Where Things Could Go Right For The DPJ

Today's Nihon Keizai Shimbun makes a big deal about the Democratic Party of Japan's running 90 fewer district candidates in this year's election than in 2012 and about 100 fewer than the LDP is running. (Link - J)

Pretty stark numbers, underlining the seeming the failure of Japan's single member districts to do as foretold and give rise to a two major party system.

Well, maybe.

In 2012, in a record low turnout election, a demoralized DPJ had candidates running in 264 districts. In 227 of those districts, the DPJ candidate was running against both an LDP candidate and at least one other non-Communist major party candidate.

Fast forward to today.

The Your Party, 69 candidates in 2012, is no more. Two of its members just joined the DPJ last week. In 2012 the Your Party received 5.2 million proportional seat votes.

The Mirai Party, 121 candidaters in 2012 and 3.4 million proportional votes, is no more. Mirai's remnant, the Life Party, is down to five legislators after two defected to the DPJ last week. Life will be running 17 candidates in this election.

The Japan Restoration Party ran 172 candidates in 2012 and received 12.2 million proportional seat votes. Its two fission products, the Japan Innovation Party and the Party of the Next Generations, are running 73 and 34 candidates, respectively. In the most recent polls, support for the JIP stood at about half the support for the DPJ. NexGen polls at 0%.

In 2012, the DPJ basically fought the election with both hands tied behind its back, having to defend a legislative program that was not even its own. There were non-LDP, non-DPJ viable national alternatives.

Not this time.

This year is much more a two party race, with the JIP having to choose whether to play the role of regional champion or national nuisance. It is the LDP and Abe who are running on their records.

The road of course is bumpy. DPJ and JIP candidates are running against each other in 24 districts. The DPJ is running against another non-Communist party in 22 more districts. In total the DPJ is running against non-Communist opposition in 53 districts.

Last time I looked, 53 out of 173 is a better ratio than 227 out of 264.

Hence the crippling importance of believable, inspiring leadership. The numbers are there for the DPJ to mess up Abe Shinzo's December 14 plans. A flag carrier the voters could believe in would have a huge impact, driving turnout and moving the marginal voter to wish to punish the LDP and Abe for their broken wheel of good fortune.

Whatever happens, the 2014 election will result in a great winnowing of the parties. NexGen and Life will collapse into nothingness; the Socialists may join the pair in final, pathetic oblivion. JIP will lose many of its proportional seats.

What will remain is the ruling coalition's two parties, a revived DPJ, a pugnacious but rump JIP and the Communists.

Not quite a two party system, but lookin' more and more like one.


Later - Check out the intelligent points from A. Sutter in the comments.

Later still - The Mainichi Shimbun has checked in with its English-language version of the story. (Link)

In Review- The Abe Announcements

All in all, Abe Shinzo just gave a pretty damn spirited and sound defense of his Cabinet's economic policies. Most importantly for the PM, in response to the idiotic "Abenomics has failed" argument, Abe went straight to the nub of the problem and asked his critics, rhetorically, "If not what I am doing, what is it that you would do?"

The first of the two weak points in the whole affair was when the PM reiterated his bogus proposition that the great failure of the Democratic Party of Japan was its having violated its campaign manifesto in voting for a rise in the consumption tax without doing as he is doing, dissolving the Diet and asking the people their opinion of the change of plans first. That the DPJ changed its plans due to its having been boxed in by decades of LDP profligacy and because it could not escape the accusation from the LDP of baramaki ("throwing money around") in its own attempts at stimulus...and that raising the consumption tax was one of the few legislative items it could push through both Houses of the Diet, specifically because it was AN LDP MANIFESTO PROMISE, the PM did not...shall we say, "make clear"?

The second weak moment was when the second questioner in the Q&A called him out on his bogus proposition regarding the DPJ and calling an election. The PM became testy and wasted a good 3-4 minutes explaining why his proposition was defensible.

My grade for Prime Minister Abe's performance: A

for both substance and effort.

I admit, a bias...but in a negative direction. After hearing what he said to the Japanese press in Brisbane and his attacks on Edana Yukio and the DPJ in the Diet I had very, very low expectations for tonight's press conference.

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)

Positive Lessons For The Opposition From The Shiga Governor's Race

"Wanna race?"

Over at Izakaya Politics, Stephen Stapczynski has published a credible analysis of the outcome of the Shiga gubernatorial election. (Link)

I cannot disagree with Stapczynski's broad point that whatever the nation's dailies and talking heads are saying, there is little reason to believe the Abe government's recent decision to reinterpret the Constitution so as to allow the exercise of the right of collective self-defense (CSD) strongly impacted the outcome in Shiga. While there is evidence the CSD decision affected the outcome by somewhat suppressing the New Komeito vote for the ruling alliance candidate (Link), talking about the possible effect of CSD detracts attention from the real valence issue in Shiga: nuclear power plant restarts -- from which Shiga Prefecture would enjoy relatively few benefits and accrue a significant amount of risk. Indeed, it is telling that Abe Shinzo and other LDP bigwigs, who have reason to blow smoke in people's eyes, have been among the most prominent purveyors of the narrative that the CSD decision affected the Shiga outcome. (Link - J)

Stapczynski's conclusion is not unreasonable:

"Abe's shift in security policy will have a broader (yet minimal) impact on his national approval rating, but nuclear energy was the key issue in the Shiga gubernatorial elections, not CSD. The LDP is still the king of the land, and I suspect that future local elections will go in their favor. And with no organized or popular opposition party in sight (Mikazuki ran as an independent), Abe really doesn’t have anything to worry about."

Nevertheless, there are aspects of the Shiga election Stapczynski does not mention which do have significant implications for revival of the fortunes of Japan's political opposition.

1) You Can Do This

After getting trounced by the LDP-New Komeito alliance in election after election since the ill-designed House of Representatives contest of December 2012, Japan's riberaru ("liberal" very much in the American sense of the word) politicians managed in Shiga to hang on in one of their strongholds. That they were able to do so at a time when the national polls show the liberal parties in total winning the loyalties of only 10% of the voters -- the LDP alone has the allegiance of 40% -- just hanging on is a major achievement.

2) The Communists Don't Enter Into It

All during the post-war era, the Japan Communist Party has served as a facilitator of LDP dominance. By insisting on running candidates in almost every race, the JCP has traditionally drained off around 10-15% of anti-LDP votes, making it difficult for moderate anti-LDP candidates to compete.

The big question for many has been whether moderate opposition is so down at present it has no choice but to forge an electoral alliance with the Communists, fielding joint candidates in order to capture that otherwise lost 10%-15%.

The Shiga result indicates that the answer to the question is "No, the opposition does not need to accommodate the Communists, a move that could destroy it, in order to beat the LDP" -- though the nuclear restart issue clouds the conclusion.

3) Make Them Happy To Vote Again

This is the big one.

Turnout for the Shiga election was 50.15%. This seems a dramatic decline from the number in 2010, when 61.56% of the voters showed up. However, the 2010 contest was held in concert with a House of Councillors election, artificially goosing the numbers in the gubernatorial race.

The true comparative is the 2006 election, when Kada Yukiko won her first term in office. The figure then was 44.94%, 5.21 percentage points fewer than in last Sunday's contest.

So what?

Here's what: the margin of victory for the former DPJ MP Mikazuki was just 13,076 votes, less than 2.4% of the total votes cast. Exit polls indicate that some of that margin of difference came from disaffected New Komeito voters, a surprising 24% of whom disobeyed the party directive to vote for the LDP's Koyari.

The vast majority of votes that made a difference, however, came from the ranks of the non-aligned vote, which according to recent polls, is 42.5% of the electorate (Link - J). Non-aligned voters broke for the anti-nuclear Mikazuki two-to-one, overwhelming the machine LDP vote (73% of self-proclaimed LDP voters chose Koyari).

The exit polls indeed indicated that while the nuclear restarts issue was crucial on the margin, it was not fundamental to the voting patterns of the voters. Only 10.3% of the voters called nuclear power the most important issue at hand. Far more named economic growth and employment (28.4%) and social welfare (19.3%) the key issues of the election. For those thinking the economy and employment the key issues, 63.1% voted for the LDP's Koyari.

So the takeaway from the election results for the opposition, particularly the moribund DPJ, are:

- keep the nuclear power phaseout plans worked out under the Kan Naoto and Noda Yoshihiko administrations - it helps at the margin

- ditch the constrictive Koizumi/DPJ economic policies of a decade ago. They made some sense in the fat times of the early part of the Zero Years. After the Global Recession of 2008-Present, they make zero sense. Be big time Abenomics boosters instead, but offer an alternative "Abenomics with a brain attached"

- snipe at Abe Shinzo and the LDP higher ups for their omniscient, dictatorial attitudes, even as newspaper editorialists tell you not to -- because doing so keeps the New Komeito leadership nervous about appearing to be the pushovers they are

- finally, GET PEOPLE HAPPY ABOUT VOTING AGAIN

The Second Abe Era began with 10 million voters not showing up at the polls in December 2012, turning a DPJ defeat into a runaway LDP victory -- in an election where there was were non-DPJ, anti-LDP alternatives for whom moderates could vote (and vote they did, for the Japan Restoration Party, which captured 12 million votes to the DPJ's 8 million). The message out of Shiga to the opposition is "Get the disaffected voters interested in voting -- not necessarily voting for you, specifically, just voting at all -- and the LDP can lose, just like it did before 2012."

Voter turnout. Voter turnout. Voter turnout.

Get it up and you are in this game again.


Later - The Economist has published a solid presentation of the more standard view, with the graph everyone has to keep in mind when thinking about Abe Shinzo -- and the advance warning the Fukushima and Okinawa gubernatorial elections are not likely to polish the image of Abe as LDP leader. As noted above, that members of Team Abe use the Cabinet Decision on CSD as an explanation for the Shiga results invites caution. (Link)

Image courtesy: Abe Shinzo official Facebook page.

Abe Shinzo's Virtual Referendum

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

The choice is not a happy or an easy one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

In My Reptile Mind

A year ago, in a response to Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide's first submissions to what has become a lengthy list of things the Abe Cabinet is NOT thinking of doing, (e.g., NOT thinking of revising the Murayama Statement, NOT thinking of rescinding the Kono Statement) I posed a question about the nature of the beast doing the talking:

When a snake tells you it is not thinking of biting you, what matters more? That a snake told you, "I'm not thinking of biting you" -- or that it is a snake?

Over the first year and half of the second coming of Abe Shinzo and Friends, the answer to my question has been, astonishingly, "The former."

Which has me, a year later, composing another serpentine metaphor as regards militant-nationalist-revisionist-Sinophobe-conservative-right-wing-hawk Abe Shinzo:

In order for a snake to grow larger, it must shed its skin.

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Lest anyone think that my use of snake metaphors is pejorative, be aware that:

1) I love snakes, particularly the big bad aodaisho (Japanese rat snake - Elaphe climacophora - Link)

and

2) I admiringly referred to former Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko as "The Anaconda" -- at least until he betrayed himself, his party and the electorate with his still unexplained offer to Abe to dissolve the House of Representatives.

Photo: Abe Shinzo arriving at the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan's conference "Women in Business" on 27 May 2014

Photo credit: Jonathan Kushner on Facebook (Link)

What I Want For Christmas Is A Train Set, Among Other Things

The Okinawa Prefectural Government (OPG), in what is looking like an end game move in the longstanding battle over approval of the plan to begin destroying habitat for the critically endangered dugong landfill at the Futenma Replacement Facility (FRF) site at Henoko, released a wish list on Tuesday of the projects and programs it would want the central government to pay for prior to Governor Nakaima Hirokazu's authorization of the landfill permit.

The list of requests is long and presumptuous:

1) Termination of operations and swift return of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma within 5 years;

2) Total return of Camp Kinser within 7 years;

3) Revision of the Status Of Forces Agreement between the US and Japan including

- On-site investigations from the viewpoints of environment and excavating cultural assets by Okinawa, inside the military facilities three years before their returns,

- On-site investigations by experts in the Okinawa Prefectural Government inside both existing and new facilities, in cases where environmental pollution is suspected,

- Application of tighter environmental regulations, those of either the U.S. or Japan, to the US military facilities;

4) Deploying about a dozen of the Ospreys currently deployed in Okinawa out of the prefecture

- Relocating of the majority of Osprey training exercises

- Removal of Ospreys from Okinawa after the termination of operations of MCAS Futenma.

In addition:

1) a budget allocation for FY 2014 of about 340.8 billion yen to be used for enhancing the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) [the fast developing technology center where the honorable Janne of Janne in Osaka hangs his hat], etc.;)

2) 300 billion yen by 2021 for the second runway of Naha airport, etc.;

3) funding for the a railway system and for the recovery for commercial use of the land returned land from the US military bases;

4) the implement tax reform (preferential tax treatments for investments in Okinawa) in FY 2014.

Source: Okinawa Prefectural Government

Demanding sweeping changes, including swift alternations to the Status Of Forces Agreement (Oh, you do so not want to go there!) could be Governor Nakaima's way fending off Abe goverment pressure to OK the necessary permits. More likely though Nakaima is simply following the rule of thumb of negotiating where if you are only going to get 70% of what you ask for, you should ask for 140% of what you want.

The Okinawa list does not include a casino license, despite the rumors that such a license is high on the prefectural list of economic development priorities. Since such a license does not yet exist, seeing as how casino gambling is still illegal, the prefectural government can hardly demand one from the national government.

According to the Yomiuri Shimbun, the U.S. government responded to the Nakaima requests by declaring it will not acquiesce to any changes in the SOFA (Link) -- demonstrating that when it comes to Okinawan face, there is just no stopping the USG's trampling upon it.

Governot Nakaima and his advisors know that Okinawa's options are much more limited now than they were when Nakaima won reelection in 2010. Chinese activities in the Senkakus, which are in the OPG's jurisidiction, have skyrocketed. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's ruling coalition owns whopping majorities in both House of Diet. If Nakaima does not sign the permits by the end of the year -- his time limit on a decision regarding the first phase of construction for the Henoko FRF -- then the Abe government will simply submit a bill to the Diet authorizing the work, bypassing the prefecture's objections. If A Diet vote takes place, Nakaima's capacity to request compensatory action and budget allocations for the presence of U.S. bases on Okinawa will evaporate.

The pressure on the hospitalized Nakaima (the atmospherics of the hospitalization are great: Nakaima is in Tokyo but the prime minister and the chief cabinet secretary can only visit him at his convenience, not theirs) and the OPG is immense. Asking for the construction of a train line (Uh, where are the rights-of-way for a railroad going to come from on an island with such severe land use constraints that the FRF has to be built out over the ocean?) shows that the Okinawans, for all their happy-go-lucky, let's dance libidinous reputations, remain up to the mainland challenge.

The Supreme Court's Decision On The December 2012 Elections

Shisaku is on hiatus while the author is conducting a fish survey. However the Supreme Court decision on the December 2012 House of Representatives election (Link) deserves some kind of comment.

One should probably be checking in with Andrea Ortolani for fine- grained analysis. However, it seems that in the aggregate the Supremes, in declaring the district elections "in a state of unconstitutionality" (iken jotai) with three justices ruling the elections "unconstitutional but not invalid", have worked out a least worst outcome. While a preservation of the dignity of the Court would seemingly have demanded a ruling that the December 2012 elections, carried out as they were in defiance of a Supreme Court order to change the electoral map, be slapped down at least as unconstitutional, if not unconstitutional and invalid (what the logical difference would be between those two possible rulings, I would not wish to ponder).

Ruling the 2012 elections unconstitutional would have created a juridical/legislative black hole, though. If the elections that elected the current crop of Diet members were unconstitutional, then the only legitimate Diet capable of reforming the districts would be the one that was turned out of office a year ago. Reassembling those members now, to vote on reform legislation, would itself be unconstitutional as the terms in office of those members, had they been served out in full, ended in August.

So the Supremes simply repeated themselves -- "this is wrong and you should fix it before you hold another election" -- a flash of a sword but not a real stab the contradictions inherent in the description of the relative powers of the judiciary and the legislature found in Articles 41 and 81 of the Constitution). The contradiction -- the Diet is the supreme organ but the Court is the ultimate decider of constitutionality versus unconstitutionality -- is not something the Supremes would necessarily want to resolve given that the 2012 elections did result in a transfer of power in between parties.

In a seemingly pointless but still significant snit of protest, the Court did pre-emptively strike down the current reformation of the electoral map, the so-called +0/-5 solution passed in the final days of the last Diet, as insufficient to fix the state of unconstitutionality. Fiddling at the margins -- dropping the five smallest districts and moving a few communities in and out of a few districts so that the maximum measured level of disparity is 1.99 -- is NOT what the Supremes want in terms of rectifying the disparities in between the districts. Since the population shifts since 2010, the time of the last census, have resulted the new, "reformed" districts again creeping past the 2.0 disparity standard, the Court had the opportunity to blast the +0/-5 fiddle -- and to the Court's credit, it did.

This aside leaves the door open for the Court to take action at a later date, if the Diet continues to shirk its obligation to renew the nation through more equal electoral district maps. By declaring the +0/-5 solution insufficient, the Supremes have put the Diet on the hook to fix the districts before the next election -- or else the Supremes could chose to really put their feet down.

The Supremes' ruling against the plaintiffs in this round of cases is a blow against those fighting for a rectification of the value of the votes of urban dwellers and the residents of rural constituencies. The Abe government and the current Liberal Democratic Party majority in the House of Representatives can also breathe easier -- their elections to power being, if not exactly validated, at least insulated against major challenge.

The Asahi Shimbun is bummed at the setback (Link - J) but it should not be -- the legislative fight against electoral district disparity must continue.


Later - The Yomiuri Shimbun offers a government-supportive English-language edit (Link) and the Mainichi Shimbun a more neutral English-language edit (Link) of the story.

Are We Of His World Or Merely On It?

This is my world
and I am
World Leader Pretend.

- REM, "World Leader Pretend" (1988)

What does Kasai Yoshiyuki want?

- A leveraged buyout of the management of his homeland, installing a chief executive with significant self-worth issues? Check.

- A fantasy vanity maglev project through the heart of his country, with hostage shareholders and ultimately the taxpayers footing the bill? Check.

- The militarization of Japan's space policy? Check.

- U.S. high speed rail policy muddled by sales of advanced railway technology? Check.

- Japan-U.K. strategic relations muddled by sales of advanced railway technology? A work in progress.

- The United States, Japan and India forged into a politico-economic strategic iron triangle? A work in progress.

- A more strongly pro-government and pro-nuclear NHK? Check.

- The use of influence over the prime minister and the cash generated by the Shinkansen in a zero sum game of influence intent on countering China in every corner of the globe, no matter how remote? Check.

The above is just what's available after only a few minutes diddling around in English.

It is probably best to familiarize yourself with Kasai Yoshiyuki's world*. Because if your life is in some way linked to Japan, you already live in it.

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* Go ahead, Google him. In various combinations: "Yoshiyuki Kasai Shinzo Abe" "Yoshiyuki Kasai China" "Yoshiyuki Kasai India" "Yoshiyuki Kasai space" "Yoshiyuki Kasai Huntington Huffington Post" "Yoshiyuki Kasai Tomohiko Taniguchi" -- it's great fun.

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?

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

* 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?

Erratum - Redistricting Cases

In a post yesterday I suggested that newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Yamamoto Tsuneyuki, the target of Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide's criticism a few months ago, will have a chance for revenge against the government in being able to rule on the constitutionality of the December 2012 House of Representatives elections.

This seems to be incorrect. Commenter Philippe has pointed out new reports saying Yamamoto has either been recused or has recused himself from the election cases because of his testimony in the Diet on the constitutionality of the map of electoral districts, done when he was the top official of the Cabinet Legislative Bureau. (Link)

My apologies to all for my mistaken assertion.

Yamamoto's recusal means that only 14 of the Supreme Court's 15 justices will be ruling on the constitutionality of the election, opening up the possibility for a 7-to-7 deadlocked state of indecision.

More complex grows our tale...

Collision Course On Elections

Yesterday the Supreme Court began hearing arguments in the amalgamated 16 cases brought against the nation's prefectural electoral commissions requesting the nullification of the December 2012 House of Representatives elections on the grounds that the degree of disparity in the electoral districts, which reached 2.43 to 1 in the case of Kochi District #3 versus Chiba District #4, violates the constitutional principle of equality under the law. The Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling before the year is out. (Link - J)

The potential for constitutional chaos is not insignificant. If the court declares the election unconstitutional and invalid, the existing Diet is illegitimate. However, since the Constitution stipulates that only the Diet has authority over the drawing of electoral district boundaries, the country would be bereft of a legal body empowered to pull everyone from out of an electoral black hole.

As the Nihon Keizai Shimbun points out, twice before, in 1972 and in 1983, the Supreme Court has ruled that an election was unconstitutional. In both cases the court ruled that the elections results were nevertheless valid. (Link - J)

No, the concept "unconstitutional but valid" does not make any sense to me either.

The fillip in the cases currently before the court is that in '72 and '83, the Supreme Court was ruling on election districts found unconstitutionally unbalanced after the fact. In the current cases, the Supreme Court told the Diet three years ago that the electoral map was "in a state of unconstitutionality" and warned legislators to fix it before the next House of Representatives election.

The Diet failed to do so.

Given the Supreme Court's advance warning, narrow indeed is intellectual window open for the Court to issue a pass on the validity of the election that brought Abe Shinzo and his allies to power.

[See updated information here] In terms of personal stories, there the one involving the Court's most junior member, Justice Yamamoto Tsuneyuki. Yamamoto did not keep his peace when Prime Minister Abe Shinzo earlier this year kicked him upstairs from his post as Cabinet Legislative Bureau chief in favor of Komatsu Ichiro, a diplomat seen as a pushover on the changing the CLB's position on the constitutionality of collective security (Link). That Yamamoto will be caucusing his fellow justices and ruling on the constitutionality of the election that brought his nemeses Abe and Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide to power is the most delicious irony.

Suga does not make many mistakes. Counterattacking against Yamamoto, however, might turn out to have been a big one.

On Abe Shinzo And Yasukuni - The It's OK, I Don't Want To Talk To You Either Edition

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's chief courier Hagiuda Ko'ichi has clocked in with what the press are interpreting as a prime ministerial promise to visit Yasukuni by year's end. (Link)

Hagiuda's rise to prominence (TBS had him on their morning roundtable talk show as the representative of the government) over the past ten months has been spectacular. He is only 50 years of age and in only his third term as a member of the House of Representatives. Until December of last year he had been cooling his heels in the hallways of Nagatacho, having lost his seat in the 2009 massacre (Fun fact that Hagiuda displays on his personal website: more folks voted for him in his loss in 2009 than voted for him in his win in 2012 -- Link - J). Yet now he is Abe's government's unofficial mouthpiece.

Wild.

As for a promise/threat to visit Yasukuni before the year is out, can there be a more blunt way of making sure nothing good happens in the near future in Sino-Japanese or South Korea-Japan relations? Why would anyone in the Chinese or South Korean governments, much less President Xi Jinping or Park Geun-hye, want to be caught dead in a photo frame with a member of the Japanese government, with an Abe pilgrimage to Yasukuni impending?

Then again, in terms of ex post facto ratiocination, there is genius in the giving of advance notice. Abe has been trying and failing to secure even a short conversation on the sidelines of a multilateral summit with either Xi or Park. Being shunned by the leaders of the two other big regional powers, even after the LDP's thumping win in the July House of Councillors election, has been humiliating for the PM.

Now, however, rejection by his peers can be explained away with a breezy:

"Of course I want to talk to Xi and Park. But they know I am going to visit Yasukuni by year's end. Meeting with me right now could get them in hot water at home. So I understand their being unwilling to be seen in public with me. I don't take their standoffishness personally."

A brilliant pivot, if the above is indeed an accurate description of Team Abe's transformation of a lemon into lemonade.

The Eternal Sunshine Of Noda Yoshihiko’s Spotty Recollection

The DPJ's Gang of Six

Former Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, who inexplicably called an election last December which led to his party's extirpation, is now doing P.R. for himself under the Bold, Mature and Sober labels.

Noda 'chose tax hike over being premier'
The Japan News

Former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said in a recent interview that he placed more importance on raising the consumption tax rate than remaining prime minister when he decided last August to approve the increase.

As head of the then ruling party, Noda agreed with the then two opposition parties on comprehensive social security and tax system reforms, including the consumption tax hike.

[Snip]

Noda said he had intended to resign from his Diet seat if he could not pave the way for raising the consumption tax.

"At the time I thought I might have to choose between the consumption tax hike or my post as prime minister," Noda said. "After also considering that I would have to choose between the tax increase and my own party [many members of which opposed the increase], I said I was willing to bet my political life. I meant that I intended to resign as a Diet member."

During the meeting of the leaders of the three parties last August, Noda was urged by then LDP President Sadakazu Tanigaki to specify when he, as the prime minister, would dissolve the lower house. At the time, the LDP wanted the lower house election to be held soon as it expected to score a major victory in the election, while the DPJ leadership wanted to delay the election as much as possible.

Noda said he replied: "I'll use an abstract expression but in a way that is as clear as possible. Both 'in the near future' and 'sometime soon' are all right with me."

After Tanigaki said, "I prefer 'sometime soon,'" Noda agreed to use that expression to describe when his administration would call an election, he said in the interview.

About the meaning of "sometime soon," Noda revealed that he had been determined to dissolve the lower house by the year-end.
“The only choice was [dissolution] by year-end. That was the bottom line. It was better for the nation considering the effects on preparing and implementing the budget," he said.

(Link)

No.

No, no, no, no and no.

That Abe Shinzo with his assault on the Bank of Japan and his profligate budgets would be reviving the animal spirits of the Japanese economy in 2013 was not something Noda could even vaguely foresee in mid-2012. Abe Shinzo was not the president of the LDP at the time. Noda was negotiating with Abe's hapless predecessor Tanigaki Sadakazu -- a mark demanding a double cross* if there ever was one -- whose economic policies were as no more expansionist than the DPJ's were. "LDP president Abe" to whom Noda would ultimately surrender, was still only a gleam in the eyes of revisionist and fantabulist members of the business establishment.

As for the excuse Noda makes for a November dissolution followed by a mid-December election, it does not hold water. An orderly process of compiling a budget is important, yes. However, is a sideshow if the DPJ has, as it did, a majority in the House of Representatives. The Constitution makes it clear that whatever the hell else happens, Japan's budget cannot be held hostage to a minority (the relevant passages are in Article 60, in case you are wondering).

What Noda did achieve, through his sobriety and iron-willed determination, was the electoral destruction of his party, the upending of a two-decade long process of building up a two-major-parties-alternating-as-the-party-of-government system and the short-circuiting the redrawing of the House of Representatives electoral map so as to reflect the Supreme Court's rulings on disproportionate representation -- all this, into the dumpster, in order to get the LDP to vote in favor of an LDP policy manifesto item. Furthermore, by calling the election in December, Noda made sure that the DPJ would suffer a huge cut in its 2013 government subsidy, making the financing of a return to power any time soon all the harder. Had Noda simply waited until January 2 for his announcement, his party, even if it lost a lot of seats in the subsequent elections, would still be on a decent financial footing.

Noda did not twist the LDP's arm, they twisted his, and his mind too. Snapping the spine of the DPJ was their job and Noda did it for them. If, as Noda indicates in this interview, it was either win the LDP's and the New Komeito's support for raising the consumption tax or resign from the Diet, I can think of hundreds if not millions of persons ready to cry, "Why the heck did you not resign from the Diet then?"

Furthermore, the Democrats cannot rid themselves of their portly DINO. He won his district handily last December by a greater margin than in August 2009. In addition, of all the members of the so-called "Gang of Six" of neither-entirely-cooperative-nor-entirely-helpful center-right leaders of the party (Noda, Edano Yukio, Azumi Jun, Okada Katsuya, Gemba Ko'ichiro and Maehara Seiji - Link - J), only Noda was able to bask in the glow of a DPJ candidate winning a seat in his home prefecture this past July.

Since the Democrats (and the rest of us) are stuck with Noda, the least we can ask for is that news organizations assign reporters willing to corner him on his dunderheaded management of the DPJ.

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* How hapless was Tanigaki Sadakazu? He could be lulled into a debate over whether the House of Representatives should be dissolved "sometime soon" or "in the near future" and into choosing one of the two alternatives, allowing him to walk out of the building thinking he had extracted a concession from out of Noda.

Original image courtesy: Sankei Shimbun

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.

A Win Is A Win Is A Win Is A Win

They call it the Miracle in Miami (Maiami no kiseki).

On 21 July 1996, the under-23 teams of Japan and Brazil faced off in the first round of the Olympic soccer tournament. Brazil, which had won every major crown except an Olympic gold medal, sent to the Miami pitch what was essentially its national team. To a side that had Bebeto at forward and Rivaldo at mid-field, the Brazilian coach added the maximum three overage players, inserting Roberto Carlos, Juninho and Ronaldo.

Japan, which was not expected to advance, put its actual under-23 squad on the pitch. Japan's indeed was the only team in the Olympic tournament composed entirely of players under 23 year of age. Only two of the players on the Japan side of the pitch had played for the national squad.

It was a hopelessly unfair contest of legends against kids.

The match began, with Brazil pressing from the start. The difference in individual skill levels was clear and humiliating. The ball almost never left the Japan side of the field, the Brazil players passing it around amongst themselves. From left, right and center, the Brazilians unleashed a fusillade of shots-on-goal.

But the strangest thing happened. Despite running the Japanese ragged and firing away without restraint, the Brazilians were failing to put the ball in the goal mouth. Sometimes the shot sailed wide; sometimes it struck the post. Desperately lunging Japanese players blocked others. A multitude bounced, glided or rocketed into the gloved hands of Kawaguchi Toshikatsu, who had what the Brazilian coach later called "the match of a lifetime."

The crowd, which was composed almost entirely of Brazil supporters, began to get frustrated. A Brazilian fan ran on to the pitch, disrupting play.

Halftime came, the players switched sides. The ball still never left the Japan side; the Brazilians still could not get a goal.

Then, in the 73rd minute of play, a long clear from the sidelines sailed toward the penalty area in front of the Brazil goal. Two Brazilian defenders and two Japanese attackers rushed to meet it. In what was a scene replayed a million times afterward, Brazil national team goalie Dida abandoned his position in a flying attempt to wrest the ball away from the four. What he managed to do instead was crash into one of the two Brazil defenders, wiping out Brazil’s line of defense. The ball, with excruciating slowness, bounced toward the empty net. Midfielder Ito Teruyoshi, who is still playing professional soccer today (Lifetime J1/J2 record: 636 appearances/36 goals. International record: 27 appearances/ 0 goals), gave it a final, perverse tap.

The freak goal made the Brazilians mad. They went to a full press, no defenders back. The action on the pitch began to get ugly, with scrambles and kicking fests in front of the Japan goal familiar to anyone who has watched six year olds play.

Still the ball refused to curl Brazil's way.

After what was the longest 17 minutes in any of the Japanese players’ lives, the referee blew his whistle.

Final score: Japan 1 - Brazil 0

The Brazilians had taken 28 shots on goal. The Japanese were generously credited with 4 -- but their only real shot had been Ito's toe tap.

* * *

Why bring up what many Japanese fans consider the greatest match in Japanese soccer history -- and the most improbable victory?

Keeping in mind the result on that crazy afternoon in 1996 might help curb the tongue when the subject of conversation turns to the implications of voter turnout in the December 2012 House of Representatives election or last month's House of Councillors election. There have been a lot of well-meant analyses pointing out that the majority of folks did not vote for the Liberal Democratic Party in the last two national elections, with the implication that the Abe government's mandate to rule based on control of both House of the Diet is somehow less than legitimate.

It ain't.

As to voter turnout, if the voters do not show up to vote, and the LDP benefits, do not blame the LDP.

As to the district first-past-the-post system and a fractured opposition's meaning an awful lot of anti-LDP votes get nullified, do not blame the LDP. Be thankful for the positives: first-past-the-post gives the most popular party at least a chance at forming a stable government.

Yes the gearing of the first-past-the-post system is inequitable. So is the electoral college system for choosing U.S. presidents. Most of the time, with U.S. turnout rates the way they are, only ¼ of the U.S. electorate has voted for a U.S. president.

Do not blame the LDP also for claiming a mandate from the elections. What would you want the party to do instead? Shrug and mumble, "You know, most folks did not vote for us so we really should not presume to take any action"?

Voter turnout is the significant number in terms of making good choices as regards candidates. It should not be seen as significant as regards the right to govern...

[For the record, given

a) historical downward drift in voter turnout,
b) the reality that the outcome in the House of Councillors election was never in doubt and
3) the many horrible candidates of the opposition

voter turnout for the 21 July 2013 election was fantastic.]

The significant number for governance is Cabinet popularity. With high levels of public support, a prime minister can lead the country and his Cabinet can provide stable government.

Lose support, and the election results of a few months ago become meaningless. Just ask Hatoyama Yukio how this happens.

As long as Abe Shinzo can keep himself from creating international incidents and Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide can keep in the air all of the dozens of balls he is juggling, Japan will have the possibility of effective government. There are going to be some real crisis points -- whether to go forward with 3% rise in the consumption tax, whether or not to wave the white flag in the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations. That the folks who won election under the banner of Abe's leadership of the LDP may not see as the party secretariat does regarding these and other issues mean huge problems.

The LDP and the New Komeito won last year and last month, ostensibly according to the rules. That the Supreme Court might decide in the autumn to toss the results of the December 2012 House of Representatives in the trash can will be a judgment on the validity of the rules, not on the victory.

To somehow imply that the LDP is on shaky ground making decisions because it does not have the support of 50% + 1 of the voters -- no.

If it is according to the rules and within regulation, a win is a win is a win is a win -- no matter how ridiculous.


Later - Thanks to reader DS for catching the error.

Call Waiting

Do The Forces Of Constitutional Revision Have A Chance? (2)

[Part 2 of 2. Part 1 I published yesterday.]

Assuming that everything goes perfectly -- and I do mean perfectly -- for the Liberal Democratic Party in the district seat elections on July 21, and assuming its allies in constitutional revision the Japan Restoration Party and the Your Party pick up the majority of the seats remaining after one subtracts the four seats the New Komeito must/will win, the combined forces of constitutional revision will control 123 of the 161 162 seats they need to have a 2/3rds majority in the House of Councillors.

Can the forces of revision win the further 38 39 seats they need to reach the magical 161 162 total?

In addition to voting for the district candidate, voters write either the name of a party member or the name of a party on a separate ballot. These votes are tallied according to party, with the vote for the individual counted as a vote for the party with whom he or she is affiliated.

The 48 seats up for election on this separate ballot are the proportional vote. Seats are divvied up using the d’Hondt method, meaning the vote totals are divided by one, then by two, then by three..with the largest remaining result getting the next available seat.

If you do not want to think to too much about the method but just want the results, here is a great calculator (Tip of the hat to Tobias Harris of Observing Japan).

The first guess one needs to make regarding the inputs, and it is a doozy, is how many folks will show up at the polling stations on July 21. As I insinuated in a post the other day major elections of the past year have featured record-breaking or close-to-record-setting low levels of voter turnout.

The causes of the low level of voter participation in 2013 are not hard to discern:

-a secular reduction in interest in elections since electoral reforms in the 1990s,

-a reduction in interest in politics after the collapse of the credibility of the Democratic Party of Japan as an alternative to the LDP,

- the exhaustion from having had a national election and a change of government only six months earlier and local elections only a few weeks ago,

- ridiculously high support ratings for both the Cabinet and the LDP in the public opinion polls (the demoralization factor) and

- the absence of real policy choice in between the parties.

The last items does not mean that the parties are indistinguishable, for they do offer different mixes of policies. However, none of these mixes is either inspired or inspiring, leading voters more likely to choose, when they show up, the parties that can enact any policies.

To these reasons for sitting out this election out we have to add the possibility of unpleasant weather on election day actively dissuading folks from leaving their homes to go to the polling stations (this summer has been naaaaassssty!).

The number of persons casting ballots I come up with, in a brutish, what-the-hell calculus, is 48,000,000 . That is a whopping 12 million voters down from the House of Councillors elections in 2007 and 2010. It is also a greater drop than the huge fall in between the 2009 and 2012 House of Representatives elections, when 10,000,000 voters who showed up in 2009 failed to show up last year.

The voting rate in this guestimate is nevertheless still more than 44.67% recorded in the 1995 House of Councillors election. The median age of the voters has risen since 1995, and older voters vote more, so that despite all the negative forces listed above, a turnout rate of 46% (based on the latest, July 8 figure from the Ministry for General Affairs and Telecommunications of 104,780,660 persons eligible to vote) seems about right.

Now, how will these votes be divided up?

Let us make two incredibly generous assumptions to critics who find me too solicitous of the LDP, one supposition regarding the DPJ based on atmospherics and one boneheaded assertion. The first is that the LDP does no better in the vote than its current 42% rate of support in public opinion polls, despite the concentration of power the drop in voter participation gives to vote machines. The second is that centrist voters, wary of giving the LDP too much support, will give their votes to the main center-right opposition DPJ, JRP and Your Party in about equal amounts. The third is that public trust in the DPJ has sunk to the point where the Your Party and the DPJ win exactly the same number of votes. The fourth, the dumb one, is that at least 7,000,000 folks plunk down for the New Komeito and its candidates.

The voting numbers I get, in aggregate, are:

LDP 20,000,000
New Komeito 7,000,000
DPJ 5,000,000
Your Party 5,000,000
JRP 4,500,000
JCP 3,500,000
SDP 1,800,000
Other parties 1,200,000

Plugging these raw vote totals into the D’Hondt calculator, the following proportional seat distribution pops out:

LDP 22
New Komeito 7
DPJ 5
Your Party 5
JRP 4
JCP 3
SDP 1
Other parties 0

The projection, biased upon the assumption of no last minute reversal of the decay of support for the DPJ, still only secures only 31 seats for the revisionists, 7 seats short of Constitutional Revision Nirvana.

The fly in the constitutional revision crowd's punch bowl is...surprise! (not really) the NEW KOMEITO. Unless the leaders of the New Komeito or That Which Cannot Be Named tell their voters to not show up on the 21st, their immobile mass will outweigh any projected "rightward shift" in favor of constitutional revision.

I invite readers to play around with the calculator, trying out higher voter turnouts and different support levels based on the public opinion survey the individual reader may fancy.

Fiddle as one might, the leap to the 161 162 seats needed for constitutional revision -- even when making assumptions equivalent to pretty much everything goes the revisionists' way on election eve -- remains just too far off.

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%

Where The Abe Cabinet Will Lead Us - A Preview

Two worthies well worth listening to -- Columbia University professor Gerald Curtis and Sophia University professor Nakano Koichi -- will be speaking this noontime at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. (Link)

I must admit a curious relationship with both men. Professor Curtis gave a very kind public plug for Shisaku last month, with the caveat (an unnecessary one, really) that "Michael is not always right." Professor Nakano does not know quite what to make of me, even after we have served on discussion panels together. I am guessing, though, that I am not his favorite person.

Which is odd, because of the two, I more inclined to agree with Dr. Nakano than Dr. Curtis, specifically on the outlook for the governing style of the Abe Cabinet after the July 21 election. Professor Curtis is largely sanguine, expecting that the postwar habis of political parties and governments holding back from the full use of their powers will carry on past July 21. I believe, and I suspect Dr. Nakano believes that once clear of the House of Councillors election the Liberal Democratic Party's worst elements will run amok, bulldozing long-desired revisionist and remilitarization claptrap through the Diet, constrained by only by the occasional mild protest from a cowering New Komeito and/or their own sloth.

Dr. Curtis has assured me that fear public criticism will keep Abe and Company from making use of the near dictatorial powers they will enjoy after July 21. The good doctor may have a point: the Abe government has heretofore not made much use of its supermajority in the House of Representatives...if by "not made much use" one means, "if one ignores the use of the supermajority to pass the redistricting based upon the egregious +0/-5 electoral reform legislation perpetuating the inequalities in the electoral system critical to LDP dominance." (Link - J)

I am not sure that today's LDP, composed of folks who could not stop attacking Prime Minister Kan Naoto even as the country was plunged in its worst crisis since World War II, is so genteel as to be reined in by admonitions from the nation's editors and television personalities.

If I were at the press conference I would also like to hear what both professors make of the recent drops in voter participation...and not just for the knife to the back such opting out from voting has been for the Democratic Party of Japan. I would like to know how the two professors will incorporate the terrible voter turnout numbers for the last two big elections (last December's House of Representatives election and the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election of June 23) and the projected poor turnout for the July 21 election into their theories on how Japanese democracy works, or, if they wish to categorize it so, how Japanese democracy does not work.