The Futenma Failure Takes Its Toll on the DPJ and Boosts the SDP

Points to note in the latest Kyodo and Fuji Sankei public opinion polls.

Cabinet - In the Kyodo poll, support for the Hatoyama Cabinet has again dropped, this time below the crucial 20% line. Some 19% of those polled still support the Cabinet, down from 21% last month. Those not supporting the Cabinet soared, however, to 73%, up from 64% in the poll taken a month ago.

When asked why they do not support the Cabinet, 25% said it was because that they could not trust the Prime Minister and 36% said it was because they have no confidence in Prime Minister as a leader. Other reasons cited were having no confidence in the Cabinet's economic plans (13%) and no confidence in the goverment's ability to pursue reform (6%). Other options did not poll above 4%.

As for the Fuji Sankei Group pol, it finds found similar support numbers: 19% supporting the Cabinet and 74% not supporting it.

Political Party - When asked which party they support, 21% of respondents in the Kyodo said the Democratic Party of Japan while 22% said the Liberal Democratic Party. This marks the first time the support numbers for the LDP have exceeded those for the DPJ since last summer's House of Representatives election. The upstart Your Party (Minna no To), the reformist default party, has the support of 11% of the electorate.

As for which party the voters will be casting their votes in this summer's House of Councillor's election, the Kyodo poll finds 20% of the electorate voting for the DPJ, 21% voting for the LDP, 11% voting for Your Party.

The Fuji Sankei poll only asked its subjects which party they inted to vote for in proportional party vote in this summer's House of Councillor's election. The numbers there are even more stark: only 13% will cast their votes for the ruling DPJ and 18% for the LDP. Oddly, the Fuji Sankei poll finds a only 5% of its respondents ready to cast their votes for Your Party - the same as the number declaring that they will vote for the New Komeito.

In line with predictions made last week, the Social Democratic Party, which voted yesterday to leave the ruling coalition following the firing on Friday of its leader Fukushima Mizuho from her Cabinet post, seems to be reaping a P.R. windfall from its principled stance against the government's plan to move elements of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to Henoko. Whereas slightly fewer than 2% of voters declared themselves supporters of the SDP in last month's poll, the party now enjoys the support of 5% of the electorate - vaulting the SDP into fourth place among organized parties in the Kyodo poll. As this doubling of support is the first significant movement in the support numbers for the Social Democrats since last year, one can only assume it is due to the SDP's stubborn unwillingness to countenance the Prime Minister's failing to honor his promise to move all of Futenma outside of Okinawa Prefecture.

The Kyodo poll finds a similar jump, from less than 2% last month to over 5% today, in those who say they will cast their votes for the SDP. Oddly, the Fuji Sankei poll finds fewer than 1% of its respondents ready to cast their votes for the SDP. However, the lack of support for the SDP in the Fuji Sankei may be simply a reflection of the poll's having been conducted on May 27, before Fukushima made clear she would not budge on a vote for a Cabinet Decision, leaving the Prime Minister no choice but to sack her.

- The Futenma Climbdown - The people's view of moving MCAS Futenma remains unchanged despite the Prime Minister's heartfelt plea for understanding on Friday. In the Kyodo poll, 66% of respondents do not appreciate (hyoka shinai) the government's plan to move MCAS Futenma to Henoko. Only 25% say they do value what the government has done. This finding emphasizes what seems to be permanent feature of the political landscape: a two-thirds majority of Japanese voters believing unacceptable the continued stationing of the U.S. Marines forces associated with Futenma on the island of Okinawa, no matter the escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula and the increased number of incidents at sea involving the People's Liberation Army Navy and Japan's Maritime Self Defense Forces and Coast Guard. A majority of the voters still want Futenma somewhere else, even after seven months of fruitless searches for an alternative to the Roadmap.

All in all, a terrible sets of results for Prime Minister Hatoyama and the DPJ. In normal times, discussions would be underway to find a way for the Prime Minister and the top party leaders to step aside. However, with the end of the regular Diet session on June 16 and a likely calling of the election on June 23, there is simply no time to go through all the requirements needed to replace the PM and the party leadership before the currently projected July 11 House of Councillors election.

That's All Folks! (Fukushima Mizuho Edition)

NHK has just announced that Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio has relieved (himen) Minister for Consumer Affairs and Declinining Birthrate Fukushima Mizuho of her ministerial postings.

Hatoyama spent all day trying to convince the Social Democratic Party's leader to reverse her stance on the government's plan to move elements of the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to Henoko. To every entreaty Fukushima replied that if the government's proposal named Henoko or any other place inside Okinawa Prefecture as the destination of the forces currently at Futenma, she would refuse to sign the document. Furthermore, if asked to resign, she would refuse to do so.

Faced with the prospect of the plan's not winning the status of a Cabinet Decision -- and having issued a joint statement with the United States on the outlines of the plan on a few hours earlier, the prime minister was left with no other choice but sacking his stubborn minister and coalition party leader.

The Cabinet will now meet sans Fukushima to approve the plan.

Having had to rely on forceful methods to pass a significantly unpopular plan, the prime minister's problems are only just beginning. He has a plan which his remaining non-DPJ minister, People's New Party leader Kamei Shizuka, has repeatedly stated is unrealizable. He has retreated from every position he has taken over the last nine months, driving the people of Okinawa to the edge of fury and the rest of the country over the edge of exasperation.

The contrast between himself, the constant and in the end unfulfilled waverer, and Minister Fukushima, who stuck by her guns all the way to the bitter end, could not be more stark.

Sic transit gloria mundi...

The Day Begins

It is a morning of full of promise in Tokyo, with a brilliant blue sky like an azure lid clamped down upon the city. Strong winds are setting the branches of the keyaki to dancing, whilst the gregarious onaga (Cyanopica cyana) in their gangs flit back and forth, screeching and jeering.

Hardly the appropriate overture for a day of conflict, resistance and defeat.

House of Councillors Election 2010 - Districts in Transition

The House of Councillors has 242 members, elected to six-year terms. Half of the seats of the House, 121 seats, will be up for election this summer.

Seats are divided between electoral district (senkyoku) seats and party proportional (hireiku) seats. There will be 73 district seats and 48 party proportional seats up for election.

In the House of Councillors elections the electoral districts are contiguous with the boundaries of the prefectures. Each prefecture has a least two House of Councillors members representing it, which means prefectures will thus have at least one seat up for election this summer. The maximum number of seats up for election in an electoral district is 5.

There are 29 prefectures with but a single seat up for election, 12 prefectures with two seats up for election, 5 with three seats up for election and a single prefecture (the Tokyo Metropolitan District) with five seats up for election.

The prefecture with the greatest electoral leverage will be Tottori, where one House of Councillors member will be elected to represent the interests of just 590,000 inhabitants. By contrast, voters in Kanagawa Prefecture (3 seats) must accept having one House of Councillors member for every 2.98 million inhabitants.

Two prefectures, Gunma and Tochigi, will be losing seats in this election through reapportionment, each prefecture dropping from two seats to one. This means that two sitting incumbents could be in the running for but a single seat. In both Gunma and Tochigi, the two existing seats are split between a member of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan and a member of the Liberal Democratic Party. Expect rowdy campaigns in these two prefectures, one of which (Gunma) is considered an LDP fortress, the prefecture having produced a slew of prime ministers for the LDP.

Two prefectures, the TMD and Chiba, will be adding seats in this election. This would normally be a plus for the LDP, which in recent elections has been able to rely on its political machine to scrape into office in multi-seat districts with second place or third place finishes. However in 2007, the LDP, running two candidates in the TMD, only managed to win one seat, this despite the expansion of seats available from four to five. The LDP's top vote getter, TV announcer Marukawa Tamayo, only barely finished above an independent, AIDS activist Kawada Ryuhei, in the battle for fourth and fifth places. Kawada has since joined the Your Party (Minna no To) which advocates policies resonant with the values of urban and suburban managerial-class and salarymen-class voters. With the LDP's political machine in tatters and the Your Party riding high in the polls, the Your Party candidate will overleap the LDP candidate, leaving the LDP likely fighting minor parties and independents for the newly available seat - a battle the moribund LDP could lose.

New In the Blogroll

The Asian Wall Street Journal has launched a Japan group blog Japan Real Time. Go for a visit by clicking the link on the left.

The timing of Japan Real Time's launch is somewhat interesting, as rival media giant Reuters seems to be losing interest in the blogging format. The stand-alone site Raw Japan has been abandoned in favor of a Japan page in the Reuters Global News Journal. The pace of contributions since the switchover - only 2 posts in the last 5 weeks -- indicates a possible lack of faith in the format.

Good luck to the folks at the ASWJ with their new venture.

She's Not There - Futenma-to-Henoko Edition

Well no one told me about her.
What could I do?
Well no one told me about her
Though they all knew.

But it's too late to say you're sorry.
How would I know, why should I care?
Please don't bother trying to find her,
She's not there.

The Zombies, "She's Not There" (1964)

All photographs are manipulations, saying as much (or more) about the attitudes of the photographer and the editor as what really occurred.

The above image of Consumer Affairs Minister Fukushima Mizuho and Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio in the Diet yesterday graces the front page of my newspaper this morning. It is assumed to speak volumes, silently, in shared visual language all understand.

Image courtesy: The Mainichi Shimbun

Will Fukushima Mizuho Force Prime Minister Hatoyama's Hand?

Article 68

1) The Prime Minister shall appoint the Ministers of State. However, a majority of their number must be chosen from among the members of the Diet.

2) The Prime Minister may remove the Ministers of State as he chooses.

- The Constitution of Japan (1946)

As a preface to this post, please read Ethan Chua's argument that the biggest loser from the Futenma climbdown is the Social Democratic Party.

I take exception with Mr. Chua's conclusion. The biggest losers from the Futenma climbdown are still likely to be the Prime Minister and Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirano Hirofumi, both of whom have watched their reputations evanesce away into air. No amount of apologizing, prevaricating or pandering can give them the least bit of political substance.

Minister of Consumer Affairs Fukushima Mizuho and the SDP, however, seem to be preparing to walk away from the smoldering wreckage of the Hatoyama fallback with their reputations for principled intransigence intact. In appearance after appearance in Okinawa today, Fukushima made clear that she will not vote in favor of the government plan outlined this weekend to move the personnel and materiel of MCAS Futenma to a new offshore base to be built outside Camp Schwab in Henoko -- basically the plan outlined in the 2006 roadmap.

If Fukushima votes no at the plan's presentation to the Cabinet on Friday, she will provoke a stunning political showdown. Without the unanimous consent of the Cabinet, the plan cannot be considered a Cabinet Decision (kakugi kettei). It can only be a Prime Minister's Statement (shusho hatsugen) -- and according to press reports, Fukushima is ready to oppose the bill's even receiving this lower level of official status.

Furthermore --and someone should correct me if I am wrong here -- but if the plan does not receive the imprematur of a kakugi kettei, it cannot be presented in the Diet as a government bill (naikaku teishutsu hoan or seifuan). Hirano has argued that a Prime Minister's Statement, if it receives the understanding (ryokai) of the Cabinet is just as good as a Cabinet Decision -- but since Fukushima says she will oppose a Prime Minister's Statement, this attempt to find a work-around seems moot. Instead the bill would have to be presented as a Diet member's bill (giin teishutsu hoan), forcing the Prime Minister to either submit the bill in his own name with the signatures of 20 members of the House of Representatives or 10 members of the House of Councillors in support of it, or find a close ally to submit it instead.

Prime Minister Hatoyama can round up the signatures of 20 House of Representatives members in a second, of course. However, the humiliation of failing to win the unquestioned support of the Cabinet he himself picked makes this route the last one he would want to take.

The alternative is for Prime Minister Hatoyama somehow prevent Fukushima from voting no at Friday's regular Cabinet meeting. He and other Cabinet ministers, while indicting their rage at Fukushima's visit and statements, have tried to open a little political wiggle room for Fukushima to back out of her threat, saying that she traveled to Okinawa and made her statements not as a minister of the Japanese government, but as the head of her party.

Such casuistry will probably not lure Fukushima into backing down. Her party is facing the potential loss of all its seats up for election this year, including, it should be noted, hers. Having lost the support of, over the last 15 years, those hating the Liberal Democratic Party, the pacifists, the labor unions and true believers in socialism, the SDP has no natural constituency to keep it alive.

However, if the party can sell itself as the member of the revolutionary coalition that did not sell out the Okinawans, that held firm to its beliefs, it might win support amongst Japan's currently demoralized hardcore pacifists and the smoldering anti-American left.

If Fukushima does not back down before Thursday, when the DSP will hold a meeting that is sure to request that she vote against the Prime Minister's new plan, then Hatoyama may have no choice but to fire her. Under Article 68 of the constitution the prime minister has the right to arbitrarily (nin'i) remove any state minister from office.

The results of firing Fukushima could be even worse than letting her vote against the government's plans, however. While her party is numerically irrelevant in terms of the passage of bills through the Diet, its expulsion from the coalition will draw an immediate, negative response from the People's New Party, which is currently unenthusiastic albeit not opposed to the government's Futenma-to-Henoko proposal.

PNP president Kamei Shizuka, after talking to Fukushima on the telephone about the impending collision yesterday, has indeed suggested that Hatoyama needs to take two steps back, not even calling the plan a Prime Minister's Statement. Instead, he has suggested that Hatoyama refer to his plan simply as "a plan that is currently being undertaken" (tsukochu no an). As for Fukushima's seemingly suicidal devotion to principle, he is quoted as telling her, "Look, that government plan has no chance of being realized. To leave the coalition and go to an honorable death over a plan that cannot be realized is idiotic."

So for those who think that Hatoyama has, at great political cost, successfully sold out the Okinawans and the Socialists, staving off a crisis with the United States with a plan that essentially replicates the major elements of the plan LDP agreed to in 2006, hang on to your hats.

This is going to be a fun next three days.

Opposing Views From Persons In Whose Homes I Have Had Dinner

Pro: Robert Dujarric, writing in The Japan Times on the potential cultural diplomacy value of increased immigration into Japan.

Con (more skeptical, actually): Paul Scalise, writing in Newsweek, on the potential aggregate net economic cost of accepting immigrants, based upon Health, Welfare and Labour Ministry estimates.

What's nice is that I can agree on the validity of the points being raised by both authors.

Really Worthwhile Reads

Via a link on the Reischauer Center's blogsite comes William Brooks, the former director of the translation division at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, on the historical background to the Futenma climbdown. My only caveat to Brooks's timely tour-de-force: stay alert to the biases of various of Japanese media groups he cites.

Kiwi analyst Corey Wallace on an under-the-radar Liberal Democratic Party bill creating a permanent law on the dispatch of Self Defense Forces for peacekeeping and disaster relief purposes. The key point he homes in on: the proposed law will define what a peacekeeping mission is, with the rules of engagement being taken off the table.

House of Councillors Election 2010 - Buying Votes Where One Can

A glance at this morning's top news stories reveals a ruling party working its control of the dispensing of goverment goodies to either nail down or tamp down constituencies possibly crucial to the outcome of this summer's House of Councillors election.

In a move guaranteed to make believers in fundamental structural reform gag, Democratic Party of Japan Secretary-General Ozawa Ichiro and People's New Party leader Kamei Shizuka made grand appearances at the convention of the National Postmasters Association (Zentoku) in Nagoya on Sunday. Ozawa promised the assembled that the Diet would approve the government's proposed amendments to the postal reform law in the current Diet session. The Kamei-drafted amendments, which halt the privatization of the postal savings bank and breakup of the postal services into separate business units, is now in committee in the House of Representatives. Presentation of a bill halting postal reform is having international repercussions and is portrayed in the media as the PNP tail wagging the DPJ dog. Nevertheless, Ozawa seemed quite pleased with his welcome.

Japan has around 20,000 postmasters, spread evenly over the entire country. As such they would hardly seem worth Ozawa's and the DPJ's time. However, pandering to the postmasters is seen as the key to securing the votes of Post Office's large unionized workforce, their family members and the hundreds of thousands of largely elderly voters in rural areas dependent upon the Post Office for their banking, insurance and delivery needs. Winning the support of the postmasters is thought to represent the securing of up to a million votes nationwide -- which gives the postmasters significant leverage in an election featuring a deeply unpopular ruling party and a plethora of political rivals vying for the public's favor.

A few stops down on the Tokaido Shinkansen Line, National Policy Unit deputy minister Furukawa Motohisa visited Osaka to discuss with Osaka Governor Hashimoto Toru the possibility of establishing a special low corporate tax international business zone within the prefecture -- a pet project of the governor's. That Governor Hashimoto has recently established the Ishin no Kai, a political organization the governor hopes to transform into a full-fledged political party -- and that a candidate of the Ishin no Kai yesterday overcame candidates support by the DPJ, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Communists in a local election in Osaka Prefecture , are not likely to be unrelated -- particularly because of the candidates supported by political parties, the DPJ's candidate finished dead last.

That a national government gasping for revenues would actually be considering the establishment of low corporate tax zones in Hashimoto's bailiwick on the theory that a lower corporate tax rate would entice businesses to set up shop in Osaka (or elsewhere) despite the high costs for everything else (land, labor, energy...) is a belief that taxes the imagination.