Explaining The House Of Councillors Election - On The Lack Of A Viable Centrist Opposition

In the most recent set of public opinion polls, conducted over the weekend following the Ise-Shima G7 summit, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its leader Abe Shinzo had much to smile about. Most polls showed a leap in Cabinet approval ratings of about 5%, adding on to what are at historic levels of public acceptance of a Cabinet, at least for a prime minister in his fourth in office (not that there have been, historically, many of these creatures). The ruling party's dispiriting four-to-one advantage in support over its centrist rival, the Democratic Party remained unchanged or improved.

Certainly the atmospherics of President Barack Obama's visit to Hiroshima, which pleased an astonishing 98% of respondents in the Kyodo poll (the first time I have ever seen such a polling number anywhere outside the DPRK) have added to the luster of Prime Minister Abe and his government.

Nevertheless, the public's attitude toward the policies of the Abe administration and the LDP remains at best grudging and at worst hostile. A majority of the population does not believe the government's economic policies are a success or likely to succeed. A majority of the voters do not want the government to consider a revision of the Constitution. A majority indeed do even not want the ruling coalition to win the necessary number of seats giving it the potential to alter the Constitution.

So what is going on? Why has the opposition been unable to translate the public dissatisfaction with the current policy directions or potential policy directions of the LDP and the Cabinet into support?

A considerable amount of the blame for the Democratic Party's inability to capitalize on a favorable policy environment has to be laid at the door of party leader Okada Katsuya. He is a bland and earnest individual with poor charisma and paltry appreciation of the value of political symbols. With his wooden speeches and leaden demeanor he practically begs the news media to belittle him. That journalists are recording his words and his image not because he has anything to say but because he is the leader of the opposition bothers him not enough. If not for the sheen of the leadership post, the news media and the public would ignore him.

However, it is facile to attribute the major part of anti-LDP opposition's unpopularity to the current leader of DP. Replacing Okada with someone else (a prospect the DP faces following the drubbing they will receive in July) cannot fix the fundamental problems of the opposition, even if the opposition were to recruit a magnetar like Koizumi Shinjiro, the only current rival to Prime Minister Abe.

For a viable opposition to be both viable and an opposition it has to 1) oppose and 2) have a place upon which to make its stand.

In the current political environment, both internal and external, neither is possible.

In terms of policy stance, the LDP is incorrectly classified as a center-right party. It is in fact a center-left party or even leftist party, with a nationalist/patriotic veneer of ersatz, sheepish rightism. The LDP's current economic policies are the interventionist dreams of European and North American liberals, with not a shred left of the small-government and market-driven drives of the Hashimoto and Koizumi (pere) eras. As for security policy, Japan's politico-military establishment under Abe is as cautious and rule-bound as it has ever been, at least as compared with counterparts in other OECD countries. As for its promises of constant expansion of social spending, only the Japan Communist Party holds a candle to the LDP.

So where is Japan's so-called "liberal" opposition to stand? Yes, it can oppose last year's security legislation on procedural grounds. However, if one looks for concrete difference, one finds that when the DPJ, the precursor to today's DP, was in power, its security plans were identical to those of the current government. On the economy and social welfare, to the immediate left of the LDP is the JCP, with only a micrometer of space between them.

Rob the electorate of the illusion that a change in political parties will in and of itself better Japan, as the DPJ's turn in power did, and you have an impossibly narrow base on which to build a challenge to the current ruling coalition and its leader.


Later - For a review of the latest polling numbers, check out the most recent Sasakawa Foundation post by Tobias Harris (Link)

Very Kind Of Them #45

The folks behind the Number 1 Shimbun, the house publication of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, offered to publish some of my musings about last month's Democratic Party of Japan leadership election.

Very, very kind of them -- and brave. (Link)

The Abe Cabinet Paradox

Two wild and crazy guys.

It's impossssible...
To put a Cadillac in your nose!
It's just imposssssible!

- Steve Martin, Let's Get Small (1977)

One of the classic gag lines, in both sense of the word "gag," in the world of politics and statistics for the last two decades has been the annual reporting of growth rates of the GDPs of China's provinces. For reasons of political expediency and personal promotion within the bureaucracy and the Chinese Communist Party, the officials of all China's provinces have been reporting GDP growth rates greater than the national average, despite the teeny tiny problem of such a result's being utterly impossible. The response of the world's China's watchers to this ridiculous transformation of the world's largest country into a hypertrophied Lake Wobegon, Minnesota ("where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average" - Link) has always been chorus of knowing giggles.

Lately, and sadly, this perennial source of wonderment and merriment has undergone a downsizing, leaving this small, blue-green planet a rather less amusing place. (Link)

Have no fear, bewildering statistics lovers, I present to you...the second Abe Cabinet!

You may have missed Monday's Nihon Keizai Shimbun article on the results of that paper's most recent public opinion poll. In it, quietly and without any fuss, lay a paradox. Not a particularly impossible one (on the order of Steve Martin's above) but still a rather eyebrow-raising one.

Nihon Keizai Shimbun
Telephone survey of 26-28 September 2014 (previous month's results)

Q: Do you support or not support the Abe Cabinet?

Support 53% (60%)

Do not support 31% (26%)

Admittedly, it is unusual to see a drop of 7% over a month when the Diet is out of session and not much has happened -- at least not much the government of Abe Shinzo had any control over, aside from the predictable failure of the DPRK government to produce the report it promised on the fates of Japanese abductees, a possibility (inevitability?) that the Abe government should have gone out of its way to semaphore well before the end of last month. The most reasonable explanation for the drop is a return to the norm, as the 60% support reading was recorded immediately after the announcement of the new cabinet lineup with its attractive record number of women ministers.

The mind-twisting results in the Nikkei poll are the responses to the questions on the policies of the Abe Cabinet:

Do you support the raising of the consumption tax to 10% in October next year?

Support 28%

Do not support 66%


Do you have high expectations for the government's efforts to revitalize the rural areas?

Have high expectations 35%

Do not have high expectations 47%


Do you have high expectations for the Abe government's policies raising the stature of women?

Have high expectations 43%

Do not have high expectations 40%


Do you believe that the restart of the nation's nuclear power plants must be pushed through?

Must be pushed through 34%

Not necessary to be pushed through 53%

Look at the first of each pair of numbers. These are the support numbers for the Abe government's policies or else the percentage of the population having faith in the Abe government's ability to carry out its policies. In every instance, the expression of support or faith is 10 percentage points below the percentage of voters expressing support for the Cabinet.

Basically, the second Abe Cabinet is more popular than ANY of its policies. A lot more.

Take just a moment to figure that one out.

Then perhaps throw your hands up in the air and admit:

"I don't get it. OK, maybe the old saw about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts is true...or the average of the parts...or whatever. Really?"

The paradox of the Abe Cabinet's "being" being more popular than anything the Abe Cabinet is "doing" or "wants to do" does fit into a long-term pattern of public reactions to Abe Shinzo. In his first term a prime minister his Cabinet's popularity and his international standing rose and fell in inverse relation to his acting according to his own personal record, his professed values and his promises.

In other words, the less Abe acted like himself, the more his popularity and international stature rose.

Not much has changed in that department. What is strange is that not liking what the Cabinet is doing is not translating this time around into not liking the Cabinet. The support numbers for the Cabinet stay fantastically high, a-historical in their stability.

Most peculiar, this Abe fellow. He provokes the cognitive dissonance in folks.

There is, of course, one big difference in between now and seven years ago, one that a follower posted immediately after I tweeted this conundrum on Twitter:

@MichaelTCucek - Imagine if there were an Opposition to criticize the policies and propose alternatives for them. Yes, just imagine.
— Colin Doyle (@nagaijin) September 29, 2014

Yes just imagine it...because with the current cast of clowns in charge of the opposition (Link) one's imagination is all one can rely upon.

Opposition Update - I'm A Fixin' To Die

OK, so now we know: the Democratic Party of Japan has a death wish.

When Prime Minister Abe Shinzo is invoking, on seemingly an hourly basis, the need for greater opportunities for women not just in Japan (Link) but everywhere (Link and Link), and he is slotting women into a record number of cabinet and Liberal Democratic Party posts (Link), when the international discussion on Japan is focusing on the country's ridiculous underutilization of women's talents and energy (Link), the DPJ responds with a new leadership council compose of dudes, dudes and nothing but dudes.

And not just just dudes, but dudes we have all seen before. (Link to classic Jiji Press sarcasm)

There is such a thing as optics. Truly, the new DPJ leadership group (above photo) is excruciating to behold.

Matching the DPJ in its wish for its own demise is the Your Party, whose founder and former leader Watanabe "Sticky Fingers" Yoshimi is demanding that his beleaguered former deputy, party leader Asao Ken'ichiro link Your Party up with the LDP or die. Asao, exhausted by the toxic Watanabe's interference, has finally snapped, saying that if Watanable wants to consummate his love for the LDP, he should leave the party.　Watanabe, as mature as he can be (Can you believe he was once considered a shoo-in for future prime minister?) has said that a founder cannot leave a party, so it is Asao who must go. (Link - J)

Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah -- same as you!

To be fair, Watanabe did have a viable plan to link up with the LDP, even after the departure of Eda Kenji and the defectors of Unity (oxymoron alert) -- who are having their own problems in trying to merge with the Osaka rump of Hashimoto Toru's Restoration Party. (Link)

However, getting caught with arms up to his elbows in the cookie jar sank Watanabe's plans for a glorious hawk-hawk-hawk superalliance supplanting the LDP/New Komeito ruling coalition -- because it became apparent once he resigned as party leader that the only real link between the LDP and the Your Party was the personal one between Watanabe and Abe Shinzo (Watanabe being one of the four-member "Abe Road" group of Abe and his most trusted political allies).

The Party For Future Generations (no, that is its real name - don't laugh) launched itself Tuesday night in what was a thoroughly joyless affair. Spry stroke survivor, party leader and adopted son of a convicted Class A war criminal Hiranuma "Shall We Dance" Takeo (75) and his somewhat more mature senior adviser, the frustrated stand up comedian Ishihara Shintaro (81) wore themselves out thundering about a future they, if actuarial tables are to be trusted, will not see -- Ishihara talking about the goals over the party over a decade, where he will be in his early 90s. Fellow party members, who might be around when the future generations arrive, sat quietly and uncomfortably, looking like a group of random strangers in a urologist's waiting room. (Link - J -video)

I know what you are thinking: Japan's opposition parties cannot, cannot be as pathetic as they seem here . There must be some glimmer of hope somewhere -- like the appointment of Edano Yukio as the DPJ's secretary-general giving a clear sense that Edano will succeed the hapless Kaieda Banri as party leader.

Yes, it is true, the Edano appointment provides a glimmer of hope. But only a glimmer. When lumped together with the amazing sublimating Socialists and the cash-burning Communists, Japan's opposition parties are a mind-boggling flaming heap of wasted time and talent.

Which has got to represent a huge temptation for Abe Shinzo to shuck his newly minted Cabinet and call a snap election of the House of Representatives -- after, that is, he signs off on the second raising of the consumption tax from 8% to 10%.


Image courtesy: Democratic Party of Japan official website.

By The Way, Okada Katsuya Is Still Dull

"I see you have brought a card with you, Mr. Okada. Please tell us about your card."

The Democratic Party of Japan, the once and possibly future alternative to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, will today be having a joint meeting of its members of both Houses of the Diet.

The party has some big issues to face - existential ones. (Link)

Though the agenda may have other items on it, there is really only one major topic of discussion: should the current party leader Kaieda Banri be forced to hold an early leadership election? A year ago, after the party's defeat in the House of Councillors election giving Abe Shinzo and his party control of both Houses, Kaieda asked to be given a year to turn party fortunes around. By any measure, he has failed to make even minor progress in that direction. The DPJ is the main opposition party again but only because its potential rivals - the Japan Restoration Party of Hashimoto Toru and Ishihara Shintaro and the Your Party of Watanabe Yoshimi -- have fissioned into ever more strangely-named pieces. Kaieda gained a slight boost from the victory of the anti-Liberal Democratic Party, former DPJ MP candidate Mikatsuki Taizo in the Shiga governor's race two weeks ago. However, in order to win that race Mikatsuki and his many DPJ helpmates pointedly avoiding mentioning the candidate's DPJ ties, worrying that association with the DPJ would torpedo his chances.

Sincere and learned, Kaieda has failed to inspire as a party leader. He has little aptitude in playing to the public's or the news media's expectations and foibles. He has also failed to chart the party a new ideological course, choosing instead to peddle the traditional DPJ solutions to Japan's problems -- as though the Global Financial Crisis and Abenomics had not reshuffled the world's and Japan's decks.

The problem with replacing Kaieda with someone else is...who is going to be that someone else? If the party is going to press him to go, it has to make a clear, clean break -- or else the exercise will look like what it is, a desperate attempt to generate interest in the party through a coup. Kaieda comes from the DPJ's liberal wing, so reasonably the pendulum must now swing the other way, with a new leader selected from out of the party's conservative wing.

Unfortunately, none of the handful of top conservative candidates for the party leadership -- Noda Yoshihiko, Maehara Seiji, Edano Yukio, Gemba Ko'ichiro, Azumi Jun and Okada Katsuya: a collectivity the Yomiuri Shimbun refers to "The Gang of Six" -- has significantly greater electoral appeal, intellectual flexibility or party support than Kaieda. Former prime minister Noda has the gravitas. He has not, however, shed the status of "Class A War Criminal" he earned throught his inexplicable calling of the House of Representatives election of December 2012. Maehara is derided as an LDP clone and is always reminded, when he makes noises about challenging the leadership, of a little incident involving a fake email. The younger or at least younger-seeming trio of Edano, Gemba and Azumi have failed, over Kaieda's year of trial, to create the impression they are more than just former ministers and power brokers of the DPJ's fat years.

This leaves Okada, the stolid and fabulously wealthy (Link) veteran who led the party to ignominious and overwhelming defeat in the 2005 summer snap House of Representatives. To be fair, Okada had the misfortune of being asked to outsmart and outmaneuver the greatest political wizard of the age, Koizumi Jun'ichiro. This Okada failed to do -- even though Koizumi, by expelling the postal reform rebels from the LDP and running candidates against them, was fighting the election on two fronts. Like a white Toyota Corolla, Okada was sensible and dependable and safety conscious and simply got blown off the road by the red Ferrari that is Koizumi.

Okada has been feisty and crisp, however, in recent appearances. He forcefully pinned down the prime minister, for example, in the debate over collective self defense (Link). He has for the past few weeks been making a lot of reasonable-sounding noises about the necessity for a change in the party leadership, creating the impression he has decided he should be Kaieda's replacement.

In something of a dress rehearsal for a leadership challenge, Okada appeared this last Saturday on Tahara So'ichiro BS (not what you think) program to debate the Cabinet Decision on collective self defense. His debate opponent was Watanabe Tsuneo -- not the all powerful Abe-supporting media emperor Watanabe Tsuneo, the Japan Foundation's quiet researcher Watanabe Tsuneo -- who is also the son of DPJ elder statesman and legendary quote machine Watanabe Kozo.

The bad news from Saturday's debate? Even against a friendly or at least neutral opponent (Watanabe has no political ambitions -- he refused to take over his father's seat in the Diet after his father retired) Okada could not debate the issues effectively. Time after time Okada would toss up a point only to sit morosely and watch Watanabe swat it back.

Losing a debate on a minor cable channel against a researcher would not be such a big deal. However, Okada's talking points were for the most part spot on correct. Watanabe's were, by contrast, largely non-sequiturs. If one cannot smash an avuncular BS (what you are thinking) spewing individual who feels no particular emnity toward you, then you are not ready for prime time.

Okada has got to be hoping his friends and allies were not watching on Saturday. From the Twitter feeds of DPJ types and unfortunately for Okada, it seems that they were.

So don't be surprised if the big development at the DPJ headquarters today is Kaieda surviving what should be a lethal general meeting. Kaieda is terrible...but his potential replacements are not much better. Instead of Kaieda offering himself up for the good of the party, it is party secretary-general Obata Akihiro who offing himself (Link - J) ostensibly to try to make amends for what a lousy leader Kaieda has been.

Okada Katsuya's being still dull opens the door a bit wider, however, for an eventual run for the top post by Hosono "Get Lucky" Goshi -- whom we know is anything but boring. (Link)


Later - The editors of the Mainichi Shimbun largely concur. (Link)

NHK Answers None Of Your Questions

NHK president Momii Kasuto at the microphone, Diet Budget Committee session, 20 February 2014. Image courtesy; Shugiin TV.

Ask me no more questions.
I’ll tell you no more lies.

- “Miss Suzy" (traditional)

It has been an angry morning in the Diet Budget Committee. NHK president Momii Katsuto has been called to the microphone time and time again (Does the chair really have to say "Nippon hoso kyokai" every time, when just saying "NHK" would save three to five seconds?). Momii was asked time and time again to grapple with simple logic. Time and time again, logic came out looking the worse for wear.

Among the concepts the Democratic Party of Japan questioners were asked to accept:

- That under NHK rules Momii lacks the authority or personal capacity to interpret or explain his own remarks

-- Momii cannot confirm or deny the accuracy of his own previous Diet testimony

The head of NHK management Hamada Kei'ichiro had perhaps the winning entry in the contorted thinking category. He offered an argument that, if taken to its logical conclusion, would say that Momii cannot testify about what he said at a meeting of the NHK governors because he has not confirmed with himself the accuracy of his personal recollection of his own remarks.

The complete insanity of the NHK representatives's non-testimony and Budget Committee chair Nikai Toshihiro's unwillingness to threaten Momii and Hamada with contempt led to five interrurptions of the session, with DPJ deputies barking and Nikai ordering the sound feed from the committee cut off.

Momii, an Abe Administration albatross (Link) has proven himself useful in at least one way. After his performance this morning almost anyone else standing behind a Diet microphone, no matter how stubborn or prickly, will seem by comparison a model of cooperation and clarity.


Later - Broken link in above now repaired.

Very Quickly On The Tokyo Metropolitan Governor's Race's Results

1) Masuzoe Yo'ichi won. However, there is little reason for the Liberal Democratic Party leadership to get all happy about the victory. Masuzoe only just surpassed the total for the two weak anti-nuclear candidates combined, even with 70% of the Liberal Democratic Party voters and greater than 90% of the New Komeito voters voting for him -- at a time when the LDP is eight times as popular as any of the opposition parties.

As for what happens next, Masuzoe has to get along with an LDP-dominated metropolitan legislature. As NHK so kindly reminded Masuzoe and the rest of this morning in the historical review clip prefacing the live studio interview of him, Masuzoe broke away from the LDP in 2009 declaiming, "The LDP's historical role in Japanese politics has come to an end."

Have fun with that.

2) The candidate the Democratic Party of Japan's supported, an ex-prime minister backed by the most popular prime minister of the last 40 years, came in third. Will heads roll at DPJ headquarters? No! Timidity and failure are now party trademarks.

3) The outcomes of Utsunomiya Kenji's candidacy was far from embarrassing. It was also far from victory. Interestingly, he did better the further away one drew from the Metropolitan district's core.

4) Tamogami Toshio received 610,000 votes. That is not enough in the way of a ground force to overthrow the government (not that Tamogami would want to -- in my recollection, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo appointed him head of the country's Air Self Defense Forces). However, it sure makes for a nice base from which to recruit new members for Tamogami's hard core revisionist, paranoid and xenophobic Ganbare Nippon! organization. We should also expect that his rallies, which were merely attracted thousands, will now attract tens of thousands, marching and shouting without police intervention (or Ishiba Shigeru complaining about the noise, I am guessing) right past the Diet buildings.

This was a fundraising and membership drive for Tamogami. The news media, by shying away from hard looks at Tamogami's past and his followers and their intimidating methods for whatever reason, served as silent enablers to this fiasco.

Go try to tell the South Koreans and Chinese this morning about Japan's deeply ingrained pacifism. They will laugh.

The DPJ's Failures Defeat Simple Description

In describing the downward arc of history, Karl Marx said that it repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.

Dear Karl, what comes after farce?

If you know, please write me, as I am at a loss to describe the level of ineptitude of the officers of the Democratic Party of Japan. Beyond pathetic they are, which is, what? What is beyond pathetic?

The latest episode in the DPJ's plunge into trans-Marxist levels of the ineffectual? The surprise announcement yesterday of the signing of a policy agreement in between candidate for Tokyo governor Masuzoe Yo'ichi and Tokyo Rengo, the Tokyo branch of the Japanese Trade Union Confederation. (Link - J)

So what?

Rengo (Link) is according to all common reckoning, the indispensible pillar of DPJ support. Without Rengo, the DPJ is nothing, electorally and otherwise.

Despite the seeming automatic coordination that should take place in between the two organizations, no one at DPJ Central seems to have made the call to Rengo's Tokyo offices to find out whether or not the folks there could support Hosokawa Morihiro, the DPJ's preferred candidate in the wild four-way* of those seeking to fill Inose Naoki's empty seat (Link). As it turns out, the union organization finds Hosokawa's anti-nuclear stance not to its liking, seeing it as a threat to the job security of the power and manufacturing sectors' unionized workforces. (Link - J)

So Tokyo Rengo is supporting Masuzoe.

That the DPJ officer who failed to block this incredible end around deep into DPJ territory is none other than the mouth from the south, the oleaginous Matsubara Jin (Link - J) does nothing to ease the sting of this most recent grostesque stumble. If Matsubara were in some way under threat of being held accountable for allowing Tokyo Rengo cut a private deal with the Liberal Democratic Party's favorite in the race for leader of the richest municipality of the known inhabited universe, then his humiliation would at least have a savor of Schadenfreude.

However, in Kaieda Banri's DPJ (Link) no one is ever held accountable for anything

That the present DPJ is moribund is not surprising, given its seeming inability to do anything right (lack of accountability having something to do with this situation). Do not the voters of this blessed land nevertheless at least deserve the semblance of a non-Communist opposition to the policies and practices of the Abe Administration?

As for Hosokawa, a DPJ endorsement minus support from Rengo is worth less than nothing. Thank goodness for him he has fellow former prime minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro in his corner.

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

* Yes, I know that the field of candidates has five individuals in it. I am trying, desperately, to forget the candidature of Dr. Nakamats.

Inose's Fall And After

Tokyo Governor Inose Naoki today announced that he has informed the head of the municipal assembly of his intention to resign his office. Inose's move comes at the end of weeks of nearly incessant calls for his resignation. Inose accepted and never declared a personal no-interest, no-expiration-date loan of 50 million yen from the family owners of the Tokushukai medical empire, currently under investigation for massive violations of the nation's voting laws in last December's House of Representatives election. (Link)

Inose has, as yet, not been charged with any impropriety in accepting the private loan -- or for having returned the money in haste after the executives of the Tokushukai were rounded up and arrested. A citizens group has filed an official complaint with the Tokyo Prosecutors' Office asking for an investigation into Inose's possibly failing to declare the loan as a political donation. The prosecutors are obliged to look into the case but are unlikely to file charges. With Inose no longer in office it is possible the matter will end there. However, the citizens group can continue to hound Inose for years via the out-of-control Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution system of citizens' indictments.

We have seen this movie too many times. An individual bubbles up from out of the murk, offering a chance to shake up the way the country operates. He then makes a mistake, or pushes too hard in trying overturn the Establishment -- and the investigators suddenly arrive. A credulous and craven media complex rushes in, broadcasting or publishing every rumor as fact, as though it were damning evidence of a criminal enterprise -- camouflaging all the while the sources whose assertions would not pass the smell test if their identities were known. The public, confused by the reporting and by inculcated and reinforced biases against rabble rousers, or desiring only that everything in life be quiet and unthreatening, abandons the previous crowd darling. Horie Takafumi, Murakami Yoshiaki, Ozawa Ichiro -- all toppled by nonsense accusations or perjured testimony. Now Inose Naoki, the most assiduous administrator the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has ever had and likely will ever have, joins the list.

That Inose's political position had become untenable became crystal clear when the Democratic Party of Japan came out against him. If there were any party or group that had a philosophical or ethical reason to call a timeout on the scrum against governor, it would be the party whose own term in power was hobbled and then cut short by the obscenely thin charges filed against the secretaries of its leader Ozawa and against Ozawa himself in 2009-11. In what is evidence of the DPJ's total lack of sense of what it stands for, the party jumped into the fray with both feet, with Assembly Member for Fuchu City Koyama Kunihiko turning in an almost hysterical performance at Tuesday's committee meeting. Party Leader Kaieda Banri, who as a protégé of Ozawa should know better, responded to news of Inose's plan to resign by saying, "Those voters who supported Inose are now forced to grasping at huge disappointment. Given that he came under a cloud of doubt, he should have resigned sooner." (Link - J)

The monumental stupidity of Kaeda's statement -- repudiating due process of law and the presumption of innocence -- reinforces the belief that the DPJ is doomed failure as long as he is the head of it.

As to why the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito, which supported Inose's candidature in 2012, should so suddenly turn against him, the answer is two-fold. First, by going after Inose for accepting Tokushukai money the LDP is making a bold bid to have the public forget that the money men in this affair, Tokuda Torao and Tokuda Takeshi -- were both LDP members of the House of Representatives. It is insane to believe that skewering Inose would cover up the LDP's fingerprints on the 50 million yen -- but goodness, it seems to have worked.

The other reason why the LDP wanted Inose gone is, unsurprisingly, money. Not paltry 50 million sums from the Tokudas -- real money. The hundreds of billions of yen that will be spent on Olympics-related construction and events preparations over the next six years. Inose rose to influence though penning books on the horrible waste inflicted by government budgets and the countryside by the construction industry, working at that time hand-in-glove with the LDP. If there is an eminence grise or noire in this drama, it is the members and supporters of the LDP's Road Tribe, who have long sought a means of wreaking vengeance on Inose for having turned the country against them.

With Inose the skeptic and critic out of the way, replaced with a more pliant successor, the Olympics can become the cover story for a thousand sins and abuses.

As for who will run in the by-election to elect a new governor, several names are being bandied about. Media types and Nagata-cho hallways rats have been flogging former Health Minister Masuzoe Yo'ichi as one likely to toss his hat in the ring. The resignation of Higashikokubaru Hideo from the Diet a week ago already initiated a burst of predictions he would be in the race.

The Sankei Shimbun, which has few scruples as to accuracy or plausability, has floated the names of LDP communications director Koike Yuriko (a Shisaku favorite legislator), Abe Shinzo's body double Hagiuda Ko'ichi and dark lord Minister of Education Shimomura Hakubun as potential candidates. (Link - J)

The hapless DPJ, which has a real opportunity to score points against the LDP in the aftermath of the publicly scorned passage of the Special Secrets Protection bill, has no idea whom it might nominate (Why am I not surprised?). Some in the DPJ are reportedly thinking the party should nominate Ren Ho, the House of Councillors member who heretofore has always been the bridesmaid in all big time political post guessing games.

Having the half-Taiwanese, sharp-tongued, whippet smart, media savvy, gorgeous and still youthful Ren Ho as the governor of Tokyo would send a plethora of positive messages to the world. Domestically, however, it would be a recipe for disaster. Prime Minister Abe's most consistently applause line when in conservative circles is an sarcastic echo of Ren Ho's famous question to government-supported supercomputer scientists who worked for 10 years without building an actual machine because they could never guarantee the machine would be #1 in the world. Incredulous that the geeks had consumed hundreds of millions of yen in government subsidies without producing anything, Ren Ho asked the project administrators, "What was wrong with being #2?" [So whenever Abe talks rouses the faithful with a "Let us pledge to be #1 in the world!" he is not riffing on Ezra Vogel; he is mocking Ren Ho.]

If the DPJ was smart, which it is not, it would nominate former Tottori governor and former Minister of Internal Affairs Katayama Yoshiro. The good professor actually knows and cares about administration and has a decent respect for the people's intelligence. Admirable qualities, those.

Why the race for governor matters, of course, is not that Tokyo is the most populous city in the country, that it is host of the national government or even that it will host the Olympics in 2020. It is that Tokyo Metropolitan Government is a fabulously wealthy local government, second only in economic/political significance to the U.S. states of California and Texas.

To sit behind the governor's desk inside the Tocho is a hell of responsibility. It needs a hell of a person.

What To Call The New Order

I was asked a few months back what we should be calling the Japanese political order in the aftermath of the July House of Councillors election, whether it is indeed the return of the "1.5 Party System" of old. The phrase "1.5 Party System" is a demeaning* and easily apprehended international version of what was domestically called "the 1955 System," after the year the two factions of the Socialists on the left and the Liberal Party and the Japan Democratic Party on the right merged to form two large left/right divide parties, with the right dominant due to the left's division into Socialist and Communist camps. I responded that a better term for the current situation would be a 1.0 Party System. Under the 1955 system, the Socialists could tie up Diet business in a serious way and had to be paid off to an extent the term "1.5 Party System" leaves unclear. "1.5 Party System" indeed undersells the political threat that the Socialists posed (which the LDP neutralized in a whole host of shoddy ways, including absurd levels of disproportion in between rural and urban voting districts). However, the "0.5" in the "1.5" does give the Socialists at least some heft -- which they had.

After last year's House of Representatives election and the July election the rump opposition parties in the Diet are little more than confused noise machines without any power to foment change. Hence my suggestion of a "1.0 System" moniker.

The image of an utterly powerless opposition (the 0 in the 1.0 expression) is obviously an exaggeration. The general concept is not, however, entirely without merit. Leadership of Japan's small but dogged anti-nuclear power and anti-secrecy bill forces, the current most prominent movements challenging the government's attempts to sweep problems under the rug and move on, comes almost entirely from outside the Diet.

I have been and will continue using the 1.0 System expression, having possibly coined it. However, one sees in the news media the indigenous expression ikkyo tajaku (一強多弱 - "one strong, many weak"), an expansion of the standard expression ikkyo meaning "dominant." I have seen the four character compound used on NHK and I think TBS network broadcasts. Here is a letter to editor of The Asahi Shimbun that uses the phrase, though the first character is replaced by the Arabic numeral 1.

When written in kanji the expression ikkyo tajaku is both visually arresting and easily understood. However, what is/would be the elegant and succint English translation?

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* Speaking of demeaning, why did the author insert a denigration of Japanese tech praxis in this article on South Korean reverse engineering of U.S. military technology?

We Few, We Happy Few

Today, October 1, Abenomics really hits the road.

In a few hours' time Prime Minister Abe Shinzo will announce his decision, actually made weeks ago, to green light the raising of the consumption tax from 5% to 8% in April next year. He is also expected to announce a package of fiscal measures designed to lessen the contractionary impact of the imposition of the tax rise. The spending package is projected to be two-thirds the size of the expected extra annual revenue collected by the new tax.

Yes, it is robbing Peter to pay Paul. It is also politics at its roughest, with the nation's legislators admitting they lack the courage to reconsider their vote on raising the tax in two big jumps.

Yuka Hayashi gets it all down here.

Abe should thank the Democratic Party of Japan today for this opportunity to (pretend to*) demonstrate the courage of his convictions.

He should but he will not.

A lot of folks still remember that it was in order to bring recalcitrant DPJ legislators on board that the Noda government agreed to include language requiring the prime minister to certify the economy is strong enough to withstand a rise in the consumption tax. The view of the then opposition Liberal Democratic Party was "raise the consumption tax rise now, raise the consumption tax forever and a collapse in consumption be damned" -- a bit of showy, pseudo-manliness that the LDP cannot recall now that it is once again the party in power.

The DPJ, as we now know, paid a huge price for following what is without a doubt the stupidest political advice ever (Link). As Hamlet would have it, the DPJ went to it over what was an LDP-drafted solution to an LDP-created debt and deficit problem.

The final hurdle for the April tax rise, according to Prime Minister Abe, would be a positive reading in the Ministry of Finances Tankan Survey. This the survey delivered, sort of, this morning, with large enterprises clocking in with a strong Tankan reading of +12, exceeding expectations. (Link)

That the scores for medium and small businesses fell below expectations (0 and -9, when the predictions were for +2 and -5, respectively) is not getting much attention. Since the decision on the tax rise was never really contingent up on the Tankan results, today's poor SME numbers will not be not entering into the government decision making progress. (Link)

Aside for the institutionalized over-reliance on the attitudes of managers of big business as guides to the economic outlook for Japan, a consistent problem made worse by the Abe administration's policies fluffing up the financial results of the country's biggest companies, the Tankan and its readings may increasingly also be fraught with the errors of group think of an ever more insular and isolated managerial class.

The Tankan is subjective. It is a measure of the feelings company executives have about the prospects for their businesses under the prevailing economic climate (the set of questions asked can be found here). Since company executives are the folks who make the big decisions regarding investment and spending, and if they are confident and happy, the more likely they are to invest and spend in a big way, making everyone else happy in a big way, it makes sense to ask them how they are feeling.

What happens, though, when no one else is happy in the way corporate executives are happy?

Come with me on a short journey down a side road.

The online commentariat went gaga a few days ago over a Nihon Keizai Shimbun report on women's attitudes toward work after marriage. The cause for the ruckus was on a giggle-and-"I told you so”" result in a government-commissioned study on the attitudes of persons under 40 years of age. Unmarried women and unmarried men in the survey sample were asked whether once they married they, if they were female, wanted to become housewives, or whether they, if they were male, wanted their future spouses to become housewives.

According to the Nikkei report, 34% of young unmarried women wanted to become full-time housewives after they married -- a seemingly irrationally high number creating headwinds for those arguing Japan's economic salvation lies in creating more opportunities for women to stay in the workforce. (Link)

The Nikkei's take on the survey was unfortunate.

First, because it misrepresented the actual answers to the questions, making it seem as though young women were their own worst enemies in terms of both marriage and economic advancement. It also created the impression of an unbridgeable gulf separating the expectations of young women and young men. **

Second, the Nikkei's report deflected attention away from the rest of the survey (Link - J) which turns out to be a treasure trove of attitude data, allowing one to burrow deep -- at least as deeply as an internet-based survey allows -- into the psyche of Japan's andafo ("under 40 years of age") generations.

For example,

- Personal sense of comfort:

Workers that have the highest level of overall personal satisfaction as regards their present lives? Civil servants, followed by college students, company managers and housewives. (Graph 2, page 5)

- Personal relationships:

Persons believing most strongly that deep personal relationships are burdens? The unemployed, followed by company executives.

Persons feeling that deep personal relationship are not a burden? Student and company employees.

Notwithstanding the above, the social group with the highest percentage of person with intense feelings that deep personal relations are not a burden? Company executives. (Graph vi , 2), page 41)

- Enthusiasm about work:

Age cohort and sex with the highest percentage of individuals wanting to keep on working, moving up the corporate ladder? Women in their teens.

Age cohort and sex with the highest percentage of individuals who do not want to work at all? Men in their mid- and late-twenties. (Graph xxxii, 1), page 76)


Then there is Graph 7, on page 8.

Despite high levels of personal satisfaction with their present lives, housewives are the least likely to agree with the statement "the future of Japan is bright" -- a vanishingly small 0.2% of housewives being in full agreement with that assertion.

Conversely -- and why I feel one needs to be careful on about relying on the results of the Tankan attitude survey as gauges of national economic performance -- those agreeing most enthusiastically with the statement "the future of Japan is bright" are: company executives.

I reproduce the report's graph of the results of the "the future of Japan is bright" question, in all its default Excel colors glory, below:


(Click on the graph to open up image in a larger format)

Line two in the graph has the responses of the company executives, showing both the highest levels of full agreement (15.4%) and agreeing somewhat (23.1%) with the statement, "The future of Japan is bright."

Accepting the caveats that the company executives in this survey are younger folks than the ones surveyed by the Tankan, and that as persons with their hands on the tillers of the economy company managers are more likely to be attuned to changes in economic winds, company managers seem to be real outliers when gauging public attitudes about Japan’s prospects. They are inordinately (Graph 6 on page 7 shows the average scores) confident about the future of the country, indicating that they are over-optimistic.

[By contrast, the survey finds housewives are inordinately pessimistic and afraid, making surveys of their attitudes equally fraught.]

Such optimism may of course be trans-national, with the managerial classes in each nation having similarly optimistic assessments of the national future. Wealth, security and a sense of control would tend to make a person feel more optimistic.

Nevertheless I am concerned at the seeming huge disconnect existing in between what managers sense will happen and what the average citizens sense will happen. In the online survey company managers made up a scant 0.4% of those surveyed, making their confidence truly a privilege of the very, very few.

I of course believe in leverage when it comes to business -- that the decisions of a tiny number or even one person can make a huge difference.

However, when the number of folks feeling a strong sense of hope are so tiny, the weight of general pessimism needs addressing -- and I am failing to see the ostensibly proactive and aggressive Abe II administration doing what it takes to generate a countervailing optimism in any but the most privileged in society.


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* I have to wonder about Mr. Abe and his convictions. They seems less convictions than persistent notions.

* The results to the question were messy, indicating a lot of internal calculation are being undertaken with understandable confusion as to what members of the opposite sex expect from a spouse:

Unmarried women - "After you get married, do you want to be a full-time housewife?"

Yes 8.2%
If I had to say yes or no, I would say yes 26.0%
I can’t say either yes or no 27.2%
If I had to say yes or no, I would say no 25.1%
No 13.4%

Unmarried men - "Would you want your wife to be a full-time housewife?"

Yes 3.9%
If I had to say yes or no, I would say yes 15.4%
I can’t say either yes or no 50.5%
If I had to say yes or no, I would say no 20.2%
No 10.0%

The 34% of young women who responded either strongly or weakly in favor of becoming housewives were asked the reasons of their choice. Contrary to popular prejudice, laziness or fear of social pressures were relatively unimportant reasons driving a decision to become a housewife:

Because I think we can get by on just my spouse's salary 12.1%
Because women should just quit work after marriage 6.3%
Because either my parents, my in-laws or my employers would expect it 0.9%
Because for women, taking care of the house and the children are more important than work 41.5%
Because I hate work 14.0%
A wife's role is to support her husband's being a good worker 19.8%
Other 5.4%

[N.B. - Respondents in this group were asked to give two reasons for their earlier positive response. The above percentages are thus composed of a mix of #1 and #2 favorite explanations.]

One Simple Answer To A Complex Question / A Momentary Lapse Of Reason

A Nagging Question: How is it that Japan's opposition parties, particularly the Democratic Party of Japan, are now so moribund? Did not the DPJ win a landslide victory in 2009? How can these once high fliers now be so irrelevant?

Something Like An Answer: Holding aside the New Komeito, which is an entirely different genus of political beast from anything else out there, there are only two parties in Japan with deep bases -- the Liberal Democratic Party and the Communist Party. Commitments to these parties are reliable, in the first case thanks to personal ties, self interest and a recognition of the durability of power elites, in the second in a faith in an ideology and notions of the family.

For the other parties, loyalty is largely a matter of the head, not the heart. In the specific case of the DPJ, its support, save among members of the Rengo league of labor unions, was at its height a kilometer wide and a centimeter deep. When the going got tough, public support evaporated.

As Pink Floyd asked:

Was it love?
Or was it the idea of being in love?

(Link)

During the DPJ's rise in popularity to where its leaders cobbled together a surrogate, but supposedly honest and trustworthy, big tent center-right party, public support arose from out of the latter: the idea of an opposition rather than the actual opposition party in question. The same seemingly holds true for the backing for the other non-Communist opposition parties -- their supporters are not in love with them, they are in love with the idea of being in love with them.

Reviving the DPJ (Link) is thus unlikely on a technical level -- for the most part, its supporters had a crush on it, not a relationship with it.

The July 21, 2013 Election - Where Are The Opposition's Economists?

The heads or co-heads of the parties had their pre-election warm-up debate at the National Press Club yesterday. (Link)

From the snippets broadcast on television or transcripted to be read on paper or on a screen, the impression is that opposition parties, despite having a raft of issues to run upon -- a crash national program favoring renewable energy sources and steering away from nuclear power, constitutionalism, a real discussion of the pros and cons of the Trans Pacific Partnership, the plan to lower the corporate income tax rate while raising the consumption tax -- issues where the majority of the populace agrees with the positions taken by opposition parties -- are either not serious about or not capable of running against the Liberal Democratic Party.

Prior to the election, commentators will review the positions the parties hold. I cannot...and not just because I am lazy.

The opposition parties do not have positions; they have poses. Whether it is the Your Party with its insistence on reform of the bureaucracy; the Japan Renewal Party (Nippon Ishin no Kai) with its love of decentralization and regionalism; the Democratic Party and the Life Party and their purported defense of people's livelihoods; the Communists and the Socialists with their "Article 9 Now and Forever, No TPP And More Daycare Centers Too" -- all are too easily dismissible with a "Yes, but what are the projected results of doing things your way?"

What marks the opposition parties as lightweights? The inability of their leaders to either quote or be seen in the company of economists.

If once, just once, Kaieda Banri or Shii Kazuo or Watanabe Yoshimi -- who purportedly runs on an economic liberalization program -- could say, "Professor So-and-so of the Department of Economics of Wossamatta U. says..." the voters would have the chance to say, "Hey, this party has considered the reality of there being trade offs. They've tried to think this all through."

Instead the voters are treated to brain-freezing tautologies of the sort, "The inflationary policies of Abenomics are going to lead to price rises, which is going to affect people's livelihoods."

Then again, a lack of serious engagement with economics seems may be the identification badge for those seeking to be seen as ready to clip the LDP's wings. Take the editorial (Please!) The Japan Times published on July 2:

...the right-leaning political forces inclined toward market fundamentalism — as represented by the Liberal Democratic Party, the Japan Restoration Party and Your Party — have already become powerful. If they become lopsidedly strong, voters will be deprived of meaningful political choices. The DPJ must clearly explain to voters the problems that market fundamentalism brings about, namely the expansion of the gap between the rich and the poor, and the shrinking of welfare and other public services provided by the government sector. Such an outcome will only serve further destabilize Japan’s economy and society.

(Link)

The LDP leaders believe in many things...but "market fundamentalism"? OK, Takenaka Heizo is back...but only as an advisor on the economic growth council, sitting alongside a bunch of CEOs who themselves are on the council in order to suggest sweetheart deals for their own industries (Yeah, I said it). Nakagawa Hidenao, the big man when it came to the Koizumi Revolution, bugged out long ago and took the spirit of free markets with him.

Who could the editors of The Japan Times be talking about? And if not individuals or factions, about which policies of the current government? And how would the editors propose to remedy the problems of inequality and loss of the ability to fund welfare?

If the thinking were any woollier, it would be a sweater.

Regarding The Ambassadorial Appointment Stories

A reader writes asking whether or not I will be posting on the rumored imminent nomination of Caroline Kennedy as the new United States Ambassador in Tokyo. (Link)

In early in March I said that I look favorably upon the appointment, with Robert Dujarric offering a wise suggestion in comments.

My position has not changed in the interim.

As for the "Joseph Nye is seen as a better" crowd, I have only one question; why is your list of alternatives "Joseph Nye" and nobody else?

While we are on the subject of U.S. Ambassadors to Tokyo, CSIS has provided a transcript of former Ambassador Thomas Schieffer's keynote address at the annual conference of Japan-U.S. alliance managers (Link). The Texas Democrat's take on the status of the alliance reads rather well. Given what I know of Schieffer's timbre and timing, it probably sounded 10 times better.

Schieffer does not figure highly in the pantheon of former ambassadors for reasons that escape me. He did make the mistake of not calling upon Ozawa Ichiro and the Democratic Party of Japan during the first 15 months following Ozawa's taking over the helm of the Democratic Party of Japan, setting the stage for an incredibly embarrassing first meeting with Ozawa after the Abe Shinzo-led Liberal Democratic Party's defeat in the 2007 House of Councillors election. Other than this howling error, Schieffer was an assiduous, conscientious and level-headed advocate for the United States.

The last of which may have been the problem.

That Schieffer possesses a sharp mind as well as a sharp wit is not in doubt. Proof: he was able to go into a business with George W. Bush, giving Bush a management position in that business, and end the arrangement happily, netting tens of millions of dollars.

Let the improbability of that outcome sink in for a second.

Despite his smarts, he looked down upon no one. The one time I met him, at a reception at the Embassy of Luxembourg, he walked up to the receiving line, alone. When Luxembourg staffers tried to lead him past the receiving line to greet the Luxembourg Ambassador right away, Schieffer waved them off with a gentle, "If you don't mind, I would prefer to stand in line and wait my turn just like everybody else" -- which he then proceeded to do.

I suppose his handlers never knew quite what to make of him.

Reality, What A Concept

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

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

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

Thoughts On The Post-Election Landscape

While there is much talk of the Liberal Democratic Party winning the next election and Abe Shinzo becoming the next prime minister, one should be keep in mind what "winning" will likely mean. If the "Third Pole" parties agree on a significant degree of coordination -- and a sufficient number of voters turn up at the polls (and that is a big "If") -- the results on election day will have the LDP and its ally the New Komeito winning under 50% of the seats in the House of Representatives. In order for Abe to win election to the premiership, and for the government to have a working majority in the House of Representatives, he and his party will have to form a coalition with either the rump Democratic Party of Japan, led by....someone not named Noda Yoshihiko, or the Third Pole forces not being led by Hashimoto Toru, who, while being the Third Pole's most legitimate and charismatic leader, has declared he is not leaving the Osaka City mayor's office. Since this election is ostensibly a referendum on three years of DPJ rule, the LDP and Abe could not endure the public and party faithful scorn at an alliance with the DPJ. Abe would begin his premiership under a cloud and low popularity ratings, with nowhere to go but down.

The basic working assumption then is that an LDP-New Komeito-Third Pole coalition will be in nominal charge of the country as of December 17 -- nominal because the negotiations on a common policy program are likely to be protracted. A person wishing to offer a guess as to the plan of action for the next government would be advised to find the points of commonality in between the policy platforms of the LDP, the Your Party and the Japan Restoration Association, with the LDP defering to its coalition partners in three key areas: subsidies, trade liberalization and the reduction of bureaucratic control over policy.