Some Nice Things About the Minshinto

This past weekend the Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) and the Ishin no To (Japan Innovation Party) merged, forming a new named party, the Minshinto (which in English could be "the Democratic Progressive Party”but in order to avoid confusion with the Taiwan ruling party of the same name is being called the "Democratic Party"). The so far mild public reaction to the event has prompted the small English language Japan commentariat to offer only a tiny burst of mostly negative reviews. Yuki Tatsumi at Stimson is the most scathing, dismissing the new party as merely the old party, with all the same negatives as before (Link1). Tobias Harris, writing for the Sasakawa Foundation, is a bit nicer but still dwells upon the lack so far of a positive public reaction to the new party’s formation. (Link2)

As hard as it may be to believe, there are some nice things one can say about the Minshinto.

1) DP leader Okada Katsuya headed off a potentially catastrophic split of his own party prior to a House of Councillors election. DP conservatives/Matsushita Seikei products (often both) like Maehara Seiji, Nagashima Akihisa and Hosono Goshi are unhappy at the Okada secretariat's steps toward electoral collaboration with the Japan Communist Party. They have been threatening to leave, joining members of the rump Ishin no To in a new conservative opposition party. With brought their JIP conservative buddies now in their party, the DP conservatives are less likely to depart. The price for this unity was accepting a stupid name change.

2) Japan's largest opposition party got larger, not smaller. That alone is something. DP has 96 seats in the House of Representatives; 60 seats in the House of Councillors. Not bad.

3) The party secretariat is the DPJ's secretariat with a few tweaks. Tatsumi sees reappointment of the DPJ leadership as a weakness, with too few new faces to generate excitement (the one new face in the bunch, attack dog Policy Research Chair YAMAO Shiori, has been slapped back with a financial scandal). One could also turn the analysis around and see a merger where one team's members kept all the important posts and the other team's members, including some with titanic egos (Eda Kenji) got essentially nothing as a pretty sweet deal for that first team.

Representative
OKADA Katsuya (DPJ)

Acting Representatives
EDA Kenji (JIP)
NAGATSUMA Akira (DPJ)
RENHO (DPJ)

Secretary-General
EDANA Yukio (DPJ)

Policy Research Chair
YAMAO Shiori (DPJ)

Elections Council Chair
GEMBA Koichiro (DPJ)

Diet Affairs Council Chair
AZUMI Jun (DPJ)

House of Councillors Chair
GUNJI Akira (DPJ)

4) With the Will They/Won't They/Why Don't They phase completed, the opposition can now turn to the important business of coordinating Diet and electoral actions against the still immensely powerful but increasingly less likable Liberal Democratic Party of Abe Shinzo.

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'.

Post-Election Analysis - Here We Go

As noted earlier, the most miserably pointless and demoralizing election in memory (How pointless? Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has decided to not make a single change in his Cabinet -- and you will not believe the reasons given for this decision: Link - Video J) has, for no good but plenty of bad reasons, unleashed a torrent of some of the best writing on Japanese politics ever.

It is worthwhile to offer another list of links to good reads:

Tobias Harris - "When Is a Blowout Not a Blowout?"

Mr. Harris and I, working from the same facts, came to essentially the same conclusions in the first hours after the election. I, writing for my blog, published first. Harris, because he is an assiduous worker bee, published a more comprehensive and readable article on someone else's calendar.

Sheila Smith - "Another Four Years of Abe"

Smith points out a major problem facing Abe: what to do about Koizumi Shinjiro, the Liberal Democratic Party's most popular and saleable legislator. The latest Koizumi in the Diet received the most votes of any LDP winner despite spending almost no time in his own district campaigning. Instead Koizumi played the good soldier, campaigning all over the country for other LDP candidates.

Abe tried burying Koizumi in Fukushima-related issues in the previous Diet. With Koizumi coming off a huge win, this may be more difficult.

Corey Wallace - "Not too early to start thinking about the 2016 election?"

As you can guess from the title, the soon-to-be Dr. Wallace (fingers crossed) does not think so. The Democratic Party of Japan has survived as an institution thanks to the large number of seats it has quarantined off in the House of Councillors. That block of seats comes up for reelection in 2016 - meaning that the new party leader, who is to be elected on January 18 (Why do they tarry? Amaterasu only knows) will have to quickly bring all the disparate groupings within the party into line and workout a modus vivendi with Japan Innovation Party.

Wallace also sees the election as enhancing the powers of the DPJ's rokuninshu, the six center-right legislators seen as potential leaders (The Yomiuri Shimbun less charitably calls them "the Gang of Six") of the party. I hope he is wrong, as all with the possible exception of current party secretary-general and next party leader favorite Edano Yukio are infected with the leaden seriousness that hobbles the party at election time. Politics should be about joy and these guys (and they are all guys) are not the Joy Division.

Okumura Jun - "Election 2014: The DPJ and JIP Need to Get Their Acts Together—Literally"

I cannot agree with Okumura Jun's conclusion that the DPJ and the Japan Innovation Party have to merge. Any attempt to link up the DPJ's remnants of the Japan Socialist Party with Hashimoto Toru's populists would lead to an explosion. Better to leave the two parties seperate, each running their candidates in designated DPJ-only or JIP-only districts, to challenging the LDP's conservative corporatism on the national scale with two radically different critiques.


Later - Many thanks to the commenters pointing out the broken link.

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.

Looking At The Election With The Glass Half Full

True to its Watanabe Tsuneo-set mandate of being the Liberal Democratic Party's house organ, The Yomiuri Shimbun paints a picture of opposition parties in a hopeless, riven position requiring desperate actions on the eve of Tuesday's official start of the campaign:

Poll prompts opposition to eye merger
TheYomiuri Shimbun

Movements to restructure and consolidate opposition parties will likely intensify after the upcoming House of Representatives elections, as the Democratic Party of Japan, the main opposition party, has decided not to seek a change of government in the elections for the first time since its inauguration, observers said.

DPJ Secretary General Yukio Edano told the press in Osaka on Saturday that his party will not seek a change of government at the upcoming lower house election.

"We would like to win sufficient seats this time so that voters will consider our party a possibility for government at the next election," Edano said.

DPJ leader Banri Kaieda also told the press on the same day, "We will try to increase the number [of our seats] to bring a feeling of tension to the Diet." Kaieda apparently meant that the DPJ would virtually concede the continuation of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's administration and seek a chance to return to power at another lower house election in the future.

It is the first time since the DPJ's inauguration — in 1998, with the merger of the former DPJ, the Good Governance Party and others — that it has not sought a "change of government" as its goal in lower house elections.

As of Saturday, the DPJ had fielded only 178 candidates for the upcoming elections, far fewer than the 238 required to claim a majority in the 475-seat lower house. Its final number of candidates is expected to be about 200, including those in the proportional representation section. Even if all of them were elected, the DPJ would not be able to form a single-party administration.

In the 1993 lower house elections, the Japanese Socialist Party, which was the main opposition party at that time, the Japan Renewal Party — a breakaway group from the LDP — and the others fought, calling for formation of a government with other parties opposed to the LDP and the Japanese Communist Party. Consequently, the government of Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa was formed after the elections under eight non-LDP political parties and groups.

However, the upcoming elections are unconventional compared to those of the past. They lack the option of a government based on cooperation among non-LDP parties since the DPJ this time has not revealed a plan to form a coalition government with the Japan Innovation Party or other opposition parties.

Meanwhile, the Japan Innovation Party had fielded only 81 candidates as of Saturday.

Phantom new party

Alarmed by Abe's lower house dissolution for a snap election, members of the opposition parties have come up with the idea of unifying non-LDP forces to create a new party.

Former DPJ leader Seiji Maehara secretly met Japan Innovation Party coleader Toru Hashimoto in Osaka on Nov. 15 to propose a plan to form a new party.

"Let's form a new party with the DPJ, the Japan Innovation Party and Your Party," Maehara was quoted as telling Hashimoto. "That will enable the opposition to win more seats than the ruling coalition parties at the next House of Councillors election to create a divided Diet."

Both Maehara and Hashimoto are considered advocates for reorganization of the opposition parties, and are sufficiently close as to hold frequent meetings with one another...

(Link)

OK, first of all, the silly stuff. "The opposition" is not eyeing a merger, Maehara Seiji is. Maehara, Amaterasu bless him, cannot get through breakfast without thinking of establishing a new, streamlined, conservative breakaway opposition government party with like-minded elements of other parties. He just never gives up on this kind of transparent, pathetic machination. He is the dog who will not stop bringing you a stick for you to throw even after you close the front door on him.

As for not having a "change in government" as the Democratic Part of Japan's goal -- what is wrong with having realistic goals? If you do not have enough candidates running to form a government and have had no negotiations with other parties on forming a coalition , would not setting a goal of a change in government be an invitation for anti-opposition figures like, oh let's say, the editors of The Yomiuri Shimbun, to accuse the DPJ of attempting to defraud the voters, enticing them with a promise the party cannot, in fact, deliver upon?

Talk about damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Furthermore, the analysis at the beginning is backward. Restructuring and consolidation will not take place after the election is over. The period of restructuring and consolidation is now, in the run up to tomorrow's opening of the campaign. An impending election has forced parties and individuals to decide whether to stay put, move in another direction or get out of the game entirely. Once the election is over, the pressure for change will be off, and off for a long time.

As for the tone and structure of the article, which posits simultaneous states of panic and resignation in the opposition, well, the nicest way to dismiss this depiction is say, "Amaterasu, this was sooooo two weeks ago! It's December 1 baby! Think of how much more the opposition will get its act together over the next two weeks!"

For the opposition has gotten it's act together after the inevitability of a Diet dissolution sank in over the second week of November. The DPJ has 177 candidates for the districts, up from 149 two weeks ago. The Japan Innovation Party has 81 candidates, up from 49 two weeks ago. There is some overlap in the candidacies -- the two parties will both be fielding candidates in 22 districts. However, that number is down from over 40 overlaps only two weeks ago.

Furthermore, fielding candidates in 236 out of a total 295 single-member districts is hardly running up a white flag of surrender. About 20% of the districts, mostly in Kyushu and the Chugoku regions of western Japan and the prefectures along the Japan Sea in eastern Japan, are so hopelessly dominated by Liberal Democratic Party machines that putting up candidates in them would be a waste of human and financial resources. Better to marshall the resources one has to contest the truly competitive districts, leaving the LDP strongholds alone.

The Yomiuri's account surreptitiously argues that the Abe administration and the LDP are invincible in this election. If one is talking about coming out on top numerically on December 14, this take is probably not wrong. However, to assume that Abe and Co. can come out this hastily arranged election with a strengthened capacity to govern and dominant position in Japan's political firmament is probably not right at all.

Where Things Could Go Right For The DPJ

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

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

Well, maybe.

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

Fast forward to today.

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

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

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

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

Not this time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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