Will Abe Take A Trip Down Yasukuni Lane This Day?

Yasukuni Shrine seen from Hosei University. 25 July 2015.

Will Abe Shinzo make the short trip to Yasukuni today? The smart money says, "No."

However, given

- that yesterday's Cabinet Statement contained all the magic words the international community wanted to hear, if without the tone or sense of agency the international community wanted,

- that the security legislation and the Tokyo 2020 Olympics have become embarrassments

- that Xi Jinping is not in a position to be open to chummy photo opportunities with Abe thanks to the tanking the Chinese markets and insecurity among the cadres engendered by the spreading anti-corruption campaign, meaning the loss or gain of a summit is not in play,

- that the construction plans for a Henoko replacement facility for USMC Air Base Futenma have come undone

- that Abe himself faces an LDP party leadership election next month,

I am willing to entertain the notion that the barriers preventing Abe from paying a surprise visit today are a lot lower than most analysts are willing to admit.

True, the chances of such a visit setting off serious anti-Japanese rioting in South Korea and China are not zero. Japanese companies, especially the big names, would likely suffer significant property damage and business losses. Given that Abe's second run for the presidency of the Liberal Democratic Party and second turn in the premiership are largely seen as having been framed as a quid pro quo with with the barons of Big Business, the chances for a provocative Yasukuni visit would seem slim.

And he said on August 12 that he won't go (Link - J).

Then again, despite many warnings not to, Abe paid his visit on December 26, 2013...


Yasukuni Shrine, 15 August 2014.

Hitting The Road

Playground (2015). Image by MTC.

Why should I care?
Why should I care?

- Pete Townsend, "5:15" (1973)

There's no success like failure
and failure's no success at all.

- Bob Dylan, "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" (1965)

It was not a terribly good weekend for Democratic Party of Japan leader Okada Katsuya. Liberal Democratic Party/Komeito coalition-backed candidates won 10 out of 10 governor seats up for election. The LDP came out as the top seat holder in 40 of the 41 prefectural assemblies holding elections, the sole blot on the perfect record being in Osaka Prefecture. The DPJ finished out the day with fewer total seats in the both the prefectural and the 17 specially designated city assemblies. And to top it off someone hacked Okada's personal Twitter feed on Saturday, generating a flood of spam tweets to all of those following his feed.

The LDP did all right. Its candidates certainly won the governorships. However, only two of the races -- Hokkaido and Oita -- were competitive. In truth, not even the Oita race was competitive, as in former Socialist bastion Oita former Socialist prime minister Murayama Tomiichi campaigned for the LDP-Komeito candidate, an old friend of his. The LDP raised the number of prefectures where it holds an outright majority in the assembly from 21 to 24. It finished the day with 50.48% of all prefectural seats nationwide. On the minus side, the LDP's total number of prefectural seats fell by 43 to 1153.

The big winners were the Japan Innovation Party, the Komeito and the Communists. The JIP increased its national total in the prefectures from 62 to 70 seats and won a plurality if not a full majority of the seats in the Osaka prefectural assembly. The Komeito won every seat it contested on the prefectural level, going from 169 seats to 169 seats (demonstrating once again the party leadership's knowledge of its voters) and raised its seat totals in the specially designated cities from 172 seats to 174. Indeed only one Komeito candidate failed to win a seat on Sunday, coming up short in a race for a seat in the Osaka City assembly.

The Communists, in many races the only opposition candidate, had a field day. The JCP blasted from 75 total seats to 111 in the prefectural assemblies. The JCP now owns at least one seat in every prefectural assembly, including the six not holding election this cycle - a historic first for the party. In the specially designated city assemblies, the JCP moved past the DPJ as the #3 party in the nation, raising its seat totals in these cities from 103 seats to 136 (the LDP is #1 with 301 seats, the Komeito #2 with 174).

All the wins and losses, however, come with a caveat: voter turnout was terrible. New record lows for voter turnout were set in 38 of the 41 prefectures holding assembly votes. In the specially designated city assembly races, 12 of 17 suffered new record low turnout. On average, voter turnout in the gubernatorial elections was down over 5% from turnout in 2011, the one big exception being the competitive race in Hokkaido. However, even in the Hokkaido gubernatorial race turnout declined, from 59.62% to 59.46%.

Average turnout for prefectural assembly (brown line) and gubernatorial (blue line) elections since 1947. Image courtesy Tokyo Shimbun.



Bad turnout of course favors the parties with strong with strong internal mechanisms guaranteeing dutiful voting by its members and clients. It disfavors, and indeed is a symptom of the weakness of, parties that rely attracting floating voters for their victories.

Hence, the DPJ did as well as it should have done -- which is not well at all.

There is a serious amount of specious framing going on of the results as well. News accounts have portrayed the DPJ's losses in the prefectural assemblies as devastating, with the Yomiuri Shimbun crowing:

In prefectural assembly elections in 41 prefectures, the total number of seats won by DPJ-backed candidates fell 82 from the previous elections to 264.

Of course, the Yomiuri's editors know full well that the DPJ of 2011 is not the DPJ of today. The DPJ that ran candidates in 2011 was the big tent DPJ, before the departures of Ozawa Ichiro and friends over the consumption tax rise and the skedaddling of the mostly Kansai-based opportunists to Hashimoto Toru's Isshin no kai.

A look at the numbers

Image courtesy: NHK News

shows that the DPJ was defending only 276 seats on Sunday. The party's candidates won 264 prefectural seats, a decline of -4.3% in the national total. The purported big winning LDP (for that is the way the Yomiuri characterized the LDP's results in its English-language edition) was defending a 1196 seats total. Finishing with 1153 means a decline of -3.6% nationally.

Not that dramatic a difference if you ask me.

The results on Sunday, however, do demonstrate the hurdles Okada-san and the DPJ have to overcome in order to return the party to good graces with the voters, if not with political reporters and editors:

- get people excited about voting again (like I said in this article)

- dump the chase-a-scandal-a-day tactics in the Diet. Spending time grilling cabinet members about their political funding organizations did not make the DPJ more popular this winter. The days of haranguing and the decidedly minor revelations did not affect the public opinion polling of the Cabinet or the LDP. (The videos of the latest NHK poll results are available here and here.)

The latter is easy. The former, however, is hard. The DPJ rode in blissful ignorance on the escalator to power in 2009, propelled upward by a 25 year cycle of "Anyone But The LDP" public revulsion at Japan's ruling party. When being just "anyone else" is sufficient for victory, one can be, as the DPJ was in 2009, just a pale-lipped copy of the LDP, with the LDP's political DNA still visible beneath the overlay of an opposition party.

We now live in an era of "One Strong, Many Weak" (ikkyo tajaku). A superpowerful LDP feeds off of and encourages lower voter turnout, resulting in Japan's wild deviation from Duverger's Law (don't laugh at the link).

For the DPJ to become more relevant and for democratic processes to revive Okada and his loyalists have to come up with popular policies, not just popular-sounding policies. The party has to nurture a generation of new politicians while submitting its existing apparatus and message to rigorous and regular testing.

Otherwise, this happens -- and will keep happening.

The effort may be futile. As I have stated any number of times, a hard conservative Abe Cabinet and LDP, running the loosest and most liberal economic policy in the developed world leaves very little room on the political spectrum for the DPJ to plant its flag on.

However, if the results of Sunday demonstrate anything to Okada and Company, it is that the DPJ's present path and strategy have no future.

Change or decay -- it will be one or the other.


* * *

With this, I will be taking a break from regular posting for a while. I need to devote my energies to a new venture. I may pop in and out every so often, if changes in the political climate merit comment.

Time, as Robert Allen Zimmerman would have it, for my boot heels to be wanderin'.

Snap Back - This Month's NHK Poll Numbers

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo presiding over the special economic zones advisory commission on 3 March 2015. Image courtesy the Prime Minister's Residence.


If Abe Shinzo is looking for reassurance on the public's continued confidence in his leadership (I would suspect that after December's romp in the House of Representatives election he might not) then yesterday's release of the results of NHK's weekend polling results would leave him feeling bereft.

Support for the Cabinet March 6-8 (February 6-8)

Support 46% (54%)

Do Not Support 37% (29%)

Down and up 8% represent major movements in both numbers. These big moves in public sentiment may be one offs, reflecting public disgust with "money and politics" scandals seared into recent memory by the resignation last month of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Nishikawa. Sadly most of the attention of Nagata-cho residents seems to have already moved from campaign finance scandal to Shukan Shincho's photos of Nakagawa Shoi'ichi's widow Yuko (Hokkaido #11 and currently Parliamentary Vice Minister for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries) on-the-street snogging with the younger and married Kado Hirofumi (Kinki proportional - no jokes here please).

It's the scandal du jour.  Well, it was actually du soir -- indeed the very night that Nishikawa turned in his resignation...but I digress.

More likely, however, the numbers reflect a return to reality for the Abe administration. Looking back, they are not very different from the support/do not support numbers of the Abe government in July of last year, before the Cabinet reshuffle and November, before the calling of a snap election. In between, the Cabinet's numbers have been goosed upward by positive feelings about the large number of women appointed to the Cabinet in the reshuffle and by what was likely a mild "rally round the flag" effect as a result of the hostage crisis.

Just what Prime Minister can do now to bump up his Cabinet's numbers is anyone's guess.

The survey (Link - J video) also shows a rare switch in the ranking of issues the public wants the government to tackle. The usual top answer is keiki taisaku "countermeasures against the deterioration in the economy." Tops this month, however, is the perennial #2 answer, "Fixing the social welfare system." These findings, however, came before Monday's release of revised figures for the Q4 2014 GDP growth to 1.5% annualized from 2.2%, with the resulting calendar year 2014 GDP growth figures negative. (Link)

Later - NHK's surprisingly low numbers put Abe back in a race again, between himself and bad news. The outlook is largely positive for him in the short run, if negative for the country. Beyond the June end of the Diet session (a question mark there - committee work is so behind schedule most folks in the know say the session will be extended well into July) the outlook for the PM is not so sanguine.

Abe and his appointees have pulled every economic lever: extreme quantitative easing, fiscal profligacy and shifting the nation's pension assets from Japan government bonds to Japanese equities. The Bank of Japan under Abe-selected Kuroda Haruhiko has gummed up the JGB market so thoroughly that the prices of bonds no longer contain any information. The GPIF and the Post Office are doing their dangest to achieve a similar result in equities markets. Soon, if not already, the price of a share in a listed Japanese company will say nothing about the capital stock, labor force, management, technology or special advantages of that company. Instead the price will only reflect only what government and government-linked investment behemoths are willing to pay for the shares, right now.

Despite the Abe government's every effort to game the system, the public has not responded. Neither the puffed up indicators of a coming prosperity nor the government's promises are reassuring. The voters currently does not have much of a choice as to alternate visions keeping Japan a player on the world stage. However, unless the economy turns, the stagnation-despite-steroids will set the eyes of the electorate to searching for another leader.

Sometimes...I Can Feel Them

I used to, in private, characterize Prime Minister Abe Shinzo as Japan's George W. Bush: a silver spoon in mouth grandson of privilege elevated to the premiership despite a lack of fundamental appreciation of much but overflowing with a bristling resentment worthy of a rain-soaked porcupine. Certainly his first stint in office was Bush-like, albeit conducted at seven times George W. Bush speed.

The returned Abe Shinzo, transformed by a stint in the political wilderness, is a rather different creature. In his uncharacteristic liberalism in policy after winning a victory over a wounded opposition, and flapping and crass conduct of an election destined to end in a landslide, the U.S. president Abe is emulating now seems to be not Bush fils but rather Richard Milhous Nixon.

Which may explain the odd Pauline Kael Phenomenon we are seeing: huge, crushing poll numbers but little direct anecdotal evidence of anyone rooting for the PM or his party -- outside the former domain of Choshu, possibly.

- Polls show LDP headed for landslide win despite lack of voter enthusiasm

-- Little Enthusiasm, But Plenty of Support, for Abe

- Japan Voters Ready An Unenthusiastic Yes to PM Abe

- Grudgingly, Japanese Voters Look to Stick With Abe


All of which, on this Friday, has considering the "Whoa Mama" response of a certain Robert Allen Zimmerman. (Link - Audio)

Afloat Upon A Raft Of Unusual Stability

Just how aberrant are the levels of support for for this Abe Cabinet, compared to the support ratings for the cabinets of previous prime ministers?

Here is the graph of the cabinet support ratings of the first year (in Hatoyama Yukio's case, the seven months) in office of every prime minister since Keizo Obuchi (1998-2000).



[Click on the image to see a larger version in a new window.]

Freakish? You bet. Not even the cabinet of fabled outlier Koizumi Jun'chiro (green dotted line) enjoyed the stability of support that Abe 2 (thick red line with nodes) has enjoyed over its first five months in existence.

The real sad sack tale? Kan Naoto (dotted yellow line). Starts out with 61% support in May; has 65% support in September.

What happens in between, in July and August? A collapse of support to 39% and 41% respectively -- just in time for the July 2010 House of Councillors election. The ruling coalition loses control of the House and thus control of the legislative agenda. Short circuited is the Democratic Party of Japan's plan to rule the country based upon a new set of priorities and principles. Kan and his successor Noda Yoshihiko must go hat in hand to the Liberal Democratic Party, begging the LDP to please, please, please vote for bills drawn from the LDP's policy program.

None of that kind of nonsense going on now, is there?

Data source: NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute

Up, Up And Away

The Abe Cabinet numbers continue to soar (Link - J) and the Liberal Democratic Party is running away in the projected voting for the House of Councillors elections in July. (Link)

As to why the 72% of respondents find the Abe Cabinet worthy of their support, 34.9% of respondents said it is because of the expectations as regards economic policy.

That's all I know, as none of the survey data is in my morning dead tree news delivery device...because of the system breakdown at Kyodo (Link - J) perhaps?

For those still a bit giddy over Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's feat of stomping out of Washington with the acceptance in principle of Japan's participation in Trans Pacific Partnership talks without Japan's having made making a prior commitment to tariff abolition (a jiggle that will come back to haunt both governments when it comes time to confront the United States' 25% tariff on light trucks) some more good news: 64% of the respondents in the Kyodo poll approve (to a greater or lesser extent) Japan's participation in the talks. As for the reasons why Japan should be in talks as soon as possible, the top two responses are...slightly different in the Japanese- and English-language Kyodo reports.

#1 reason, with 59% of agreeing

English language version:

"It is essential for Japan to join the Pacific Rim initiative so it can benefit from the global expansion of free-trade deals"

Japanese language version:

"Trade liberalization is the way of the times, so is it mandatory that Japan take part for its own good"


#2 reason, with 43% agreeing:

English language version

"It would increase exports and allow Japanese companies to better compete with their global rivals"

Japanese language version

"The opportunities for export for Japanese companies would increase　and [Japan] could better compete with global rivals such as South Korea."


Ah, the South Korea prod...

How Much Longer Can Noda Hang On Or The LDP Keep Still?

The Yomiuri Shimbun, Kyodo and the TBS network released the results of new public opinion polls this morning. The results are, as can be expected, miserable news for Noda Yoshihiko and his government.

Cabinet support (previous poll in [ ])

Kyodo - Nov. 3-4 [Oct. 1-2]
Support 18% [29%]

Yomiuri - Nov. 3-4 [Oct. 1-2]
Support 19% [34%]

TBS - Nov. 3-4 [Oct. 1-2]
Support 25% [30%]

For those wanting the rose-colored glasses view, after the ridiculous drama of the way-too-familiar-with-the-yakuza-and-other-scandals-tainted Tanaka Keishu having to be pushed out of the office of Minister of Law (Link), one could hardly expect the Cabinet's support numbers to stay stable. Who indeed could not lose confidence in the prime minister's judgment after his appointing of a man with flashing red light over his head (DANGER – LOST HIS DIET SEAT IN RECRUIT SCANDAL) to be the head of the nation's legal system?

However, for those wishing to look upon the numbers with a critical eye, a fall in Cabinet support below 20% level has historically triggered a deathwatch. No matter how tough Noda is -- and he is tough, perhaps the most iron-bottomed of the prime ministers since Sato Eisaku – he will bombarded with calls for his resignation. The Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito will call for a resignation and a dissolution of the Diet, the unconstitutionality of a House of Representatives election be damned.

More dangerous for Noda than the screams of the opposition parties and the pompous thundering of the editorialists and pundits is the possibility of coup within his own party. However, there are good reasons to believe that despite the fall in Cabinet support, the Democratic Party of Japan will stand beside their prime minister.

First, the DPJ just had a leadership election five weeks ago, which re-elected Noda head of the party by a wide margin. Declaring their choice stupid so soon after having made it would be fatal for the electoral chances of the DPJ’s Diet members and for the party as whole.

Second, while the numbers for the Cabinet crashed, the numbers for the DPJ, both the support numbers and the far more important "Which party will you vote for in the proportional seat ballot?" numbers, stayed stable. Meanwhile, the numbers for the LDP declined.

Which party do you support?

Kyodo - Nov. 3-4 [Oct. 1-2]
DPJ 12% [12%]
LDP 26% [30%]

TBS - Nov. 3-4 [Oct. 1-2]
DPJ 12% [12%]
LDP 22% [26%]

Which party will you cast your proportional ballot for?

Kyodo - Nov. 3-4 [Oct. 1-2]
DPJ 12% [12%]
LDP 28% [31%]

TBS - Nov. 3-4 [Oct. 1-2]
DPJ 12% [12%]
LDP 29% [35%]

The LDP decline can be attributed to a wavering of support in the face of Ishihara Shintaro's return to national politics. Ishihara's successful courtship of the Sunrise party has injected life into what was a dead party – and I mean dead in a real sense. Support for the Sunrise Party rose from 0% to 2% in the Kyodo poll and from 0% to 1% in the TBS poll. The rest of the LDP's losses seem to have bled into Hashimoto Toru's Japan Restoration Party, with which Ishihara wants to ally, or into the No Party column.

The LDP also received some bad news in the "Who should be prime minister?" imaginary vote (imaginary because the people do not pick the prime minister) as Abe Shinzo's numbers fell along with those of Prime Minister Noda.

Who should be prime minister, Noda Yoshihiko or Abe Shinzo?

Kyodo - Nov. 3-4 [Oct. 1-2]
Noda 29% [N/A]
Abe 40% [N/A]

Yomiuri - Nov. 3-4 [Oct. 1-2]
Noda 25% [34%]
Abe 39% [44%]

TBS - Nov. 3-4 [Oct. 1-2]
Noda 24% [29%]
Abe 40% [45%]

Confusion still reigns regarding what the unconstitutionality of a House of Representatives election means. That a plurality of voters can be found who want an election before the year is out further demonstrates that the news media's intentional failure to explain the mechanics of redrawing district boundaries has succeeded in its intended effect: keeping relevant the nattering nonsense of an election's being just around the corner.

Do you think an election can be held despite the Supreme Court's having ruled the district boundaries unconstitutional, or should the boundaries be reformed first, before the holding of an election?

Kyodo
Can be held 35%
Must be reformed 53%

TBS
Can be held 35%
Must be reformed 49%

When should an election be held?

Kyodo
During this Diet session 34%
Early on in the Regular Diet Session 34%

Yomiuri
Before the year is out 47%
Early on in the Regular Diet Session 14%

TBS
Before the year is out 42%
By March of next year 33%

One must note in passing the odd phrasing of he constitutionality question and the consequent odd responses. To ask voters whether they think it is all right or not to have an election, as opposed to whether it would be legal or not, injects the individual voter's personal likes or dislikes into a place they have no business being.

If Prime Minister Noda needs talking points, there were questions where the public supported him.

Was the majority of the members of the House of Councillors' refusal to allow the Prime Minister to deliver his policy address to them (Link) appropriate or not? (TBS)

Appropriate 30%
Inappropriate 58%

The LDP and the New Komeito are holding up action on the bond issuance bill until they receive from Prime Minister Noda a public promise on a date certain for an election. What do feel about this? (Kyodo)

The Diet should pass the bond issuance bill, regardless of the Prime Minister making a public promise on the election or not 53%
The Diet should pass the bond issuance bill if and only if the Prime Minister has made a public promise on the election 28%

Noda is clearly in more trouble now than he was on Friday. While the DPJ is unlikely to replace him any time soon, the danger of more DPJ members jumping ship has increased -- though the stability of the party support numbers are an argument against such an exodus.

Nevertheless, a number of DPJ members are certainly wondering whether or not they would be better off as independents or as supplicants at Hashimoto Toru's door. Hashimoto has given notice that he has a limit of 15 sitting Diet members in the Japan Restoration Party, which means enough room remains in the JRP for the number of DPJ defectors needed to drop the DPJ-People's New Party ruling coalition below the 50% level in the House of Representatives.

DPJ defectors could also seek refuge in parties other than the JRP. However, given the incredible multiplication of micro-parties and the resumed viability of the LDP, trying one's luck in one of the micro-parties is likely to end very badly.

As for the LDP, it should take the drop in the Noda Cabinet's support numbers and the drops in its popularity numbers and in Abe Shinzo's "Who should be prime minister?" numbers in stride. The question is if an enervated LDP can or not. It takes very little to trigger the panic response in the LDP under normal circumstances. In an Abe Shinzo-led LDP, the barrier between reaction and overreaction is tissue thin.

These Stars Collide

A Manic Monday for the Noda Cabinet and the Democratic Party of Japan

- The "Let's Demoralize The Embassy Staffs By Sending A Handful Of Old White Boys To Talk Turkey (shichimencho) With Those Quarelling Asiatics" roadshow (Link) rolls into the Prime Minister's Residence for a meeting with the Anaconda himself. I shudder to think who else the Washington Quartet will be meeting today -- though shadowing them the whole day would provide a resourceful journalist with a list of the influence peddlers and weak points inside the Japanese establishment. Knowing the group leader, the quartet are starting out their morning with a sushi breakfast in Tsukiji.

- The ripples of Maehara Seiji's tossing his expectation of a Diet dissolution by the year's end into the pond of Diet politics will spread out everywhere. Already, Democratic Party of Japan's Acting Secretary Azumi Jun has had to, on a Sunday when the Diet is not in session, tell reporters that Maehara's private views are not those of the party (Link - J). Liberal Democratic President Abe Shinzo, probably thinking his visit to Yasukuni (Link) is being rewarded earlier than even he could have imagined, pounded away last night on the theme that when a minister of Maehara's standing says that the prime minister has no choice but dissolve the Diet by year's end, it places a huge burden of expectations on the PM. (Link - J)

Does it ever.

- The heat from the staggering drops in the Cabinet popularity and party popularity figures recorded in the weekend's public opinion poll results could evaporate the DPJ-People New Party's slim majority in the House of Representatives.

The Asahi Shimbun

Cabinet support

Support 18% (-5%)
Do Not Support 59% (+3%)

Which party will you vote for in the party list section of the next House of Representatives election?

DPJ 13% (-4%)
LDP 36% (+6%)

(Link -J)

Fuji News Network

Which party will you vote for in the party list section of the next House of Representatives election?

DPJ 11.6% (-5.2%)
LDP 32.4% (+0.3%)

(Latest figures -J and previous figures - J)

- The pusillanimous and scandal-tarred Minister of Law Tanaka Keishu (Link), still hiding out in his hospital, refuses to resign. (Link - J)

What a way to start a week, eh, Prime Minister Noda?