Abe Shinzo's Virtual Referendum

Today is supposed to be crunch day: the day when the New Komeito decides whether to accept or reject the Liberal Democratic Party's sudden cram down of an expansion of Japan's definition of constitutional self-defense to include collective self-defense.

The choice is not a happy or an easy one.

The New Komeito's mothership, the Soka Gakkai lay religious (I know that that is an oxymoron. So does the SG. Hence its paranoia) organization has already expressed its opposition to the LDP's plan to reverse through a simple Cabinet Decision (kakugi kettei) the Japanese government's heretofore decades-old official position that the exercise of the right of collective self defense is unconstitutional. For the SG, the only proper path for such a reversal of a previous unconstitutional ruling is a revision or amendment of the Constitution (Link - J).

For the New Komeito, surrendering to LDP pressure on a Cabinet Decision would set the party formally at odds with the SG leadership. This would, of course, do wonders for the party's longtime claims to be independent of the SG. At the same time it would be extremely confusing for the SG flock -- who vote en masse for the New Komeito because is it the political face of the SG.

Why would the LDP be putting its ruling coalition partner through this ordeal? I have speculated that the Abe administration's appreciation of its inability to halt hemorrhaging of public support not only for "constitutional revision via Cabinet Decision" but collective self-defense itself has triggered a panic response. (Link)

What is making the rounds of Nagata-cho now (and for this insight I am indebted to Michael Penn of Shingetsu News) is the idea of a snap dissolution of the House of Representatives after the end of the current Diet ordinary session.

On the face of it, a House of Representatives election now poses unnecessary risks for the LDP and Abe Shinzo. The party already has huge majority in the House of Representatives reflecting the frustration and disgust the voters felt for the political process in December 2012. There is no guarantee that the voters, when given a chance at passing judgment on the Abe Administration, will not opt for independents in the district seat elections and opposition parties in the proportional seat elections. Yes, the polls numbers for the LDP and for the Abe Cabinet are fantastic and the opposition parties abysmal -- but as the House of Councillors election in 2007 showed, the public has the power to clip Abe Shinzo's pretensions of political mastery.

A snap election for the House of Representatives does, of course, nothing to change the seating arrangements in the House of Councillors. The break ups of the Your Party, the disgrace of Watanabe Yoshimi and the division of the Japan Restoration Party into two have only complicated, not eliminated, the possibility of a crafting of a Hawk-Hawk-Hawk (add as many Hawks here as you like) coalition in the House to replace the existing Hawk-Dove LDP-New Komeito coalition.

The argument for the prime minister dissolving the House of Representatives is compelling. Given the thuggishness of reversing a government constitutionality ruling by fiat, the Abe Cabinet will be searching for a means of justifying its actions. A snap election, with the certainty of a strong, possibly entirely extirpating, victory of the LDP over its scattered, fissioning and puny opponents, would demonstrate, according to Abe, the LDP and the Yomiuri media empire, that the public strongly supports the Abe Cabinet's behavior.

Of course, an LDP victory would not be a virtual referendum on the party's policies. It would be a reflection of the current pitiful state of the opposition parties. In a true referendum, such as the one that a revision of the Constitution would require, the voters would get the chance to choose between "Yes" and "No." In the whispered-about snap dissolution and general election, the choice would be between "Yes" and "Nothing."

The further arguments for a snap election are an increase in the LDP's freedom of action and a coverup of the Abe Cabinet's continued fecklessness as regards structural reform.

The LDP's rank-and-file, the young and militant mass of Abe Shinzo acolytes that Machimura Nobutaka finds distressing (Link) are not wrong in wondering why, in the face of polls showing support for the LDP in the 40% range, the LDP has not ditched its coalition with the cautious New Komeito. The relationship does seem an artifact of another time -- when the long term trend in voter behavior was away from the LDP, despite all the financial rewards being dangled, toward alternatives (the 1993 opposition coalition, the New Frontier Party, the Democratic Party of Japan, the Nippon Isshin no Kai, et cetera). for the wild things in the party the obvious choise is to force the New Komeito to chose one way or the other on a Cabinet Decision -- and if they balk, dump the coalition and go to the public for its response.

After the victory, the party could roll up its sleeves and set to work on really remaking Japan, free of the New Komeito's annoying obstructionism.

As for structural reform, on Monday the 16th the government is supposed to release a "third time's the charm" rerevised Third Arrow of Abenomics. All signs are that the government will, despite being given two chances to rethink and revamp its presentation, fail to include the details and synergies global investors and the world media crave. (Link)

What better time then, to turn around to the rest of the world with a defiant, "What? You don't like it? Well, we asked the Japanese voters and they love it!"

So what is the likelihood on this Friday morning of Abe and Friends going through with a virtual referendum after the end of the regular Diet session? Incredibly, I am thinking they are 50-50.


Later - Jiji is reporting that the New Komeito is looking for a duplicitous out smudging the line in between individual and collective self-defense (Link). Wish them luck -- given the time frame on coming to a decision on specific scenarios, New Komeito negotiators will have no opportutinity to coordinate their positions with the Soka Gakkai directorate.

More Negative Assessments Of Abenomics And A Look At The House Of Councillors Election

The Guardian blog, which is interestingly copyrighted with Project Syndicate, has published a devastating review of both the fiscal and monetary sides of Abenomics (Link). Over at the Foreign Policy website, Clyde Prestowitz continues his rock-slinging. (Link)

What needs to be said in these non-Japanese language reviews is what a goodly portion of the Japanese electorate already recognizes: that Abenomics is an attempt to buy victory in the House of Councillors election. Dump cash or promises of cash all over the country, talk the yen down so that exporters can book huge profits by the March 31 end of the fiscal year, push up share prices in the short term by creating expectations of monetary easing to the point of setting off asset inflation -- then hold an election.

Win, win, win! The bill comes due after the polls close.

Sadly, Abe Shinzo and his Liberal Democratic have to do nothing, zero, zip, rien, nicht, nanimo nai, nada to come out winners in July. The opposition Democratic Party of Japan is defending 30 district seats and 15 party proportional seats -- a hopeless task for the party, given its nearly comatose state and the emergence of rival opposition forces.

Were the Abe Cabinet and the Liberal Democratic Party-New Komeito ruling alliance to just sit tight and do nothing but govern for the next six months, the LDP would seize half of the seats the DPJ and its splinters the Livelihood Party (Seikatsu no To) and Green Breeze (Midori no kaze) will be defending.

So why destabilize the economy, if one has no good political reason to do so?

1) Abe Shinzo still lives in torment over the results of the 2007 House of Councillors election

If Abe has learned anything from 2007, and from his Cabinet and top Prime Minister's Residence appointments is seems he has learned little, it is get the sequencing right: win the House of Councillors election first, then embark on your reactionary revolution. Abe's term and the dreams of his camp followers became undone after 2007 loss of seats and control of the House to the DPJ. While nothing substantial had changed -- the LDP and the New Komeito alliance still possessed a 2/3rds supermajority in the House of Representatives -- Abe's legitimacy as president of the LDP had been compromised, allowing Aso Taro (What is in Amaterasu's name he doing in the present Cabinet?) and Yosano Kaoru to move in and take over de facto control of the government.

Abe's goal this year is to win in the House of Councillors election -- whatever the costs to the nation -- in his view wiping out the memory of his 2007 failure.

2) Constitutional reform

The magic number for the reactionaries is 160, which is 2/3rds of the seats in the House of Councillors. If the LDP and its allies, whoever they may be, can cobble together 160 seats, they are within shouting distance of amending the Constitution. At present the LDP and the New Komeito hold 92 seats. The Your Party and the Japan Restoration Party, parties sympathetic to the LDP's goal of amending the constitution, hold 11 and 3 seats respectively, bringing the total to 106.

The math is daunting. The DPJ has 35 seats up for election, the Livelihood Party 6, Green Breeze 5. If the levels of losses of the December 16 election are replicated -- a not unreasonable outcome -- the LDP and its collaborators will scoop up around 75% of these seats -- i.e., 34 seats (Running total=140). Six are currently vacant -- five on-cycle and one off-cycle. Pick these up and the total is 146. Five independent seats are up for election. Take these or co-opt the seat owner to the constitutional amendment cause, and the total is 151. Snap up the one proportional seat from the doomed People's New Party and the total is 152.

At this point, the forces of constitutional amendment hit a wall. They have to

- convince a number of the DPJ seat holders up for reelection in 2016 to either jump ship or pledge to vote for constitutional amendment

- crowd out the Socialists and the Communists in the proportional vote, picking up one or two of the five seats those parties have up for election

- beat the DPJ and its splinter parties even worse than predicted

The only way to achieve any of these latter goals is for the LDP and its allies to be insanely popular going into the election and insanely popular coming out.

With no reasonable path to 160, all that is left is the unreasonable.

Low Expectations For Abe's Foreign Relations

In the first essay of the year published by the PacNet Newsletter, former Ambassador to the Netherlands, Russia specialist and academic wanderer Togo Kazuhiko elaborates upon a point that Okumura Jun made a two weeks ago (Link) -- that contrary to fears expressed before the December 16 election, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo is working to assuage regional and international worries about his return to power. (Link)

Abe's commitment to his program has been admirable. He could have flown off the handle in response to the South Korean Supreme Court's decision, handed down just as his envoy to South Korea Nukaga Fukushiro was meeting President-elect Park Geun-hye (Link) to not extradite a Chinese national who set fire to Yasukuni Shrine (Link). The reasoning used by the Court, that the Japan-South Korea mutual extradition treaty falls into abeyance because the man had attacked a symbol of Japan's militarist/imperialist past, was worthy of a rant and a sharp reduction in government-to-government contacts. Abe let the storm pass, though, saying only that his government will vigorously protest the outcome.

Let us be honest: having maundered and thundered during the campaign about Japan's need to stand up military to regional threats, Abe comes into office with very low expectations. We are, sadly enough, being asked to clap for his not starting an armed conflict with China or South Korea during his first two weeks in office. His reputation of militancy wins him a free pass on every concession he makes to the political needs of other governments or his every failure to react to provocations.

In other words, when he acts like someone other than himself, he wins accolades.

It also bears noticing that none of the envoys are card-carrying Friends of Shinzo. Abe probably does not trust his closest allies with important relationships. The FOS certainly have no credibility on the international stage. So instead of the usual pattern of dispatching of loyal retainers with close personal connections to sound out other governments, Abe is sending as his representatives senior politicians who have their own agendas.

It will be up to the other governments to either listen to these envoys or lend them only half an ear out of recognition that they are not part of Abe's inner circle.

An Abe administration pushback against other governments will likely remain on hold until after the House of Councillors election in July. The LDP-New Komeito alliance's defeat in the 2007 House of Councillors election spiked Abe's first premiership. If Abe learned anything from his first turn as prime minister, it is to win the House of Councillors election first, then unleash the hounds of his reactionary, revisionist revolution. Given that the onus will be on the Democratic Party of Japan to defend seats traditionally held by the LDP, the obvious strategy is to sit tight for the next seven months in anticipation of the DPJ's almost certain electoral implosion.

Finally, one should avoid getting too hopped up about Abe's appointing smart and sober persons to advisory posts and advisory councils. Yes, he is surrounding himself with well-regarded academics and former bureaucrats. No, he does not have to listen to any of them.

Do Not Study Too Hard, Hosono-san

Contrary to a heretofore unknown rule that cabinet members should not challenge the prime minister in party elections, Minister of (deep breath) the Environment, the Restoration from and Prevention of Nuclear Accident and Nuclear Power Policy and Administration (i.e. - the haaardest working man in the government), unfaithful husband and hot young hunk of political man meat Hosono Goshi is reportedly studying a run for the post of leader of the Democratic Party of Japan. It seems a host of front benchers from amongst the supporters of former Prime Minister Kan Naoto, Policy Research Coumcil Chairman Maehara Seiji and former Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Kano Michihiko, want Hosono to become the DPJ's face, giving the party at least a chance at fighting the brainless default vote for the Liberal Democratic Party or much worse, the as-yet unnamed and unfounded national party of 42 year-old Osaka wunderkind Hashimoto Toru.

"Studying" (kento shite iru/kento ni haita) in a political context usually means quite the opposite of the usual meaning of the word. When a government official or a party official says, "We are studying the matter" what he/she is usually saying is, "You have asked an incredibly stupid question about a wild hypothetical. I have not the least intention of answering your question you rancid excuse for a journalist. Now sit down and shut up."

However, in this instance, Hosono, whom we know can sometimes put his brain in park, may indeed be studying a bid for the party leadership in the usual sense of the word "study."

Why will Hosono, after his brief period of study (he will be making an announcement today) likely not challenge incumbent prime minister Noda Yoshihiko, who otherwise would have a lock on the DPJ leader election?

Having a fourth DPJ prime minister since August 2009 makes the party look stupid - This was the reason Maehara gave to his supporters when he met them at lunch yesterday (J). Unfortunately, Maehara group members went to Hosono in the evening and before the cameras presented him with a written request to run. Hosono received the request, responding, "The election of a party leader is to be approached with trepidation. In that, my feeling has not changed." (J)

Seen another way, were Hosono to run and win, he would be the fifth party leader since 2009, an even further indication of party flightiness.

Putting a new bright face on the party does not work - The LDP tried to save the House of Councillors election of 2007 by naming the young Abe Shinzo, a man with a history of underachievement, as the party's fresh face. It then revved up the public relations machine (remember the egregious Newsweek Asia edition cover story comparing Abe Akie to Jacqueline Kennedy?).

The result was not quite as salubrious as planned. (E)

Then there was Fukuda Yasuo's surprise resignation in 2008 in order to open the way for the happy-go-lucky, Akihabara-loving Aso Taro to be the face of the party in a snap election in the fall.

That did not pan out, due to a little something referred to as the Lehman Brothers Crash.

Then there was Hatoyama Yukio's sudden resignation as prime minister in June 2010, simultaneously purging himself and the scandal-hobbled Ozawa Ichiro from the leadership, allowing Kan Naoto, Mr. Clean, to take over in time to save the DPJ from a loss of its majority in the July House of Councillors election.

That did not work out as planned, either. (E)

Policies and party image, it seems, matter.

Why take the hit when you can pick up the pieces? - With the DPJ likely to suffer a crushing losses in the next round of elections, the leader, whoever he is, will have to resign to take responsibility for the defeats.

Why be that leader? Why not bide one's time and run for the party leadership in the aftermath of the electoral debacle, taking up the role of the architect of the party's resurgence?

Later - The news media are reporting that Hosono, unlike that fateful night under street lamp with Yamamoto Mona, is doing the sensible thing and not succumbing to flattering attention. (J)

Abe Shinzo: The Remembering

Some subjects are just not funny. This post will be about one of them. If you are visiting for the usual irreverent take on the Japanese political scene, you should probably stop reading now.

In honor of the zeitgeist, I will address the subject directly, though he is not really here.

Abe-san,

Forgive me for addressing you as an equal. I know you are not used to it.

Abe-san, you frighten me. On Wednesday the 29th, you went to the offices of Machimura Nobutaka, your faction leader, to tell him you are running for the position of president of the Liberal Democratic Party. (E)

I knew relations between you and Machimura were bad. I knew this on April 23, when the Machimura faction held its annual fundraising party. I was there; you were not.

Incidentally, the take at the party you did not attend? 600 million yen. Not bad for a guy whose leadership you fail to respect.

I hope, I pray that you told Machimura of your intention to run only to dissuade Machimura himself from running, as he has indicated he might. I hope, I pray that your formation of a study group, the usual first step toward a run for the presidency, is just a feint. I hope, I pray that the sixty-one lawmakers signed up for your study group are just a show of force by what used to be called the "non-mainstream" segment of the LDP, not the nucleus of an actual support group.

I hope, I pray that on September 14, your name will not be among the roster of candidates.

As a defender of the Democratic Party of Japan, which has never had a serious chance at undoing 54 years of LDP malfeasance, I should be dancing a jig on the tatami. There is no potential leader of the LDP that the DPJ would rather run against. You have foreign policy prescriptions that would have would have the entire region in flames (You have limited your study group's focus to the revitalization of Japan's economy so maybe even you have some awareness of just how inflammatory your security views are). Your silver-spoon-in-mouth upbringing just irks, in comparison to DPJ leader Noda Yoshihiko's relatively modest beginnings and Hashimoto Toru's emergence from the muck. Your history of political thuggery, of simply ignoring the opposition (Remember June 30, 2007, the last day any business got done in the House of Councillors prior to the election? The vote after vote in the morning, every one with the same result: 123 to 96, 123 to 96, again and again? Remember how the opposition just gave up over the lunch break and did not return?) will be disinterred. Your groveling lust for power, refusing to follow the LDP's tradition of the party president resigning after the party suffers a humiliating electoral loss, will be revisited. The chaos that your refusal caused, making unclear exactly who was running the country in August 2007, will be page 4 analysis again.

And of course, your suddenly quitting as prime minister, after saying you would not. For medical reasons, even though you never mentioned them in your resignation speech.

Yes that.

Abe-san, you may not remember that last stunning week, almost exactly five years ago.

Let me help you.

You came back on Sunday night, from the APEC meeting in Sydney, burnt out. August had been a terrible month for you, with many of your party members screaming at you to resign, with Aso Taro conspiring with Yosano Kaoru to replace your "friends of Shinzo" cabinet with one to their and the faction leaders' liking. Your trip to India, Malaysia and Indonesia had been a complete bust politically and left you physically debilitated from the food and the travel. The Cabinet was reshuffled and blew up almost immediately, with Minister Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Endo Takehiko forced to resign after a week in office -- not at your request, but at the request of Aso and Kaoru, who had arranged to have themselves appointed LDP Secretary-General and Chief Cabinet Secretary, respectively.


Then came summit in Sydney. You promised Prime Minister John Howard and President George Bush that Japan would be their stalwart ally on the global stage, when you knew full well that upon returning to Tokyo Ozawa Ichiro's majority in the House of Councillors was going yo kill Japan's participation in Operation Enduring Freedom.

It was the last straw.

Upon your arrival back in Tokyo, you told Aso, who was waiting for you, "I cannot go on."

Unfortunately for you, you chose as your confidant a man with zero sensitivity as to human frailty, a man who when he became prime minister a year later appointed an alcoholic as his minister of finance, in the midst of the worst financial crisis the world had known in eighty years*.

He told you to gambaru, the most heartless and vapid of wishes.

The next day, Monday, you delivered a policy address opening the extraordinary session of the Diet that was so pugnacious and ambitious, it sounded delusional.

You somehow made it through Tuesday.

On Wednesday morning, however, either you or someone near you decided you were finished, done, finito, deep-fat fried. You resigned in the afternoon, claiming you were not capable of saving the Indian Ocean dispatch legislation.

Then on Thursday morning, you left the office of prime minister prematurely, never to return.

Abe-san, do you remember how you left?

Not in the back of ambulance, like most persons suffering from acute, chronic gastroenteritis would. Not with your loving wife beside you. Not with a doctor monitoring you. Not having arranged a formal transfer of your prime ministerial powers to another member of the Cabinet.

No, in the back car of a two-car motorcade packed with panicked SPs (Japan Secret Service) with you in the back seat of the second vehicle, barreling through traffic to the Keio University Hospital.

Remember?

I will be honest: your breaking down was the first hint I ever caught of your being human. Your previous behavior, until the voters of Japan liberated us of you, left me speechless with horror.

Which is why I am terribly afraid at the news you want to be LDP president again.

The LDP, the country, does not need a leader as brittle and fragile as a glass vase, especially as the next LDP leader will be facing a political situation many times more complex, more poisonous and more energy-sapping that the one that felled you in 2007. The LDP, the country does not a new improved bullet proof Abe Shinzo either. You are the archetype of the fantabulist conservative, a man who disdains his country and its people, wanting through revisions of the education system and the Constitution to create a new citizenry, replacing the one you cannot stomach.

Whichever Abe Shinzo you are, after your five years of rest, you should not be running for the presidency of the LDP.

Sincerely,

MTC

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* A belated word of praise for the bizarrely departed Nakagawa Shoichi. To his eternal credit, until that fateful plane flight to Italy, he had remained, probably for the longest period of his adult life, clean and sober. He was an addict, in the grips of a terrible addiction, yet for the good of the country and world he toughed it out.

A Grand Performance

This is from last week but it is also for the ages.

For aficionados of Japanese political theater, it is hard to beat last Wednesday’s performance by Katayama Toranosuke (J) in the House of Councillors Budget Committee hearing. In his brief time before the microphones, he cleaned the prime minister's clock with such thoroughness and ruthless humor it is hard not to clap. His is a show with everything: a comparison to leaders past, tireless boring in on his target, the arms spread eagle wide at one point in an appeal to speak on behalf of the citizenry and a Cheshire cat grin throughout.

Now I have to admit I have not always been an admirer of Katayama. When he was a member of the House of Councillors for the Liberal Democratic Party, I saw him as one of epitomes of what was holding this blessed land back. “Old Chipmunk Cheeks” I used to call him, making fun of his appearance. I cheered when he was knocked off his perch in 2007 despite his position as the #2 man for the LDP in the House by a newcomer (and a woman to boot!).

However, my opinion of Katayama changed last year in response to his brilliant revival of himself as the Sunrise Party’s (Tachiagare Nippon's) sole elected senator. He managed to leverage a sudden and one would suspect not terribly deep conversion to the party’s hard rightist ideology in order to draw on the votes of the sadly overzealous nationalists. To these he added the personal votes of his old support group (koenkai), and in a pirouette, bounced himself back into his old playground.

To watch the spectacle, go the Sangiin TV website (here) and click on the calendar for the 16th of November. The only show that comes up is the Budget Committee hearing. Click on that link to start the video. Katayama’s turn at the microphones starts up at 4:52 into the broadcast.