About That Revolution You Are Fearing

The insurgency began
And you missed it...

- REM, Begin the Begin (1986)

On April March 15, this summer's House of Councillors election became irrelevant. On that Friday, the House of Councillors approved, with coalitions shifting on every vote, the appointments of Kuroda Haruhiko as Governor of the Bank of Japan and Iwata Kikuo and Nakaso Hiroshi as deputy governors.

With these nods, the House of Councillors ceased to have a part to play in governing Japan. High appointments are the only matters requiring the approval of both Houses of the Diet. All other governance issues can pass into law via the supermajority the ruling Liberal Democratic Party/New Komeito coalition holds in the House of Representatives.

The only function the House of Councillors now serves is as a brake upon constitutional revision. The LDP and the Japan Restoration Association will be campaigning hard on the issue of revision in July. However, it is impossible for the two parties to win the necessary 2/3rds of the seats in the House of Councillors.

The existing state of legislative tyranny creates the conditions for some strange requests. Last week, Prime Minister Abe had a meeting with Osaka City mayor and JRA co-leader Hashimoto Toru at the Prime Minister’s Residence. In the course of the meeting, the prime minister asked Hashimoto for JRA support of the government’s budget, stating:

"If the JRA supports the budget bill, we will earn the public’s approval, even if the bill is rejected by the House of Councillors and has to be passed using the override."

(Link - J video)

Put into less convoluted terms, the prime minister's request reads, "We are going to pass the budget using our 2/3rds majority in the House of Representatives if the House of Councillors rejects it. Can you provide the political cover for our steamrolling of the legislation?"

What is the really weird part about Abe's gambit? Not that Abe is asking the Hashist to provide a fig leaf for the ruling coalition's naked use of power. No, what is weird is that under Article 60 of the Constitution, the passage of a budget does not require an override – the budget becomes law effective 30 days after the House of Representatives gives its approval, no matter what.

True, Abe could be talking about the full package of the budget and its enabling legislation, particularly the bond issuance bills to which Democratic Party of Japan prime ministers Kan Naoto and Noda Yoshihiko both had to sacrifice their premierships. Passing the enabling legislation will require the approval of both Houses, and barring the approval of the House of Councillors, the use of the 2/3rds override majority in the House of Representatives.

Of course, that Abe even asked Hashimoto for cover reveals an interesting lack of self-confidence on the part of the prime minister and his party. This could be because the use of the override is constitutionally suspect, the product of the LDP's and the New Komeito's margin of victory in the tainted December 2012 election.

However, reticence toward use of the override extends back before the courts made clear their disgust with the inequalities of the House of Representatives voting districts. Back in 2007-08, prime minister Fukuda Yasuo and the LDP embarrassed themselves repeatedly by failing to use the override majority to keep vital pieces of legislation from becoming defunct.

Some have argued a cultural distaste for the bald use of constitutional powers. Such a proclivity may indeed exists.

A self-interest explanation for earlier restraint would be that the smart elements of the LDP sensed that the party could not use the override without triggering questions about the legitimacy of House of Representatives elections. Had earlier LDP governments used supermajorities again and again to railroad controversial or blatantly self-serving legislation through the Diet, the courts might have stepped in earlier to rectify imbalances in the sizes of the districts -- something the LDP really wanted to avoid.

Later - Thanks to reader PW for alerting me to the error in the first line.

Sourabh Gupta on Japan's Security Policy Choices

Sourabh Gupta is a Senior Research Associate at Samuels International Associates and an East Asia Forum Distinguished Fellow. He frequently delivers an intellectual EMP blast, knocking folks' lights out on the other side of the planet.

In his most recent piece published by the EAF, Gupta makes a series of predictions regarding Japan's security policies:

The separate approaches in terms of strategic concepts, command, control and battle management systems, operational planning and crisis action procedures will not be abolished. Rather, a fresh division of bilateral roles and mission responsibilities will progressively chip away at the separation – a process that from Tokyo's point of view will be geared as much to advancing the 'normal nation' defence capabilities as to enhancing interoperability within the alliance. Japan used activities conducted under alliance auspices in Iraq and Afghanistan — such as participation in multinational peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, deploying forces overseas during times of active hostilities, and liberalising rules on supplying weapons and transporting armaments — to push the boundaries of Japanese rearmament.

Similarly, a carefully calculated set of constitutional reinterpretations can be expected to pass into legislation in coming years. The effect of these reinterpretations will be progressively to blur definitional lines between conflict and post-conflict operations, combat and non-combat zones, and military and policing activities, which still limit Japan's involvement in alliance missions within carefully prescribed thresholds. The right to exercise collective self-defence in narrowly circumscribed situations in areas surrounding Japan will also be admitted. Fundamentally though, the geopolitical separation that is built into the heart of the alliance, and the corresponding flexibility to hedge against entrapment or abandonment, will be preserved.

(Link)*

If Abe Shinzo's Liberal Democratic Party and Hashimoto Toru's Japan Restoration Party do well enough in the next election, and if the two parties can find a way to cooperate despite Hashimoto's titanic ego and narcissism, maybe.

I am even less sure about the claims made in this passage:

First, unlike the British interest in manipulating the continental balance of power, the notion of aligning against the stronger power to contain its influence is at odds with the Japanese tradition. Rather, the inclination of statecraft has been to pursue policies of strategic detachment or isolation. The next best option, when this has not been possible, is to forge amicable ties with whichever foreign state appeared to demonstrate the most impressive combination of military, economic and cultural power. Equally, efforts by Great Britain and US in the modern era and China throughout much of Japanese history to involve Japan in the region's strategic balance have mostly been unsuccessful because Tokyo has avoided a too-intimate strategic association with its foreign ally or mentor. Japan is not the UK of East Asia and will not assume the role of regional offshore balancer.

Second, the meteoric rise of China at a time of receding US primacy is placing Japan's choices at odds with its enduring principles.

Adaptive resilience to the reality of Chinese power is not the issue here. The stability of central authority in Beijing has been among the surest guarantors of Japan's domestic stability and external security. Rather, it is the need to hedge against the destabilization that is rippling through the East Asian periphery, as a by-product of the rise of Chinese power. A stable, ideally prosperous, periphery has been the indispensable condition of Japan's national security. Historically, the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Strait have served as the outer ramparts of Japan's defence perimeter. Time and again power vacuums or instability on the peninsula and within the straits have tempted entanglements in Korea and Taiwan, and stability has allowed Japan's strategic view to turn homewards.

First, two technical issues. One, meteors tend not to rise. They tend to either burn up in the upper atmosphere (luckily this is most of the time) or hit the ground, becoming meteorites. Only the occasional one is on the right course and has sufficient mass and momentum to take take the brief tour through Earth's upper atmosphere only to rise up into space. Two, for most of Japan's history, Tokyo has not been the de jure capital or even the de facto capital. Using Tokyo as a shorthand for Japan's government is unsound (the use of Beijing as a shorthand for China's government may be, depending on how far back in time Gupta wishes us to look, similarly unsound).

As to more substantive issues, while it is hard to argue with the recurring patterns in the historical record, this blessed land happens to be no longer under military management, as it was for most of the last 900 years. Talk of enduring principles without reference to the type of government a state has at a particular time seems a leap of faith.

Subtracting democratic governance also leads to errors in gauging the intensity of a government's responses. Democracy tends at once a force multiplier in defense and a dampening factor upon the expansionist inclinations of states. For those who note the two century-old tendency of the United States to go marching out on military expeditions of varying length all around the globe ("From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli," as the U.S. Marine Corps' hymn puts it) despite its democratic form of government, the resultant empire is, Robert Dujarric puts it, largely an informal one.

As for stability and prosperity on China's periphery, that is a great concept. A swing around the states on China's periphery, however, finds damn few that are either stable or prosperous. Nevertheless, China has signed agreements with most of them delineating its borders, setting hard limit on the China/Not China divide.

Indeed, the more legitimate and stable a government is and the more prosperous the state, the less likely it is that China will have resolved its differences with it (Those in the back with their hands up, South Korea is both effectively an island state, separated as it is from China by the black, uncrossable moat that is North Korea, and also in a fight with China over ownership of Socotra Rock).

The contention that instability or power vacuums in Beijing or on the Korean peninsula are goads to Japan's intervening in continental affairs belongs in the "Been There/Done That" tray. The Korean peninsula is divided, with two states on a hair-trigger and one of those states undergoing a halting and stilted leadership transition. And Japan is...where? Furthermore, "stability has allowed Japan's strategic view to turn homewards" is an Ann Elk Theory.

On a final note, Gupta needs to talk to the editors of the EAF regarding his previous featured post, "Japan and China's latest spat over the Senkakus" (23 September 2012). Not one -- and this is not necessarily his fault -- of the links in the essay seems to connects to a text supporting the assertion Gupta is making.

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* For reader/blog author Janne Morén, a warning. Clicking on the link will bring you into contact with such a liberal use of unmoored quotations marks as to put you off your lunch.

Abe Shinzo: The Remembering

Some subjects are just not funny. This post will be about one of them. If you are visiting for the usual irreverent take on the Japanese political scene, you should probably stop reading now.

In honor of the zeitgeist, I will address the subject directly, though he is not really here.

Abe-san,

Forgive me for addressing you as an equal. I know you are not used to it.

Abe-san, you frighten me. On Wednesday the 29th, you went to the offices of Machimura Nobutaka, your faction leader, to tell him you are running for the position of president of the Liberal Democratic Party. (E)

I knew relations between you and Machimura were bad. I knew this on April 23, when the Machimura faction held its annual fundraising party. I was there; you were not.

Incidentally, the take at the party you did not attend? 600 million yen. Not bad for a guy whose leadership you fail to respect.

I hope, I pray that you told Machimura of your intention to run only to dissuade Machimura himself from running, as he has indicated he might. I hope, I pray that your formation of a study group, the usual first step toward a run for the presidency, is just a feint. I hope, I pray that the sixty-one lawmakers signed up for your study group are just a show of force by what used to be called the "non-mainstream" segment of the LDP, not the nucleus of an actual support group.

I hope, I pray that on September 14, your name will not be among the roster of candidates.

As a defender of the Democratic Party of Japan, which has never had a serious chance at undoing 54 years of LDP malfeasance, I should be dancing a jig on the tatami. There is no potential leader of the LDP that the DPJ would rather run against. You have foreign policy prescriptions that would have would have the entire region in flames (You have limited your study group's focus to the revitalization of Japan's economy so maybe even you have some awareness of just how inflammatory your security views are). Your silver-spoon-in-mouth upbringing just irks, in comparison to DPJ leader Noda Yoshihiko's relatively modest beginnings and Hashimoto Toru's emergence from the muck. Your history of political thuggery, of simply ignoring the opposition (Remember June 30, 2007, the last day any business got done in the House of Councillors prior to the election? The vote after vote in the morning, every one with the same result: 123 to 96, 123 to 96, again and again? Remember how the opposition just gave up over the lunch break and did not return?) will be disinterred. Your groveling lust for power, refusing to follow the LDP's tradition of the party president resigning after the party suffers a humiliating electoral loss, will be revisited. The chaos that your refusal caused, making unclear exactly who was running the country in August 2007, will be page 4 analysis again.

And of course, your suddenly quitting as prime minister, after saying you would not. For medical reasons, even though you never mentioned them in your resignation speech.

Yes that.

Abe-san, you may not remember that last stunning week, almost exactly five years ago.

Let me help you.

You came back on Sunday night, from the APEC meeting in Sydney, burnt out. August had been a terrible month for you, with many of your party members screaming at you to resign, with Aso Taro conspiring with Yosano Kaoru to replace your "friends of Shinzo" cabinet with one to their and the faction leaders' liking. Your trip to India, Malaysia and Indonesia had been a complete bust politically and left you physically debilitated from the food and the travel. The Cabinet was reshuffled and blew up almost immediately, with Minister Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Endo Takehiko forced to resign after a week in office -- not at your request, but at the request of Aso and Kaoru, who had arranged to have themselves appointed LDP Secretary-General and Chief Cabinet Secretary, respectively.


Then came summit in Sydney. You promised Prime Minister John Howard and President George Bush that Japan would be their stalwart ally on the global stage, when you knew full well that upon returning to Tokyo Ozawa Ichiro's majority in the House of Councillors was going yo kill Japan's participation in Operation Enduring Freedom.

It was the last straw.

Upon your arrival back in Tokyo, you told Aso, who was waiting for you, "I cannot go on."

Unfortunately for you, you chose as your confidant a man with zero sensitivity as to human frailty, a man who when he became prime minister a year later appointed an alcoholic as his minister of finance, in the midst of the worst financial crisis the world had known in eighty years*.

He told you to gambaru, the most heartless and vapid of wishes.

The next day, Monday, you delivered a policy address opening the extraordinary session of the Diet that was so pugnacious and ambitious, it sounded delusional.

You somehow made it through Tuesday.

On Wednesday morning, however, either you or someone near you decided you were finished, done, finito, deep-fat fried. You resigned in the afternoon, claiming you were not capable of saving the Indian Ocean dispatch legislation.

Then on Thursday morning, you left the office of prime minister prematurely, never to return.

Abe-san, do you remember how you left?

Not in the back of ambulance, like most persons suffering from acute, chronic gastroenteritis would. Not with your loving wife beside you. Not with a doctor monitoring you. Not having arranged a formal transfer of your prime ministerial powers to another member of the Cabinet.

No, in the back car of a two-car motorcade packed with panicked SPs (Japan Secret Service) with you in the back seat of the second vehicle, barreling through traffic to the Keio University Hospital.

Remember?

I will be honest: your breaking down was the first hint I ever caught of your being human. Your previous behavior, until the voters of Japan liberated us of you, left me speechless with horror.

Which is why I am terribly afraid at the news you want to be LDP president again.

The LDP, the country, does not need a leader as brittle and fragile as a glass vase, especially as the next LDP leader will be facing a political situation many times more complex, more poisonous and more energy-sapping that the one that felled you in 2007. The LDP, the country does not a new improved bullet proof Abe Shinzo either. You are the archetype of the fantabulist conservative, a man who disdains his country and its people, wanting through revisions of the education system and the Constitution to create a new citizenry, replacing the one you cannot stomach.

Whichever Abe Shinzo you are, after your five years of rest, you should not be running for the presidency of the LDP.

Sincerely,

MTC

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* A belated word of praise for the bizarrely departed Nakagawa Shoichi. To his eternal credit, until that fateful plane flight to Italy, he had remained, probably for the longest period of his adult life, clean and sober. He was an addict, in the grips of a terrible addiction, yet for the good of the country and world he toughed it out.

A Brief Rumination On Ozawa Ichiro, With A Long Detour Through A Condemnation Of The LDP

I have been accused for being unfairly negative toward Ozawa Ichiro, both here and in private communications.

I have always found these accusations rather peculiar. I have consistently argued that Ozawa was the victim of a baseless persecution in the public sphere.I have argued repeatedly that the charges filed against him and his aides were bogus; that his shady reputation was just that, a reputation, not a fact; that he was a bugbear of The Establishment and had suffered for it.

Often the accusations come from a misreading of my characterization of Ozawa's responsibility for a particular political situation. In my post of the other day, I seemed to be intimating that the Liberal Democratic Party learned from Ozawa its knee-jerk and unpatriotic automatic naysaying to any proposal of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, its constant calling for new elections and its criticism of every act of the governments of Kan Naoto and Noda Yoshihiko.

If this were the takeaway from my assertion, the result would be a gross misrepresentation of history. Ozawa did repeatedly call for elections during his tenure as party leader of the DPJ. He also used his party's majority in the House of Councillors to stymie government initiatives, particularly the renewal of the dispatch of Maritime Self Defense Forces ships to the Indian Ocean as a part of Operation Enduring Freedom and the renewal of the temporary tax on gasoline.

These positions were based not on an unthinking saying of "no" to every government act or policy but on fundamental principles.

After the Koizumi years, the LDP was a spent force. Execrable notions -- such as Japan could be revived as an economic and political power through the reimposition of pre-1945 respect for authority and enforced patriotism -- were not laughed out of the room but the foundation of national policies. The party's last three pre-August presidents were either the sons or grandsons of prime ministers.

After Koizumi, the LDP had no business being in power.

As for the Indian Ocean dispatch and the gasoline tax, the first challenged the constitutional limits of MSDF actions. The dispatch may have been indispensible for the maintenance of the Japan-U.S. alliance -- but it should have been explained as such, not painted over with a cavalcade of nonsense. The gasoline tax had been imposed at the height of the 1973 Oil Crisis. It had been renewed without explanation or justification for over thirty years.

In all three instances, the crucial issue was government accountability. The DPJ was demanding it because the LDP was not providing it.

However, in the basic running of the government, the DPJ, despite being the opposition party, worked with the LDP, or at least did not impede the government's delivery of basic government services. In part, this cooperation was due to the DPJ's having only limited powers, the LDP and the New Komeito together having a supermajority in the House of Representatives which could override any action or inaction of the House of Councillors, where the DPJ had the upper hand. However, the DPJ also understood that at loyal opposition had to be loyal, not just an opposition.

Once and only once did the DPJ use its legal powers to oppose the government. This was on the selection of the successor to Fukui Toshihiko as governor of the Bank of Japan. The DPJ told the LDP from the outset it would not accept as candidate an alumnus of the Finance Ministry. Out of purest contempt, the LDP sent not just one, but two alumni of the Finance Ministry as its candidates. These candidates the House of Councillors rejected. Finally, out of exasperation, the LDP proposed the academic and incumbent governor Shirakawa Masaaki, who was quickly confirmed.

What the LDP learned from these episodes were the most childish of lessons: a centrist political party had had the temerity to oppose the LDP. If the LDP is ever were in the opposition, it will oppose everything that that centrist party would propose.

Which is why we are where we are where we are today. The number of bills the government can push through during a Diet session is risible. A DPJ prime minister, in order to secure the support of three major bills (the limit it seems the LDP is willing to accept), one of which is the bill on bond issuance necessary for the government to pay its bills, must offer to resign. It happened to Kan; it is happening to Noda.

In a sense, it would be to the country's benefit for the DPJ to lose its majority in the next election. The DPJ at least has some sense of how to behave as an opposition party with some semblance of a conscience.

Of course, the LDP is even more spent as a force than when it was when it was tossed from power in 2009. It has nothing to offer to anyone, even its traditional constituencies in protected industries, big business and the rural areas.

That we are in the predicament we are in is in no small part due to Ozawa Ichiro's personal failings. His sense of entitlement, his obsessive need to be in charge, his inability to nurture talent, his incapacity to accept others as equals all contributed to his betrayal of the revolution he worked so hard to bring about. Whatever the political scientists may say about inevitable things happening inevitably, personality and individual decisions matter. Had Ozawa, when Hatoyama Yukio offered him the position of secretary-general of the DPJ in the giddy days after the August 2009 wipe out of the LDP, turned Hatoyama down with a "It's time for someone else, someone with less political baggage, to secure the gains we have made," our political today discourse would be richer and more meaningful.


Later - For a report on what looks like another episode of Ozawa's spiteful pettiness getting the best of him, please read Okumura Jun's latest, "Assassin for Kikawada? Is Ozawa Crazy? But Will the DPJ Miss a Golden Opportunity? over at GlobalTalk 21.

Of Bets and Debts Blogged

Yesterday, I had the distinct pleasure of sharing at lunch at Aux Bacchanales with Okumura Jun, my reward for winning a gentlemanly bet with him" over the relative sizes of the anti-nuclear demonstrations on June 29 and July 6.

However, I did not dine with a clear conscience. I had a longstanding pledge that I had never made good upon. Back in September of 2007, I pledged to eat my hat if the United Nations Security Council had actually included in one of its resolutions praise for the soon-to-be-expiring Maritime Self Defense Forces refueling mission to the Indian Ocean, a clause included at the insistence of Japanese diplomats in order to undermine the Ozawa Ichiro-led Democratic Party of Japan's refusal to approve an extension of the mission.

Incredibly, the story happened to be true.

Of course, as we know this sacrifice of Japan's prestige came to naught, as the DPJ-led House of Councillors did not pass the extension legislation by the November 1 expiration date of the previous extension, requiring the LDP to use its supermajority in the House of Representatives to renew the Indian Ocean dispatch in the next year.

Anyway, I had never consumed my hat, as I had pledged to do.

Until yesterday.

The below concoction is known as a Texas Straw Hat. It comprised of ground meat, tomato products, onions, cheese, spices, lettuce and unsalted, plain corn chips.

It was consumable.

My debt is paid up, my conscience is now clear.

Many, many thanks to Okumura-san for the recipe.

China's Non-Existent Takeover of Japan's Refueling Mission in the Indian Ocean

It was OK when the Lowy Interpreter got taken in by this bit of Yomiuri Shimbun rigamarole. No damage done. However, when The Economist's Banyan blog reprints it, then one has to get out the intellectual herbicide, lest the garden of knowledge get completely overrun.

The original source of the fable of the Chinese Navy taking over Japan's refueling mission in the Indian Ocean was a January 11, 2009 front page story in the Sankei Shimbun. January 11 was Seijin no Hi, a national holiday and a traditional slow news day. Someone at the Sankei decided to take a few conversations with unnamed mid-level bureaucrats in the Ministry of Defense -- persons who have an incentive to invent threats, in order to justify the money we taxpayers are paying them -- dress up the result as leaks by unnamed persons "inside the government" that a serious likelihood exists of China taking over Japan's role in the Indian Ocean, supplying fuel to warships participating in Operation Enduring Freedom, and had a little fun.

So total was the ridiculousness of this idea, however, that not even the author of the piece could keep a straight face about it. Near the end of the article, there was an admission that the actual likelihood of Chinese ships refueling American ones was zero.

That is where is all should have ended. Unfortunately, as I noted here, the Yomiuri Shimbun seems to have lost all sense of shame since the Liberal Democratic Party's fall from power last year. The Yomiuri dressed up the Sankei's thinly-sourced bit of fun as fact, having not even the decency, as the Sankei had, to reveal that its "government sources" were in act, nobodies spouting irresponsible speculation.

The rest, as they say, is hysteria.

Later - Yes, it is demoralizing when a purportedly serious public intellectual like Takushoku University professor Morimoto Satoshi lends credence to this story by revealing his "fear" that China's "might" take over Japan's role.

Even later - Curiouser and curiouser. I could not find the online version of original Sankei Shimbun article because the title of the online version is completely unlike title of the printed version I read on January 11. On the other hand, the title of the original printed Sankei Shimbun article title is repeated nearly verbatim in the title of the Yomiuri Shimbun article that appeared five days later.

中国 引き継ぎ検討 (Sankei Shimbun, January 11)

インド洋での給油活動、中国が引き継ぎ検討 (Yomiuri Shimbun, January 16)

Cry plagiarism, Sankei Shimbun! Or at least bragging rights!

Not ready for the Major Leagues

As the government tries to figure out why it took two hours to notify the prime minister of a collision between a fishing boat and the country's most advanced Self Defense Forces vessel--a delay making a mockery of any claims of an improvement in the country's crisis management since the inadequate response to the 17 January 1995 earthquake...or 31 August 1998 launch of the Taepodong missile over Japan...or Prime Minister Abe Shinzō's suddden incapacitation on 13 September 2007...(I think they get the picture, MTC - Editor) the Liberal Democratic Party finds itself scrambling in the Diet on the gasoline tax, stunned that the opposition refuses to abdicate its tactical advantages.

[Reversing gears for just a moment - that the MSDF Destroyer Atago's captain did not have clearance to blast an approaching fishing boat into oblivion before it could strike the very expensive bow of his very expensive ship must be disturbing to members of the coalition against terror. LDP faction leader Yamasaki Taku, always good for stating the incredibly obvious, worries that the accident may cast doubt the preparedness of Maritime Self Defense Forces deployed the Arabian Sea as regards possible small vessels suicide attacks. ]

Yesterday in the Diet, Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo demanded that the Democratic Party of Japan take a first step toward meeting the government halfway on the renewal of the temporary gasoline levy. Only if the DPJ showed its hand--by proposing its own plan on what to do about the tax--could the two sides begin the process of coming to some sort of compromise position, the agreed-to solution to the parliamentary impasse over the bill worked out by Speaker of the House of Representative Kōno Yōhei and Speaker of the House of Councillors Eda Satsuki in a special end-of-January intervention (assen).

The DPJ response so far to the government's entreaties: go leap into a large body of freshwater.

The DPJ's position recalcitrance is not without merit. The government proposal, a 10 year, 59 trillion yen commitment, is absurd. The DPJ has not dignified it with a response--and is right to refuse to do so.

The government's absurd overreach on its bill reveals an even more fundamental and chronic problem. The demand for an opposition bill on the gas tax indicates that some 7 months since suffering a shattering reversal at the polls in the July 2007 House of Councillors election, the ruling coalition still does not understand what an opposition does. The ruling coalition, with help from the country's constipated editorialists, keeps asking the opposition to be responsible, to stop trying to score political points, to stop trying to weaken the ruling party. For some reason, the opposition is supposed to act responsibly and soberly, resign itself to its secondary status and give up on its advantages--all this for the common good, in order to further the national interest.

"Sure," the DPJ keeps telling them, "We will be incredibly responsible and work to further the national interest...just as soon as we are in control of the government."

In terms of the gasoline levy, the ruling coalition still has not grasped that the DPJ, not the ruling coalition, owns the default position. If the government cannot entice the opposition to come to a compromise, the tax will die--just as the DPJ said that it should. The government has no means of forcing the issue -- unless it offers up its own throat, the DPJ will not come out and play. Calling the DPJ "unserious" and "immature" will gain applause from some sections of the commentariat--but will only encourage Ozawa Ichirō and the rest of the DPJ to continue to play truant on the gasoline levy.

Only yesterday, I was berating the Democratic Party leadership for ceding any ground to the ruling coalition in the debate over the gasoline levy. Given the LDP's pathetic, brain dead whining over the issue, I may have been overharsh in my criticisms.