That Feeling Of Recursion

How important is resolution of the issue of the move of the functions of the Marine Corps Airbase Futenma to...anywhere but where they are now? On Friday, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo presided over a cabinet meeting. He had to do so because Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide, holder of position in charge of Cabinet meetings, is in Guam reviewing sites and facilities being prepared for the relocation of fraction of the U.S. Marine Corps forces currently based at Futenma. Though it was not much remarked in the reporting on the Suga visit (Link) Friday's meeting marked the first time in 19 years that a PM had to fill in for an absent chief cabinet minister.

When and what was the occasion of the last time a CCS was out of town and the PM had to direct a cabinet meeting? When Chief Cabinet Secretary Kajiyama Seiroku was in Okinawa, negotiating (successfully, as it turned out) Nago City's acceptance of being the host of a Futenma Replacement Facility (FRF). Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryutaro presided over that cabinet meeting, a seeming eon ago (Remember the press conference of Hashimoto, with U.S. Ambassador Walter Mondale standing behind him, announcing the move of the Marines base from Futenma to Nago within five or at most seven years?) (Link -J)

Speaking of the move to Nago, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism approved a resumption of the groundwork for the FRF, overriding Okinawa Governor Onaga Takeshi's revocation of the initial construction permit (Link). While a logical move, the ministry's action represents further erosion of the guarantees of local autonomy, found in Articles 92, 94 and 95 of the Constitution. (Link)

Since the candidates supported or provided by Liberal Democratic Party of Abe Shinzo lost, in order, the Nago City election, the Okinawa Governor's election and all of Okinawa House of Representatives seats to anti-base construction candidates, Thursday's resumption of construction is a failure of the concept of local, democratic control.

Will Abe Take A Trip Down Yasukuni Lane This Day?

Yasukuni Shrine seen from Hosei University. 25 July 2015.

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

However, given

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Yasukuni Shrine, 15 August 2014.

A Month Away

Been away...doing things...and not doing things too.

Much has happened in the interim...and in at the same time, not much, aside from world spot oil prices (huge shifts there) has changed.

Two items of note:

1) Abe Shinzo did not go to Yasukuni Shrine in the 2014 calendar year.

He may have done so in secret. Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi supposedly paid a secret visit in 1992. Current Education Minister Shimomura Hakubun supposedly paid a secret visit sometime in 2013, proving that the trick can still be pulled off.

By not publicly paying his respects at Yasukuni, Abe has betrayed the revisionists and the mawkish sentimentalists, those who have been the rungs on the ladder he has climbed to prominence within the Liberal Democratic Party and ultimately into the premiership. It is fitting: what one does with rungs is step on them.

In not visiting Yasukuni, Abe has also shown he is playing a very long game indeed in terms of being a mover and shaker in East Asian politics, sacrificing immediate political and psychological advantages for a bigger political payoff later.

2) Anti-government conservative forces triumphed in the Saga gubernatorial election.

A Japan Agriculture (JA)-supported candidate defeating the LDP-Komeito supported candidate. Most analysis focuses on the supposed black eye suffered by the Abe administration, a third embarrassment after last year's humiliations in Shiga and Okinawa -- and on the supposed red flag the victory portends for the Abe Administration's hopes to reorganize Japan's agricultural sector -- both for growth and to facilitate the completion of Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations.

What is less talked about is the implications of the victory of a non-LDP supported conservative for the basing of U.S. forces in Japan. Since his victory, the new governor of Saga has been desperately trying to reverse the agreement the prefecture has with the national government to host Self Defense Forces V-22 Ospreys at Saga Airport. As a special Socialist Party project team noted in 2009, Saga Airport boasts a very, very long runway, is not very, very far from Sasebo and its U.S. Navy homeported amphibious strike group, and is surrounded on three side by hectares of hectares of rice paddies, with narry a dwelling in sight -- the perfect place, really, for a Futenma replacement facility (FRF). The already agree-upon SDF deployment, with the ancillary development of the infrastructure to host Ospreys, is an open door to deployment of U.S. Marines Ospreys at the same dedicated facility.

How Pyrrhic a victory JA's triumph over the Abe government will appear in retrospect -- and how clever the administration -- if Saga Airport becomes a supplement to, a second, or in the extreme a replacement for the fraught Henoko FRF.

Very Kind Of Them #36

Michael Penn kindly quotes me regarding the government's likely attitude toward the incoming Onaga Takeshi Administration in Okinawa Prefecture. (Link)

The treatment received by the Okinawa Prefectural government is likely to be all the more ferrous and chilly if all four Liberal Democratic Party candidates go down to defeat in Sunday's House of Representatives election. (Link - J)

About The Nago Election

Peter Ennis and I rarely agree on anything. Most of the time he is right and I am wrong.

He has been inordinately kind in not reminding me of this.

Nevertheless, I will test fate once again and say that his most recent Japan Dispatch post on the results of the Nago City mayoral election overstates the significance of the reelection of Nago City mayor Inamine Susumu.(Link)

Ennis is right in insisting that Mayor Inamine can throw roadblocks in the way of the construction of the Futenma Replacement Facility (FRF) at Henoko. However, he underestimates the misery the national government can and will inflict upon Nago City in retaliation.  A hopped up Abe Shinzo and Company (to see how hopped up Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party are, check out the video reports from this weekend's LDP party Congress, like this one), having failed in their charm offensive toward Nago voters, no longer have to play nice.

A steady, dull, thudding march toward the on-schedule opening of the new U.S. Marines air station at Henoko is crucial to Abe's dual programs as regards the Japan-U.S. alliance:

1) rely on the U.S. to provide crucial military capabilities to fill in for current voids in Japan's capacity to defend itself and its interests (the Self Defense Forces being unable to even do the minimum: defend Japan's territories)

2) drive the U.S. policy makers and the Japan-U.S. relationship managers to tears with his single-minded provocations of South Korea, China, the non-Yomiuri Shimbun news media (Abe appoints Watanabe Tsuneo the chairman of the advisory commission on the special secrets law?!?  -- Link), the anti-nuclear movement, the education establishment and, in one way or another, just about everybody else.

Prime Minister Abe will demand consistent, demonstrable progress on the FRF. As long as the bulldozers, dredges and cranes are in motion at Henoko, the U.S. Marines and the Pentagon will continue to provide Abe with military and political cover. If the machines slow down or halt, Abe will be stuck with strict limits on his freedom to be Abe -- and there is nothing Abe wants to be more than himself.

So Inamine-san and Nago City voters, enjoy the victory party. Cherish it as a fond, wistful memory to tide you through the storm that is about to hit you.

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.

OK, I'm Game

Readers have taken exception to my recent post on the chances for the bill legalizing casino gambling passing the Diet. Many have pointed out that the forces in favor of the legislation, including nominally Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, did manage to submit the legislation to the House of Representatives on what would have been the second-to-last-day of the extraordinary session, after what was an incredibly brief review of the bill by the Liberal Democratic Party's Policy Research Council. (Link)

Despite these developments, my basic view remains unchanged: any bill attempting to legalize casinos would run up against furious opposition from the domestic gambling industries. The pachinko industry would lose its marbles, having spent fortunes to avoid the prohibition against gambling, the physical manifestations of which are small kiosks around the corner from parlors where patrons to redeem their phoney prizes for cash. To have upfront legal gambling establishments would tick pachinko owners off. It would also bring howls of protest from the organizations running the various racing formats and the national lottery, all of whom stay in the good graces of national and local government by paying through the nose on social welfare and public conveniences.

To whit, whatever money and political support politicians could extort from a few mega resorts, located near either Osaka or Tokyo, or from a smattering of smaller casinos plunked in depressed resort towns like Atami, this would be small potatoes beside the lost donations and votes resulting from a stiffing of the domestic gambling sector.

Scuttlebutt now, however, links the passage of the casino legislation with the move of the assets of Marine Corps Airbase Futenma to Henoko, Okinawa. In return for accepting the much-hated move of the base to a new location within the prefecture, Okinawans get one or perhaps the only license for an integrated resort, with the emptied Futenma airbase site as the major candidate for the new casino-recreation complex. (Link - J)

If that is the deal, which kills a flock of birds (pleasing the U.S. Pentagon + buying off the Okinawans for accepting an unfair base burden + fostering Okinawa economic development + bringing Asia's gamblers in but keeping them at arm's length) with one stone, then I can see daylight for the legalization.

Whether or not this cutting of what has been a Gordian knot for Japanese domestic politics and Japan-U.S. relations is attractive to international gambling conglomerates -- that is another question.

On Hugh White's China-American Mirages

A huge　fan am I of the East Asian Forum (Link). Dr. Peter Drysdale and associates publish pertinent articles by smart authors on a huge variety of topics. Though I wish I could be more omnivorous, I usually have to restrict myself to the contributions on Japan. While not everything that gets published is great (an occasional contribution by yours truly slips in, for example) the EAF essays in the build up and aftermath of the 21 July 2013 election were thought-provoking and enriching. Stalwarts authors like Aurelia George Mulgan and Soeya Yoshihide were their usual fascinating selves, while new talents like Ben Ascione and Toshiya Takahashi offered balanced broader pictures of the landscape of this blessed land's politics.

In its admirable open-mindedness the EAF every so often publishes a huge white whale of an essay that demands attention and, if possible, a harpooning. The Moby Dick of this weekend, which has caused me to leave the confines of my usual Japan-only reading list, comes from Dr. Hugh White of Australia National University: "Containing or counterbalancing China." (Link)

Dr. White is a prolific and much-quoted author of Big Cross-Temporal Themes And Hard-Nosed Advice pieces about foreign policy. In this essay, he tries to distill and transmit his ideas on the future of American power in the Indo-Pacific region in the face of a rising China, a theme he has explored at length elsewhere. (Link)

The essay, after a little revving up of mental engines, launches with a cascade of related questions and a brief answer.

The key questions are pretty simple: what is the aim of the current US policy towards China? What are its likely costs? Will it succeed? What if it fails? And what are the alternatives?

America's primary aim in relation to China today is to preserve its position as the primary strategic power in Asia. This aim is seldom scrutinised or even acknowledged. It is taken for granted because it assumes that primacy is the only conceivable strategic role for America in Asia, that perpetuating US primacy is thus the only alternative to strategic withdrawal, and that US primacy therefore provides the only possible basis for a stable and secure future for Asia, as it has done for so many years past. And it assumes that everyone else wants Asia to remain peaceful, and that they all agree that continued US primacy is the only way to ensure that.

Uhhhhhh…no.

And no, no, and uhhhhh...no.

While the usual pattern is to smack the first answer, then knock off each subsequent answer in turn, that is not the best way to proceed here. The last three statements can be disposed of without refutation, as they are little more self-aggrandizing positioning of the author as a seer who has thought about the implications of China's rise -- and detractors as acolytes of dead religions who have not examined their received notions.

Which leaves the first answer to the first question as worthy of contention:

"America's primary aim in relation to China today is to preserve its position as the primary strategic power in Asia."

No.

America's aim in its Asia Pacific policy is not primacy. It is presence with depth. The U.S. wants East Asia to operate in ways that further U.S. interests in the aggregate. It is agnostic on the means by which this influence is exercised or the particular hierarchy of interests it is pursuing at any one moment. What the U.S. seeks most of all, however, is to never be reliant on an ideal set of reactions by regional participants to systemic stress or a crisis.

Call it the anti-Blanche DuBois Strategy, where the ultimate goal is to never be dependent on the kindness of strangers. (Link)

Primacy in a region is only one means of realizing U.S. policy. Building up the capacities, either individually or in concert, of allies is another.

That U.S. policy is not obsessed with being the big boss but is instead careful about remaining flexible and sensitive to change in the region is why U.S. community of Japan watchers is so split over the downfall of Hatoyama Yukio. Hatoyama had faults by the bucketful (Link). He was clearly doomed by his dependence on then Secretary-General Ozawa Ichiro and Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirano (The Stupidest Person To Ever Serve in the Kantei) Hirofumi.

However, the United States government's intransigence in the face of Hatoyama's attempt to reopen the issue of the relocation of Marine Corps Airbase Futenma -- a conversation the United States had an obligation to have, as Japan had just changed governments after decades of a single party's dominance -- set the stage for Hatoyama's whirling dervish death spiral of contrite reversals.

The Obama Administration's intransigence, undermining as it did the duly elected government of an ally, leaves the Japan analysis community divided into antagonistic tribes. On the one side is the shrugging (and occasionally smirking) defenders of U.S. interference and on the other the holding-their-heads-in-their-hands-in-disbelief critics. Members of either camp can lunch together but cannot start talking about Hatoyama or the Democratic Party of Japan without the conversation degrading into testy sniping over the U.S. government's having transgressed or not transgressed a fundamental principle of U.S. policy.

Getting back to the essay, Dr. White's initial wrong assumption -- that the U.S. is wedded to primacy in the region -- cripples the rest of Dr. White's argument and his prescriptions. While well begun is half done, badly begun means even the sharpest of cooks (and Dr. White is sharp) can only pull out items seemingly half-baked.

How did Dr. White misread the fundamental nature of the goal of U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific?

One strong candidate is the conflation of strategic and tactical mendacity. Strategic mendacity is the mask of wisdom one must adopt when one cannot, for propaganda purposes, admit the fluidity of situations and limits of human knowledge. Tactical mendacity is an intentional spewing forth of a mix of truth and falsehood under the guise of appearing to get something done.

For those with a greater interest in tactical mendacity, the philosopher John Frankfurt has written the book on it, calling it by its common name. (Link)

White has listened to purveyors of tactical mendacity on the Indo-Pacific -- members of the U.S. Congress, a lot (but not all) of the uniforms in the uniformed services, think tank enablers in Washington...and their respective correlates in the Chinese establishment. He concludes that what they have been saying is indicative of intents or plans.

However, what they are saying is complete...tactical mendacity. It is neither true nor false. Whether the adamant stomping of "America cannot accept a peer rival in the Pacific" or the sly misrepresentation of history of "China seeks a level of military power commensurate with its traditional cultural and economic role" -- the obvious impracticality of the goal should be a flashing red sign with the words "Ignore Me" on it.

Strategic mendacity -- the obvious and not-so-obvious nonsense that governments say because they have to keep up appearances -- is by contrast a worthy subject of attention and dissection. The lies governments tell because they have to can be lined up alongside truths, with the writer and the reader learning something from the differences in between the two.

As for truth, what Xi Jinping and Barack Obama can talk about in private...or what Abe Shinzo and Barack Obama can talk about in private, if and when President Obama feels confident that Prime Minister Abe understands the difference between reality and strategic mendacity -- that neither Dr. White nor I can be privy to for a very long span of decades.

The Abe Cabinet's Ratings Continue Their Climb

Oy!

Link - J

Link - video - J

With support for the Abe Cabinet above the 70% line, Washington will not likely seeing a pliant or self-critical Abe Shinzo next week -- despite Abe's having no gifts to pull out of his travel bag

- no progress on the construction of a replacement facility for the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station

- no change in Japan's relationship with South Korea

- no meaningful promise regarding participation in the Trans Pacific Partnership.

Indeed, one should expect the Abe stance vis-a-vis the Americans will be, "You may think you know what you want. However, you do not know what you want. What you really want is what I want."

Shinzo Does The Minimalist Thing

For a guy whose Cabinet and party are riding high in the polls (Link - J and Link - J) Prime Minister Abe Shinzo delivered a subdued and limited policy speech. (Link - J)

Unsurprisingly, he opened with an executive summary of the Algerian gas plant incident and his government's response to the crisis. Surprisingly, he did not connect the events of the last two weeks with a call for an expansion of the capacity of the Self Defense Forces to carry out evacuations of Japanese nationals.

Also surprising was how much of the the body of the exceedingly brief speech consisted of the pattings of the heads of the pet issues of a tiny minority, ignoring big policy issues of interest to the majority of the electorate. How else to explain the call to build a "respectable and proper society" (matto na shakai) -- the answer, it seems, to everything -- or the call for Japan to aim to be #1 -- a reference not, as some commentators are going to say, to Ezra Vogel, but to a question posed by Democratic Party of Japan legislator Ren Ho to bureaucrats defending Japan's next generation supercomputer program?

It was also striking how much of the speech was delivered in an intellectual crouch. Was it really necessary to kick up the hysteria quotient, declaring the economy, reconstruction of the Tohoku, foreign affairs and education in crisis? Yes, if you are trying to seize power in an election. Yes, if you are trying to foist unpopular programs on a doubting electorate. But when you are front-loading the budgetary and monetary goodies and enjoying 65% Cabinet approval ratings -- do you need to do it then too?

Sometimes one had to wonder whether the various parts in Abe's government are speaking to each other. Who is going to listen to Finance Minister Aso Taro's scoffing at the concept of the Japanese government having a beggar-thy-neighbor weak yen policy (Link) when the prime minister says in his Diet policy speech that unless Japanese policy changes, there will be no way to pull out of deflation and a high yen?

As to foreign policy, who made the calls? Mentioned were:

1) the deepening the Japan-U.S. security relationship, including the third rail of the relationship, the move of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to a replacement facility

2) Japan-ASEAN relations

3) trendy threats: terrorism, cyberwarfare and natural disasters

What of China-Japan relations, other than a pledge to increase the national capacity to police Japan's territorial waters and airspace? What of Russo-Japanese relations? What of Japan-South Korea relations?

What of energy policy? Or energy, period? (Just one mention, PLEASE!) What of pensions, eldercare, youth underemployment?

And what are we supposed to make of a promise to return to primary budget balance in the medium term? Those who are interested in the issue know the promise to be a lie, while those are not interested in the issue cannot understand why the promise is being made.

And why as a conclusion, after making all sorts of promises to better Japan and make the lives of its citizens easier (including an eyebrow-raising pledge to make it easier for domestic companies and organizations to recruit non-Japanese employees) wind up the speech with an "Do not ask others what will be done -- the only way to improve your own lives is by your own hands?"

All in all, a surprisingly surprising little speech.


Later, much later - Here is a translated Yomiuri Shimbun article (Link) providing the background to Abe's rhetorical question, "Everyone, shall we not go forward from this day with a goal of being the best in the world?"

Japan's Politics Stomps On The Accelerator

In The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens entitles one of the chapters "TOO FULL OF ADVENTURE TO BE BRIEFLY DESCRIBED."*

I feel the same way about events in politics these past few days.

-- Liberal Democratic Party president Tanigaki Sadakazu faced reality yesterday, giving up on even running for reelection (E). That he waited so long, forcing his second-in-command Ishihara Nobuteru to forego advance preparation for his own bid for the presidency, either represents faith triumphing over observable fact, or payback for Ishihara's only half-hearted expressions of support for Tanigaki's running for a second term.

Though Ishihara appears to be on course for a victory in the presidential race, and, after the next House of Representatives election, the premiership, it bears noticing that historically his presidential bid is an aberration. Only two secretary-generals have taken over as president since the peaceful, negotiated transition from Nakasone Yasuhiro to Takeshita Noboru in November 1987.

The first was the closed-door, five person negotiated agreement for Secretary-General Mori Yoshiro to take over the premiership from the brain dead but still on life support Obuchi Keizo, three days after Obuchi suffered his fatal stroke.

The other instance of a secretary-general succeeding a party president was Aso Taro taking over for Fukuda Yasuo when Fukuda suddenly resigned on September 1, 2008. Aso had only been in office a month, having been named secretary-general in a leadership shakeup on August 1.

The Aso case points out the main reason why most secretary-generals cannot usually make the direct transition from the party #2 position to the presidency. Under normal circumstances, the secratary-general has been the right-hand man to the president, as much responsible for the daily decisions, right or wrong, as the man in the #1 spot. The secretary-general has also always been seen as bearing ultimate responsibility for the LDP's performance in elections. Many a leadership transition was triggered by the party having a poor showing in an election, mandating that the secretary-general resign and serve a brief stint in limbo.

However, in this instance, the abrasiveness and shallow party roots of Ishihara's main challenger, foreign and security policy specialist Ishiba Shigeru, seem to be showing a green light for Ishihara's election, possibly even in the first round vote of the LDP local chapters.

The other challengers in the LDP race -- former prime minister Abe Shinzo, Machimura Nobutaka and Hayashi Yoshimasa -- seem to be in the race for tactical or public relations reasons.

Hayashi is the Washington think tank candidate -- fluent in English and a familiar face in Washington. He is, however, a member of the House of Councillors -- whose members are seen as not having a personal investment in the party's performance in the House of Representatives.  Hayashi is seen as being only technically available to step into the position of prime minister.

Machimura is the faction head candidate, participating so that the list of candidates has at least one faction head in it. Machimura's candidacy presents another hurdle for Machimura faction member Ishihara, as he would normally count on the votes of his faction as the core of his support in the Diet members' round of voting.

Abe is entering the race for purely tactical reasons. He used to be both the ultra-conservative and Washington think tank candidate. His breakdown while in office, unsurprisingly cooled most Washington and national interest. He does remain, however, the most recognizable of the unapologetic, fantastic history-believing nationalists. He is thus probably running in order to play the part of kingmaker in between Ishiba and Ishihara, extracting a promise of accelerated militarization and anti-Chinese and anti-South Korean stances in return for the votes of his supporters.

-- The window for declaring oneself a DPJ leadership candidate closed yesterday. With Hosono Goshi having been talked out of running on Friday last, a field of four candidates-- deridable as "Noda Yoshihiko and the Three Dwarfs" -- now are set for a whirlwind campaign ending on September 21. (E)

As Okumura Jun has noted, the explosion of interest in a Hosono candidacy last week was prima facie evidence that the three remaining Noda challengers -- Haraguchi Kazuhiko, Akamatsu Hirotaka and Kano Michihiko -- do not inspire. In speeches yesterday, each of the candidates, whilst criticizing the prime minister and his policy of accommodation with the LDP-New Komeito alliance, revealed his particular weakness. Haraguchi fulminated about the public's loss of faith in the party due to the abandonment of the promises in the 2009 manifesto. Haraguchi seems unaware that 1) manifesto author Ozawa Ichiro and his most of his acolytes decamped a few months ago, leaving a very small audience, at least among Diet members, for the "we have forgotten our roots" message.

Akamatsu's and Kano's candidacies seem more tactical, given their comparatively advanced ages (Akamatsu is 63; Kano 70). Akamatsu represents the potential votes of the party's under-appreciated socialists, while Kano can offer the votes of his own group and the votes of the members with a visceral hatred/fear of a DPJ commitment to participate in the Trans Pacific Partnership. Kano already has a history of vote trading, his support having been a crucial component of Noda Yoshihiko's victory over the Ozawa-supported Kaieda Banri in the 2011 leadership election.

Both Akamatsu and Kano railed against the three-party agreement that made the passage of the social welfare and pension reform bills possible. Noda defended it, and defended the extension of the three party agreement into the fall extraordinary session. Both sides are just blowing smoke, however. The three party agreement has falls into abeyance with Tanigaki's withdrawal from the LDP presidential race and the automatic evaporation on Spetember 8 of the bond issuance bill and electoral reform bill.

-- Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru on Sunday hosted a symposium (E) introducing the ideas that will vault his regional movement into a national political party, the Nihon (or Nippon) Ishin no Kai (the Japan Renewal Party or Japan Restoration Party. By the way, forget about running a search on 日本維新の会 -- what you get is the Facebook page of a Haraguchi Kazuhiko study group of the same name). At the seemingly interminable meeting (five hours in real time) Hashimoto introduced the seven members of the Diet who will today (Tuesday) tender their resignations from their current parties in time for the the JRA's coming out reception on Wednesday. That three of the seven are House of Councillors proportional seat members of the Your Party indicates the prescience of Michael Penn's private circulation article, of August 27, "Yoshimi Watanabe's Your Party in Terminal Crisis."

Of the remaining four defectors, three come from the DPJ and one from the LDP. Matsunami Kenta of the LDP is a proportional seat member of the House of Representatives, and from the Kinki bloc where Osaka is located. That the majority of the JRA's Diet members are proportional seat members indicates the cautious attitude district seat holders are taking with towards to Hashimoto's leap into national politics. That the majority of the defectors are also from the House of Councillors, rather than the more volatile and politically significant House of Representatives, indicates a further lack of certainty among those dissatisfied with the status quo that Hashimoto has coattails.

Also attending and speaking at the meeting were the usual suspects of devolution of power to local governments: former comedian and Miyazaki governor Higashikokubaru Hideo and two of The Three Hiroshis: former Kanagawa Yokohama pretty boy governor mayor Nakata Hiroshi and former revisionist textbook inceptor and Suginami City mayor Yamada Hiroshi, whose Spirit of Japan Party (Nihon soshinto) went nowhere. (J)

That Hashimoto featured these pre-August 2009 election retreads at his talk fest, and indeed wants them to run as Nihon Ishin no Kai candidates, indicates that for all the media interest and public opinion poll enthusiasm for the new party, there is little meat yet on the bones.

-- The deployment of MV-22 Osprey aircraft to the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station in Okinawa received what was ostensibly a significant blow on Sunday from a mass protest (E). Organizers claimed 101,000 persons participated in the rally. Aerial images on television seemed to indicate the size of the crowd was closer to 20,000, though it is possible thousands were, like crowd at the July 16 nuclear protest, hiding under the trees from the blazing sun.

Given that signing off on Osprey operations is electoral poison, it is likely that the final OK will be given by a lame duck Cabinet after after the results of a House of Representatives elections are in. That the U.S. Marine Corps generally gets what it wants means that the effectiveness of the protest is about as doubtful as its crowd numbers.

-- The purported suicide of Financial Services and Postal Reform Minister Matsushita is still the top of the news -- as a such a rare occurrence should be.

I loathe conspiracy theories and theorists but the official narratives so far regarding this case do not hold together. We are supposed to believe that a man found toppled over had hanged himself, or strangled himself with cords of some kind. We are being asked to believe that his security detail did not have a key to his condominium, having to use Minister Matsushita's wife's key to open the condominium front door. We are being asked to believe that he left goodbye messages to his wife, Prime Minister Noda and the Cabinet. We are being asked to believe that the imminent publication of a Shukan Shincho expose of a purported mistress may have pushed Matsushita to take his own life. (J)

As to the last claim, when you are seventy-three, recovering from prostrate prostate cancer and are revealed to have engaged in extra-marital shenanigans, you are well past the "this will ruin my career" stage.

Next up should be revelations of the content of the purported three goodbye notes.

Do I expect to be seeing the actual texts, ever?

No.

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

* Demonstrating that British comic writing has been in the dead-pan, self-referential subversion of the narrative voice business for a very long time.

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!" **

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

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

Photo courtesy: Mainichijp

Extended And Revised Thoughts On The Decision To Retry Ozawa Ichiro

Yesterday, the three lawyers appointed by the court to prosecute Ichiro Ozawa under Japan's Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution system announced they would be appealing the not guilty verdict the Tokyo District Court handed down on April 26. The decision to appeal comes less than 24 hours after the DPJ's Standing Officers Council voted to end the suspension of Ozawa's party privileges and 24 hours before the deadline for the three lawyers had to file an appeal.

Given that the lawyers had two weeks to make this decision, their choice to do so within the same news cycle as the DPJ executive's having made its move on reinstating Ozawa indicates that it is politics, not the law, that is driving this case.

Three major cases come to mind of countries with democratic elections where the courts have been used to prevent a challenger of the system from seizing upon his chance to take power: Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Russia and Ichiro Ozawa in Japan.

Elevating Ozawa to the level of the other two may seem perverse. After all, he has never spent a day in jail while the other two have languished in prison for years.

However, the cases are comparable in the use of pliant prosecutors and flimsy charges to effectively short-circuit the democratic process, to the benefit of politicians and corporate managements grown fat and lazy on crony, state-assisted capitalism and patronage.

While the cases of Anwar and Khodhorkovsky have served as reminders of just what kind of states Malaysia and Russia were and are, the judicial houndings of Ozawa and his aides have raised few warning bells worldwide. Indeed, the persecution of Ozawa has some in Washington dancing in the aisles. The 2009 arrest of Okubo Takanori, the beginning of the process that has led to yesterday's decision to retry, not only prevented the installation of a prime minister wishing to redefine the Japan-U.S. relationship as a more equal partnership but one seeking to meet the challenge of a rising China with an extended open hand rather than a closed fist.

The continued court cases against Ozawa and his subordinates also eat away at the support for the DPJ, which many in Washington see as a party too spiky and independent for the smooth operation of the Japan-U.S. military alliance.

However, those craving to see the return to power of a seemingly more U.S.-friendly and purportedly more competent LDP are either ignorant of history or in the pay of the wrong sorts of people. The LDP, as an illegitimate ruling party – which means its continued hold on power was dependent upon the suppression of votes – was a terrible interlocutor for the United States and the world. It was the party of delay, always whining about its inability to make good on its promises until “after the next election” – a plaint that tested the listener’s capacity to reason out, “But wait, after the next election, there will be another election, and after that, yet another…” Given their electoral lock on the country, LDP governments cared little that policy makers, journalists and scholars saw through this “wait until after the next election" canard  – and that under its thrall Japan would always underperform and punch below its weight. Under the"serious" and "seasoned" LDP, trade and IPR talks would drag out for decades, the Futenma-to-Henoko move went nowhere and the Self Defense Forces remained marginalized and internationally insignificant.

Some might argue that there are immediate benefits to this decision to retry Ozawa, that hobbling him will smooth the passage of important legislation tackling the national debt emboldening the Noda government to be more aggressive in pushing Japan into negotiations on joining the TPP. Unfortunately, opposition to the government's plans to raise the consumption tax, cut spending and join the TPP negotiations runs across the political spectrum. It is not just Ozawa.

There is the further problem that turmoil in Tokyo has promoted the rise of regional challengers to the main national triumvirate of the DPJ, the LDP and the New Komeito. The most successful and obvious of these is the Ishin no kai of Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto. These new regional movements are the wild cards now in Japan’s national politics. The old boys and the rare old girls of the bureaucracy and the non-profit foundations probably assuring their counterparts in the world's capitals that these new political forces can be tutored in the ways of behaving themselves on the international stage. However, there are no guarantees of that Hashimoto, Mayor Takashi Kawamura of Nagoya or other regionalists will listen to what their tutors tell them.

The legal persecution of Ozawa has had a corrosive effect on the development of a two-party system, where two legitimate, centrist, responsible parties with largely equal access to national office slug it out over differences in policy. Those who wave off what is happening with a dismissive “Ah, this is just the law finally catching up a grubby old time party hack, nothing new” have agendas of their own, obsfucating the truth being one of them.

Politics And Society In Comic Verse – Senryu of March 3, 2012

Haiku has a bastard cousin, senryu. If haiku takes a moment and seeks to make it poignant and timeless, senryu takes a subject, comments on it in the present time, then gleefully evaporates into nothingness.

Relentlessly topical, senryu have a lifespan of about two weeks, or sometimes even less. There are no schools or traditions to follow. Authors, invariably non-professionals with a gift for word play and a brazen willingness to tell bad jokes in public, take the basic 17 syllable verse unit – with some leeway as to how one defines 17 syllables — and run with it. Punning, rhyming, assonance and slipping parentheses are applauded, as are references to popular culture and most importantly, politics.

You can probably guess which poetry form I prefer.

Here is a selection of senryu from the Tokyo Shimbun of Saturday, March 3.

日本丸「八策」よりも「金策」急
Nihonmaru
hassaku yori mo
kinsaku kyu

The Japanese ship of state
Rather than the "Eight Proposals from the Ship"
Has to hurry up with "the scramble for cash"

Here the apposition is between the policy program of Hashimoto Toru's Ishin no kai which the proto-party has pompously called the “Eight Proposals from the Ship” (hassaku) in reference to Sakamoto Ryoma’s reform proposals of the same name — and the grubby search for revenues, including seizing dormant bank accounts, currently gripping the government (kinsaku). Both hassaku and kinsaku have the same second Chinese character. "Nihonmaru" is here used both as a common metaphor for Japan and specifically as a ship reference, as Sakamoto composed his eight proposals while onboard a vessel.

お馬鹿キャラクイズに弱い防衛相
Obakakyara
kuizu ni yowai
boeiso

Our idiot role-player Minister of Defense
Who is weak at quizzes

or

Our Minister of Defense who is weak
At even quiz shows for idiots

Minister of Defense Tanaka Naoki has been an absolute disaster in parliamentary committee meetings. He has been constantly providing laughable interpretations of law, misunderstanding questions, pathetically stalling for time and coming back from gaffe after gaffe with apologies for either providing false information or no information. In this he is like an obakakyara, an archaismic version of the obakatarento, the “idiot celebrity,” the likes of whom have been infesting the airwaves en masse since five years ago. These are individuals, usually pretty young women, who have absolutely nothing in between their ears. Their abject stupidity is their charm. They are popular guests on certain quiz shows, or at least get booked on them, precisely because the answers they concoct are so idiotic.

再建に記憶絞れよエルピーダ
Saiketsun ni
Kioku shibore yo
Erupida

In restructuring
Let's extract some memory, shall we?
Elpida

The word play is in the phrase "extracting memory" (kioku shibore) since Elpida, which filed for bankruptcy last week, is a memory chip maker. The writer is hoping that Japan's powers that be learn something from the experience of trying to cobble together and prop up a national champion manufacturer in an industry where Japan has no clear national competitive edge.

言うだけの番長やがて腰くだけ
Iu dake no
bancho yagate
koshi kudake

The gang leader who just talks tough (iu dake no bancho)
Has at last had to take a fall

On the 23rd of last month, Maehara Seiji, the Democratic Party of Japan's policy research chairman, took the extraordinary step of banning from his press conferences the right-wing national Sankei Shimbun. The Sankei had it coming, as it is, to be polite, a "fact-challenged" newspaper. The Sankei raged, the other newspapers tut-tutted, but Maehara stood firm. Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, when asked what he thought of the brouhaha, did not say that he supported the action. He did say, however, that he would leave the matter up to Maehara. After five days, Maehara let the Sankei back in. When the Sankei reporter asked his first question — "Why did you ban us?" – Maehara shot back, "You wrote things not based on facts. As the questions and answers you had in your text never took place, I refused you entry." (J)

What is interesting here is the author takes the Sankei's view of the incident – which is all the more interesting as the Tokyo Shimbun is a card-carrying lefty paper. He (and it is a he, as the names of the authors along with the towns they live in are listed alongside the verses) says that Maehara had to bend at the hips and fall (koshi kudake) which, given the broadside Maehara shot off at the Sankei reporter (which all the other papers dutifully and merrily reproduced) is a very idiosyncratic interpretation of the outcome. He also uses a slightly modified version of the Sankei's personal epithet for Maehara, the "gang-leader who just talks" (iudake bancho) which is itself a near homophone of a famous manga series Yuyake bancho (You Tube video). The first four syllables of the poem (iu dake) also rhyme with the last three syllables (kudake).

Here is one for the Japan-U.S. alliance fans, one which is also blessedly straightforward:

普天間と辺野古動かぬ千日手
Futenma to
Henoko ugokanu
sen'nichite

Futenma and Henoko
The endless series of non-moves

Sen'nichite, according to my dictionary, is a term from shogi describing "a potentially endless repetition of moves leading to a draw." Which, 15 years into the process, is a damn accurate description of the Futenma mess.

If you have persevered this far, time for some serious play.

ハシズムもいつかはシズム時がある
Hashizumu mo
itsu ka wa shizumu
toki ga aru

Hashism
Will also have its time when
It will sink

or

Hashism will also have its time

Those skeptical of or antagonistic toward Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru’s blend of enforced patriotism, browbeating opponents and lacerating bureaucrats deride his political program as hashizumu (“Hashism”) a play on fascism (fuashizumu).

The joke in this poem is in the way shizumu, “to sink” is written in katakana, rather than in kanji and/or hiragana,. It follows the topic marker wa, written as it should be with ha of hiragana. Together, the wa and the shizumu together become hashizumu, repeating the first word.

Then there are the senryu that, try as I might, I am at a loss to understand.

原発は嫌とムンク「叫び」たり
Genpatsu wa
Iya to Munku
"Sakebi" tari

Ok, we have the reference to Edward Munch's "The Scream." We have folks screaming that they hate nuclear power plants. How it all fits together, seeing as how there are only six syllables in the middle line, defeats my meager powers of interpretation.

Anyone willing to have a go at it?

Why One Can Admire This Man

Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko has finished his two-day visit to Okinawa. He paid the obligatory visit to the Himeyuri Monument and also the War Dead memorial. He, however, had a private, informal dinner with the governor at the governor's residence, the sort of respectful yet warm and egalitarian gesture that escaped the grasp of his predecessors. In the formal meeting at the prefectural government offices the next day, the PM apologized profusely for the conduct of various officials and his party, putting the governor in the position of the superior. The governor reciprocated as good manners demanded, by saying a magnanimous, "No, no, no need to apologize."

It is both encouraging and sad to see Prime Minister Noda trying to make amends for the supercilious attitudes of his many predecessors. He had a tough message to transmit: that the move of Marine Corps elements from Futenma Airbase to a new base to be built at Henoko was the only possible solution to the danger posed by Futenma's continued operation. It is a deeply unpopular message, even on the mainland -- the Mainichi Shimbun (J) and Asazuba! newscast this morning castigating the PM for calling the move to Henoko the only effective solution (Henoko isetsu ga yu'itsu, koka na hoho). However, he delivered the message with such humility and reason that in a less enervated time, he might have pulled the Henoko rabbit out of his hat. As the atmosphere on the island is irrevocably poisoned -- that the PM must abnegate himself for a plan that the rival Liberal Democratic Party agreed to but never carried out -- is deflating.

Noda perseveres, putting his shoulder to wheel on issues like pension reform, raising of the consumption tax, closing down Futenma and building the Henoko Replacement Facility, watching his public popularity plummet despite his bringing responsibility and dignity to the office in which serves. That many of his efforts look Sysiphian, or destined to collapse into failure -- especially now that the near certain exoneration of Ozawa Ichiro and the now undeniable unconstitutionality of dissolving the Diet exposes him to a revolt from within this spring, elicits a sigh of pained resignation. Were it that Noda or his like in charge of the country a decade ago, these these many gestures, courtesies and displays of spine would have made a huge difference.

Now...so much is exhausted, broken and hobbled with cynicism.

Enough About Hashimoto Toru Already!

Why this sudden focus on Hashimoto Toru? Why not write about some other important topic, one with greater interest to the international relations crowd? What about the stunning package deal on the movement of U.S. Marines announced a week ago?

OK, yes it was remarkable that the United States relented on having the return of five facilities in southern Okinawa (including Naha Port!) being conditional on the building of a Futenma Replacement Facility at Henoko. Yes, it was historic that the plan to move 8,000 Marines and their dependents to Guam was downsized to sending only 4,700 Marines to Guam, with the remainder of those slated for redeployment scattered about the Asia-Pacific. (Link)

Nevertheless, one has to wonder who the genius was -- whether it was someone in the U.S. Pentagon or, in a brilliant reverse strike against the congenitally anti-bureaucrat Democratic Party of Japan, a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and/or the Ministry of Defense -- who had the brilliant idea of proposing to send 1,500 of the Futenma Marines to Iwakuni, in Yamaguchi Prefecture. (Link)

For it is not often that just days after signing off on what is purported to be a big win for Japanese diplomacy (Link - E) that the government of Japan has to send two cabinet ministers to visit a prefectural governor and a mayor and assure them with their heads bowed that under no circumstances is the government of Japan considering to send more Marines their way (Link) -- especially as the threat of such a move led to the mayor of Iwakuni City to cancel a land sale necessary for the provision of housing to the U.S. Navy service members and their dependents already being moved out of the Atsugi Airbase. (Link)

Technically, the 1,500 Marines to Iwakuni proposal is a snafu, the result of not thinking something through -- and thinking things through is sort of what government officials are paid to do.

So somebody -- or a lot of somebodies -- did not do his/her/their job(s).

Now, as to Hashimoto Toru, the latest stunning revelation -- and it is a doozy -- is that upon discovering that Osaka City employees last November carried out anti-Hashimoto campaign activities using Osaka City property (Link - J) the man-in-a-awful-hurry ordered all of Osaka City's 35,000 employees to fill out a questionnaire detailing their political and union activities, requiring them to return it by the 16th (yesterday - Link - J).

The local teacher's union told Hashimoto to go take a hike (Link - J). Japan's Communist Party is in a complete, slavering snit (Link - J). Japan's national bar association has told Hashimoto he was out of his mind (Link - J).

Something about the mayor's order being a violation of the Constitution, something about Article 14, Article 15, Article 19...Article 21...Article 28...

Why did Hashimoto bother to do this? He won the election, running away. Furthermore, what Osaka City employee in his or her right mind would fill out the questionnaire truthfully?

The incident just adds another brick to the wall of what is being derisively referred to as Hashimoto's "Hashism."

Hatoyama Never Ceases To Amaze

Due to his bulging eyes and spacey pronouncements, former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio earned the sobriquet "the Alien." To be sure, he acts as if he is from another planet.

The planet Horse Manure.

When will the man stop making nonsense promises?

Yesterday, in Muroran City, he told a group of 700 supporters he wanted to change the Chinese characters of his name Yukio (由紀夫) to Yuukio (友紀夫) in order to promote his and his father's concept of yuuai (友愛). (J)

Sure. Like he is going to change the pronunciation of his name to something ridiculous.

Like he said:

- he would move the operations of the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma outside of Okinawa Prefecture (19 July 2009)

- "Trust me" to U.S. President Barack Obama, when asked whether or not he had a solution to the Futenma problem. (13 November 2009)

- he was "totally unaware" of the hundreds of millions of yen his mother donated to his political funding organization (25 December 2009)

- he would have a solution to the Futenma problem by the end of May 2010 (7 January 2010)

- in the Diet testimony that he had "a secret plan" to solve the Futenma plan (31 March 2010)

- to supporters in Hokkaido that he would not seek reelection to his Diet seat (made June 2010, rescinded on 18 December 2010)

- he had secured the resignation in the very near future of Prime Minister Kan Naoto (claimed on 2 June 2011, repudiated by Kan on 3 June 2011)

It remains an open question of course, whether or not Hatoyama will, upon his retirement from the Diet, take up farming (21 February 2010).

Somehow, I would not bet on it.

Ozawa Ichiro sure did the party a favor when he railroaded the election of Hatoyama to head the Democratic Party of Japan in May 2009. Yep, he foisted upon the country a real leader for a new age.

Hi, My Name Is Tanaka Naoki And I Do Not Know Anything

It was cruel. It was theater.

On the one side was Koike Yuriko, the Iron Butterfly, attack dog of the Liberal Democratic Party in the non-Japanese media.

On the other was Tanaka Naoki, the Minister of Defense, about whom not much of substance can be said.

Koike - "What is the strategic goal of 'AirSea Battle'"?

Tanaka - "We welcome the new strategy of the United States...but as far as what has been said so far, I don't really understand it."

Koike - " Uhhh...I am at a loss for words...but seriously, in the ABCs of defense, this is 'A'."

(Link - J)

***

What was he thinking? The "he" in this case being Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, who plucked Tanaka out from well-deserved obscurity to take over for the disastrous Ichikawa Yasuo, he of the "I am an amateur in defense matters...but this is the very essence of civilian control [of the military]" fame. The guy who did not know about the 1995 child rape case that set off the frantic rounds of Japan-U.S. discussions resulting in the plan to move Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to Henoko. The guy who was censured by the House of Councillors for his embarrassing lack of knowledge of defense matters.

Noda should have known the knives would be out for his next minister of defense. He should have known he would have to pick a sharpie to meet the onslaught from the opposition.

So what does the PM do? He picks his new minister of defense based on the number of times the man in question has been elected to the House of Councillors...because the cabinet needs to have a balance of members from the House of Representatives and from the House of Councillors.

It has been a raining snafus ever since.

- The promise to "begin construction at the Henoko site by the end of the year." Huh? Anyone tell the governor of Okinawa about this? (E)

- Confusing the weapons usage restrictions placed on Self Defense Forces members when they are assigned to peace-keeping operations with Japan's three principles on arms exports. (E)

- Upon visiting the city of Ginowan, where the operations of helicopters in and out of the Futenma base are viewed as a threat, particularly since one fell on a nearby university in 2004, Tanaka remarked to his aide, "There don't seem to be so many [helicopters flying about]." (E)

- When asked what country's forces will be cooperating with SDF personnel in a PKO in South Sudan, Tanaka responds, "That has not been decided yet." His senior vice minister pipes up, "The request has been put to a Bangladeshi construction battalion." Tanaka is forced to apologize. (E)

- Leaving the committee room from the same questioning session without informing the chair, Tanaka brings the session to a halt. When he returns 15 minutes later to cries of "Where have you been?" he apologizes for disappearing, saying that since his nose had been running uncontrollably he had gone to his office to get some cold medicine. (J)

- So frustrating the LDP's Sato Masahisa with his answers that the former SDF colonel and commander of Japan's forces in Iraq blurts out, "Gibberish! Trying to debate policy with an unqualified individual like you just drives one out of one's mind!" (J)

In an essay published by the East Asian Forum last week, I described Defense Minister Tanaka Naoki as a defense naïf. In my first draft, I had used the phrase "defense ignoramus." On the advice of friends, I softened my remark.

Possibly a bad instance of self-censorship.

The irony in all this? Prime Minister Noda's father was a career SDF man...a fact not lost on former colonel Sato:

"Prime Minister Noda's father was an SDF soldier. In his heart, the PM must be thinking, 'I would hate to have had my father working under this man.'" (ibid - J)

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...

Take That, Perfidious Sea Slug!

On Christmas Eve I likened Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko to a marine invertebrate, disgusted at his floopy defenses of awful, divisive decisions made by his government last week.

Well, it seems that an onslaught of feelings of disgust and dismay are washing about the prime minister right now, so much so it is hard for him to keep his head above the froth. How lucky that he spent the weekend in China and this evening hopped aboard a plane to India.

Where to begin?

- The F-35 decision - Liberal Democratic Party defense policy wonk Ishiba Shigeru, who has never been known to oppose any military acquisition before, promises in an interview with the Tokyo Shimbun (J) that his party will grill the government in Diet Budget Committee session. Ishiba quite clearly believes that the decision was a political one, to please the government of the United States when the Democratic Party of Japan has made such a hash of handling the Futenma Replacement Facility controversy. He is also convinced that the F-35 is simply the wrong plane to purchase at this time.

When you have lost a confessed military otaku as Ishiba over an order for a cutting-edge weapons system of primarily U.S. manufacture, you have really messed up.

- The Yamba Dam decision - DPJ Policy Research Council Chairman Maehara Seiji told the prime minister and the chief cabinet minister that a decision to restart the cancelled Yamba Dam project would not garner party support. DPJ Secretary-General Koshiishi Azuma echoed Maehara view. Acting Secretary General Tarutoko Shinji said the party will not support the decision. To this, Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osamu seems to have responded something on the lines of "What we have here is a failure to communicate." The three party officials threw up their hands and deferred to the government's wishes to restart the miserable project.

Well, what has happened, aside from every media outlet pointing out that the restart of the dam project represents a final turning away from the promises set out in the party's 2009 electoral manifesto? Nakajima Masaki, a proportional seat holder from the Northern Kanto Bloc has announced his intention to leave the DPJ, with support for his decision from the DPJ's district seatholders (J). In addition, Ishizeki Takashi, the party's Representative for Gunma District #2, is resigning from all of his party posts. In the party's Tax Committee meeting on Monday, which was supposed to discuss the government's various tax proposals including a rise in the consumption tax, two of the three hours of the meeting was taken up by opponents of the Yamba Dam airing their complaints about the decision.

- The Budget and Tax Proposals - The prime minister wants to have all discussions of the budget and tax rise proposals finished by the end of the year. A budget put together seemingly without rhyme or reason was approved on Saturday, with provisos to set in motion a rise of the consumption tax. The rush to push through all the decisions on these proposals before the end of the year has result in severe party discord. Three DPJ Representatives have announced they are leaving the party in a protest against the precipitous raising of the consumption tax. They hope to lead another seven to eight Representatives out with them and form a new political party (J). In another move, 89 first term members of the House of Representatives have sent a joint message to the party leadership that before the government can consider imposing a rise in the consumption tax on the citizens, the DPJ must follow through on its promise to cut the number of Diet members -- this even though the most of the seats to be cut would come from amongts those held by the first-termers.

Seems like some folks still have some spine and revolutionary spirit in the DPJ after all.

To be sure, the multiple rebellions and threats seems to be taking their toll on the heretofore unflappable PM. On the news tonight, his right eyelid was drooping, making the man look as though he needed a shave, a shower and a full night's rest.

Maybe he will get some sleep on the plane.