Abe Shinzo's Secrets

About three weeks ago Timothy Langley and I had a long YouTube conversation about the implications of the Wikileaks release of July 31 (Link). The release itself featured rather innocuous information regarding Japanese trade and climate change thinking in 2007. What was stunning was the information demonstrated that the United States' National Security Agency was intercepting, translating and then disseminating the transcripts of the telephone calls of Japanese government officials in Tokyo.

At that time of our conversation Mr. Langley told me that despite efforts of the current governments to downplay the significance of this spying, the story was not going away.

Looks like he was right:

Abe Asks U.S. to Investigate Alleged NSA Spying on Japanese Government
Wall Street Journal

TOKYO—Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday asked U.S. President Barack Obama to investigate alleged spying by the National Security Agency on the Japanese government and companies, Mr. Abe’s spokesman said.

Documents posted online by WikiLeaks last month suggested that conversations involving government officials, central bankers and Japanese companies had been secretly intercepted by the U.S. agency. In a phone conversation Wednesday morning Tokyo time, Mr. Obama expressed regret that the issue has caused trouble for Mr. Abe and the government, according to Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga...

(Link)

It is a rare instance where the United States feels a need to express its regrets to a leader of Japan. Abe, however, has received an apology of sorts (Mr. Abe now knows what it is like to hear "Regret" when what one wants to hear is "Sorry") both from U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (Link) and now from President Obama himself.

During the recording of the podcast on August 7, I thought the issue with legs would be the hunt for the door openers. The extent and depth of the infiltration into the communications of government officials, particularly the extraordinary number of telephone numbers tapped inside Japan's Ministry of Finance, indicated full cooperation, either knowing or unknowing, of Japanese entities and individuals. My thought was that the current Abe administration would demand to know who allowed the NSA access to Japan's communications networks or even physically into the ministries and the Prime Minister's Residence, that these collaborators or dupes might be reprimanded or even punished.

My thinking now, in light of Prime Minister Abe and President Obama having a conversation on a subject that should have been closed by the previous conversation with Vice President Biden, is that the prime minister has a much bigger worry on his mind.

The Wikileaks release featured analyses of internal communications from Abe's first term in office. The list of high priority targets includes "EXEC SCY TO CHIEF CAB SCY" - the executive secretary to the chief cabinet secretary -- meaning that the U.S. was listening in on the calls made by the executive secretary of the person who is the operations command center of Japan's bureaucracy, the Cabinet and the Prime Minister's staff.

Bad enough news for the alliance-- one has to have a serious attitude problem to dare tap such a nexus of power in a country that supports the U.S. in almost every instance (not to mention figures out how to pay for a lot of what the U.S. wants to do).

The timing of the tapping activity and closeness to the center of the intercepts, however, raises a searing question for Abe: what, if not everything, the United States government knows and has shared about what transpired inside the Prime Minister's Residence in late July, August and early September, 2007.

The facts that his Diet colleagues do not know.

The facts that his supporters do not know.

The facts that possibly only his closest aides, Aso Taro and Yosano Kaoru know.(Link)

The sports newspapers and the weeklies accounts of Abe's last weeks in office in 2007 were pretty wild and woolly. Abe has been insulated from the repercussions of these "revelations," however, because everyone knows the sports newspapers and weeklies will print anything, no matter how implausible, misrepresented or just plain made up.

But if the U.S. was listening in to the calls being made by Yosano's executive secretary, then some folks, maybe a lot of folks, might just know...the truth.

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

Only semi-prophetic was I on Monday. While I did guess correctly that a close associate of the prime minister would claim the Abe administration's prudent stewardship of the Japanese economy was the reason for the sudden surge in the value of the yen, I missed guessing the identity of the perpetrator. I had hoped the claimant would be LDP Political Research Council Chair Inada Tomomi. Instead, it was the equally close Friend of Shinzo, Economic Revitalization Minister Amari Akira, who checked in with the fundamental stability claim (Link).

Image courtesy: Prime Minister's Residence

Very Kind Of Him #57 - The Flip Side Of My Remarks

Jeffrey Kingston of Temple University Japan has quoted me copiously in an opinion article published in The Japan Times (Link: Abe gets negative reviews ahead of U.S. visit). The quotations are certain to make me persona non grata in the Kantei.

I am grateful for Professor Kingston's quoting me. The quotes are verbatim.

However, I disagree with characterization that my overall assessment of Abe is negative.

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo is not really the majority of the population's idea of a dream date. The PM lacks most of the commonly recognized personality traits and qualities of a successful politician. Nevertheless, his Cabinet is the most reliably popular one for three decades. Abe is also fully back from the political Siberia his illness banished him to in September 2007. For four years he wandered the halls or slumped in his seat in the upper reaches of the House of Representatives, a weird ghostly figure. His resurrection and return should be the stuff of legends.

Abe has also fulfilled the proposition I set forth in February 2013: that he and his team will provide Japan with stable government (Video and Slides). The political opposition remains, three years out from the Noda Yoshihiko Self-Destruct Dissolution, an afterthought, a mosquito buzzing around the ruling coalition -- annoying but easily crushed. Heck, the opposition could not even snatch the Hokkaido governorship in today's first round of the Unified Local elections. (Link - J)

Abe, of course, has not just kept the opposition down and irrelevant: he has outmaneuvered and marginalized almost every potential political rival inside the LDP. The last possible holdout against "Abe's Way Or The Highway," LDP General Council Chair Nikai Toshihiro, a frequent critic of several key Abe administration policies, declared in an article published this week that "all of the holders of the top leadership posts of the LDP" is in support of Abe's reelection as party president this fall" -- meaning himself included. (Link - J)

As for "Abe Magic" and the "Abe Paradox" in the article -- again, correctly recorded -- these simple phenomena observable in the public polling data. They are also two manifestations of a single astonishing achievement: the conjuring up of a sense of inevitability to Abe's continued rule despite his inability to convince the majority of the voters to support whatever it is he is planning to do. Are the voters so starved for stability in the prime minister's spot that they are willing to say they support a Cabinet whose policies they do not like?

Seemingly.

Not at lot has gone really right in Abe's second stint. The economy is still weak; the monetary carpet bombing of the land with yen has not resulted in zero inflation; the collective self defense proposals are a spaghetti bowl of promises (and way behind schedule); Okinawa is in open revolt.

However, it is year three, Abe is still here and he is sticking to his much delayed agenda. He is letting all the hardships, bad news (the Algerian gasworks attack; the Hiroshima landslides; the murder of Goto Kenji) and missed targets roll off his back. Of course, a PM with a majority in the House of Councillors and a supermajority in the House of Representatives should be invincible. Abe's successors, from both LDP and Democratic Party of Japan, have shown how it is possible to fail in this blessed land's top office despite controlling more than the requisite number of seats in both Houses.

Abe succeeds despite himself. That is not negative. It is amazing.

Prime Minister Abe Returns

"Mr. Prime Minister, given how well both your teams did in the just-concluded World Cup, is this shot not kind of, you know, weird -- not to mention, wide?"

Yesterday just before 10 a.m., Prime Minister Abe returned to Tokyo from his week-long trip to Latin America and the Caribbean. He had an audience with the Emperor informing his Majesty of his safe return (why does no one question the preservation of this Victorian relic, the requirement that every minister stop off at the Palace to tell the Emperor that he/she is leaving the country and, upon his/her return, go to the Palace to check in? How about just notifying His Majesty via Facebook?).

After the 15 minutes with His Majesty, Abe went to the Diet Member's Building #1 to the dentist's office therein to have some work done on his teeth.

What is unbelievable about this schedule?

That after the visit to the dentist's office, Prime Minister Abe and Mrs. Abe went home to their private home in Tomigaya AND THE PM TOOK THE AFTERNOON OFF.

For anyone who peruses the PM's hyperactive-to-the-point-of-almost-parody daily schedules, the news that he came back on a Monday and proceeded to do basically nothing both astounds and instill fear.

Is the PM OK? Could he not have convened a meeting of yet another important-sounding obscure economic reform panel? Receive a visit from the Chiba Kiwi Fruit Marketing Association Kiwi Festival queens? (Link)

Perhaps the otherwise unoccupied hours gave the PM time to reflect upon some eternal truths he has seemed to have been ignoring of late:

- if I ever listen to what my fellow Liberal Democratic Party members are telling me to do, my term in office will be abbreviated and the LDP will go down to ignominious electoral defeat only three years after winning an unassailable victory. To live long and prosper I must remember Koizumi Jun'ichiro's contempt for LDP conventional wisdom!

- if I reward my friends for their loyalty, they will repay me with either incompetence, larceny, treachery or all three combined. I have a terrible taste in friends.

- I have to tell domestic audiences that I am sincere when I

a) hand out Cabinet posts in September based on faction affiliation

b) ram through the Diet an emergency spending plan to boost rural development just in time for the mid-April local elections (Link)

c) say I learned the lesson of the Shiga gubernatorial election and will redouble my efforts to guarantee LDP candidates win the upcoming Fukushima and Okinawa gubernatorial contests

and signal to international audiences that I am doing all of these things for utterly insincere and cynical reasons and so please ignore them, they are not the real Abe Shinzo -- otherwise one side or the other will drop me like a piece of Shanghai-processed chicken.

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Photo image of Team Abe in Brazil courtesy: Abe Shinzo official Facebook page.

Knockin' On Heaven's Door

-- Our country is facing great changes of the times, such as decreasing population, intensifying competition on global scale, deteriorating education in schools and families, and changes in the national security environment surrounding Japan.

-- Under the coalition government of the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito Party, we will rally together as the "Policy Implementation Cabinet," and steadily advance policies with solid foundations on the ground. We will articulate our policies with confidence, and deepen constructive debates with the opposition parties, and do our best in sincerely coming up with answers to each and every question, so that the people can live without anxiety into the future.

-- Starting with myself, cabinet ministers, senior vice ministers, and parliamentary vice ministers -- a total of 70 top government officials -- will divide up and each visit various local communities throughout the country, and listen to the voices on the ground face to face with the elderly people, young people, and people working for small and medium enterprises, and reflect their views in policies which are attentive to various circumstances.

-- It is essential to have a long-term system design to make the public pension a foundation of national daily life, a trustworthy system without anxiety for the people. This is the responsibility of politics. It is extremely important that discussions will be resumed in the Diet that transcend the positions of the ruling and opposition parties, and transparent and constructive consultations will be conducted.

-- I will make every effort to sincerely respond to the earnest voices of the people in the regions raising concerns over disparities and their future prospects, and make the dividends of reforms to be felt by the regions.

-- We will strive for local tax and financial reforms, including further transfer of power to local governments and correction of tax revenue disparities among regions.

-- We will integrate the implementation systems established under the Cabinet, including the one for regional revitalization. We will also provide assistance to regions willing to work on revitalization, in a concentrated and effective manner that adapts to the actual situations prevailing in the respective regions, by fully mobilizing measures such as the Program for Helping Striving Regions to Help Themselves

-- We will support improving vocational skills, and raise the minimum wage, in order to shore up the living standards of people working in the regions.

-- We will work to support the revitalization of the regions as a whole, by improving the productivities of small and medium enterprises which prop up the regional economy, and newly establishing a Regional Vitality Restoration Organization.

-- We will focus our efforts on policies that build for the future, including assistance to hard-working people based on the "agricultural policies on the offensive." Firmly acknowledging the anxieties held by senior and small-scale farming households, we will provide attentive assistance to them.

-- Careful attention will be paid to shoring up academic abilities by increasing classroom hours, enhancing textbooks and effectively utilizing the nationwide academic test. Efforts will also be focused on trial experiences and on moral education.

-- We will establish a well-modulated salary structure for teachers and strive to smoothly implement a renewal system for teaching licenses. Through measures such as reducing their administrative burdens, we will increase the amount of time that teachers engage fully in face-to-face interaction with students.

-- We will establish a system of emergency hub hospitals and networks responsible for emergency medical care in each of the regions, so that necessary emergency medical services can be received even during the night. We will make full efforts with a view to resolving the shortage of doctors in local regions through measures such as promptly dispatching "doctors without prefectural borders," and establishing a framework for working in remote areas at the medical departments of universities in local regions.

-- We will advance efforts to make Japan the most disaster-resistant nation in the world. We will work to make schools and other public facilities as well as houses more resistant to earthquakes, and create systems that can respond without fail if the need arises -- systems to provide information to the elderly, confirm people's safety and conduct rescue operations. Every effort will be made to ensure that nuclear power plants respond properly when earthquakes occur, while at the same time ensuring full disclosure of information in order to reassure the residents in the surrounding areas.

-- In order to create an environment where people can have children and raise them with a sense of security, we will expand diverse and attentive day care services and advance a review of the ways in which people work so that they can strike a balance between work and family life.

-- We will realize sustainable growth, making the utmost use of the strengths Japan has thus far developed, such as science and technology. By supporting new innovations that open up the next era, as well as by making the economy more open to the outside world through promoting the liberalization of Japan's aviation industry, as well as in tourism, finance and other sectors, we will bring into Japan the growth and vitality of countries in Asia and elsewhere in the world.

--We will resolutely carry out administrative and financial reforms aimed at "zero waste." We will formulate a well-modulated budget, and firmly proceed on the path of integrated reform of expenditures and revenues, toward the goal of achieving a surplus in the primary balance of the central and local governments combined

-- We will thoroughly eradicate the bad disposition of civil servants that have come to light, and create a new mold of civil servants who will shoulder the administration of the country in the 21st century.

-- I will continue to carry forward "Proactive Diplomacy."

-- I do not believe anyone has forgotten the shocks of the North Korean missile launches and its announcement of a nuclear test. The security environment surrounding Japan continues to be harsh. Japan's national security system needs to be restructured, by strengthening the headquarters functions of the Prime Minister's Office and the intelligence capabilities of the Government. We will steadily implement the realignment of U.S. Forces in Japan, while listening closely to the earnest voices of local communities including Okinawa, and exerting our best efforts to promote the development of these communities.

-- In order to resolve North Korea's abduction, nuclear and missile issues, we will further strengthen our solidarity with the international community. We will make every effort with an iron will, until the return of all the abductees will be achieved.

-- Our environmental technologies make our country proud in the world. We will achieve compatibility between environment and economy in a way characteristic of Japan, which regards the environment not as a constraint on but rather as a boost for economic growth, through such means as the promotion of widespread use of energy conservation technologies overseas.

-- On the Constitution, which delineates the shape and form of the country, the enactment of the National Referendum Law has created a conducive environment for deepening discussions on revision. I hope that discussions to meet the expectations of the people will continue to be conducted.

-- I will continue to listen to the opinions of the people attentively and explain my policies fully, and press forward in conducting the affairs of the state.

-- The statecraft I aspire for is one that, while adapting to severe changes in the environment surrounding our country, safeguards and nurtures the values that Japan possesses intrinsically, which we can still find in our daily lives such as a sense of self-discipline, compassion and warmth for others; statecraft that enables each and every person to feel true richness and satisfaction in their daily lives; namely, statecraft that advances the creation of a beautiful country. With a vision of how Japan should be in 50 years, and in 100 years, and never losing sight of our origins, I solemnly swear that I will give all my body and soul to fulfill the responsibilities of the Prime Minister.

In response to all of which my colleague of the time shouted, "And We Will All Go to Heaven!"

Abe Shinzo made the above promises to the Diet and the nation on 10 September 2007. Two days later he held a press conference, announcing his intent to resign as prime minister -- the reason I have presented that final section in blue.

As for the section in red , I think the reason for drawing attention to those promises needs no clarification.

In June the Abe Cabinet Version 2.0 will be making a third attempt at presenting a cogent and inspiring vision for the so-called Third Arrow structural reforms. From what we have been hearing from the Industrial Competitiveness Council (pictured above), its subcommittees and similar advisory bodies, the prime minister is not listening to the likes of Gerald Curtis and others who have advised him to choose four or five big but not unreasonable goals to achieve by year's end. Instead what is leaking out from the advisors and the ministers is a prodigious wish list, daunting in length, scope and difficulty.

I am not entirely unsympathetic to the tactic of listing as many agenda items as possible all at once. It makes it easier to claim victory later on. Make your list long enough and you are sure to achieve at least some of the goals by the end of the year. Maybe a whole bunch of them, given the ruling coalition's explicit ability to get things done, when it wishes to throw its weight around.

However, I cannot shake a sense that unless Abe and Company trim down the list of things "we will do" then more than a few listeners may respond in June as my colleague did seven years ago. Make your list of promises too long -- and the threads tying the package together too tenuous -- and your list of promises will be seen not as ambitious but as merely insulting to the intelligence.


For the original Abe Shinzo Diet Policy Speech of 10 September 2007, go to:
http://japan.kantei.go.jp/abespeech/2007/09/10syosin_e.html

For a sweet, rough and soft version of “Knockin' On Heaven's Door” by the Grateful Dead, go to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYg2j8VS154

Image courtesy: Prime Minister's Residence

Rex Omnis Qui Videt, Shinzo Abe Est

© Jeff Cable Photography

O Fortuna!
Velut luna
Statu variabilis!

O Fortune!
Varying in state
like the Moon!

- Carl Orff, Carmina Burana (1935-36)

Yesterday morning I was seated in the far left side of the Ascot banquet hall of the Hotel Okura. From out of the dark on the far right, avoiding a piece of equipment dropped in his path (the special police had something to say about that afterward) walked in Abe Shinzo, the prime minister of Japan.

Or at least that is what my eyes, my program and everyone around me was telling me.

The man delivered a set speech for fourteen minutes and fifteen seconds, then sat down in an armchair answering questions from the chairman of the day's proceedings for another ten and a half minutes.

I have had Abe Shinzo in my line of sight since October 2005, when I attended a conference on Japan's defense at the hotel nearest the Kantei. Abe, the then Chief Cabinet Secretary, was the keynote mealtime speaker.

The speech then was unimpressive. The phrase best describing its delivery: "still wet behind the ears."

Halfway through Abe seemed to lose himself, using the expression ware-ware ("we" "us") to explain what his grandfather Kishi Nobusuke was doing during the build up toward the signing of the revised Security Arrangements between Japan and the United States.

I turned to my tablemate (Dr. Richard Samuels of MIT) with a look on my face of "Did Abe Shinzo just refer to himself as a comrade-in-arms of his grandfather during the Ampo struggle, when he was all of six years old?"

I had Abe Shinzo right in my face every day during his first year as prime minister. I recall the expression of utter, contemptuous boredom on his visage on last day of the Diet session, as he sat on the dais watching vote after railroading vote in the House of Councillors plenary session, the opposition having left the chamber (except for the Communists, who stayed) after the insult of the morning votes -- and the look of his eyes, visible just over the shoulder of a desperate and sweating SP, as he was driven to a specially prepared ward in the Keio University Hospital just seven weeks later.　(Link)

I have watched him on a daily basis in the fifteen months since his return to the premiership: struggling to remember his routines, spluttering in Diet interpellations on the simplest of questions, mawkishly flailing his way through some simply embarrassing speeches. (Link)

That man, the Abe Shinzo I know, or thought I knew, did not show up at the Japan Summit 2014.

Someone else did.

The person called Abe Shinzo at the dais and in the armchair yesterday was not Abe Shinzo, grandson of Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, grandnephew of Prime Minister (and Nobel Peace Prize winner) Sato Eisaku. He was Abe Shinzo, Prime Minister of Japan, President of the Liberal Democratic Party -- pure and simple. When he sat down in the armchair to answer the hard ball questions thrown at him by The Economist's Asia chief Dominic Ziegler, throwing them right back at his interrogator when when answering was not in his interests ("Since what you are asking pertains to what tactics my country will be using [at the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations] I obviously cannot provide details") -- Abe owned that chair like I have never seen any Prime Minister of Japan own a piece of furniture. Not quite a Vladimir Putin slouch -- but Abe still sat in that chair as if he had brought it with him from home.

This was not your "wet behind the ears" botchan, acting out the role of prime minister with the shadow of imposture looming over him. Those who still look at Abe Shinzo that way are living in the past -- and it might as well be the distant past.

Was Abe's astonishing poise, humor and self-confidence all an act?

Maybe. But then he and his handlers should be triply congratulated for having him put on this act in front of not just the domestic and international news media but an overflow crowd of the world's investment community -- at a time when Abenomics in need of a PR boost...and furthermore on the eve of an incredibly important official visit by U.S. president Barack Obama.

If the Abe Shinzo who showed up yesterday meets an Obama delegation believing that he has to ingratiate himself to them, then the Americans are going of find out what the phrase "hitting a brick wall" means.

Failure at the final push for a TPP agreement this weekend? Abe Shinzo will not give a damn -- and nobody around him will either.

Abe's Cabinet is enjoying an insane 60% support rating (latest Kyodo News poll). His party holds the commanding heights in the Diet, the policy debate and the public's imagination. The number of persons answering the question of "Why do you support Prime Minister Abe?" with the plaintive and honest, "Because there is no other suitable person around" is climbing. "Because there is no other suitable person around" is indeed now the most common answer to the question of why voters support the PM, outdistancing the "high expectations for the economy" response (29% of respondents versus 21% again in the latest Kyodo poll).

And now even the Chinese and the South Koreans are trying to make nice. (Link)

Abe Shinzo 2.0, Spring Edition is so comfortable in his own skin he is even letting his beloved hair go, allowing the gray to show.

Fortune.

Changeable like the Moon.

Indeed.


Later - provisional translation of the Prime Minister's speech to The Economist Japan Summit 2014: "Japan towards 2020: time to get started." (Link)

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Partial reproduction of photo image of 15 April 2014 "blood moon" by professional photographer Jeff Cable. Click here for the original image and here to read the explanation of how it was created.

Photo image of Abe speaking at the Japan Summit 2014 courtesy JapanRealTime.

Yes, It's Been A Year For Abe Now

News flash - See my latest post for the exclamation point has put on his first year in office.

Today is the first anniversary of Abe Shinzo's second stint as prime minister of Japan. There will be a plethora of articles looking at the past year (Link - J) assessing the Abe Administration’s efforts are regards stimulating economic growth and improving Japan’s security. A lot of the assessments will likely judge the prime minister's and the Cabinet's performance as encouraging but with many major goals unmet. Many will detect a loss of focus on the part of the government, a sudden fascination with security matters supplanting what was an internationally popular transformation (one hesitates to say reform) plan.

True.

However, by any reasonable standard, the first year of the Abe Administration, Version 2.0, has been insanely successful. Perhaps not for the country, but certainly for him, his party and the industries and interest groups that sought to back his return. Abe is in robust health, both physically and in terms of his Cabinet support ratings. He is hitting his main policy targets largely according to his time line. Now admittedly, that may not be difficult for a prime minister backed up by commanding ruling coalition majorities in both House of the Diet. However, Abe was in the same political position during the first ten months of his last, calamitous stint in office. He and his unmerry Friends of Shinzo cabinet of that time could not take a step without bogged down in a myriad scandals and sour note recitations and retractions of revisionist claptrap. The current Cabinet marches forward, despite being chock-a-block with potential rivals for control of the ruling party.

If any group has reason to be upset with the prime minister, it is the xenophobic black-shirt, contorted windbag revisionist fellow traveller cohort of which he is supposedly the avatar. Abe has not visited Yasukuni; he has not repudiated any part of the Kono or Murayama Statements; he has not attempted to crush the Teacher's Union or force misleading textbooks on students; he has spoken out against the anti-Korean Zaitokukai demonstrators; he has been solicitous, even complimentary toward Chinese and South Korean leaders who have been demonstrating their unfitness for high office by their repeated rhetorical slaps to Abe's and Japan's face. Abe has shrugged off the insults and taken his paranoid base for granted -- a double-cross of the misguided hyperpatriots which, to be fair, he alone of major politicians had the potential to perform.

Not all is perfect in the House of Abe, of course. His government's inability to compile an even marginally coherent and/or convincing package of Third Arrow economic reforms has the international investment class suspecting that no such package will ever be forthcoming. The passage by force of numbers of the Special Secrets Protection Act, without public support (the more the public knew about the contents of the Act, the less it liked it) fanned into flames what were only smoldering embers of civic opposition to Abe’s multi-faceted revolution.

A lot of folks would rather have someone else as PM, someone with fewer risks of being sidetracked on pet projects or undone by prickly pride. However, as compared to the annual tumble and stumble into ignominy of prime ministers since Koizumi Jun'ichiro (Abe provided the template for this roller coaster ride into unpopularity during his term in office in 2006-07) the stability we have seen so far is Abe's response to the slings and arrows of his critics.

Abe Shinzo after one year is on course, in command and tremendously sure of himself. A lot folks, your truly included, would have told you in December last year that such an outcome was unlikely in the extreme, if not indeed impossible.

Follow Up On Koike Yuriko

A week ago, in a post about the Official Secret Bill (Yes, someday I will write about something else) and Koike Yuriko, the Liberal Democratic Party's top public information honcho, I wrote that:

"Publishing in English via Project Syndicate, she has disseminated anti-Democratic Party of Japan and pro-Abe Shinzo propaganda worldwide underneath the radar of the local representatives of the foreign press."

As luck, or the simple passage of time, would have it, Koike has clocked in with one of her stomping propaganda pieces:

Reinventing a key security institution in Japan

Shinzo Abe's second term as Japan's Prime Minister began with a laser-like focus on economic revitalization. That policy, almost instantly dubbed "Abenomics", comprises what have been called the three "arrows": bold monetary policy, an expansionary fiscal stance, and structural reforms to stimulate private investment. Hosting the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020 has added a fourth arrow to this quiver in the form of increased infrastructure investment and tourism revenue in the years up to the games.

To be sure, after 15 years of deflationary recession, revitalization of the Japanese economy remains far from complete. Nonetheless, the effects of Abe's reforms are becoming visible in areas such as equity prices and exchange rates.

But Abe also confronts a security environment in Asia that is every bit as brittle as Japan's economy was before his government took office last December. Indeed, he confronted many of the same issues during his first administration seven years ago. His efforts back then were halted by his own resignation, and he is now making a second attempt to establish a national security governance system to meet Japan's needs—and those of its allies—in 21st century Asia.

In a speech to a plenary session of the lower house of Japan's Diet on 25 October, Abe emphasized that, given the current security situation in Asia, "It is essential to strengthen command functions for implementing the Prime Minister's national security policy." Now that split control of the Diet's upper and lower houses has been resolved, with Abe's Liberal Democrats in strong control of both chambers, a Bill to modernize Japan's national security governance is certain to pass.

The Bill that Abe has submitted aims to establish a Japanese National Security Council (NSC), based on lessons from the successes and failures of similar institutions in other countries, such as NSC in the US. The Security Council of Japan—something of a stopgap measure created to provide advice from relevant cabinet members to the Prime Minister in times of crisis—will now be reorganized as a formal institution.

The new NSC's membership will be limited to the Prime Minister, the cabinet secretary, and the foreign and defence ministers, with relevant ministers added on an ad hoc basis. A permanent National Security Secretariat, headed by a person with abundant diplomatic experience, will be established in the Prime Minister's office, with 60 security specialists from various fields laying the policy groundwork for medium and long-term national security strategy.

(Link)

First, compliments where deserved. The text is both in straightforward, colloquial English and makes sense, in any language.

Second, Koike-san, cool it on the clapping-for-oneself-in-the-North-Korean-manner adjectives and adjectivals ("laser-like," "bold," "abundant") will ya?

Third, how much shorter would the work day of Prime Minister's Residence journalists be if Koike were given the job of official government spokesperson? Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide, who is as good at his multi-tasking nightmare job as anyone ever has been, nevertheless leaves folks drooling with strings of rhetorical questions rather than clearcut assertions or denials.

If Koike were wrangling the journalists, the daily press conference would be, "Here's the news -- so listen up, you idiots."

The essay is interesting for its detour into self-indulgence, with Koike venting once again about the Prime Minister's Schedule, her pet peeve, her discussion of which caused the government angina last week. That an international audience would not understand a single thing about whatever it is about the Schedule that puts Koike into such a snit (not that domestic audiences can either) does not bother her in the least, evidently.

Worthwhile Reads for October 28, 2013

- Don't be put off by the title. David Pilling, the incredibly skilled former bureau chief for the Financial Times, has published the fairest portrait of Abe Shinzo available in the English language (Link).

It makes one's mouth water for the book on Japan Mr. Pilling has coming out in January.

- Over at the East Asia Forum a three-part series of succinct articles on facets of Abenomics from Hugh Patrick of Columbia University. (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)

- Though defensive, Mark Adomanis' blog post for Forbes on Russia's reputed disastrous demographics (Link) is fantastic for the graph comparing the number of life births in Russia and Japan (Graph). Generation by generation, Japan's and Russia total number of births have been declining, with the peaks in each successively lower swing in Russia coming about 12 years after a similar peak in Japan. The head shaker is how the generational climb in births in Russia births since 1998 (the build up out of the collapse of the ruble thanks to the echo of the boomer echo - i.e., the grandchildren of the post-1945 baby boom) had no equivalent in Japan, unless one counts the ripple around 1995.

Abe Shinzo's Friends Indeed

"It is called the Unbegun Symphony. It used to be called the Pathetic Symphony. Now these names as you may know, like the Jupiter Symphony and the Eroica Symphony...now these names as you may know, they are usually not given by the composer. They are given by friends or the musicians and stuff. This name, the Pathetic Symphony, was given to the piece by some of my old friends.

(Pause)

Well, I have a new set of friends now...and we're calling it the Unbegun Symphony."

- Peter Schickele, "The Unbegun Symphony" (1966) *

Well, he has a new set of friends now...

When I hear Abe Shinzo arguing for a stimulus package (taking cash out of the national treasury and distributing it to politically important constituencies) in order to offset the likely downturn in individual and corporate spending after the consumption tax rise (raised in order to pay for the higher health and pension costs associated with a larger population of retirees) so as to not derail the economic growth associated with Abenomics monetary policy (which, by targeting inflation, will eat away at the spending power of those on fixed incomes and/or living off their savings, i.e., retirees) and fiscal policy (which by accelerating the rate of increase of the national debt, threatens jumps in interest rates demanded by borrowers, which will increase the percentage of the national budget consecrated to debt service, decreasing the amount of money available for everything else, most importantly pensions and healthcare for the elderly) all against the advice of economists Honda Etsuro and Hamada Ko'ichi, the two identified "fathers of Abenomics," whilst simultaneously trying to drum up support globally for an as yet unknown set of structural reforms to be decided on...soon...because the set of reforms his brain trust of supposedly market savvy and creative CEOs produced for the big June announcement were either trivial (Link) or so nakedly self-serving (Rakuten CEO Mikitani Hiroshi going so far as to threaten to quit Abe's industrial competitiveness council if the sales of drugs and medical equipment over the Internet were not in included in the June announcement) as to embarrass the PM -- I blackly remember Professor Schickele's sardonic, "Well, I have a new set of friends now..."

In his return to power a year ago, Abe Shinzo seems to have secretly made a deal with himself and his eminence grise Suga Yoshihide. Abe would nod in the direction of old coterie of supporters and allies, the so-called "Friends of Abe" like Taka'ichi Sanae, Furuya Keiji and Inada Tomomi -- and yes, even the duplicitous and too glib Aso Taro -- relying upon them as the backbone for his challenge to the status quo within the Liberal Democratic Party. The muscle and momentum for the takeover of the party and the government, however, would come from the zaikai, with new style but still establishment business moguls like Mikitani, Takeda Phamaceuticals CEO and Keizai Doyukai head Hasegawa Yasuchika, JR Central Chairman Kasai Yasuyuki, Fuji Film CEO Komori Shigetaka as a set of "New Friends of Shinzo" -- persons whom when you talked to them seemed full of ideas on how to transform Japan into an economic powerhouse, a state capable of paying for the kind of raw politico-military power Abe had seemingly previously thought could only come through the imposition from above of a hair-trigger patriotic, paranoid obedience to authority -- you know, like the mindset the Chinese seem to be fostering.

The New Friends seemed full of the promise of a revived fukukoku kyohei, but a fukoku kyohei for the Facebook Age -- with the New Friends of Shinzo providing the ideas and capital for the fukoku and the Old Friends providing the applause for the Abe/Suga duarchy's tentative tiptoeing toward the kyohei.

As I watch Abe's epic, manic, economic speedballing -- meeting everyone, asking everyone's advice, with resulting announcements of new economic policies off-setting the effects of previous economic policies offsetting the effects of yet earlier policies engaged to counter the consequences of even older policies, with frenetic searches for new statistics demonstrating earlier that the latest policies are indeed working (Link) or that the current policies need yet newer policies to offset them -- I find myself worrying, "Won't the pressures of finding a path through the bewilderingly numerous, numbingly complex and often mutually contradictory plans of the New Friends of Abe cause the man to break down -- just like the unseemly power-grabbing and intransigence of the Old Friends did?"

A disconcerting thought for a sunny day.


Later - It is not a sign of the Apocalypse, but when the Yomiuri Shimbun, which is as a rule sycophantic in its coverage of the policies of the LDP prime ministers, is like me in shaking its head at the PM's mutually negating proposals (Link) then the sum of the parts of the current administration's ideas is clearly less than a whole.

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* The album An Hysteric Return: P.D.Q. Bach at Carnegie Hall is available here.

Abe Shinzo in 2020? (Not Hindsight)

Twice this week I have read in prominent publications musings about whether or not Prime Minister Abe Shinzo could possibly still be in office at the time of the opening of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

Could Abe be the premier at the torch lighting ceremony?

In theory, yes. The only requirements for a prime minister are being alive and a member of the Diet (yes, I am aware that the latter presumes the former. Bear with me).

Prime Minister Abe is 58 years old, meaning that he will be 65 at the time the 2020 games. Abe's father Shintaro died at the relatively young age of 67 of undetermined causes -- explanations including heart failure (the official cause of death), liver failure and cancer. Shinzo has also had health problems, the nature of which are the subject of speculation (secrecy about health issues seems to run in the family). Shintaro's death came after a two year period of hospitalization -- a collapse and sudden withdrawal from public life seemingly triggered by the shuddering halt in his career brought about by the Recruit Scandal (another parallel - Link).

While the robustness of Abe Shinzo's physical health has a question mark over it, there should be no questions about his political health. Yamaguchi Prefecture is the home of conservative elective politics and a Liberal Democratic Party (all six Diet members) and Kishi clan (Abe's younger brother Kishi Nobuo is the representative for Yamaguchi District #4) bastion. Abe will continue to win in his Yamaguchi #2 district as long as he is running for a seat.

Nevertheless, the charter of the LDP pretty much rules out Abe presiding over Olympics in 2020. Article 12 of the charter sets the term of the presidency of the LDP at three years, with a maximum of two consecutive terms in office (Link - J). While there is no stipulation that a prime minister must be the head of a party, the general consensus is that only the heads of parties are eligible for the prime ministerial election. Murayama Tomiichi became prime minister even though he was not the leader of the largest party in the Diet. He nevertheless was at least the leader of the soon-to-be-doomed Socialist Party.

In the already unlikely event Abe Shinzo manages to serve out two full terms, he will lose his party presidency. This will mandate his resignation as prime minister.

Abe could, of course, return to the LDP presidency after the term in office of a successor. However, it is extremely unlikely that the members of the LDP, or more specifically the many prime minister wannabees in the LDP, would let Abe have a third chance at the party's top post. It is even more unlikely that Abe would run for the premiership as an independent or the head of a party other than the LDP.

Unthinking On Why Abe Will Visit Yasukuni In August

Once we are past the July 21 elections, Sino-Japanese relations will be in a sweet spot. Both China and Japan will have ostensibly new, legitimate leaders, with significant political succession campaigns far off. It will be years before either side has to gin up the paranoia/resentment machine to advance its political program. Both leaders, with their inherited political bona fides, would be in a position to find ways to work together to keep the bilateral relationship on an even keel. Given the tight intermeshing of the economies of the two countries, crippling relations over pride would be daft. This is doubly so because the Chinese economy is going to be entering a rough patch, with growth gearing down sharply from deleveraging and a shift from investment-led to consumption-led growth. It is trebly so because big business in Japan, which is invested in China up to its earlobes, has been an unquestioned and unquestioning backer of Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party.

Nevertheless, Abe will toss the opportunity to make history into history's dustbin and go to Yasukuni in August. He not do so on the August 15 defeat day but on another day (I have bet that it will be August 12) -- not with a herd of lawmakers and flunkies in tow but quietly, without warning.

Why? Abe does not have to prove anything. The revisionist base loves him, whether he goes to Yasukuni or not. The collapse of the Japan Restoration Party means there is no more threat to the LDP from the right.

If Abe goes to Yasukuni there will be anti-Japanese riots in China. Xi Jinping will never come to Japan for a summit. Ship intrusions into the area around the Senkakus will skyrocket.

To which I can only respond, "And how will all these outcomes not fulfill the predictions regarding Chinese behavior that Abe and his fellow travelers have been making since...forever?"

In addition to the self serving opportunism of instigating exactly the kind of hysteria and overreaction in China the revisionist right has prophesied, Abe has purely personal reasons for going to Yasukuni in August. The first is psychohistorical: he has never forgiven himself for failing to go in August 2007. Second, since their accessions to power, Xi Jinping has made not the least sacrifice of political capital in order to reach out to Abe. Unlike Park Geun-hye, who has to be seen giving Abe the cold shoulder in order to bury talk of her father's service to Japan, Xi is free to extend the hand of friendship to Abe. For reasons of either cowardice or prejudice, Xi has done nothing.

He will do nothing.

A terrible error.

Abe has been wearing a mask of affability these past six months in line with the needs of his party in the run up to the House of Councillors election. Once past the election, Abe will let down the facade of buoyant happiness, reverting to his usual state of umbrage. We have already seen flashes of resentment creep out from behind the mask, the anger he feels toward anyone showing him disrespect, in Abe's Facebook attacks on anti-Trans Pacific Partnership demonstrators, Tanaka Hitoshi and Hosono Goshi. Once past the election, Abe's brittle edginess, shared by many in his Cabinet, will no longer need to be hidden away.

So many of the projects dear to the revisionists are closed to Abe. Garrison the Senkakus? Suicidal, stupid. Revise Article 96, Article 9 and the rest of the Constitution? Not enough votes in the House of Councillors for the necessary 2/3rds majority.

Going to Yasukuni is the default dream realization -- and Abe will revert to it once the election is over and done. Provocative, spiteful will the visit be, yet not threatening except in rhetorical terms.

After Abe takes the plunge world opinion will fault him for his lack of sensitivity and inability to appreciate the fragility of Japan's position in East Asia.

World opinion will, however be drawing a bead at the wrong target. Those lacking in sense and sensitivity are in Beijing. Those afraid of an objective accounting for the past are there too.

Can one fault the Chinese for failing to understand Japan? Not really. Power and wealth have muddled brains. A global fear of losing access to the China bounty has clipped tongues.

At the end of the day, at the very end, the interests of East Asia's princeling leaders are best served by conflict between the nations. Marginal territorial and history disputes are helpful distractions, turning the attention of citizens away from such questions as "Are the children and grandchildren of past leaders really the best persons for these jobs?" and "What is there in this aristocracy thing for me and my family, anyway?"

The July 21, 2013 Elections - By the Numbers

Total number of candidates: 433

Total number of seats up for election 121

Number of district seat candidates: 271

Number of district seats up for election: 73

Number of proportional seat candidates: 162

Number of proportional seats up for election: 48

Total number of candidates, by party:

LDP 78
JCP 63
DPJ 55
JRP 44
Your Party 34
New Komeito 21
Life 11
SDP 9
Green Breeze 8
Other 83

Support for the parties (NHK poll of 7-9 June 2013)

LDP 41.7%
JCP 2.2%
DPJ 5.8%
JRP 1.5%
Your Party 1.5%
New Komeito 5.1%
Life 0.1%
SDP 0.4%
Green Breeze 0.0%
Other 0.2%
None of the above 34.6%
Don't know/can't say: 7.0%

The number of seats "X would have to win in order to do Y"

- parties nominally in support of constitutional revision to have the 2/3rds majority of seats in the House of Councillors necessary to revise the Constitution: 100

- the LDP to have all by itself majorities in both Houses of the Diet: 72

- the LDP and the New Komeito to have majorities in both Houses of the Diet: 63


Voter turnout - the last time

- last time these seats were up for election (29 July 2007): 58.64%

- last House of Councillors election (11 July 2010): 57.92%

- last national election (House of Representatives, 16 December 2012):　59.32% (historical low)

- latest major election (Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, 23 June 2013): 43.50% (second lowest ever)


Voter Turnout - Lowest

House of Councillors: 44.50% (23 July 1995)

House of Representatives: 59.32% (16 December 2012)

Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly: 40.80% (6 July 1995)

[Complete revival of the (Lack of) Spirit of '95 will guarantee Abe a historic victory on the 21st. It will also put a permanent asterisk mark next to the victory, with the explanation "Earned But Not Merited"]


Demographics

% of candidates who are women: 24% (second highest % in last 30 years)

% of candidates who are younger than 50 years of age: 43%

% of candidates who are 60 years of age or older: 26%

Mr. Abe's Ostensibly New Book

In preparation for my talk at Temple University Japan next week on the Abe Cabinet (announcement) I have been reading Abe Shinzo's Atarashii kuni e ("Toward a New Country") the 2013 update of Abe's famous Utsukushii kuni e ("Toward a Beautiful Country").

　

"Toward a New Country" is a deeply disturbing and frustrating work.

First and foremost, the expanded edition of Abe Thought does not explain the "new" of "New Country" anymore than the 2006 version explained the "beautiful" of a "Beautiful Country" did. It does not even backtrack and fill us in on what the "beautiful" was.

I am left with my own idiosyncratic understanding of Abe's aesthetic sense, which is to equate Abe's "beautiful" with "fine" in as it is found in Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls:

The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and and I hate very much to leave it.

A beautiful Japan is one worth the fighting for -- a formulation which incepts Abe & Company's maundering about the citizenry's lack of hokori (誇り) and dispenses with the contradiction in between "a beautiful Japan" and the incredible destruction that has been wreaked upon Japan's traditional natural and man-made environments.

Second, the new version of Abe Thought is as reliant on British and American examples as the old one. How can a man be a prime minister of Japan yet in his major opus on his views on how to run his country constantly be talking about Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher?

Abe's reliance on non-Japanese illustrations for his approach to politics must be a feature, not a bug. My guess is that if he used Japanese figures and historical incidents as his touchstones, readers and commentators would have a greater capacity to contest his version of events and lessons learned. By going outside his own tradition, with "Winston Churchill said this and meant this" propositions, Abe is free to make stuff up without anyone calling him on it.

Third, Abe is unreconstructed. Five years after his collapse, three of which were spent as a member of the opposition, and all we get that is "new" is a two page introduction and 19 pages of appendices regarding the December 2012 election manifesto.

As to everything in between, Abe proudly states, "Nothing has changed."

Ah, but the world has changed in the interim...

Lest I Be Misunderstood

Your continued attacks on Abenomics is awful...

These attacks have been the worst part of following your blog.

I am grateful for readers willing to tell me that I am full of crap (and possibly full of myself).

As for Abenomics, I will keep hacking away until I get an explanation of the program that I, a layman in every sense of the word, can believe in.

One of the few benefits of being on the wrong side of life's great divide (where the number of sunrises ahead is fewer than those already seen) is that one has locked away a fine personal collection of flim-flams, frauds, gyps, rip offs, shafts and scams to consult whenever someone offers simple solutions to complex problems.

All collections are eclectic, though, which is why I ask readers to smack me down whenever I misapprehend.

As for Abe Shinzo, the man, I worry about him. I sincerely do.

I Can't Stomach This

Cartoon from the Tokyo Shimbun of 18 December 2012:

Panel 1: LDP election headquarters, "Huge Victory" -- shouts of "Banzai! Banzai!"

Panel 2: LDP president Abe Shinzo, in between Secretary General Ishiba Shigeru and Executive Acting Secretary-General Suga Yoshihide, doubling over, "Oh, my belly it...it hurts..."

Panel 3: Abe, grinning and swinging from one to the other, "..from LAUGHING TOO HARD!"

Panel 4: Amid gales of laughter from all, Ishiba, "I thought, 'Have we turned back the clock?' for a second there!"

Abe says that ulcerative colitis drove him from office in 2007 and that his illness is under control due to a new drug. (Link)

I could believe his story, except that:

1) he has never offered to release his medical records

2) he made no mention of illness in his resignation speech of September 12, 2007 nor during question-and-answer session afterward (Link)

3) there was a question-and-answer session on September 12, 2007

3) he left the Prime Minister's Residence two days later in the back seat of a Special Police car, unaccompanied by a doctor or his wife, the two car motorcade barreling through Nagata-cho to a closed wing of Keio University Hospital, without a transfer of executive power to another member of the Cabinet.

Yep, makes me laugh. Ha. Ha.

Image courtesy: Tokyo Shimbun

Constitution Day Readings

It is Constitution Day. The front page stories are about specific Articles of the Constitution. It is otherwise a slow news day, aside from the complete bordel of the Chen Guangcheng affair. On television, the revisionists and the anti-revisionists are slugging it out (on NHK it's Morimoto Satoshi versus Egawa Shoko in a no-holds barred death match. As she is the crusader who took on Aum Shinrikyo and survived, my money is on Egawa).

Michael Auslin has a new essay up at Foreign Policy riffing on the Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko's semi-summit (no dinner?) with President Barack Obama, the face-saving agreement signed at the last minute regarding redeployment of U.S. forces currently on Okinawa, the changes in Japan's positions on arms exports and the U.S.-drafted Constitution.  (Link).  It is a reality-based piece, noting what are real changes in the way this blessed land has interpreted the limits set by Article 9. 

I am afraid though, that Auslin goes too far by mentioning two subjects one should not bring up in polite company: the F-35 and Abe Shinzo.  The F-35 program is imploding under its own weight (E) and one observer even declares the plane a threat to the Japan-U.S. alliance . It would be unseemly of me to say I told you so... but I told you so.

As for former prime minister Abe Shinzo, the wiser course remains to pretend he never happened. Even his good ideas are not being copied.

To every Auslin, who knows something about the Constitution and how difficult it would be to alter it, there are a passel commentators blessedly ignorant of it.

The winner of this year's I Don't Know Me No Constitution Award goes to the milbloggers at TIME magazine, who are making this something of a bad habit.

Where to begin when a post begins with this humdinger of an assertion?

The prospect of U.S. and Japanese troops fighting side by side in the next land war in Asia — and heaven forbid the need for either — comes a step closer with a little-noted provision in U.S. realignment plans announced last week.

(Link)

"Fighting side by side in the next land war in Asia" - takes the breath away, does it not?

Yes, I have noticed that the motto of the milblogs of TIME magazine is "Where military intelligence is not a contradiction in terms."

Oh, Amaterasu, How Did I Ever Miss This One?

A photo for the ages -- let us just hope the age in question is not ours.

Right wing heroine and TV personality Sakurai Yoshiko, former prime minister and LDP member Abe Shinzo, Sunrise Party (Tachiagare Nippon) leader Hiranuma Takeo and The Spirit of Japan party leader Yamada Hiroshi announce the formation of a united front against the Democratic Party of Japan.

- The Hanoi field hospital (1945)-born author of the infamous "The Facts" full page advertisement in The Washington Post, as well as hundreds of revisionist articles, opinion pieces and books.

- The grandson of a Class A War Criminal. And lots of other stuff.

- The adopted son of a Class A War Criminal.

- A signer of the official letter in support of "The Facts" advertisement and former mayor of the only major city whose public middle schools used the controversial Fusosha "New History Textbook."

Honestly, when will these folks find some other hobbies to pursue?

Photo courtesy: The Sankei Shimbun

Abe Shinzō - another look

Rather than messing with photo images of famous figures, with their lighting and attribution problems, Japanese newspapers tend to print graphically bold and proprietary caricatures next to articles about those figures.

The following three caricatures of Abe Shinzō appeared in articles printed yesterday announcing his return to active political life. They come from the left-of-center elite The Asahi Shimbun, the populist Mainichi Shimbun and the revisionist right Sankei Shimbun.

From the political orientation of the newspaper alone, can you match the image with the newspaper? (Answer below)

In my post on Abe's reemergence I wrote, "I cannot say whether the considerable length of time between his resignation as PM and his reacceptance into the faction is due to the damage he suffered himself or the damage his resignation inflicted upon the LDP."

A mid-level Machimura faction member, quoted in the Mainichi Shimbun, makes it clear it is the latter. Asked for his comment on Abe's moves this week, the member said:

「安倍氏は突然、首相を辞任し党に大きなダメージを与えた。表舞台に出るのは早すぎる」

"The party suffered considerable damage due to Abe's sudden resignation as Prime Minister. It is too early for him to appear on center stage."

So there you have it. The doghouse still in he is.

Answer - Left image: Mainichi. Center image: Sankei. Right image: Asahi.

Reaching For the Sun

Former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō has come back to the surface.

Six months after his intestinal fortitude failed him in September, forcing to leave the premiership, Abe seems to be taking baby steps toward rehabilitating himself in the political realm.

Yesterday, he presided over the first session of a new study group, Kūru āsu 50 (Cool Earth 50), dedicated to supporting the Toyako Summit and the goals, set down during the desperate days of the Abe administration, of halving greenhouse emissions by the year 2050.

At the time the project was announced, the Japanese name was Utsukushii sei 50, (The Beautiful Celestial Body 50). Abe, or whoever is propping him up, seems to realize that anything with utsukushii (beautiful) in the name is radioactive, politically speaking.

The launch of the study group, held inside LDP headquarters, was not exactly the "must attend" event of the day. Fourteen lawmakers showed up, mostly close allies and fellow doghouse dwellers like former Chief Cabinet Secretary Shiozaki Yasuhisa and former Special Advisor for Public Relations Sekō Hiroshige.

Today (March 6) Abe made his formal request to reinstated into the Machimura Faction. He had left the faction, as tradition demands, upon his election as president of the LDP in 2005. I cannot say whether the considerable length of time between his resignation as PM and his reacceptance into the faction is due to the damage he suffered himself or the damage his resignation inflicted upon the LDP. I doubt anyone will ever give an honest account of the last few months.

Abe is very solicitous as regards Fukuda's present political weakness. He has sworn to do what he can to bolster the government by ensuring the Toyako Summit's success.

He did, in code words, indicated that the petulant fantabulist obsessions still guide him:

「初心に戻って一国会議員として福田政権を支え、誇りある国、日本をつくっていきたい」

"I have returned to the enthusiasm of the beginner, supporting the Fukuda Cabinet as a member of the Diet. I also want to go forward, building a country, Japan where there is pride (hokori no aru kuni, Nippon)

A great right wing favorite that hokori (誇り) . The right damn near owns a copyright on the word.

Even after the fall, the pride -- still trying to tell the citizens that their mode of thought is all wrong.

"Build a country, Japan, that has pride"-- not "a country, Japan, people can be proud of."

Those damn citizens again--still not appreciating beauty cool.

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Yatsude (Fatsia japonica) in the courtyard of the Myōhonji
Kamakura City, Kanagawa Prefecture
May 27, 2007
Photo credit: MTC
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Later - The Japan Observer has his own fabulous post on this subject.