Tokyo Gubernatorial Election 2016 - A Last Look

In a few minutes voting starts for the governorship of the Tokyo Metropolitan District(1). Twenty-one names are on the ballot but only a few are worth mentioning. Even fewer have a chance at making a splash.

The prize is a heck of a job - essentially the presidency of the world's 16th largest economy -- the part of Japan that generates, rather than immolates, revenues.

At this writing it looks like Koike Yuriko's Big Decision -- to defy the Liberal Democratic Party's national and Tokyo establishments by offering herself as a candidate -- will pay off with a big electoral win. The Iron Butterfly - my name for her given her hardline realist security policy views and her penchant of flitting from party to party as political expediency dictates -- is leading in the polls. Her main rivals -- former newscaster Torigoe Shuntaro and former Iwate Governor Masuda Hiroya -- have been trying to keep up with on the one hand crippled and the other tepid campaigns.

One has to be appalled by the Torigoe situation. A last minute choice of the four party electoral alliance of the Democratic Party, the Japan Communist Party and micro-party twins the Socialists and Livelihood (made after an inexplicable second-to-last minute dalliance with Abe Shinzo critic and major fruitcake Koga Shigeaki) Torigoe's hopes for victory were immediately torpedoed by tabloid tales of his having seduced an innocent 20 year old a decade ago. Torigoe did what his lawyers told him to do -- say nothing, prepare to sue, threaten with a police complaint of obstruction of an election -- which made him look like he was trying to bury the story. He had an obligation to save himself from extortion and possible prosecutorial misconduct over an incident he thought resolved years ago. Trying to run for governor – and get others excited about his run for the governorship -- at the same time has proven a titanic struggle.

LDP and Komeito's candidate Masuda Hiroya is probably one of Japan’s top thinkers on local administration. He has competently run Iwate Prefecture, shaking off the influence of his mentor Ozawa Ichiro in the process. He has been Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications. His May 2014 report on immanent catastrophic population declines in rural areas shook off decades of complacency about the "genteel decline" of Japan exurban environment.

Which is why it is both terrible and wonderful that his candidacy has failed to catch fire even with The Establishment. Terrible in that of all the persons seeking the governorship Masuda is the only one with even an inkling of how local administration works, what it is good at, what it must abandon and what, if anything, Tokyo can do to help revive the rest of Japan. Wonderful in that failure will mean that the poisoned chalice of the Tokyo Governorship will not devastate the career and reputation of a third of Japan's reformers. The snakepit of Shinjuku Ward devoured and then spat out Inose Naoki and Masuzoe Yo'ichi for non-criminal financial indiscretions. Losing Masuda as well to local Tokyo's politics would be Brechtian farce.

Down the ticket, the Tokyo election has attracted this year more than its usual share of right wing nut jobs courting the Empire Should Strike Back vote (a not-to-be ignored and not insignificant constituency, given soon-to-be-felon General Tamogami Toshio's stunning capture 600,000 votes in 2014). Chief among these awful crackpots is Sakurai Makoto (not his real name) the former chairman of the anti-Korean, anti-Chinese hate group the Zaitokukai. One hopes (OK, I hope) the plethora of wacky alternatives and a cooling of Sino-Japanese tensions over the Senkakus (credit to both Abe Shinzo and Xi Jinping for this) keeps him below 100,000 votes.

Turnout is expected to be light. Normally, low turnout would favor the LDP/Komeito candidate, backed as he is by the political machines of both parties. Not even low turnout, however, looks to derail Koike Yuriko’s bid to become the first woman to lead Tokyo.



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1) a neologism - the actual English name of Tokyo-to is "the Tokyo Metropolitan Government." I will try to convince the new governor to change the name as calling a geographical area a "government" makes zero sense.

Hitting The Road

Playground (2015). Image by MTC.

Why should I care?
Why should I care?

- Pete Townsend, "5:15" (1973)

There's no success like failure
and failure's no success at all.

- Bob Dylan, "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" (1965)

It was not a terribly good weekend for Democratic Party of Japan leader Okada Katsuya. Liberal Democratic Party/Komeito coalition-backed candidates won 10 out of 10 governor seats up for election. The LDP came out as the top seat holder in 40 of the 41 prefectural assemblies holding elections, the sole blot on the perfect record being in Osaka Prefecture. The DPJ finished out the day with fewer total seats in the both the prefectural and the 17 specially designated city assemblies. And to top it off someone hacked Okada's personal Twitter feed on Saturday, generating a flood of spam tweets to all of those following his feed.

The LDP did all right. Its candidates certainly won the governorships. However, only two of the races -- Hokkaido and Oita -- were competitive. In truth, not even the Oita race was competitive, as in former Socialist bastion Oita former Socialist prime minister Murayama Tomiichi campaigned for the LDP-Komeito candidate, an old friend of his. The LDP raised the number of prefectures where it holds an outright majority in the assembly from 21 to 24. It finished the day with 50.48% of all prefectural seats nationwide. On the minus side, the LDP's total number of prefectural seats fell by 43 to 1153.

The big winners were the Japan Innovation Party, the Komeito and the Communists. The JIP increased its national total in the prefectures from 62 to 70 seats and won a plurality if not a full majority of the seats in the Osaka prefectural assembly. The Komeito won every seat it contested on the prefectural level, going from 169 seats to 169 seats (demonstrating once again the party leadership's knowledge of its voters) and raised its seat totals in the specially designated cities from 172 seats to 174. Indeed only one Komeito candidate failed to win a seat on Sunday, coming up short in a race for a seat in the Osaka City assembly.

The Communists, in many races the only opposition candidate, had a field day. The JCP blasted from 75 total seats to 111 in the prefectural assemblies. The JCP now owns at least one seat in every prefectural assembly, including the six not holding election this cycle - a historic first for the party. In the specially designated city assemblies, the JCP moved past the DPJ as the #3 party in the nation, raising its seat totals in these cities from 103 seats to 136 (the LDP is #1 with 301 seats, the Komeito #2 with 174).

All the wins and losses, however, come with a caveat: voter turnout was terrible. New record lows for voter turnout were set in 38 of the 41 prefectures holding assembly votes. In the specially designated city assembly races, 12 of 17 suffered new record low turnout. On average, voter turnout in the gubernatorial elections was down over 5% from turnout in 2011, the one big exception being the competitive race in Hokkaido. However, even in the Hokkaido gubernatorial race turnout declined, from 59.62% to 59.46%.

Average turnout for prefectural assembly (brown line) and gubernatorial (blue line) elections since 1947. Image courtesy Tokyo Shimbun.



Bad turnout of course favors the parties with strong with strong internal mechanisms guaranteeing dutiful voting by its members and clients. It disfavors, and indeed is a symptom of the weakness of, parties that rely attracting floating voters for their victories.

Hence, the DPJ did as well as it should have done -- which is not well at all.

There is a serious amount of specious framing going on of the results as well. News accounts have portrayed the DPJ's losses in the prefectural assemblies as devastating, with the Yomiuri Shimbun crowing:

In prefectural assembly elections in 41 prefectures, the total number of seats won by DPJ-backed candidates fell 82 from the previous elections to 264.

Of course, the Yomiuri's editors know full well that the DPJ of 2011 is not the DPJ of today. The DPJ that ran candidates in 2011 was the big tent DPJ, before the departures of Ozawa Ichiro and friends over the consumption tax rise and the skedaddling of the mostly Kansai-based opportunists to Hashimoto Toru's Isshin no kai.

A look at the numbers

Image courtesy: NHK News

shows that the DPJ was defending only 276 seats on Sunday. The party's candidates won 264 prefectural seats, a decline of -4.3% in the national total. The purported big winning LDP (for that is the way the Yomiuri characterized the LDP's results in its English-language edition) was defending a 1196 seats total. Finishing with 1153 means a decline of -3.6% nationally.

Not that dramatic a difference if you ask me.

The results on Sunday, however, do demonstrate the hurdles Okada-san and the DPJ have to overcome in order to return the party to good graces with the voters, if not with political reporters and editors:

- get people excited about voting again (like I said in this article)

- dump the chase-a-scandal-a-day tactics in the Diet. Spending time grilling cabinet members about their political funding organizations did not make the DPJ more popular this winter. The days of haranguing and the decidedly minor revelations did not affect the public opinion polling of the Cabinet or the LDP. (The videos of the latest NHK poll results are available here and here.)

The latter is easy. The former, however, is hard. The DPJ rode in blissful ignorance on the escalator to power in 2009, propelled upward by a 25 year cycle of "Anyone But The LDP" public revulsion at Japan's ruling party. When being just "anyone else" is sufficient for victory, one can be, as the DPJ was in 2009, just a pale-lipped copy of the LDP, with the LDP's political DNA still visible beneath the overlay of an opposition party.

We now live in an era of "One Strong, Many Weak" (ikkyo tajaku). A superpowerful LDP feeds off of and encourages lower voter turnout, resulting in Japan's wild deviation from Duverger's Law (don't laugh at the link).

For the DPJ to become more relevant and for democratic processes to revive Okada and his loyalists have to come up with popular policies, not just popular-sounding policies. The party has to nurture a generation of new politicians while submitting its existing apparatus and message to rigorous and regular testing.

Otherwise, this happens -- and will keep happening.

The effort may be futile. As I have stated any number of times, a hard conservative Abe Cabinet and LDP, running the loosest and most liberal economic policy in the developed world leaves very little room on the political spectrum for the DPJ to plant its flag on.

However, if the results of Sunday demonstrate anything to Okada and Company, it is that the DPJ's present path and strategy have no future.

Change or decay -- it will be one or the other.


* * *

With this, I will be taking a break from regular posting for a while. I need to devote my energies to a new venture. I may pop in and out every so often, if changes in the political climate merit comment.

Time, as Robert Allen Zimmerman would have it, for my boot heels to be wanderin'.

The Breakdown Of The Party Proportional Vote

Here is the breakdown of the party proportional vote in Sunday's House of Representatives election, national totals.


Click on image to open in a new window.

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and the LDP have been proudly noting that the party received over 1 million more votes than it did in the victory of 2012, when it received 16,624,457 votes.

As for the oppostion parties, the DPJ raised its total by 140,000 votes, having received 9,628,653 in the 2012 election. The Japan Restoration Party and the Your Party together received a total of 17,507,814 votes in 2012. In 2014, the remnants of these two parties, the JIP and NexGen, received a total of 9,797,618 votes.

Who really get to crow, though? The Japan Communist Party. It received nearly 2.4 million more votes than it did in December 2012, a two year increase of 64%.


Later - An earlier version of this post stated that the increase of the JCP proportional vote was 62%. Sorry.

For The LDP And Mr. Abe, A Worst Case Scenario

Sometime early next week, or perhaps sooner, the major news organizations will be presenting their most likely outcomes of the 14 December 2014 House of Representatives elections. These outlooks will be based on reporting and polling from the prefectural and regional bureaus, combined with sophisticated analysis of past voting records and a jaundiced view toward voter turnout, which, if one goes by the traditional indicator questions of "How much interest do you have in the upcoming election?" and "How definite is your wish to go to the polls on election day?" is on course for a historical and possibly delegitimizing low.

However, let us assume, for argument's sake, turnout is closer to historical norms, i.e., greater than 59%. And let us assume, and this would not be for argument's sake but simply because it can be inferred, that every additional voter showing up will be voting against the Liberal Democratic Party, both in the district and the proportional vote, save in the districts where the choice is between an LDP candidate and a Japan Communist Party (JCP) candidate.

What happens?

I took a look on Monday at the projected list of candidates in all 295 districts. Based upon that list and small set of rules-of-thumb, I tried to arrive at an estimate of the worst possible reasonably plausible result for the ruling LDP/Komeito coalition.

My rules-of-thumb for the districts were:

- When an LDP candidate and a Democratic Party of Japan candidate with an equal number of elections to the Diet face off in a district, the LDP candidate wins.

- When an LDP candidate faces off against a DPJ or a Japan Innovation Party candidate with a higher number of elections to the Diet, the opposition candidate wins.

- When and LDP candidate faces off against a DPJ candidate and a candidate from the JIP, and neither the DPJ nor the JIP candidate has two or more elections to the Diet than the LDP member, the LDP candidate wins. If either the DPJ or the JIP candidate has two more elections to the Diet than the LDP candidate, an opposition candidate wins.

- If an LDP candidate faces off against a DPJ candidate or a JIP candidate of any status, and a Party of the Future Generations candidate is also in the running, the LDP candidate loses.

- The Komeito wins all 9 of its district electoral contests.

- Veteran candidates with more than 7 elections to the Diet win their districts, irrespective of party allegiance.

In the proportional seats I took the median values of the "likely to vote for in the proportional half of the ballot" question answers found in the Mainichi Shimbun and Kyoto News polls, and apportioned the 180 proportional seats accordingly. This left a huge clot of seats with no party assignation, as the voters in the surveys were undecided or had no opinion. Based upon the Theory of Wild Guesses, I apportioned the proportional votes of these undecided/uncaring voters according to the following pattern:

3 for the LDP
2 for the DPJ
1 for the JIP
1 for the Communists
1 for the Komeito
0.2 for the Democratic Socialist Party (Socialists)
0.2 for the People's Life Party (Life)
0.2 for the Party for Future Generations (PFG)

After applying the above rules, and a fudge factor consisting of just being mean to a handful of candidates whom I find unattractive ("There is no way you are going to win again, you rodent!") I ended up with the following "if everything goes right for the DPJ and everything goes wrong for the LDP" election outcome:



Pretty wild results, admittedly.

- The LDP loses only 48 seats -- remember this is a worst case scenario -- and with their Komeito allies finish 9 seats above the crucial 266 seat "absolute safety" line where the coalition possess both all the chairs of Diet committees and a greater than 50% majority in all the committees -- meaning that any and all coalition-sponsored legislation passes out of committee without incident.

- The DPJ hits its goal of three figures with plenty to spare.

- The Communists nearly triple their representation. Yikes.

- The JIP, despite having two dynamic leaders in Eda Kenji and Hashimoto Toru, gets mauled.

This is just a first approximation. Probably a lot more independents with local followings will get through (the drop in the independents number looks suspect). Remember also this is assuming that a lot more folks vote than the major news organizations currently think are likely to show up at the polls.

More later.

Later - The major news organizations have checked in with their projections, based upon their internal numbers...and they are saying the coalition ends up with greater than 300 seats.

The Yomiuri Shimbun (Link -J)

The Asahi Shimbun (Link -J)

Interestingly, or perhaps not, they find the same surge for the Communists I noted in my above "worst case for the LDP" scenario.

Japan's Corporate Income Tax: Who Pays?

On Friday, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo told reporters that his government was laying out the groundwork for an eventual reduction of Japan's effective corporate income tax rate from its current over 35% to under 30% sometime in the near future (Link). Abe and his advisors had proposed an accelerated reduction to under 30% in three years's time. However, the Finance Ministry and the Liberal Democratic Party's tax committee gagged at the inevitable giant shortfall in government revenues. (Link - J)

Abe's announcement has won the approval of the usual suspects. The Nippon Keidanren's new head honcho is thrilled (Link - J). The Sankei Shimbun's editors called the move "indispensable" (Link - J). The reliably underinformed and innumerate William Pesek called it "the centerpiece of the Japanese prime minister's initiative to boost growth." (Link)

Uh huh.

Discussion of lowering the effective corporate tax rate in the media is shallow to the point of malfeasance. Even the reliably lefty and level-headed Tokyo Shimbun, which knows the score as the percentage of Japanese corporations actually paying ANY corporate income tax (under 30% of all corporations, just over 50% of those with base capital of 100 million yen or more - Link J) cannot sponsor an intelligent debate about the subject. (Link - J)


So let's look at some basic facts regarding the rates of corporate income tax companies pay, courtesy the only folks who seem to ask any questions, the Japan Communist Party and its party organ, Akahata ("Red Flag").

Take the above graph, published in Akahata on April 30. Based upon data demanded from the Tax Office by JCP member Sasaki Kensho, it shows that the actual rate of tax paid by Japanese corporations varies widely according to size and is never anywhere near 35% nominal rate. Micro-companies, ones with base capital of 5 million yen or less pay effectively pay about 22%. Small- and medium-sized companies pay anywhere from 23% to 27%, with the peak in the Mittelstand range of companies with 100 million to 500 million yen in base capital.

Above the 100 to 500 million yen range, the actual rate of tax companies pay drops precipitously. Egregiously, companies engaged in consolidated accounting, i.e., all the major corporations who are the names on the walls at the Nippon Keidanren, pay an effective 13% rate of tax.

Source:
http://www.jcp.or.jp/akahata/aik14/2014-04-30/2014043001_01_1.html

What rates of tax are individual companies paying? Here are some numbers, again via the JCP and Akahata.

Toyota Motors 0%
Mitsubishi Corp. 6.2%
Canon 27.8% (a surprise)
Nissan 10.9%
Honda Motors 18%
Komatsu 13.7%
Mitsubishi Land 24.5%
Isuzu 21.3%
Kyocera 13.9%

Source:
http://www.jcp.or.jp/akahata/aik14/2014-06-10/2014061001_01_1.html

Yes, it does look bad that the fabulously profitable Toyota Motors, whose chairman Toyoda Akio is not only a loyal supporter of Prime Minister Abe (Link) but who is the only person under 60 years of age in the directorate of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (i.e. -- the person who will still be around when the Olympics are held in 6 years's time) pays not one yen in corporate income tax.

So it is the mid-sized companies who are not only paying taxes but who are paying them at a higher rate than anyone else. The big names, the ones with the exceedingly clever accounting departments, are taking advantage of every break they can get.

As for the economic impact of a reduction of the effective tax rate, increasing the retained earnings of corporations while crushing government revenues, I have ranted about the 220 trillion yen (2.2 trillion USD) that Japanese companies already hold in cash and equivalents -- i.e., the Everest of money that is neither invested, paid to the workers and nor returned to the shareholders -- before. (Link)

So what the hell is this talk of reducing the corporate tax rate about? Quietly, if you ask honest members of the LDP, it is about attracting foreign investment from non-Japanese sources. Japan's corporate income tax can be seen as an invisible barrier (oxymoron alert!) against foreign corporations investing in Japan, since these non-Japanese companies tend to be based in countries where investors demand profits -- which puts them a severe disadvantage in competing in Japan against Japanese corporations whose shareholders actually like it when the company books losses -- BECAUSE THEN THE COMPANY PAYS NO TAXES.

Pax vobiscum.

Later - In comments, Jason Mortimer provides an important rejoinder to this post, to which I have offer a short response.

May Have Got Memo, Did Not Read It

Dear Japan Communist Party,

Please check your email. There should be a message from the Liberal Democratic Party, the New Komeito and the Democratic Party of Japan.

If it is not there, it should be. As a stopgap, I am forwarding what I believe is a translation of the main body of the text:

Hashimoto Toru is resigning as mayor of Osaka City in order to win reelection to office. He wants to claim a mandate for his One Osaka plan.

Holding a by-election will cost the taxpayers money.

If we all pull together and agree to refuse to run candidates in this by-election, Hashimoto can be reelected without an actual vote, saving the taxpayers their money.

This automatic reelection will solve nothing because the situation in the assemblies will be as they were. Furthermore, since there was no actual polling of the electorate, Hashimoto will not be able to claim a mandate.

If we hang together on this we come out looking like fiscally prudent, sober folks. Hashimoto comes out looking like the petulant child.

What is he going to do? Call another election to replace the one we would not let him have?

Let us stay focused on the goal: getting him to resign and not run for reelection.

If we stick together on this we can send him back to daytime television, where he belongs.

Later - If the above is unintelligible (Since you wrote it, would unintelligibility be a surprise? - Ed.) it is in reference to this (have looked, have not found an English-language source).

Across The Board

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, whose economics is beloved of liberal economists Joseph Stiglitz (Link) and Paul Krugman (Link), is about become the first non-American to receive the hardline conservative Hudson Institute's Herman Kahn Award. (Link).

Dig it.


Responses to the question "Which party do you support?"
NHK News poll of September 8-9, 2013

In just a year since Abe's election as president of the LDP, he and his Liberal Democratic Party have become the unexpected colossus, spanning the ideological spectrum. Only the thin ultra-liberal, anti-business left end of the political stick is left open for the Communists to hang onto. Otherwise, the LDP and its coalition partner the New Komeito are everywhere.

Public opinion polls find a majority of voters supporting the idea a vigorous alternative to the LDP. However refreshing such a faith in politics-as-renewed-by-the-possibility-of-electoral-defeat, after Abe and his party move into the room, there is precious little oxygen left to breathe.

And the struggle for breath has become oh, so ironic in the case of the party whose campaign slogan for the July election was "We will be the power to protect livelihoods" (Kurashi o mamoru chikara ni naru) -- a.k.a., the Democratic Party of Japan. The DPJ now finds itself in dire straits if it cannot somehow find a way to lay off a big chunk of its own workforce. (Link)

Oops-a-daisy! (Hey former prime minister Noda, how's that manly sudden dissolution offer working out for ya?)

As for the Japan Restoration Party, with all the crud that Ishihara Shintaro has been saying the past few months about his co-leader Hashimoto Toru and Hashimoto's core program of converting Osaka from a prefecture to a metropolitan district, is it correct to even label that mad vessel a party?

The members of LDP certainly could still blow this sweet deal they have right now. They could get greedy and start pocketing some of the money they have tossed into economy through fiscal irresponsibility and monetary slaternliness. They could start fighting ordinary citizens to push through mega-projects making little economic or environmental sense (completing the capital ring roads, digging the Linear Motor Car Line from Shinagawa to Nagoya, restarting nuclear power plants in of questionable geomorphology). They could mess up the march of economy policy out of an inability to sacrifice some of their supporters.

Right now, however, they are on a roll -- right over every other party except the JCP.

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

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

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

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

As Pink Floyd asked:

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

(Link)

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

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

OK, So I Am Surprised, I Really Am

Hey,

Hirano Tatsuo, my apologies, you really do know Iwate Prefecture.

When you quit the Democratic Party of Japan in April, I thought the decision daft or at least confused (Link). However, when the smoke cleared from the circular firing squad this Sunday night, you were the one still standing. Omedeto!

You in Iwate and Itokazu Keiko (running with Social Democratic, People's Life, Green Breeze and Communist support, of all the lefty things) in Okinawa kept the Liberal Democratic Party from sweeping all of the single seat constituencies.

May the LDP send more former college rugby coaches to run against you in the future.

Democratic Party of Japan, congratulations. Seriously.

Everyone knew you were a goner in the single seat districts. Everyone knew you were in dire straits in the proportional seat voting.

However, in the two- and three-seat districts, your candidates toughed it out.

This was a bad election for you, the party garnering fewer votes in the proportional side of the ballot than the New Komeito. Still, third place is far from a full blown catastrophe. With a new leader (Yes, Mr. Kaieda Banri, your time, though brief, is up) and some decent candidates, the party can revive to serve as an honorable opposition.

[An aside, but the most wicked bon mot of the morning? The commentator on the Asa Zuba! wide show who cheerily suggested to DPJ bigwig Nagatsuma Akira, "Well, now that there are fewer of you, it should be easier to smooth over differences of opinion."]

Your Party and Japan Communist Party, what happened to your supposed juice? You, the opposite ends of Japan’s economic policy prescription spectrum with your shared contempt for the bureaucracy, you were supposed to be the havens of protest votes forced to run screaming from out of the wreckage of the DPJ.

In the end though, you both came up short, with 4.7 million and 5.1 million votes, respectively.

This was your big day, your opportunity to do some damage on the proportional side. Your performance, however, was only OK, with strong district candidates bailing you out in the end.

Social Democratic Party, you live! Of course, by losing one of the two seats you were defending, you are now down to five seats, meaning that while you are still considered a party in Diet, you are at the five member limit.

So you live to die another day.

Anti-nuclear activists Kira Yoshiko (JCP) and Yamamoto Taro (independent), you not only won district seats in Tokyo, but shoved Takemi Keizo, an LDP Washington insider running as the representative of the health care industry into the fifth and final slot. You both now have six years to harass the nuclear industry and its supporters from the inside, rather than cacophonously from without.

Zing! No, Double Zing!

[How can anyone resist having a young (she’s only 30) Communist woman senator whose name is pronounced “Killer”?]

Japan Restoration Party, they must like you in the Kansai. They must really, really like you. At 6.3 million proportional seat votes, you are effectively half as popular nationally as you were seven months ago. With everyone was writing you off, though, winning six proportional seats must feel good.

It has been hard not to notice, though, that your two top vote winners in the proportional vote were:

1) a professional wrestler close to the Pyongyang regime and an eager participant in that regime's propaganda actions and

2) the militant anti-Pyongyang former finance ministry bureaucrat who has fought, fought, fought to win freedom and justice for those abducted by the DPRK

That these two are your #1 and #2 in the proportional vote reflects what we can only call awesome party message coherence.

Where The Opponents Of The LDP Lose Me

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

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

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

- The Democratic Party of Japan

- The People's Life Party

- The Social Democratic Party

- The Japan Communist Party and

- Green Breeze (Midori no kaze)


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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final Tally

The seat totals in the House of Representatives, as confirmed by national broadcaster NHK at 5:04 a.m.

Oops! I Did It Again 294
New Sentinel 31

Deservedly Chastized 57
You're Scaring Me 54
Politics Is So Icky 18
No Future 9
Cash Burn 8
Left Behind 2
Post Office Players 1
Great White North 1
Anonymous #1 0
Anonymous #2 0

Independents 5

Key points:

- The OIDIA and NS have a supermajority of 325 seats. They can ignore the House of Councillors in all matters except appointments. This is a great gift; it is also a great burden. Given the power to deliver on domestic and international promises, the alliance has to produce results.

- 10 million voters who had participated in the last two House of Representatives elections stayed away from the polls this time. The result was the lowest voter turnout for a general election in the postwar era.

The Electoral Lists - Looking At Some Of the Numbers

- Though it does not come as a staggering surprise, it is nevertheless eyebrow-raising how much the Democratic Party of Japan has lowered its sights after its overwhelming victory in August 2009. The DPJ is running only 267 candidates (264 district, 3 proportional seat-only), 41 fewer than it managed to get elected to the House of Representatives just three years ago.

The DPJ is running head to head against the Liberal Democratic Party in 75 districts, head to head against the Japan Restoration Association in 2 districts, against the LDP and the Party of the Future in 45 districts, against the DPJ and the JRA in 81 districts and in four-way race in 54 districts.

- The LDP is preparing for a wipe out of its opponents. It is fielding candidates in 288 districts. When combined with the 9 districts where it will be supporting New Komeito candidates, the LDP is basically carpet bombing the country with candidates, with a huge reserve force of proportional seat-only candidates (49) in case the party runs the table in the districts.

- If the participation of women in public life is a big issue for you, this is yet another election to take a pass upon. Just under 15% (225 out of 1504) of the candidates are women.

The two established parties remain largely closed to women. The DPJ has women in only 14% of its candidate slots. The LDP, despite the best efforts of Koizumi Jun'ichiro to bring women into the party and the Cabinet, remains an embarrassment, with only 8% women candidates.

As usual, the Japan Communist Party is the most balanced, with one quarter of its candidates being women (80 out of 322). The Party of the Future is right behind, with 23% women candidates.

-Speaking of the Japan Communist Party, it is running candidates in 299 districts. In the last Diet, it did not win a single district seat. A few candidates may surpass the electoral deposit refund threshold, but in general the JCP is looking at a forfeit of 3 million yen x 299 = 897 million yen – a US $10.95 million transfer to the Ministry of Finance. If the party does as well as it did in 2009, it will forfeit 23 – 9 = 14 x 6 million yen = 84 million yen in deposits for the proportional seats.

If the JCP accepted public financing, the money received in subsidy could be recycled as the deposits. Instead, the party will destroy capital, sadly the capital of its supporters, to the tune of 981 million yen just to get its foot in the door, before it spends a single yen on campaigning.

- After the newspapers have been saying that the population numbers coming out of the 2010 census result in 94 of the current electoral districts having more than 1.99 times the population of Kochi District #3 (211,835 voters), the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications reports that the real number of unconstitutionally under-represented districts is only 72. That is still a ridiculous 24% of all districts inhabited by voters who, by their under-representation, are worth less than half of a Kochi #3 voter.

The mystery remains Chiba District #4, the most populous district in the nation (497,601), represented by one Noda Yoshihiko. According to the MIC figures, a voter in the prime minister’s home district is only 41% of a fully enfranchised human being Kochi voter. Chiba #4 voters should be resentful of the PM’s having sold them out for the next decade in his sudden acceptance of the LDP’s egregious +0/-5 electoral district reform plan.

Is Noda in danger because his national party duties leave him unable to do retail campaigning? Hmmm… He buried Fujita Mikio in 2009 by 76,700 votes but only squeaked by in 2005, retaining his seat by a mere 944 votes. Fujita is back for a third shot at Noda and Chiba #4 is one of the 45 districts where the DPJ faces a challenge from the both the LDP and the Party of the Future.

A race to keep an eye on – for all the wrong reasons.

Worthwhile Reads for October 28, 2012

Philip Brasor is a professional writer...and it shows. He has been writing for the print edition of The Japan Times for what seems an eternity, which makes him eligible for some kind of "bravely facing adversity" award. A while back he and I both contributed essays to a book produced by the tireless Our Man from Abiko. The difference in the quality of the essays left me feeling a deep sense of shame.

Brasor and his partner Tsukuba Masako have published a cracking essay for anyone who has ever wondered, "Given the parade of turkeys the major parties foist upon the electorate, why is it that individuals possessing talent, charm and a modicum of sense fail to throw their hats in the ring? This blessed land boasts an educated and informed electorate, half of whom have no allegiance to any party. A bright and competent person, clearly able to walk and eat a rice cake at the same time, should be able to waltz in and crush the party offerings."

One answer, and it is a big one, is the kyotakukin. Brasor and Tsukuba explain it -- and pay tribute in passing to the Japan Communist Party's almost insane commitment to electoral democracy. For those in need of a comparative figure, 3 million yen is one third of the annual salary of a managerial class employee with 10 years service in a company.

Brasor and Tsukuba - "Candidate deposit requirement guarantees same faces on the ballot"

The essay is the latest post to the pair's economics blog Yen for Living, hosted on The Japan Times' website.

Brasor and Tsukuba also produce a fascinating personal blog on what would seem an unpromising subject: looking for housing in the Kanto area: Cat Foreheads & Rabbit Hutches.

In the "Could it be that simple?" department, The Diplomat published an essay a few weeks back offering possible relief for Japanese exporters exhausted by the hoops one must leap through to do business in China. According James Parker, to finance consultant and lecturer, the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA), which the PRK government has promoted as a way of increasing Chinese influence over the economic life of ASEAN countries mutual prosperity, opens a back door, through the law of unintended consequences, for Japanese companies to sell their wares and services in China without the hassle of being in China,. That these companies will also likely end up paying lower wages is a bonus.

Parker - "The Coming Economic Shift?"

It sounds all to good to be true -- and Parker admits, given the gap in between the logistics web and the transport infrastructure China offers and and the capacities of ASEAN countries (pax Singapore and pockets of Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines) -- making the "ASEAN workaround" pay off will be difficult, in the short run.

However, with the government of China making only cosmetic efforts at lessening the risks and aggravations Japanese companies face in China, and with the government of Japan, probably at the initiative of pro-active bureaucrats, quietly ramping up economic diplomacy in the parts of ASEAN where the China has enjoyed undue influence for the last few decades (Link), predictions of an inevitable decline in Japan's engagement with ASEAN (Link) may turn out to have been premature.

Tanigaki's Appeal To The International Finance Community

As noted earlier this morning, Liberal Democratic Party President Tanigaki Sadakazu was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal Asia (E). He was also interviewed by Bloomberg (E), leaving Reuters no doubt wondering, "What are we, chopped liver? Not raw, of course." (E)

In both articles, Tanigaki makes essentially the same points:

- If Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, in an attempt to prevent further defections from the Democratic Party of Japan's House of Representatives or House of Councillors delegations, proposes modifications of the bill doubling the consumption tax in FY 2015, then the deal in between the DPJ and the LDP-New Komeito alliance is off.

- Tanigaki is ready to submit a no-confidence motion against the government in August.

What could be compelling the president of the LDP to talk to foreign financial information wire services? Was he just going the rounds, talking to anyone who could schedule an interview with him?

Seemingly not. A cursory look at the domestic press shows him offering no interviews to a domestic news entity, just a press availability open to everyone on the 20th.

So what is the deal here?

The first point Tanigaki raises is trivial: a deal's a deal. The PM is not stupid -- he knows that if he tries to renegotiate the package on the passage of the pension and social welfare bills through the House of Councillors, the LDP and the New Komeito will cry betrayal, and order their senators to vote against the bills, killing the reforms.

The second point raised is non-trivial -- and gives an indication why Tanigaki chose to spend his time with Bloomberg and ASW-A rather than any major domestic news outlet.

Tanigaki faces a huge battle to retain his position, should he choose to present himself as a candidate in the LDP's presidential election in late September. He has taken the party absolutely nowhere in three years in office. The party's public support numbers are below those the party had after its trouncing at the polls in August 2009 -- though, to be fair, the LDP does rather better when the question asked is: "What party will you be voting for in the proportional seat vote for the House of Representatives?"

Ambitious colleagues in the party know that Tanigaki's election to the presidency was not due to any outstanding qualities he possessed, but merely because out of the princes of the factions, it was Tanigaki's turn on the throne (I am indebted to Okumura Jun for this insight).

The domestic news media is aware of the tenuous hold Tanigaki has upon the party rank-and-file. They know that if he cannot engineer a political crisis before the end of the current Diet session on September 8, he will go down in history as only the second LDP president to not become Prime Minister.

What the domestic news media also knows is that Tanigaki has virtually no ability to precipitate a political crisis of the magnitude capable of toppling the Noda Cabinet. He cannot bring down the government in this session over the bond issuance bill: the government has enough money to last until October, or beyond, with a little fiddling. As for a successful no-confidence motion, Tanigaki would have to round up everyone not in the governing coaltion -- every member of every party and every independent -- plus 17 of the DPJ's own members, to vote with the LDP (the numbers work out differently, of course, if there are abstentions). This means the Communists voting with the LDP, something that might happen, oh, immediately prior to a giant meteor hitting earth, extinguishing all life on the planet. It means the LDP joining hands with Ozawa Ichiro's People's Life First Party (LF).

The LDP has a strong wish to return to the position of the party of government and strict internal discipline. But grab Ozawa's hand, after all the many times he has scalded the LDP? The very thought sets the brain to boiling.

So it would make sense to talk, not to the national media, which would ask all sorts of embarrassing questions like:

- "How are you going to get the Communists into bed with you?"

and

- "What if you entice the requisite number of number of traitors to vote with you and your allies against the government? Then what do you do? The electoral districts are still unconstitutional, so a Diet dissolution and elections are illegal. What kind of coalition are you going to put together to solve that problem, after you have blown the DPJ apart?"

Better to talk to the international financial press, to sow confusion in the international markets and foreign institutions, first in the hopes of sparking questions about the stability of the Noda government, and second, through the Japanese media's peculiar obsession with the way Japan is portrayed in the non-Japanese media, a rebound of the story in the domestic press.

Because after a serious bout of political deafness over the U.S. Marines' introduction of the despised MV-22 Osprey aircraft into this blessed land (J), one which made it look as if the intransigence of the U.S. Marines was going to drive a second DPJ prime minister out of office, the PM has righted himself and is demanding safety assurances and interim flight paths guaranteed to drive the U.S. Marines nuts. This is perhaps not the "Return to Sender" message the public wants the PM to send to the United States. However, it represents a significant step in the government at least appearing to reclaim sovereignty over the nation's airspace, which Noda for a moment seemed to be giving away.

Tanigaki needs Noda to misread another issue, or have a member of the Cabinet get caught in a compromising position, to evade the axe in September.

Without Noda's or the Cabinet's help, Tanigaki is doomed. He will talk up a storm but he has no wind at his back.

Party By The Numbers

All day...and all of the night.

Public funding of elections

On April 6, the Ministry of General Affairs and Telecommunications announced its dispensation of public campaign funds to the established parties.

The winners and their winnings (in yen) are:

Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)
16,505,302,000

Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)
10,154,000,000

New Komeito
2,279,166,000 yen

Minna no To (Your Party)
1,118,299,000

Social Democratic Party (SDP)
763,697,000

People's New Party (PNP)
442,543,000

Kizuna Party (Kizuna)
275,585,000

Tachiagare Nippon (Sunrise Party)
173,779,000

Japan New Party (JNP)
136,022,000

Shinto Kaikaku (New Renaissance Party - NRP)
119,610,000

Shinto Daichi-True DPJ
115,325,000

(Link)

The ones making out like bandits are the PNP, who after the coup last week will be splitting up amongst the six remaining members an apportionment for eight.

The Japan Communist Party (JCP), out of principle and/or basic stupidity (at times the two resemble one another), does not take public funds.


Seats in the Diet, both Houses

Following the resignations of Kamei Shizuka and Kamei Akiko from the PNP and the dissolution of the caucus linking the PNP and the JNP, the memberships of the Houses of the Diet are divided as follows.

House of Representatives

DPJ-Club of Independents 291
LDP-Association of Independents 120
New Komeito 21
JCP 9
Kizuna 9
SDP 6
Your Party 5
PNP 3
Shinto Daichi- True DPJ 3
Sunrise Party 2
independents 10
unoccupied 1

House of Councillors

DPJ-Shinryokufukai 104
LDP-Sunrise Party-Association of Independents 86
New Komeito 19
Your Party 11
JCP 6
SDP-League to Protect the Constitution 4
PNP 3
NRP 2
Shinto Daichi- True DPJ 2
independents 5

The Shinryokufukai is a party is a political relic, existing only in the name of the House of Councillors caucus.

When A Policy Falls On Deaf Ears, Does It Make A Noise?

If the news media has any influence, it might.

Yesterday, the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito stopped dilly-dallying about the request from Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko for direct talks between himself and LDP President Tanigaki Sadakazu, New Komeito Leader Yamaguchi Kunio and the heads of the other parties in the Diet. Democratic Party of Japan Diet Affairs Chairman Jojima Koriki put the question of negotiations prior to Diet discussions to the six Diet Affairs chairmen of the non-government parties. New Party Kizuna and interestingly the Communists were the only parties that agreed with the governing coalition's proposal. The other parties indicated that the legislation is only half-baked (literally, "not fully boiled") and needs to be discussed in the Diet, starting with the party leaders debate on the 11th. (J)

The primary subject Noda wants to talk about with the two leaders of the main opposition parties would be the passage of legislation enabling the government to raise the consumption tax to 10% by the year 2014. Since the raising of the consumption tax to 10% was in the LDP's manifesto for the 2010 House of Councillors election (J), talking with Noda about smoothing Diet passage of legislation raising the tax to 10% should be a given. Refusing to meet with the PM to discuss the subject is thus equivalent to Tanigaki and Kawaguchi sticking their fingers in their ears and baying, "Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah. I can't hear you!"

Unfortunately, the same day the decision to not meet with Noda came down, the LDP released its campaign manifesto for the next House of Representatives election -- an election that the LDP and the New Komeito would like to precipitate by refusing to cooperate with the government on any legislation or by passing only a limited number of bills in exchange for a dissolution of the Diet -- the so-called "discussion dissolution" (hanashiai kaisan).

Somewhat unexpectedly, the news media took the confluence of these two events as an opportunity to paint the LDP as a party that puts political maneuvering (seikyoku) ahead of policy (seisaku).

Jiji Press

「１０％」明記も対決強調＝消費税、問われる整合性－自民

"The LDP - Fighting Specifically and With Fervor on the Raising of the Consumption Tax to '10%'; Its Integrity Now Being/Can be Questioned"

(Link)

NHK

自民 消費税率１０％で政権公約

"The LDP: a rise of the consumption tax to 10% in its campaign promises"

(Link)

TV Asahi

自民党が政権公約を公表　消費税は「当面10％」

"The LDP Announces Its Campaign Manifesto: The Consumption Tax 'To 10%, For The Time Being'"

(Link)

Mainichi Shimbun

自民党:消費税「当面１０％」…衆院選マニフェスト原案

LDP: The Consumption Tax 'To 10%, For The Time Being'...Its Current Manifesto for the House of Representatives Election

(Link)

Nihon Keizai Shimbun

自民公約原案、苦肉の「当面10％」　話し合い解散に含み

"The LDP's Current Manifesto, A Desperate 'To 10%, For The Time Being,' With A Discussion Dissolution Included"

(Link)

Sankei Shinbun

自民党　責任野党の努力足りない

"The LDP: Efforts As A Responsible Opposition Party Are Lacking"

(Link)

When the nation's top business paper, the voice of the establishment and morning paper of the furthest right wing rap you on the knuckles over your shenanigans, you are in serious trouble.

True to its transparent and voluntary role as the unofficial party organ of the LDP, the Yomiuri Shimbun did its best to ignore the glaring contradiction in between the party's promises and its present actions, preferring to focus in its reporting on other parts of the manifesto, skating right past the consumption tax issue:

Yomiuri Shimbun

自民政権公約原案、原子力政策やＴＰＰ及び腰

"The Current LDP Manifesto: From Nuclear Power Policy to the TPP, Persistence Ducking"

(Link)

The bold effort at willful blindness is sort of the Yomiuri Shimbun's way of saying to the other news outlets, "Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah. I can't hear you!"

Raising the consumption may be unpopular in general, the most recent NHK polls showing 36% of voters opposed to the legislation with another 35% with lukewarm feelings about it. Only 25% of voters favor the government's plan to raise the consumption tax to 10% -- which I suppose is not a bad level of support for a tax rise in a sluggish economy. The attempt to blast the consumption tax legislation first through the DPJ, where about of a quarter of the membership has serious qualms about the legislation, and the through the Diet is not helping the popularity of the Noda Cabinet and the DPJ. Both lost support from last month's tallies -- though possibly not in a statistically significant way -- the constant caveat necessary given that Japanese pollsters never advertise their margins of error. (J and J)

However, as the concerted attack, the Yomiuri excepted, on Tanigaki's ducking the invitation to meet with Noda shows that the press does not consider the consumption tax issue one the LDP and the New Komeito can evade, no matter how hard they may try to do so.


Later - Many thanks to the Chrysanthemum Sniffer for his suggestion that I revisit my translation of the Yomiuri title.

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."

House of Councillors Elections 2010 - The Tokyo Quintilemma (corrected)

In politics, what you see is not always what you get.

Tokyo is blessed because it sends five Senators (yes, that is what they are called) to the House of Councillors.

Tokyo is cursed because it has to select five Senators for the House of Councillors.

First there is the list itself, with a staggering 24 names. Only Aomori and Kumamoto, each with 5 candidates vying for but a single seat, have more freewheeling level of competition, and then only fractionally. In Tokyo, recent candidate inflation rate is just out of control: in 2007, there were 20 candidates for the 5 seats, in 2004, there were 11 candidates for 4 seats.

And why not? House of Councillors member is a great job. A six-year position with a fabulous salary, extraordinary housing and transportation perquisites, basically three free meals a day, personal and family security, social status and very few responsibilities.

It is a wonder that there are not hundreds of aspirants.

Then there is the plethora of parties, mostly of the right. In 2007, voters had to contend with 6 parties offering candidates and a mass of independents. This year there are 9 parties, if one includes the Nippon Soshinto and the Happiness Realization Party, plus a lot of candidates from what claim to be parties.

Then there is the doubling up. The Democrats have two incumbents, Government Revitalization Minister Renho and the Democratic Party of Japan's top vote getter in 2004 Ogawa Toshio. They are being challenged by a pair of two LDP candidates: incumbent Nakagawa Masaharu and newcomer Tokai Yukiko, holder of a U.S. journalism degree.

-- An aside, but what is wrong with the LDP as regards its strong women candidates? Tokai's heavily photoshopped campaign posters immediately bring to mind the Katayama Satsuki disaster (Katayama, the former Mrs. Masuzoe Yo'ichi for those who are new to this game, is one of the candidates on the Liberal Democratic Party's proportional lists). The actual Ms. Tokai is somewhat less doe-like in appearance. Is it because she is taking on, in the person of Renho, a former model and Clarion Girl? And why do the papers fail to say diddly about her coming directly out of General Electric to run in this race, referring to her instead as "a former newscaster?" --

Then there are the guys with the movie star good looks and the scintillating resumes. First is the attractive and savvy Matsuda Kota, the man who brough Tully's Coffee to Japan. He is running on the corporate-sponsored Your Party (Minna no To) ticket (odd that). He is matched on the left by the Social Democratic Party's 37 year-old Morihara Hideki, a former international NGO worker.

Once past these six candidates, one crosses a over to the wrong side of the tracks, where one's associates cast a shadow upon one's image.

The candidate on Easy Street is Takeya Toshiko of the New Komeito (and yes, that fade in is creepy).
Even though Takeya's party has been for the last decade the LDP's coalition partner in government, selling out nearly every one of its core principles in order to hold onto a ministry, the New Komeito still has enough cadres dedicated voters in Tokyo to get Takeya elected no matter what. She has 790,000 to 800,000 votes in the bag, and in the 2004 and 2007 elections, the highest ranking failed candidates won 597,000 and 652,000 votes, respectively.

The hard-luck case is Koike Akira, who is himself not bats--t crazy but as a member of the Communist Party will be treated as such. One of the rare physicians in the Diet and blessed with a good sense of humor, he will be anathema to all but his party's faithful. He would have a decent shot at winning a seat as an independent, especially if he made a special effort to label himself an ex-Communist-running-as-an-independent. Instead, he should go down ignominious defeat with a 450,000 JCP loyalist votes.

After this, one crosses the Rubicon, from the acceptable to the bats--t crazy.

Back in the old days, when comedian/actors like Aoshima Yukio or prominent writers, architects, doctors or whatnot were on tail end of the ballot, one could toss a vote in their direction, certain one was at least giving the country a reason to smile, or, as it turned out in Aoshima's case, would have capped off a great double career.

What to do? What to say? It is right-wing fringe you like? Come on it -- so many different flavors one available could start up an ice cream store. Possibly sane independent one has never heard of before? The voters have at least nine to choose from.

Then there my personal favorite; the Wringer. Ogawa Shoji (小川昇志) has a name is so similar to the DPJ's Ogawa Toshio (小川敏夫) that one can has to think that Shoji-kun was either

a) hired by a member of the opposition to confuse DPJ voters about which Ogawa they want to vote for, resulting in a lot of votes going to Sho-chan that were meant for Toshi-kun

b) wanted to see if he could steal one of the last remaining seats thanks votes that were meant for Ogawa Toshio

c) filled with a hatred so intense for Ogawa Toshio he registered himself just to mess up Ogawa's otherwise fairly certain reelection.

d) Some mix of the above

So how to winnow out 5 winners from out of this mass?

My guess is that Renho is the top vote getter and Takeya Toshiko wins a seat on the Soka Gakkai vote. Ogawa Toshio survives but in only fourth or fifth place due to his obscurity relative his glamorous fellow party member and the other Ogawa's meddlesome presence. Nakagawa Masaharu was the top vote getter of all in 2004 but he will be fighting with his colleague Tokai Yukiko. He will grab the fifth seat, if an LDP candidate finishes in the running at all, the poor showing due to the collapse of the LDP's Tokyo party organization and the plethora of right wing fringe candidates on the ballot from tiny but still established parties. Of the pretty boys in the running, I am guessing Matsuda wins the last seat on both the media-zaikai tailwinds currently inflating the reputation of Your Party and his Matsuda's actual reputation for bringing in a business into Japan and making it a success.

My apologies to all the other candidates...but you are just not in this race. A Tokyo voter has five Senators, more than the citizens of any other prefecture (Hurrah!) and you are not going to be one of them. (And that does include you, Yamada Hiroshi. You should have never left your day job.)


With thanks to John de Hoog for his help.

Later - This post has been edited for clarity.

Faith In Numbers (1)

In the dip in the popularity polls of the Kan Cabinet after the quite responsible shout out by Prime Minister Kan Naoto to the Liberal Democratic Party to stop the catcalls from the sidelines and instead join with the ruling coalition in reforming country's revenues base (i.e. - raise taxes) the nation's liberal news organizations are beginning to lose their marbles panicking.

Here are the latest seat projections for the various parties in the upcoming House of Councillors election from The Asahi Shimbun.

And here are the projections from the Tokyo Shimbun


According to the median view of the of the Asahi, the DPJ will end up with exactly the same number of seats -- 54 -- in the House of Councillors as it now controls. In the Tokyo Shimbun, the party will actually lose two spots, slipping to 52 seats. In both cases, the DPJ will have to go hat in hand post election in search of (a) coalition parther(s), as it needed to win 60 seats in order to have a 50%+1 majority in the House of Councillors.

Not having a majority in the upper house is not the end of the world, of course. The most important piece of legislation, the national budget, goes into effect 30 days after it is passed by the House of Representatives, no matter what the House of Councillors does with it. The DPJ holds a comfortable 307 out of 482 480 seats* majority in the House of Representatives - so the budget is safe. However, for all other legislation or the confirmation of officials, the DPJ will have to rely on the kindness of strangers to make it to the 122 votes it needs to get anything done on the legislative front.

There also so problematic issues of control of committee chairmanships in the House of Councillors should the DPJ fail to win an outright majority. These are not on a par, however, with the simple fact that no legislation is guaranteed passage without a 50%+1 majority of the House of Councillors members present -- which opens up some interesting opportunities in the case the DPJ fall just a few votes short of an absolute majority for sudden absences of independents from the chambers at crucial moments. Two of the seven independent members of the House of Councillors are up for reelection this year, meaning that at very least, in the next Diet session, 119 votes might be sufficient for passage of legislation which the DPJ really want to see passed.

Anyway, both the projected polls leave the DPJ far short of the majorities it needs. Just how they do this seems unsound.

First is the pass given to the microparties in both polls. There are not just five, as listed in both sets of results. There are eight seven. Two of the left: the Social Democratic Party and the Women's Party. Six on the right: People's New Party, Sunrise Party (Tachiagare Nippon), New Renaissance Party (Shinto kaikaku), The Spirit of Japan (Nihon Soshinto) and the Happiness Realization Party.

The larger the number of little parties, the greater likelihood they will zero each other out the d'Hondt system, which is the method used to assign seats in the proportional part of the election. In each of the last three House of Councillors elections a party had to secure 2.2% of the national vote to win even a single proportional seat. At present, only the SDP is polling greater than 2%.

To see how the winnowing process happens, check out the wonderful d'Hondt system calculator here.

Using the calculator, I have run a basic scenario, assuming conservatively that

1) just as many voters show up in 2010 as in 2007
2) skeptical non-aligned voters choose Your Party as the non-DPJ, non-LDP alternative
3) that the Communists and the Socialists stay put
4) that Your Party captures the business lobby vote
5) that the conservative microparties steal votes that would have gone to the LDP, and
6) some voters will vote for the LDP out of nostalgia or force of habit

The results of the simulation, which you can see here, assigns the 48 available proportional seats this way:

DPJ 19
LDP 11
New Komeito 6
Your Party 6
Japan Communist Party 3
Democratic Socialist Party 2
Sunrise 1

One can fiddle about and get New Renaissance a seat that the cost of one DPJ seat. However, failing a huge jump in turnout of folks boiling mad at the DPJ, these are likely to be the results we see in the morning paper on July 12.

Sic transit nunc gloria the microparties and their purported seats.

If my simulation can be faulted, it is for being too generous to the LDP. The party chose last year to run as the anti-Ozawa Ichiro party, choosing stances not based upon their logical coherence but on whether or not Ozawa was for them or against them. Other than anti-Ozawaism, the party failed to produce a convincing reason for its wavering supporters to stick around, the reason why Masuzoe Yo'ichi quit, dismissing "LDP" as the acronym for "Lousy Dumb Party."

Which brings up my second, much larger objection to the Asahi and Tokyo Shimbun projections: the presumption of viability of the LDP as a political force in the district elections - the subject of my next post.

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*Kobayashi Chiyomi resigned from her seat the day after the close of the regular Diet session. The by-election for her Hokkaido #5 district seat will be in October. One other seat is also vacant.

Thoughts on the Hokkyoso Political Donations Scandal

Over at Twisting Flowers Ethan Chua has an overview of the Hokkyoso political donations scandal engulfing Democratic Party of Japan member Kobayashi Chiyomi. While it seems impossible to believe that Hokkaido Teachers' union representatives, many of whom held high positions in the Kobayashi campaign headquarters, were unaware of the campaign finance law forbidding donations by organizations to individual campaigns, the real rascal here seems to be Kimura Michiru, the Kobayashi campaign's accountant. When asked why he placed the four rounds of direct donations from the Hokkaido teachers's union in a separate secret bank account, he replied, "Well, I had reason to believe the donations were illegal."

Whatever happened to refusing to accept the donation, telling the union representatives, "I'm sorry; I can't take that. It's illegal."? Or, conversely, accepting one's professional responsibility of identifying oneself as a co-conspirator an attempt to circumvent campaign finance laws?

Kimura hereby adds his name to the ever-burgeoning assembly, the "Japan League of Unhelpful Accountants."

While the eruption of yet another DPJ political funds scandal would normally redound to the opposition's benefit, there are extenuating circumstances here that could conceivably turn Kobayashi's predicament into a plus for the DPJ.

First, the teacher's unions normally ally themselves not with the DPJ but with the Japan Communist Party. Right wingers have indeed long insisted that the national umbrella Japan Teachers' Union (Nihon Kyōshokuin Kumiai, or Nikkyōso) is nothing more than a JCP recruitment and organizing committee. The Communists, normally the loudest voices on political corruption issues, have indeed remained remarkably subdued about Kobayashi's problems, probably in order to avoid drawing any more attention to the subject of where exactly the nation's teachers unions have been sending their money.

Second, the Hokkyoso scandal gives added impetus to one of the DPJ's signature legislative proposals: a ban on all corporate and non-profit organization donations to political campaigns. This proposal is detested by the Liberal Democratic Party, which due to its minority status is now even more dependent on corporate and organizational giving than ever. The ban is strongly supported, however, by the LDP's former coalition partner the New Komeito, and support/opposition to the ban has emerged the wedge issue driving the two former allied parties apart.

If Kobayashi's problems trigger a precipitous passage of a draconian campaign finance law reform detrimental to the LDP's fundraising efforts, and a fracture of LDP-New Komeito comity, then the DPJ leadership will likely count the whole affair as a worthy sacrifice of a few percentage points of party support.