Where The Opponents Of The LDP Lose Me

In intellectual sparfests these past few days I have faced not a few persons asserting that the citizens of Japan deserve (and, according to Ozawa Ichiro, want) an organized, progressive umbrella party as an electoral alternative to the Liberal Democratic Party.

To which I reply, "And what would this alternative party's policy axis be?"

Let us look at the posters of the current five strongly anti-LDP opposition parties, i.e.

- The Democratic Party of Japan

- The People's Life Party

- The Social Democratic Party

- The Japan Communist Party and

- Green Breeze (Midori no kaze)


DPJ - "We Will be the Power to Protect People's Ways of Life"


People's Life Party - "We Will Protect Livelihoods!"


DSP - "Rather Than A Strong Country, A Kind Society"


JCP - "Stop TPP: Agriculture, Employment, Medical Care and Food Safety
The Party That Loves This Country"

Green Breeze - no official poster (that I know of) but a lot of the same kind of messages

Give the JCP credit for its opportunistic seizure of a national emblem at a time when Mt. Fuji is very much in the news, and for its unabashed expression of a love of country. Way to go, JCP (whose name is, by the way, the NIPPON Kyosanto) -- this is how a progressive party should muscle in on right wing nationalist territory!

Nevertheless, the similarity of the messages, rather than being a source of hope (hey look, all these different parties are saying about the same thing -- we have the ingredients for a united front here!) is instead incredibly depressing*. Each party is asserting that globalization and its effects can be resisted, that competition and market forces can be stopped at the border, and that even as the world changes, Japan can stay as it was.

I am sorry. If a crabbed, timid and backward-looking vision is what you have on offer, then you have lost me.

For all its many faults, the policies of the ruling LDP-New Komeito coalition, which are in every area risky as hell, at least acknowledge the premise that the important work of government is the management of change, not desperate, lunging attempts to keep change out.

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* That the DPJ, People's Life and Green Breeze should have near identical policy platforms is hardly surprising, as all are led by either Ozawa Ichiro or one of his proteges.

A Time For Puppets

山高皇帝遠
Shan gao huang-di yuan.
The mountains are high; the emperor is far away.

was the aphorism that came to mind in response to the joke. It is the same sentiment—that those who would disapprove are not around to stop us from doing what we want—that had the Beatles singing, “No one will be watching us/Why don't we do it in the road?”

Looking up the origins of the above proverb, I learn that it has a bleaker twin: "Heaven is high; the emperor is far away" – i.e., the sources of moral order are nowhere near, so you are at the mercy of the local authority.

* * *

The Bunraku puppet theater of Osaka is in residence in Tokyo until December 16, performing at the National Theater. The program is one of education, introducing the art form to adults. It starts with a kyogen adaptation, followed by a pair of brief explanatory lectures by representatives of three principal classes of performers, and then a long (one hour) tragedy.

Although the bunraku is one of the treasures of Japanese art and culture, the it has fallen on hard times. Audiences and private patronage are dwindling. Its stars, being less than one and a half meters tall and made of wood, have a hard time moonlighting in modern theater, television and cinema, as kabuki performers are able to do.

Part of the reason behind the decline is that the bunraku is based in Osaka. Once a rival center of influence and affluence to Edo/Tokyo (the country's major news media groups have their origins in Osaka, for example), Osaka is now a decidedly second tier city, beloved of its citizens but otherwise seen as scruffy, unattractive and in chronic economic decline.

For any classical art form to survive in Osaka would be difficult. For one as labor intensive as the bunraku, survival depends on the government subsidies.

Enter Hashimoto Toru, the boisterous and impatient mayor of Osaka and true leader of the Japan Restoration Association (Link). A crusader against waste and featherbedding in his hometown, Hashimoto has taken the axe to expenditures and Osaka-style governance to the cheers of an exhausted Osaka citizenry.

Among the targets of his axe have been Osaka City subsidies of the bunraku. Hashimoto has argued that the citizens of the city should not be forced to provide financial support an activity enjoyed by only a few. He has, under duress, seen the bunraku twice, hating it both times, finding the art form and the association that controls it hide-bound, fusty and inappropriate for the times.

For background on the Hashimoto-bunraku war, consult this and this
and this and this and this.

While Hashimoto strikes a populist pose, his views are not widely shared. The bunraku's tour in Tokyo is indeed supported by:

The Tokyo Metropolitan District
Chiba Prefecture
The Kanagawa Prefecture Board of Education
The Saitama Prefecture Board of Education
The All Japan Federation of Boards of Education
JTB
Kintetsu
The Nippon Keidanren
The Keizai Doyukai
The Tokyo Chamber of Commerce

Business organizations, professional organizations and corporations have bought blocks of seats for the cultural advancement of their members and employees.

The performers have worked in a little bit on their struggles with Osaka's mayor into the explanatory lecture in between the two plays. It has the tayu, the chanter of the joruri text, trying to give a modern equivalent for one rough and tumble character in a story:

"He's a sort of an Antonio Inoki* figure."

At which point the shamisen player derisively butts in:

"Oh, come on. How can you use such an old example? If you use that kind of relic as your illustration, you will make Hashimoto-san upset."

The audience cracks up. The tayu, smirking to the audience, replies:

"It is not an old-fashioned example...and who is this Hashimoto of whom you are speaking, anyway?

To which the shamisen player, his face also in a smirk, chirps:

"Why...Hashimoto Shinya**, of course."

At which the audience roars in approval.

It is unlikely that the bunraku, begging as it is at Hashimoto Toru's doorstep, would dare include this bit of cheek in a performance in Osaka. But the puppets and their masters are in Tokyo, where no one (except, of course, the occasional decidedly odd Japan politics blogger) will make a big deal out of a brief stab at Osaka's uncouth and self-adoring leader***.

Hence my reflexive thought of the Chinese proverb at the head of this post.

* * *

Hashimoto Toru's war with the bunraku and the theater's bit of fun illuminates some darker facets of this election.

Taking aim at an art form, one which puts Osaka on the map of world culture, shows Hashimoto's populism to be unfocused. Indeed, it is not populism at all. It is philistinism—a proud, even arrogant ignorance of culture and aesthetics.

Such ignorance would be acceptable if it were not coupled with a will to power—a will that Hashimoto has in spades.

The mating of the two elements results in Hashimoto's lashing out at everything he does not understand, no matter the actual significance of a particular item,. In action unbecoming, he uses the power of his tongue and office to crush whatever it is that has earned his ire on a particular day (tattoos on public workers, teachers who are not patriotic, public employees unions).

Hashimoto's inability to sort enemies from annoyances—and react to each according to its rank of importance—marks him as unworthy of higher office. The great populist Koizumi Jun'ichiro, whose family origins are almost as rough as Hashimoto's, made sure to take on powerful entrenched interests. Hashimoto's tendency to go after butterflies with sledgehammers should disturb those who might otherwise be lulled into inattention by his mastery of the quip, the riposte and details of policy.

* * *

That Hashimoto is a philistine is unremarkable. He is, after all, a self-made man of rough circumstances. He may ask, "What does traditional high culture have to do with me?" without transgression. One could go over with him the humble, outcast origins of great artistic traditions like the No theater...but one would first have to find a way around his defensiveness about his origins.

What is remarkable in this campaign is that the main party leaders, with the bold exception of Ishihara Shintaro, all seem to be philistines. Ishihara has literature, Koizumi had Elvis Presley (and XJapan). However, for the majority of the political leaders currently clogging our airways and textual news, one would be hard-pressed to identify a single art either practiced or enjoyed by any them. The only art that interests them seems to be the art of politics, which either paradoxically or inevitably, considering their fastidious concentration on it, not one of them practices with any finesse.

Expanding upon the paradox Okumura Jun noted in his exegesis on my post about the calligraphy of the leaders of the parties—that among those who profess to want to lead Japan back to its traditions are persons who are ignorant of them (Link)—the current crop of party leaders seem to want to be leaders of the Japanese people without taking joy in either being Japanese or people.

It is possible that it is not so much Noda Yoshihiko's duplicity, Abe Shinzo's radical reactionary beliefs, Kada Yukiko's willingness to hold Ozawa Ichiro's hand, Fukushima Mizuho's girlishness, Yamaguchi Natsuo's Gumby hair, Watanabe Yoshimi's accepting of public money only to use it to support his habit of yelling of insults from the sidelines, Shii Kazuo's aggressive anti-fashion or the sheer preposterousness of the micro-party leaders that is driving the voters away. It is the absorption of the political leaders into the job of being political leaders, where earnestness masquerades as determination, which makes it so hard for the public to take a shine to any of the leaders or their parties. Hobbies and interests alone cannot save one, as Aso Taro's and Tanigaki Sadakazu's stints as Liberal Democratic Party president demonstrated. However, a lack of identifiable trivial pursuits shows a disrespect for the human—an unnatural woodenness, as it were.

And no, Noda's noted fondness for alcohol does make the grade.

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* Born in 1943.
** Born in 1965
*** That Osaka is seen as an uncultured pit of a city, particularly by Tokyo denizens, is another reason the joke can be inserted into the Tokyo performances.

Eleven Party Leaders: By This My Hand Revealed

If the current public opinion polls hold up, and the Democratic Party of Japan suffers losses commensurate with its betrayal of the high hopes the voters had had for the party when they voted it into power in 2009, leaving the Liberal Democratic Party and the Japan Restoration Association as the top vote winners, then we are all in big trouble.

How do we know this?

Calligraphy.

The leaders of the eleven parties held a joint press conference yesterday at the National Press Club. The hosts had the party leaders write down, with felt-tip pens on giant stiff paper flip cards, the main theme(s) of their campaigns.

For those not familiar with this business of writing down slogans or mottoes, the request would probably seem a tad odd. The practice is quite common, however. A major sports figure can hardly get out of a one-on-one, sit down interview without being handed a white square of stiff paper and a felt tip pen.

Given the place of this little ritual in public life, the variation in the performance of the eleven was stunning. The majority of the leaders proved incapable of writing down a few legible characters in a white rectangle.

In so doing, the eleven revealed more about their personalities through their hands than they could ever hope to conceal with their speech.

The most beautiful and flowing calligraphy belongs, unsurprisingly, to octogenarian author and JRA leader Ishihara Shintaro. Of the eleven he was also the only one who chose to write in traditional columns, right to left -- the others all writing in magazine style, in lines, left to right.

Out of either vanity or habit or both, Ishihara finished by putting his signature on the card.

(Fished from out of the snark tank: "So this is one of your signed works, is it?" and "Do you have to leave your signature on everything?")

Ishihara’s calligraphy was not the most vain. That honor belongs to convicted felon (his case is on appeal) Suzuki Muneo of Nippon Daichi. His curlicues and hooks bring only one adjective to mind: affected.

Masuzoe Yoichi (the former Mr. Katayama Satsuki) of Japan Renaissance has pleasant enough calligraphy, if a bit uneven. Too bad that his party is just a figment of his imagination.

After the trio of self-important gentlemen, standards start sliding fast.

Shozaburo Jimi of the People's New Party wins the creativity prize for writing in two different calligraphic styles. He unfortunately also wins the stuffy pretension prize for his selection of the massive rashinban instead of the English loan word kompasu (compass).

New Komeito's Yamaguchi Natsuo's calligraphy is so formulaic and straight-laced it hurts to just look at it. The excessive angularity is matched only by the vapidity of the slogan: "Reconstruct Japan." Uh, Yamaguchi-sensei, what about reform and change?

Fukushima Mizuho of the Social Democratic Party certainly made the best use of the available space. The result unfortunately looks like a handwritten sign on a chair outside a salon listing the hair care services available inside.

Democratic Party of Japan leader and prime minister Noda Yoshihiko's style is that of a diligent student: simple, clear, considered and dull. He gets the structural design award for the neat, one-space offset of the two rhetorical questions "Do we go forward? Or do we turn around and go back?"*

The Communist Party's Ishii Shii Kazuo's calligraphy resembles my own. He has my sympathy. His slogan -- "Offer and Enact" -- encapsulates the hopeless of the Communist dream. The Communists keep offering, but since they never compromise, what they offer never gets enacted.

It is hard to classify Watanabe Yoshimi's calligraphy. Does the weird bowing of the word "fighting" (tatakau) crush the word "reform" (kaikaku) through design -- or did Watatabe just run out of space? Abstractly, is he being coy or is he just incompetent?

Now to the rock bottom.

Kada Yukiko of the Party of the Future uses the first line as a testing ground for various ways of holding the pen. It seems she has spent a life in academia and local government without ever once using a white board. Trying to read the first line, "Politics is the power to build the future" (Seiji wa mirai o tsukuru chikara) is exhausting and annoying. After making the effort and finding one has so little to show for it, one takes a glance at the succeeding to lines, sees all the splotches (How can there be ink splotches? It's a felt-tip pen!) and gives up.

LDP president Abe Shinzo's calligraphy is atrocious. No, that is not right. Nobel Prize winning author Oe Kenzaburo's calligraphy is atrocious**. Abe's calligraphy is...demented. The gigantic, spindly ma followed by the minuscule tsu. The ugly, embarrassing collision of the characters sei and ji, as if the writer had never put the two together before -- which is unfortunate as seiji is "politics."

No one writes this badly. Even if one were trying to, one could not do it.

The irony of course is the slogan itself: Matto na seiji -- "right and proper politics."

For those more expert in the art, a photo collage of the leaders and their work.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. Fukushima Mizuho is giving us a peace sign with her left hand.

Image courtesy: Jiji Press

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* Prime Minister Noda has been merciless in his mockery of the LDP's cringe-worthy campaign slogan, "Lets Take Japan Back!" (Nippon o torimodosu). His speeches are peppered with varying disparagements of "going back," "being taken back" or "heading back."

** I once viewed an exhibition of the personal effects and mementos of Donald Keene, organized by Columbia University on the advent of his retirement. Among the items displayed was a letter from Oe Kenzaburo in his fourth-grader scrawl. The kicker was Oe's plea in the letter, "Please do not show this letter to anyone. My calligraphy is abominable!"

Oh Please Just, Go Away

On Friday, former (thank Amaterasu) prime minister Hatoyama Yukio showed up in front of the Prime Minister's residence to show his support for the Friday evening anti-nuclear protests.

Hatoyama and Social Democratic Party leader Fukushima Mizuho -- the woman he fired when she would not approve his repudiation of his campaign promise to move the U.S. Marine Corps elements currently at Futenma to a location outside of Okinawa Prefecture.

Honestly, this man should be behind bars, not out on the streets.

During his premiership, his immediate underlings were discovered to be running a criminal enterprise, converting, through thousands of false transactions, taxable gift mountains of cash from his mother into bogus, non-taxable political donations, some, mysteriously and remarkably, from persons no longer living.

Ozawa Ichiro is roasted over the coals, and continues to be roasted over them, over a single loan he made to his own political organization where no taxes were evaded nor no illegal profits made.

Hatoyama gets to pay the back taxes on the gifts (600 million yen's worth of back taxes), his underlings get prison terms and he walks away scott-free.

My bad if I misunderstand the legal niceties involved, but was there not a requirement to investigate what Hatoyama knew and when it was that he did know it?

Had I been at the protest on Friday, I would have screamed "Kaere! seikyoku iranai!" * -- a sentiment seemingly shared, quietly, by some of the protest participants (J) -- or to get under Hatoyama's notoriously thin skin, insert Yosano Kaoru's deathless and dead-on epithet, delivered in Diet session two years ago (E):

"Kaere! Heisei datsuzei no o!" **

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

* "Go Home! We don't need political maneuvering!"

** "Go Home! King of the Heisei Era tax evaders!"

Photo courtesy: Mainichijp

We Ain't Leavin' Til We Get What We Came Here For

In the end, Kamei "Pavarotti" Shizuka could only convince his policy research council chief Kamei Akiko (who, strangely enough, is not a close relation. She is the direct lineal descendant of the daimyo of the Tsuwano han. He comes what might be a branch line that reverted to being peasants during the Sengoku period) to leave the government. For reasons that only he can fathom, he thinks he can decamp with the People's New Party banner under his arm, leaving the 6 now former PNP members to labor on in the Diet as independents.

Kamei's leaving in a huff allows Jimi Shozaburo, the financial services minister, free to vote in the next cabinet meeting in favor of the bill increasing the consumption tax -- the last hurdle the government of Noda Yoshihiko had to vault before it could offer the bill to the House of Representatives.

Unfortunately for Kamei, and for persons trying to make sense of the situation, Jimi, party secretary-general Shimoji Mikio and the 4 others say they have not left the PNP. (J)

Something has to give. Likely as not the 6 will form a new party that can then join the government in a new coalition, maintaining the leverage they need in order to pressure the Democratic Party of Japan into scheduling a vote on a postal counter-reformation bill the 6 like. Or they can rely on the assurances of the prime minister (5 of them met with Noda last night) that the raison d'être of the PNP will be respected, even if the PNP is in the state of non-être.

So after Fukushima Mizuho of the Social Democratic Party of Japan, Kamei Shizuka of the PNP has headed for the doors on a point of principle (the point of principle not being the execution of three death row convicts, the other subject that kept Kamei Shizuka, a fervent death penalty opponent, busy yesterday).

The first post August 2009 election prime minister Hatoyama Yukio, Kamei and Fukushima, the trio who ushered in the new era of Japanese politics just 2 1/2 years ago (or quartet, if one adds the shadow prime minister Ozawa Ichiro) have all strode off from center stage, leaving their respective parties either hobbled or in shambles.

The revolution rolls on, having devoured its first generation of leaders -- as is so often the case.

The Socialist Party Slides Toward Extinction

Though it hardly seems worthwhile to report on the political decline of a micro-party, the political news of the day is Social Democratic Party leader Fukushima Mizuho's certain reelection as the head of her party. Certain as in she is running unopposed and there will, as a consequence, be no vote for party leader at the party's congress on February 24.

Fukushima's victory comes as a result of both party rules and the SDP's continuing failure at the polls. Party rules state that a candidate for party leader must have the nominations of at least 4 Diet members. With only 10 Diet members in total, the SDP has only just enough members for two competing candidates, if every single Diet member plays along. Fukushima nailed down her fourth nominee on the 20th. Party policy chief Abe Tomoko, who had wanted to challenge Fukushima, managed to win the support of three of her colleagues but failed to win the endorsement of the last remaining Diet member before the nomination deadline today.

With her failure to gain enough support to challenge Fukushima, with whom she has clashed in terms of the SDP's unwillingness to work with other parties, Abe is left with a rather unpalatable choice: either stick around with Fukushima glaring daggers at her all the time or leave the party. "As a politician I have a decision to make and when I make it I will hold a press conference," was Abe's comment to the press (J). Unfortunately for Abe, she is a proportional seat member, meaning that she can only serve as independent, since those elected on a party list who defect from their party can only found a new one, not join an existing one. Abe cannot make the journey from relevance to irrelevance to relevance again trod by district seat holder Tsujimoto Kiyomi who lost her sub-cabinet post when the DSP left the ruling coalition over the Futenma relocation dispute. In revenge, Tsujimoto left the DSP, sat as an independent for a while to cool off, then joined the Democratic Party of Japan.

If Abe leaves, the full Diet membership of the DSP will drop down to nine seats, putting it at a par with the brand new and already much-loathed Kizuna party. If her three supporters in the leadership fight decide to leave with her, the party will be left with three House of Representatives members and three House of Councillors members, leaving it perilously close to the five Diet member limit for political organizations that wish to be identified as parties.

Even without this nasty split over party leadership, the Socialists and indeed all the micro-parties were already in peril. The ruling Democratic Party of Japan has said it will submit a bill in the next session eliminating 80 of the 180 proportional seats in the Diet, ostensibly as a cost-cutting measure but really as a sop to its own rank-and-file, who are ticked off at the party leadership for not making the least effort to carry out the proposals listed in the DPJ's 2009 manifesto and indeed backtracking on almost all of them. The measure has very little chance of passing, despite its attractiveness to the main opposition party the Liberal Democratic Party, since the new bill would decimate the numbers of the LDP's ally, the New Komeito Party. Any reduction of the number of proportional seats, however, would imperil the continued existence of the SDP in the House of Representatives. Simulations show that if the 80 seat reduction were to be carried out, all of the Socialist Party proportional seats, including the one Abe sits in, would vanish.

The disappearance of the Socialists would, of course, end a grand chapter in the history of Japanese politics, one with the cautionary lesson of never giving up one's ideals and policies for the brass ring of power. Once the number two party in the Diet, locked in a seemingly eternal love-hate relationship with the dominant LDP, institutionalized in what became known as "the 1955 system," the Socialists were already in alarming decline after the establishment of center-left alternatives to the LDP in the 1993 election. Real rot and rebellion did not set in, however, until after the Socialists made what they were to find out was really the deal of a lifetime: an alliance with the LDP that had a clueless Murayama Tomiichi become the first Socialist PM since the unifications of the two main parties in 1955. In order to win this prize, the Socialists shed virtually all of their major points of difference with the LDP's left-leaning members. Bereft of the mantle of the party of persons of conscience (because clearly the Socialists did not have one), the party rapidly lost its voting base to the rising DPJ.

The passing of the Socialists into history would not be of much consequence save that in its brief time as the coalition partner of the ruling DPJ-- and its departure from the ruling coalition over policy -- the SDP had regained some of the luster of being the party of conscience. It was its members, not the members of the DPJ, who really tried to find a workable alternative to the move of Futenma to Henoko promised by DPJ party leader and prime minister Hatoyama Yukio. When the coalition voted to backtrack on Hatoyama's promise to find an alternate site to Henoko, the SDP pulled itself out of the coalition (E).

Sic transit gloria Showa mundi...

Crunch Time For The TPP and Noda

Today's the day when the heretofore Delphic Oracle of Nagata-cho, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, makes his "political decision" regarding Japan's participation in Trans-Pacific Partnership talks. I say the odds are still 50-50, despite the intellectual firepower that has been deployed in favor of participation. On the ground and over the airwaves, the actions of pro-TPP forces have been pathetic in their flaccidity, whilst the anti-TPP forces have marched unimpeded into the public consciousness.

With the DPJ neatly divided in two, the public (according to the latest polls) showing only a fractional majority in favor of participation and not just the opposition parties (Do you know how weird it is to see Oshima Tadamori, Shii Kazuo and Fukushima Mizuho sharing a stage at a huge rally, with all three of them wearing identical headbands?) but the government coalition partner the People's New Party against participation, the consensus builder Noda is facing the challenge of his life, at a time he would much rather be hammering out the details of the third supplementary budget, ferreting out the resources necessary to reconstruct the Tohoku region and mitigate the Fukushima disaster and pushing through a rise in the consumption tax to pay for Japan's mounting retiree and healthcare costs.

As for the Korean Example, which was supposed to goad the country into accepting the mixed bag of burdens that is the TPP so as not to fall behind the seemingly FTA-mad ROK, the opportunistic fight breaking out in Seoul over ratification of the Korea-U.S. FTA could not come at a worse time.

The world (well, at least the world investor class, which controls much of the way the world is portrayed) is screaming "Go" and the political situation at home is screaming "Stop."

No matter which path Noda chooses today, he loses.

Tsujimoto Kiyomi Shocks the SDP and Japan's Political Establishment*

Tsujimoto Kiyomi has never been one to avoid the spotlight. Bursting into the national consciousness with her infuriated attempt to pin down former Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro into answering a question -- her shouted "Sori! Sori! Sori!" becoming something of a national catchphrase -- she later astounded all by getting caught with a ghost employee on her tiny staff -- a crime for which she was arrested, convicted and given a suspended sentence. Then, despite the supposedly lifelong scarring a conviction of a crime usually inflicts upon a person, she did the one thing she knew how to do: run for national office, most recently winning the Osaka #10 district seat in 2009 -- becoming one of the few of members of the Socialist Democratic Party to hold a district rather than a proportional seat.

Last night, Tsujimoto shook the party and the political realm with talk of leaving SDP. For the party, her departure would be a public relations disaster: aside from party leader Fukushima Mizuho, Tsujimoto is the party's most recognizable politician. She is frequently partnered with the local candidate on party political posters -- possibly even more often than Fukushima herself. The party also went out on a limb readmitting her, a convicted felon, back into the party's ranks. SDP Secretary Shigeno Yasumasa, with whom Tsujimoto had her meeting last night, is adamantly rejecting acceptance of her resignation.

However, Tsujimoto is most likely on her way out. Her appointment as Senior Vice Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism under the Hatoyama Cabinet capped a long fight back to political respectability. Having to surrender her post following the SDP's decision to withdraw from the ruling coalition over Fukushima's opposition to the Futenma-to-Henoko agreement was a bitter pill for Tsujimoto. Normally stoic and sarcastic, she wept profusely and bitterly as she said goodby to her staff at the Ministry.

Tsujimoto's remaining in the party after its withdrawal from the coalition seems to have been conditional. If Fukushima's dramatic dismissal from the Cabinet over the Futenma deal led to a spike in electoral support for the SDP nationwide or for its candidates in the districts, then Tsujimoto would swallow her disappointment and stick with the party. However, on July 11 the party performed disastrously: losing one of its three seats from the proportional list and in all of its districts lost -- even in the Okinawa contest against an LDP candidate who had only recently switched from supporting the 2006 Roadmap to opposing it.

So where does Tsujimoto go after leaving? The eventual natural fit for her is the ruling Democratic Party of Japan. As the first defector to join the DPJ after that party's terrible showing in the July 11 elections and a former loyal member of the Hatoyama government, Tsujimoto would certainly be rewarded with a position within the party well above what her seniority would merit.

A question right now is whether anyone within the ruling party will be insisting on receiving the credit for encouraging Tsujimoto to leave the SDP. Based on a photograph I flagged in September 2007, I can imagine one person who might have a reasonable and quite inconvenient (for the current DPJ leadership group) claim to have been working toward this result for quite some time.

Tsujimoto's defection and likely cooperation as an independent with the DPJ--utnil such time as she could actually join the party -- points out a little remarked reality of the post-July 11 Japanese political world: with 306 seats in the House of Representatives, the DPJ is closer to the two-thirds majority it would need to override actions of the House of Councillors than it is to a coalition producing a working majority in the House of Councillors. In terms of passing legislation the DPJ likes, luring 13 more legislators into cooperation with the party in the House of Representatives seems a far better bet than trying to deal with the standoffish Watanabe Yoshimi's Your Party or the self-righteous New Komeito in the House of Councillors.

* An earlier version of this post had an incorrect acronym in the title line, leading to a host of incorrect versions of the English language name of the Shakai Minshuto.

Indi, Just Let It Go!

Why I love Sato Masaaki, the cartoonist at the Tokyo Shinbun.


Prime Minister Naoto Kan, dressed as Professor Indiana Jones, hangs from his bullwhip, trying to keep from sinking into quicksand whilst clutching a small satchel marked "Consumption Tax." However, the branch his bullwhip is wrapped around, marked "Support Ratings," is cracking, presaging his being swallowed up in the mire. At the edge of the area of quicksand, the trio of Kamei Shizuka, Fukushima Mizuho and what seems to be Tanigaki Sadakazu mutter in confusion, "Just separate himself from it and he's fine, but..." (Hanaseba ii no ni...)*

The title of this work is "The Treasure" (Otakara).


Dedicated to EC, Richard Katz and Gerald Curtis.

Image Courtesy: The Tokyo Shimbun

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* Just why Tanigaki would feel anything but unbridled joy at Kan's hanging on to a pledge to serious consider raising the consumption tax as a part of his fiscal reconfiguration package escapes me. Maybe the tall man in the glasses is supposed to be Ozawa Ichiro.

Hatoyama Yukio - Innovator

In 1992, President Alberto Fujimori of Peru, frustrated by an obstructionist Congress stymieing his every effort to battle both hyperinflation and the psychotic Maoist Shining Path insurgency, suspended Peru's constitution, granted all legislative powers to the executive branch of government and sent the Army to seize all members of the Congress opposed to him. For his use of the Army to lead a toppling of the constitutional order of which he supposedly was the apex, leaving himself in power, Fujimori was credited with having pioneered, or at least provided the textbook example of, a new form of government overthrow, the autogolpe or auto-coup.

Hatoyama Yukio deserves a similar honor for what he achieved on June 2 - 4. The newspapers have for the most part referred to what happen as Hatoyama's having "stepped down" (taijin - literally "withdrawal of the military encampment") from the post of prime minister - the standard term for a prime minister resigning voluntarily. However, in overseeing a friendly transfer of power to his fellow party co-founder Kan Naoto, securing the bloodless simultaneous political seppuku of his supposed political master Ozawa Ichiro, all with the retention of his entire Cabinet save four of the five really problematic/ferociously unpopular ministers and party executives (himself, Ozawa, Consumer Affairs Minister and Social Democratic Party leader Fukushima Mizuho and the Miyazaki Foot-and-Mouth Disease outbreak scapegoat Akamatsu Hirotaka. The fifth problematic minister, Financial Services Minister and People's New Party leader Kamei Shizuka, was left behind for disposal by Kan) Hatoyama should be considered the author of a political innovation worthy of its own technical term. For what happened was not so much a change of Cabinet as a Cabinet reshuffle, only one where the Prime Minister, realizing that he is part of the problem, reshuffles himself out of the Cabinet lineup.

Perhaps it should be called "The Pigeon Mountain Shuffle" -- that seems to be a sufficiently "loopy" name.

Background to the DPJ's Ongoing Counter-Reformation

Prime Minister Kan Naoto has nearly completed filling up the holes in the new line up of Democratic Party of Japan executives and the Cabinet. From announcements and speculation printed in the nation's newspapers, it is clear that the DPJ is undergoing a massive shift away from the course it has been following since 2005.

When Kan and former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio founded the DPJ in 1996, the party's core faith was that Japan suffered from an excess of government spending on slow growth or even loss-making endeavors. The key to reviving Japan's health was the removal of the control of spending from bureaucrats (who were supposedly using the budget compilation process to featherbed organizations and industries that would supply them with sinecures following their formal retirement from government service) and assaults on the system of subsidies and supports for industries and activities (agriculture, construction, package delivery) with close ties to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Under the classic DPJ paradigm, government would have a limited role in directing the economy, with the focus of policy on the cutting away of the relations of economic dependency. The goal was a more open, failure-tolerant structure, where a social safety net would catch those who fell out of those industries undergoing shrinkage.

Two major events post-2000 forced the party to junk this policy framework. The first was the wholesale larceny of the party's ideas by Koizumi Jun'ichiro, who ran against the traditional policies of his own party, the LDP, promising change almost identical to the changes proposed by the DPJ.

The second was the landslide loss in the 2005 House of Representatives election, where a glum Okada Katsuya seemed to be campaigning on the slogans of "no fun anymore, suffering for everyone." Against improbable optimism of Koizumi, Okada's grim warnings of disaster were a total electoral downer. Unsurprisingly, the party fell flat on its face, getting wiped out in urban and suburban districts, its supposed impregnable electoral fortresses.

Rather than switching to a Koizumi-like bon vivant with a taste for the spotlight, the DPJ opted for the leadership of Ozawa Ichiro. Like Koizumi, Ozawa had a flair for the irresponsible and insincere promise. Unlike him, he was disdainful of the press, preferring to build his political machine out of the knitting together a thousand normally mutually exclusive promises to a thousand different interest groups. Recruiting local worthies to his cause through patient courtship, he built up a huge electoral bank of persons he could run as candidates who were primarily reliant on his political wiles for their educations.

This was, of course, the classic LDP Tanaka/Takeshita faction's winning playbook. Under Koizumi, the LDP abandoned its traditional method of building coalitions of interest groups and patient local recruitment in favor of a media-driven presidential and national mode of rule. As the LDP set about "modernizing" itself, Ozawa moved into the gap, dragging the DPJ, kicking and screaming, in with him.

The new DPJ had a successful test drive in the 2007 House of Councillors elections, where it prevailed over the LDP. It can be argued, however, that the DPJ did well due more to latent disgust at the LDP (particularly over the pension scheme fiasco and other policy missteps ) than thanks to the DPJ's new look.

Ozawa's DPJ received its real test in the 2009 House of Representatives elections, where it completely flipped the country's districts from LDP to DPJ control. The touchstone of the election was the DPJ's policy manifesto, which contained so many concessions and promises to so many different constituencies as to be internally incoherent, and impossible to implement as a whole. A strategy of promising everything to everyone made perfect sense in political terms, however: the electoral map having been drawn by the old time LDP in such a way as to favor the party that could make the most improbable promises.

The results of the 2009 vindicated Ozawa and bolstered his standing in the party to immense heights. A grateful Hatoyama, who found himself in the position of being the party's candidate for Prime Minister thanks to Ozawa's having rigged the snap 2009 party leader election, granted Ozawa the position of Secretary-General and the ability to fully complete the transformation of the DPJ into his personal policy and elections machine.

Events, however, began eating away at Ozawa's authority within the party faster than he could remake the party to his own needs. The global economy began recovering from the 2008 crash much earlier than anticipated, reducing the intense need for the deficit spending tthat undergirded his promises to interest groups and shifting attention toward countries with seemingly unsustainable debt increase paths, of which Japan was one. Prime Minister Hatoyama's political finance difficulties turned out to be far, far worse than imagined, composed of hundreds of real, repeated criminal acts involving hundred of millions of yen. The Futenma base problem turned out to be insoluable, no matter that most of the country believed that the Okinawans had been shafted by previous LDP governments.

What seems to have broken the camel's back, however, was Ozawa's shutting down the DPJ's Policy Research Council. While nominally a move to concentrate policy formation in the Cabinet, the abolition of the Council looked like shutting down the only forum for anti-Ozawa elements to argue that the party manifesto was a laundry list of promises, not a plan -- and an electoral liability for a ruling party. Whether or not this contention was true on not is debatable -- but by abolishing the Policy Research Council, Ozawa seemed to be declaring that that debate would not ever happen.

While members from the DPJ's middle ranks fought with Ozawa over the elimination of the Council, it was likely that they did so under the supervision of senior members of the party, many of whom understood that their own influence was in danger of being usurped. Until the abolition of the Council, the claims that Ozawa sought to establish a dictatorship could be explained away as fanciful LDP scare stories. After its abolition, and the sidelining of dozens of longtime DPJ policy wonks, these scare stories seemed suddenly far less farfetched.

The turning point, it seems, was the Ubukata Affair. When Ubukata Yukio went to the media with the case against Ozawa, the party directorate announced that Ubukata would be stripped of his Deputy Secretary-General post. This decision did not last the weekend. Announced on a Thursday, the dismissal was rescinded on the following Monday.

Several weeks ago I wondered why the Seven Magistrates of the DPJ did not follow Ubukata's lead and rid themselves of their wounded and troublesome Secretary-General and his associates. At the time, I rationalized the inaction of Sengoku Yoshito, Edano Yukio and others as their decision to take the path of least resistance: clashing with Hatoyama and Ozawa head on was risky, picking up the pieces after a disastrous House of Councillors election would be child's play.

Following the collapse of support for the Cabinet and the Party in the wake of the Futenma climbdown and the dismissal of Fukushima Mizuho from the Cabinet, the Seven Magistrates found themselves in the situation where they could carry out the prophesied coup -- because, as every poll indicated, the House of Councillors election was lost.

[Yes, a paradox: anti-Ozawa forces could move in and alter the course of future events only after the course of future events was inevitable.]

Since seemingly winning over Hatoyama Yukio to their cause, the anti-Ozawa leaders have moved with staggering efficiency and dispatch to eliminate Ozawa's influence over both policy and party management. Fiscal conservatives are now in all the party's and the government's top policy setting positions (bureaucrat bête noire Ren Ho, who had been slated to take over for Fukushima at Consumer Affairs, will take over for Edano as Minister of Government Revitalization), the Policy Research Council is being revived and the PM has told former Secretary-General Ozawa to keep his thoughts and advice to himself.

Today's party position announcements and tomorrow's new Cabinet lineup will be sending a message, one that will have repercussions well beyond its already mesurable impact on the fortunes of Kan & Company in the upcoming House of Councillor's election.

The DPJ, the classical DPJ, is back.

And by Next Week, Prime Minister Kan?

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.

- William Congreve

Memo to me: avoid making definitive pronouncements.

I said yesterday that not enough time remained before the end of the current Diet session and the probable date of the House of Councillors election for the DPJ to replace deeply unpopular Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio.

My having made this statement seems to not be impeding in any way political maneuvering that very well might lead to such an outcome.

The avalanche began in a question to Democratic Socialist Party leader Fukushima Mizuho, who until last Friday was State Minister for Consumer Affairs and Declining Birthrate. When asked whether or not members of her party, who voted to leave the ruling coalition on Sunday, would join members of the opposition in a vote of a no-confidence against Prime Minister Hatoyama, Fukushima said it would be "rather difficult" (nakanaka muzukashii) for her party to not support the resolution.

That "rather difficult" set everyone's pulses to racing. Not about a no-confidence resolution in the House of Representatives, which would compel the Prime Minister to resign or call a general election. In that chamber the prime minister's Democratic Party of Japan holds a ponderous majority of 308 seats out of 480.

No, the exciting possibility is a censure measure in the House of Councillors, where ruling coalition's majority is wafer-thin. While the passage of a censure measure would not force the prime minister from office, it would be a stinging official rebuke to the PM, one he can ill afford given that his fumbling has cost his party dearly in terms of public support on the eve of a crucial election. Should the House of Councillors vote to censure the PM, the humiliation could be enough to force him to resign of his own volition.

The numbers on the vote work out like this. Following the withdrawal of the SDP from the ruling coalition, the DPJ-Shinryokufukai/People's New Party/Japan New Party caucus controls 122 seats, one seat above 50% line in the 242 seat House of Councillors. In fact, as Adamu has recently pointed out, the caucus enjoys a two-vote cushion, thank to Wakabayashi Masatoshi's having had to resign from the chamber in shame following an extraordinary case of wandering fingers. So if all the member of the caucus show up, their numbers can easily defeat any censure motion.

That caveat however -- if the members of the caucus show up -- turns out to be significant. Of late, it has been the non-ruling coalition members of the House of Councillors who have been absenting themselves from plenary sessions. They feel that since their votes cannot stop the majority from prevailing in the House, their time would be better spent out campaigning for the upcoming election. If the opposition offers a censure motion, however, one can be fairly sure that the party whips will get on the phone (or send an email) to their wandering charges to get back to the chamber for the vote.

If all the members of the opposition are in the House, the focus then shifts to the ruling coalition's membership. If even only a handful of them fail to show up for the vote -- or even, in a fit of manic rage, a handful vote for the censure motion -- the motion will pass.

How likely is it that members of the ruling coalition will not show up to block a censure motion or show up to turn tables on the PM? That depends on how serious you believe the "Class of 2004 Problem" to be.

The DPJ has 35 district seat holders and 18 proportional seat holders facing reelection this year. These incumbent seat holders were elected in 2004, when Okada Katsuya was DPJ party president. Some of these seatholders have close ties to the current problematic party leadership duo of Prime Minister Hatoyama and Secretary-General Ozawa Ichiro. Most, however, do not. Indeed, the Class of 2004 in the House of Councillors are the DPJ members who owe the least allegiance to Hatoyama and Ozawa. That the fundraising scandals, fiscally irresponsible policies and infuriating leadership styles of both men have put these members of the House of Councillors in a precarious electoral position (not to mention Ozawa's cramming a second DPJ candidate into some multi-seat districts, meaning that the incumbent would be running not just against opponents from other parties but one from his/her own party) would seem to be reason enough for them to suddenly have an errand to run when the opposition brings its censure motion up for a vote.

A situation that seems indeed nakanaka muzukashii for the PM and his political fixit man Ozawa.

That's All Folks! (Fukushima Mizuho Edition)

NHK has just announced that Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio has relieved (himen) Minister for Consumer Affairs and Declinining Birthrate Fukushima Mizuho of her ministerial postings.

Hatoyama spent all day trying to convince the Social Democratic Party's leader to reverse her stance on the government's plan to move elements of the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to Henoko. To every entreaty Fukushima replied that if the government's proposal named Henoko or any other place inside Okinawa Prefecture as the destination of the forces currently at Futenma, she would refuse to sign the document. Furthermore, if asked to resign, she would refuse to do so.

Faced with the prospect of the plan's not winning the status of a Cabinet Decision -- and having issued a joint statement with the United States on the outlines of the plan on a few hours earlier, the prime minister was left with no other choice but sacking his stubborn minister and coalition party leader.

The Cabinet will now meet sans Fukushima to approve the plan.

Having had to rely on forceful methods to pass a significantly unpopular plan, the prime minister's problems are only just beginning. He has a plan which his remaining non-DPJ minister, People's New Party leader Kamei Shizuka, has repeatedly stated is unrealizable. He has retreated from every position he has taken over the last nine months, driving the people of Okinawa to the edge of fury and the rest of the country over the edge of exasperation.

The contrast between himself, the constant and in the end unfulfilled waverer, and Minister Fukushima, who stuck by her guns all the way to the bitter end, could not be more stark.

Sic transit gloria mundi...

She's Not There - Futenma-to-Henoko Edition

Well no one told me about her.
What could I do?
Well no one told me about her
Though they all knew.

But it's too late to say you're sorry.
How would I know, why should I care?
Please don't bother trying to find her,
She's not there.

The Zombies, "She's Not There" (1964)

All photographs are manipulations, saying as much (or more) about the attitudes of the photographer and the editor as what really occurred.

The above image of Consumer Affairs Minister Fukushima Mizuho and Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio in the Diet yesterday graces the front page of my newspaper this morning. It is assumed to speak volumes, silently, in shared visual language all understand.

Image courtesy: The Mainichi Shimbun

Will Fukushima Mizuho Force Prime Minister Hatoyama's Hand?

Article 68

1) The Prime Minister shall appoint the Ministers of State. However, a majority of their number must be chosen from among the members of the Diet.

2) The Prime Minister may remove the Ministers of State as he chooses.

- The Constitution of Japan (1946)

As a preface to this post, please read Ethan Chua's argument that the biggest loser from the Futenma climbdown is the Social Democratic Party.

I take exception with Mr. Chua's conclusion. The biggest losers from the Futenma climbdown are still likely to be the Prime Minister and Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirano Hirofumi, both of whom have watched their reputations evanesce away into air. No amount of apologizing, prevaricating or pandering can give them the least bit of political substance.

Minister of Consumer Affairs Fukushima Mizuho and the SDP, however, seem to be preparing to walk away from the smoldering wreckage of the Hatoyama fallback with their reputations for principled intransigence intact. In appearance after appearance in Okinawa today, Fukushima made clear that she will not vote in favor of the government plan outlined this weekend to move the personnel and materiel of MCAS Futenma to a new offshore base to be built outside Camp Schwab in Henoko -- basically the plan outlined in the 2006 roadmap.

If Fukushima votes no at the plan's presentation to the Cabinet on Friday, she will provoke a stunning political showdown. Without the unanimous consent of the Cabinet, the plan cannot be considered a Cabinet Decision (kakugi kettei). It can only be a Prime Minister's Statement (shusho hatsugen) -- and according to press reports, Fukushima is ready to oppose the bill's even receiving this lower level of official status.

Furthermore --and someone should correct me if I am wrong here -- but if the plan does not receive the imprematur of a kakugi kettei, it cannot be presented in the Diet as a government bill (naikaku teishutsu hoan or seifuan). Hirano has argued that a Prime Minister's Statement, if it receives the understanding (ryokai) of the Cabinet is just as good as a Cabinet Decision -- but since Fukushima says she will oppose a Prime Minister's Statement, this attempt to find a work-around seems moot. Instead the bill would have to be presented as a Diet member's bill (giin teishutsu hoan), forcing the Prime Minister to either submit the bill in his own name with the signatures of 20 members of the House of Representatives or 10 members of the House of Councillors in support of it, or find a close ally to submit it instead.

Prime Minister Hatoyama can round up the signatures of 20 House of Representatives members in a second, of course. However, the humiliation of failing to win the unquestioned support of the Cabinet he himself picked makes this route the last one he would want to take.

The alternative is for Prime Minister Hatoyama somehow prevent Fukushima from voting no at Friday's regular Cabinet meeting. He and other Cabinet ministers, while indicting their rage at Fukushima's visit and statements, have tried to open a little political wiggle room for Fukushima to back out of her threat, saying that she traveled to Okinawa and made her statements not as a minister of the Japanese government, but as the head of her party.

Such casuistry will probably not lure Fukushima into backing down. Her party is facing the potential loss of all its seats up for election this year, including, it should be noted, hers. Having lost the support of, over the last 15 years, those hating the Liberal Democratic Party, the pacifists, the labor unions and true believers in socialism, the SDP has no natural constituency to keep it alive.

However, if the party can sell itself as the member of the revolutionary coalition that did not sell out the Okinawans, that held firm to its beliefs, it might win support amongst Japan's currently demoralized hardcore pacifists and the smoldering anti-American left.

If Fukushima does not back down before Thursday, when the DSP will hold a meeting that is sure to request that she vote against the Prime Minister's new plan, then Hatoyama may have no choice but to fire her. Under Article 68 of the constitution the prime minister has the right to arbitrarily (nin'i) remove any state minister from office.

The results of firing Fukushima could be even worse than letting her vote against the government's plans, however. While her party is numerically irrelevant in terms of the passage of bills through the Diet, its expulsion from the coalition will draw an immediate, negative response from the People's New Party, which is currently unenthusiastic albeit not opposed to the government's Futenma-to-Henoko proposal.

PNP president Kamei Shizuka, after talking to Fukushima on the telephone about the impending collision yesterday, has indeed suggested that Hatoyama needs to take two steps back, not even calling the plan a Prime Minister's Statement. Instead, he has suggested that Hatoyama refer to his plan simply as "a plan that is currently being undertaken" (tsukochu no an). As for Fukushima's seemingly suicidal devotion to principle, he is quoted as telling her, "Look, that government plan has no chance of being realized. To leave the coalition and go to an honorable death over a plan that cannot be realized is idiotic."

So for those who think that Hatoyama has, at great political cost, successfully sold out the Okinawans and the Socialists, staving off a crisis with the United States with a plan that essentially replicates the major elements of the plan LDP agreed to in 2006, hang on to your hats.

This is going to be a fun next three days.

Ding! We Have A Majority in Both Houses!

Very quietly yesterday, without any fuss, House of Councillors member Yoshimura Kentaro Gotaro formally registered himself as a member of the Democratic Party of Japan-People's New Party-Shinryokufukai-New Party Nippon caucus. Yoshimura, a district seatholder for Fukuoka Prefecture, had joined the PNP on Tuesday after having quit the Liberal Democratic Party at the very end of last year.

Yoshimura's registration as a member of the DPJ-dominated caucus brings the total number of the active members in the caucus to 122, which is 50% plus one of the 242 seats in the House of Councillors.

For those keeping score at home, the numbers in the House of Councillors are:

DPJ-led four party caucus 122
LDP-Reform Club 82
New Komeito 22
Communist Party 7
Socialist-Rengo 5
Independents 5

If I were Fukushima Mizuho or any other member of the Democratic Socialist Party, I would be thinking hard about keeping my chin up, my eyes bright, a smile glued to my face and, if anyone tries to goad me into offering a comment on whether or not Ozawa Ichiro should testify in the Diet about his accounting troubles, pretend I was stone deaf from now until just after 8 p.m. on election night.

More of That Socialist Stuff

Yuka Hayashi of The Wall Street Journal has interviewed Democratic Socialist Party Leader Fukushima Mizuho.

The takeway line the world has been waiting for:

"We are not opposed to all military bases in Okinawa and we aren't saying all troops should leave right away," said Ms. Fukushima, a human-rights lawyer. "But I believe we should use this opportunity to discuss broader issues, like why there is such a huge concentration of U.S. bases in Okinawa and why, after 64 years since the end of the World War II, there is still such a significant presence of U.S. forces in Japan."

Now that we have settled that little bit of business, perhaps now would be a good time for Ambassador John Roos to pay a small social call on Fukushima-sensei, to hear what she and her colleagues have to say.

Read the full article here.

Fear of A Sinitic Planet or Something

Shorter version of today's Washington Post editorial:

If the U.S. government does not ease up on insisting that the perfidious Hatoyama Yukio deliver on the 2006 Futenma-to-Henoko agreement, Hatoyama will split his party in two by choosing to draw Japan closer to China. So let us give Japanese democracy a chance because the current government, which will deliver a decision in May, cannot decide anything important before the House of Councillors election in July.

Times are admittedly tough in the print industry. Many in the industry are hanging by a string. But is the Washington Post abandoning checking even its own editorials for clarity and continuity?

As for the swipe at the Democratic Socialist Party, has Fukushima Mizuho or anyone under her been demanding that all U.S. troops leave Japan? There is no mention of a total withdrawal of U.S. forces from Okinawa, much less Japan as a whole, in the party manifesto. Or is it the People's New Party that is demanding total withdrawal?

One should perhaps not complain, of course. The author of this piece is at least considering the possibility that it may be unwise for the U.S. government to continue pursuing a full court press on the Government of Japan in an attempt force a commitment to the 2006 agreement.