zero political oversight. Bureaucrats from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) used the opportunity to create a bailout fund for the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), the non-profit nominally in charge of the pelagic research hunt. The Institute was deeply in debt due to declining income from whale meat sales and the costs of Sea Shepherd interference in JARPA II.

Letting the bureaucrats run amok in compiling the supplementary budget did not earn Noda and the DPJ an iota of gratitude, of course. Bureaucrats continued their happy non-cooperation with (or, in their undermining of Tanaka Makiko's attempt to clamp down on abuses in the conversion of two-year schools into four-year colleges, their de facto mutiny against) the DPJ-led government until said government's Hatoyama/Ozawa/Noda-inflicted demise of two weeks ago.

Second are bureaucrats from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT). Under pressure from MAFF bureaucrats and politicians wishing to pander to pro-whaling voters, MLIT gave a stamp of approval to an otherwise incomprehensible half-retrofit of the whaling mothership, the Nisshin Maru.

The ship is in bad shape, having suffered two major fires in the past few years, including one in Antarctic waters in 2007 that killed one of the crew. It needs a complete retrofit to be fully seaworthy.

The time required for a full retrofit of the vessel, however, would have forced the cancellation of the 2012-13 hunt. Since missing even a single year would undermine the international legitimacy of the hunt (this is the way that MAFF bureaucrats think) the screws were put on MLIT to allow the ICR to cut corners on the Nisshin Maru's safety upgrade.

Third, and most egregiously, is the Australian government. Canberra took an intrasigent stance in the 2010-2011 negotiations for an International Whaling Commission-controlled compromise. The plan was to balance a cutback in JARPA II in return for an expansion of Japan's whaling activities in the Northwest Pacific, probably restricting whaling to Japan's economic exclusion zone (EEZ). Even the most limited version of the compromise was projected to reduce the number of animals killed by 5,000 over a 10 year period.

The actual number of animals saved by any plan would probably have been larger. A major reduction in the number of kills under the research whaling banner would have sunk JARPA II as an enterprise, resulting in a de facto if not de jure ban on the southern hunt, if not all pelagic whaling. A resumption of a commercial hunt for Minke whales in the waters around Japan would have also ended the never-halted-or-reduced hunt for Baird's Beaked whale, Pilot whale and Risso's Dolphin -- three large-bodied species Japan's small-scale coastal whalers kill precisely because they are not on the IWC's protected list.

With a pro-pelagic whaling Liberal Democratic Party back in power there will be no compromises of any kind offered on JARPA II, JARPN II or anything else having to do with the plunging an explosive charge inside an animal, detonating it, and having the animal bleed to death.

Nice work, Mr. Garrett.

The outcome?

The whalers and their nemeses in Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace (which really should know better) burn diesel fuel and threaten each other's safety in some of the world's already most dangerous seas, sucking money out of wallets all over the globe (Do they send each other cards at Christmas time, each thanking the other for keeping the gravy train rolling one more year?).

Australian and Japanese governments find themselves at loggerheads over a valence issue at the cost of greater cooperation in substantive environmental, security and economic actions.

The Japanese people (most of whom, when shown the alternatives, want nothing to do with pelagic whaling) find themselves loathed around the world.

Hundreds of our fellow Earth inhabitants are needlessly killed in inhumane ways.

How indeed can we dance/When our Earth is turning?

No Country For Gentlefolk

Harold Abrahams - "You know, gentlemen, you yearn for victory just as I do. But achieved with the apparent effortlessness of Gods. Yours are the archaic values of the prep school playground..."

- Chariots of Fire (1981)

According to Yuko Nakano, research associate at the Center of Strategic and International Studies:

The LDP, with its coalition partner Komeito, controls 325 seats in the Lower House which is more than the two-thirds majority that is needed to overrule the Upper House. However, the ruling parties cannot fall back on this "super majority" every time they try to pass important legislation. Such a legislative practice can be seen as a sign of "arrogance" by the public and the LDP and Komeito do not want to create a public backlash against them, especially before the Upper House election next year. It is precisely for this reason that the LDP and the Komeito may seek some form of partnership with others in the parliament.

(Link)

According to Okumura Jun of Global Talk 21:

The LDP will maintain its position as a dominant mainstream party by virtue of its 1/4 bedrock share of the voting electorate plus an enduring coalition with Komeito (and its 1/10 bedrock support base) that includes intimate coordination at the SMD level (making Komeito the virtual pacifist-wing of the LDP). Moreover, the coalition has a House of Representatives supermajority that must be used sparingly from a media-management perspective but will enable it to pass annual tax legislation, which, coupled with the ~FY2012, blanket deficit-bond authorization, will enable it to keep the government running without regard to the configuration of the House of Councilors. This means that if the LDP does badly in the 2013 HoC regular election, it can jettison Abe in favor of a baby face and continue in power without calling a HoR election until December 2016, when its current term ends. The outcome of the 2013 HoC election is crucial for Abe's long-term survival as prime minister, but is only a speed bump for the LDP.

(Link)

Were it that it were so. Were that there were a body of unwritten rules recognized by all; a compulsion to obey those rules out of a desire to be seen responsible and just; and an eagle-eyed news complex to keep one in line if one transgresses.

However, the above highlighted portions have nothing to do with Japanese politics of December 2012 and beyond. History tells a different tale as to the mores of this blessed land:

- On July 30, 2006, the last business day of the regular session of the Diet, when the one Abe Shinzo was basking in the sunlight of a majority in the House of Councillors and a supermajority in the House of Representatives, bill after bill was rushed through in the morning House of Councillors session on identical votes of 123 to 96, 123 to 96, 123 to 96 During lunch, the powerless opposition decided to give up, with only the Communists returning for the afternoon session. (Link - J)

- On March 19, 2011, eight days after the disaster of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and seven days since the meltdowns of the Fukushima Dai'ichi nuclear plants began, Prime Minister Naoto Kan called his Liberal Democratic Party counterpart Tanigaki Sadakazu. Kan proposed the establishment of a government of national unity with Tanigaki as the vice premier.

Tanigaki spurned the offer. The LDP's attack dogs went into action on the talk shows, rubbishing Kan's offer to share power in a time of national emergency.

- On March 21, 2011, two days after the LDP's spurning of Kan's offer, the news media began spreading the vile rumors that Kan had halted a last ditch injection of salt water into the reactor cores and interrupted plant worker efforts in an emergency visit to the plant on March 12. On March 28, Kan had to withstand withering Diet questioning of his judgment and calls for his resignation for contributing to or even causing the nuclear disaster...

...except of course that Kan during his emergency visit to the plant had given the order to enter the #1 reactor building that the plant managers had been awaiting from the management of Tokyo Electric Power...and the interruption of the injection of salt water had never taken place, the heroic onsite plant director having overruled a direct TEPCO order to stop the injection.

- On August 29, 2012 the LDP, angered by Prime Minister Noda's letting slip an LDP deadline for a Diet dissolution, voted for a motion of censure against the Noda government. However, due to a procedural rule, the LDP could not vote for its own motion of censure. It had to vote for a motion submitted by seven other opposition parties in the House of Councillors, including People First, the party of LDP's arch-enemy Ozawa Ichiro. The language of that censure motion condemned the raising of the consumption tax and the Triparty Agreement of the Democratic Party of Japan, the LDP and the New Komeito which had ensure the passage of the consumption tax bill. The New Komeito, seeing it impossible to vote for a censure motion that condemned its actions, walked out before the vote. The LDP contingent remained, voting against itself.

- On December 15, 2012, all the major newspapers published editorials on Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko's dissolution of the Diet. The Yomiuri Shimbun, the enemy of the DPJ, declared unwavering support for the dissolution whilst outlining in detail how the election would be illegal. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun somehow found the illegality of the election less important than Prime Minister Noda's having missed the LDP's August 8 deadline for a dissolution. The Sankei Shimbun endorsed the dissolution without a mention of the legal and constitutional issues at all.

The most crushing, however, was the The Asahi Shimbun editorial. In what can only be seen as a concerted effort to complete an alignment with the most famous lines of William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming" – "The best lack all conviction, while the worst. Are full of passionate intensity. "— The Asahi Shimbun acknowledged the illegality of the upcoming election only to endorse the dissolution as "something one just had to live with" (yamu o enai suru mono). (Link)

Adhere to an unwritten rule? The news media was unwilling to demand that the Prime Minister and the House of Representatives obey the law!

If there decency is to survive the incoming administration, hope must be placed in the influence of the New Komeito.

However, hope, they say, is not a plan. Rather than relying on heretofore unseen gentility in the LDP and a sudden growth of a spine in a crusade-leery news media complex, we need a new set of rules befitting the challenges ahead:

Jim Malone - "He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way!"

- The Untouchables (1987)

And A Damn Shall Not Be Given

What are likely to be first victims of the Liberal Democratic Party's victory on December 16?

Japan-Australia relations, Japan-New Zealand relations and a few hundred minke whales.

Under pressure from pro-pelagic whaling members of the Diet, the government has had to abandon its plan to allow the industry to die from neglect. Rather than force the Nisshin Maru mothership to sit in port undergoing a much-needed retrofit throughout the length of the Antarctic summer, the government seems to have acceded to the ship's departing for the austral summer hunt having only undergone half-a-retrofit.

Why the government saw it necessary to lower safety standards and allow the whaling vessel set off to sail some of the world's most daunting seas is a mystery. Then again, the Democratic Party of Japan's bifurcated approach toward pelagic whaling has been baffling. The pelagic hunt was effectively nationalized through the government's paying off the Institute of Cetacean Research's debts – infamously, as we all recall, through the supplementary budget for Tohoku recovery. The Nisshin Maru was observed on the 13th having its engines tested at Innoshima in Hiroshima Prefecture (Link - J) which is in a swing district that until December 16 was represented by a DPJ member However, Nisshin Maru is homeported in Shimonoseki, represented in the Diet by a certain Mr. Abe Shinzo. (Link)

It is not like the DPJ was helping itself by bailing out the industry.

Abe could still stiff his constituents in a gesture of goodwill toward the Australian government. After all, his predecessor Noda Yoshihiko betrayed his constituents by selling out on electoral district reform, getting nothing in return.

I would not count on Abe making the strategic decision, however.

The Price Of Noble Failure

Yet another in what will likely be a number of "What was Noda Yoshihiko thinking?" posts.

Here is the chart from The Asahi Shimbun showing the change in the government's party politics subsidies, based upon the results of the December 16 election.

The Liberal Democratic Party will see its annual subsidy rise from 10.154 billion yen to 14.59 billion yen. The Democratic Party of Japan will see its subsidy fall from 16.504 billion yen to 8.558 billion yen.

If Noda had held off on calling the election until the new year, the DPJ would have been eligible for the full 16 billion yen subsidy, the calculation's being based upon a party's Diet membership on January 1.

Looks like another case of High Okadaism, a super-serious and ethical stance that leads to electoral catastrophe, so-named in honor of Deputy Prime Minister Okada Katsuya, whose nervously-gripping-the-steering-wheel-of-a-white-Toyota-Corolla campaign in 2005 got its doors blown off by Koizumi Jun'ichiro's red Lamborghini. Noda just could not bring himself to hold out for TWO WEEKS MORE, allowing the DPJ, whatever what might have happened to it in a 2013 election, to at least walk away with a huge bankroll for future contests.

Image Courtesy: The Asahi Shimbun

She Doesn't Do Subtlety

The other day I offered the proposition that Diet dissolution of November 16 had no common name. Historically dissolutions have common names, identifiers of the political crisis that had triggered the dissolution. The most entertaining is probably the Bakayaro Dissolution of 1953, when Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida was forced to call an election after shouting "You moron" (bakayaro)) at an opposition lawmaker. Others have been more substantive, such as the Consumption Tax Dissolution of 1990 and the Post Office Reform (Yusei) Dissolution of 2005.

Election 2012 seems to lack a moniker, though. Wikipedia suggests (Link) that it should be called the Soon Dissolution, in reference to Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko's promise to Tanigaki Sadakazu on August 8 to hold an election "soon" (chikai uchi ni). However, none of the protagonists seem to have made frequent use of that expression during the campaign.

Yesterday soon-to-be ex-minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and ex-member of the House of Representatives Tanaka Makiko revealed her nominee for the dissolution's name, demonstrating once again her demure, tasteful way with words:

"It was a dissolution of a Prime Minister who felt pressed to quit. It's the 'Suicide Terrorist Bomber Dissolution' (jibaku tero kaisan) I thought to myself. And so it became."

(Link - J)

Tanaka Makiko: a sassy, brassy but perhaps not quite classy lady.

She is not even technically correct. A suicide bomber targets enemies or innocents. The persons worst affected by Noda's dissolution were neither.