Looking At The Opinion Polls And The DPJ's Short To-Do List

It pains me to say it. It pains you to hear it.

Results from the first post-dissolution announcement public opinion polls are out. They are from Kyodo News, the newswire jointly owned by the nation's local newspapers -- which trends hard anti-Abe -- and The Asahi Shimbun, which despite the reputation of its editors being congenitally and irrationally anti-Abe, trends in the middle of the pack, at least in terms of its public polling results.

In the crucial "Which party will you vote for in the proportional part of the ballot?" the numbers are:

Kyodo News poll (11/19~20)

LDP 25.3%
DPJ 9.4%
Komeito 4.9%
Communist 4.2%
JIP 3.1%
Socialist 0.9%
Life 0.3%
Next Generations 0.1%
Other 0.2%

Undecided 44.4%

(Link - J)

The Asahi Shimbun (11/19~20)

LDP 37%
DPJ 13%
JIP 9%
Communist 6%
Komeito 4%
Socialist 1%
Life 0%
Next Generations 0%
Other parties 2%

Undecided 30%

(Link - J)

The results are pretty supportive of a comfortable LDP/Komeito victory in the election. Winning even only a third of the 180 proportional seats puts the coalition on course for well over the 266 they need for "total control" of the Diet, the number of seats where ruling coalitions members chair all committees and the ruling coalition enjoys 50%+1 member voting majorities in all committees.

For the Democratic Party of Japan, the numbers are unimpressive. In pre-2009 days, the DPJ typically received twice the percentage of the final vote as was indicated in pre-vote polling. Assuming that this trend reemerges, the DPJ still polls well behind the LDP -- which means while it may claw back some seats from its disastrous 2012 showing, they will not be taken from the ruling coalition. Instead they will be taken from the JIP, Life and Next Generation.　The latter two parties, the remnant vanity projects of the two tired anachronisms Ishihara Shintaro and Ozawa Ichiro, will mercifully wink out of existence.

The large number of undecided voters and The Asahi Shimbun poll's head snapping first finding of a drop of Cabinet support below the non support number (Supporting the Abe Cabinet 39%; Not supporting the Abe Cabinet 40%) means the DPJ's chances of making Abe Shinzo and the LDP look like the losers of the election are not beyond reach. Indeed to claim the mantle of the credible opposition to the LDP, the DPJ would need to do only two things:

1) Stop party leader Kaieda Banri from speaking

Kaieda (pictured above) seems a nice, educated guy. However, and there is no kind way of putting this, he has a black tongue. Anything he talks about turns to dirt. Just hearing two sentences from him on matters of policy sends one scrambling for the mute button.

Demoralized DPJ members and conniving conservatives within the party lofted Kaieda into the leadership position for one purpose only: to resign in remorse after the party's pre-determined poor showing in the 2013 House of Councillors. In a testament to his political deafness Kaieda failed at failing, refusing to fall upon his sword at the appointed moment, insisting peculiarly that his having been elected leader means he is a leader.

If Kaieda remains the face and voice of the DPJ in this election, the party will fail to capitalize on the Abe administration's troubles.

2) Talk about the transfer of the nation's spending power

The DPJ cannot talk about the crushing of the economy from consumption tax rise because a DPJ government proposed and passed the legislation mandating the rise. The DPJ cannot dismiss Abenomics outright because it has no alternative plan other than managed, precipitous decline.

What the DPJ can and should do is ask Mr. Abe and the ruling coalition how, after having realized a huge transfer of wealth from the common citizens to the corporate sector* through the devaluation of the yen, the ruling coalition intends to get that money back.


[Many thanks to Corey Wallace (@CoreyJWallace) and Michael Penn (@ShingetsuNews) for the first reports on Twitter linking to the above opinion polls.]


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* And not the whole corporate sector either. The Tokyo Shimbun reported yesterday in a front page story that in the mid-term reporting season of the 1381 companies listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange First Section 50.5% of the profits declared came from the reporting of just 30 companies. Making matters worse, with all the help that Abenomics is supposed giving the corporates, 122 companies of the 1381 in the First Section booked losses.

Original image courtesy: Kobe Shimbun

Opposition Update - I'm A Fixin' To Die

OK, so now we know: the Democratic Party of Japan has a death wish.

When Prime Minister Abe Shinzo is invoking, on seemingly an hourly basis, the need for greater opportunities for women not just in Japan (Link) but everywhere (Link and Link), and he is slotting women into a record number of cabinet and Liberal Democratic Party posts (Link), when the international discussion on Japan is focusing on the country's ridiculous underutilization of women's talents and energy (Link), the DPJ responds with a new leadership council compose of dudes, dudes and nothing but dudes.

And not just just dudes, but dudes we have all seen before. (Link to classic Jiji Press sarcasm)

There is such a thing as optics. Truly, the new DPJ leadership group (above photo) is excruciating to behold.

Matching the DPJ in its wish for its own demise is the Your Party, whose founder and former leader Watanabe "Sticky Fingers" Yoshimi is demanding that his beleaguered former deputy, party leader Asao Ken'ichiro link Your Party up with the LDP or die. Asao, exhausted by the toxic Watanabe's interference, has finally snapped, saying that if Watanable wants to consummate his love for the LDP, he should leave the party.　Watanabe, as mature as he can be (Can you believe he was once considered a shoo-in for future prime minister?) has said that a founder cannot leave a party, so it is Asao who must go. (Link - J)

Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah -- same as you!

To be fair, Watanabe did have a viable plan to link up with the LDP, even after the departure of Eda Kenji and the defectors of Unity (oxymoron alert) -- who are having their own problems in trying to merge with the Osaka rump of Hashimoto Toru's Restoration Party. (Link)

However, getting caught with arms up to his elbows in the cookie jar sank Watanabe's plans for a glorious hawk-hawk-hawk superalliance supplanting the LDP/New Komeito ruling coalition -- because it became apparent once he resigned as party leader that the only real link between the LDP and the Your Party was the personal one between Watanabe and Abe Shinzo (Watanabe being one of the four-member "Abe Road" group of Abe and his most trusted political allies).

The Party For Future Generations (no, that is its real name - don't laugh) launched itself Tuesday night in what was a thoroughly joyless affair. Spry stroke survivor, party leader and adopted son of a convicted Class A war criminal Hiranuma "Shall We Dance" Takeo (75) and his somewhat more mature senior adviser, the frustrated stand up comedian Ishihara Shintaro (81) wore themselves out thundering about a future they, if actuarial tables are to be trusted, will not see -- Ishihara talking about the goals over the party over a decade, where he will be in his early 90s. Fellow party members, who might be around when the future generations arrive, sat quietly and uncomfortably, looking like a group of random strangers in a urologist's waiting room. (Link - J -video)

I know what you are thinking: Japan's opposition parties cannot, cannot be as pathetic as they seem here . There must be some glimmer of hope somewhere -- like the appointment of Edano Yukio as the DPJ's secretary-general giving a clear sense that Edano will succeed the hapless Kaieda Banri as party leader.

Yes, it is true, the Edano appointment provides a glimmer of hope. But only a glimmer. When lumped together with the amazing sublimating Socialists and the cash-burning Communists, Japan's opposition parties are a mind-boggling flaming heap of wasted time and talent.

Which has got to represent a huge temptation for Abe Shinzo to shuck his newly minted Cabinet and call a snap election of the House of Representatives -- after, that is, he signs off on the second raising of the consumption tax from 8% to 10%.


Image courtesy: Democratic Party of Japan official website.

Inose's Fall And After

Tokyo Governor Inose Naoki today announced that he has informed the head of the municipal assembly of his intention to resign his office. Inose's move comes at the end of weeks of nearly incessant calls for his resignation. Inose accepted and never declared a personal no-interest, no-expiration-date loan of 50 million yen from the family owners of the Tokushukai medical empire, currently under investigation for massive violations of the nation's voting laws in last December's House of Representatives election. (Link)

Inose has, as yet, not been charged with any impropriety in accepting the private loan -- or for having returned the money in haste after the executives of the Tokushukai were rounded up and arrested. A citizens group has filed an official complaint with the Tokyo Prosecutors' Office asking for an investigation into Inose's possibly failing to declare the loan as a political donation. The prosecutors are obliged to look into the case but are unlikely to file charges. With Inose no longer in office it is possible the matter will end there. However, the citizens group can continue to hound Inose for years via the out-of-control Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution system of citizens' indictments.

We have seen this movie too many times. An individual bubbles up from out of the murk, offering a chance to shake up the way the country operates. He then makes a mistake, or pushes too hard in trying overturn the Establishment -- and the investigators suddenly arrive. A credulous and craven media complex rushes in, broadcasting or publishing every rumor as fact, as though it were damning evidence of a criminal enterprise -- camouflaging all the while the sources whose assertions would not pass the smell test if their identities were known. The public, confused by the reporting and by inculcated and reinforced biases against rabble rousers, or desiring only that everything in life be quiet and unthreatening, abandons the previous crowd darling. Horie Takafumi, Murakami Yoshiaki, Ozawa Ichiro -- all toppled by nonsense accusations or perjured testimony. Now Inose Naoki, the most assiduous administrator the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has ever had and likely will ever have, joins the list.

That Inose's political position had become untenable became crystal clear when the Democratic Party of Japan came out against him. If there were any party or group that had a philosophical or ethical reason to call a timeout on the scrum against governor, it would be the party whose own term in power was hobbled and then cut short by the obscenely thin charges filed against the secretaries of its leader Ozawa and against Ozawa himself in 2009-11. In what is evidence of the DPJ's total lack of sense of what it stands for, the party jumped into the fray with both feet, with Assembly Member for Fuchu City Koyama Kunihiko turning in an almost hysterical performance at Tuesday's committee meeting. Party Leader Kaieda Banri, who as a protégé of Ozawa should know better, responded to news of Inose's plan to resign by saying, "Those voters who supported Inose are now forced to grasping at huge disappointment. Given that he came under a cloud of doubt, he should have resigned sooner." (Link - J)

The monumental stupidity of Kaeda's statement -- repudiating due process of law and the presumption of innocence -- reinforces the belief that the DPJ is doomed failure as long as he is the head of it.

As to why the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito, which supported Inose's candidature in 2012, should so suddenly turn against him, the answer is two-fold. First, by going after Inose for accepting Tokushukai money the LDP is making a bold bid to have the public forget that the money men in this affair, Tokuda Torao and Tokuda Takeshi -- were both LDP members of the House of Representatives. It is insane to believe that skewering Inose would cover up the LDP's fingerprints on the 50 million yen -- but goodness, it seems to have worked.

The other reason why the LDP wanted Inose gone is, unsurprisingly, money. Not paltry 50 million sums from the Tokudas -- real money. The hundreds of billions of yen that will be spent on Olympics-related construction and events preparations over the next six years. Inose rose to influence though penning books on the horrible waste inflicted by government budgets and the countryside by the construction industry, working at that time hand-in-glove with the LDP. If there is an eminence grise or noire in this drama, it is the members and supporters of the LDP's Road Tribe, who have long sought a means of wreaking vengeance on Inose for having turned the country against them.

With Inose the skeptic and critic out of the way, replaced with a more pliant successor, the Olympics can become the cover story for a thousand sins and abuses.

As for who will run in the by-election to elect a new governor, several names are being bandied about. Media types and Nagata-cho hallways rats have been flogging former Health Minister Masuzoe Yo'ichi as one likely to toss his hat in the ring. The resignation of Higashikokubaru Hideo from the Diet a week ago already initiated a burst of predictions he would be in the race.

The Sankei Shimbun, which has few scruples as to accuracy or plausability, has floated the names of LDP communications director Koike Yuriko (a Shisaku favorite legislator), Abe Shinzo's body double Hagiuda Ko'ichi and dark lord Minister of Education Shimomura Hakubun as potential candidates. (Link - J)

The hapless DPJ, which has a real opportunity to score points against the LDP in the aftermath of the publicly scorned passage of the Special Secrets Protection bill, has no idea whom it might nominate (Why am I not surprised?). Some in the DPJ are reportedly thinking the party should nominate Ren Ho, the House of Councillors member who heretofore has always been the bridesmaid in all big time political post guessing games.

Having the half-Taiwanese, sharp-tongued, whippet smart, media savvy, gorgeous and still youthful Ren Ho as the governor of Tokyo would send a plethora of positive messages to the world. Domestically, however, it would be a recipe for disaster. Prime Minister Abe's most consistently applause line when in conservative circles is an sarcastic echo of Ren Ho's famous question to government-supported supercomputer scientists who worked for 10 years without building an actual machine because they could never guarantee the machine would be #1 in the world. Incredulous that the geeks had consumed hundreds of millions of yen in government subsidies without producing anything, Ren Ho asked the project administrators, "What was wrong with being #2?" [So whenever Abe talks rouses the faithful with a "Let us pledge to be #1 in the world!" he is not riffing on Ezra Vogel; he is mocking Ren Ho.]

If the DPJ was smart, which it is not, it would nominate former Tottori governor and former Minister of Internal Affairs Katayama Yoshiro. The good professor actually knows and cares about administration and has a decent respect for the people's intelligence. Admirable qualities, those.

Why the race for governor matters, of course, is not that Tokyo is the most populous city in the country, that it is host of the national government or even that it will host the Olympics in 2020. It is that Tokyo Metropolitan Government is a fabulously wealthy local government, second only in economic/political significance to the U.S. states of California and Texas.

To sit behind the governor's desk inside the Tocho is a hell of responsibility. It needs a hell of a person.

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.

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

Prime Minister Abe On Facebook

The Asahi Shimbun insists that we pay for English language content (Link). Non-Japanese speakers have had to therefore wait for Toko Sekiguchi's account to learn about the Prime Minister's losing it when Tanaka Hitoshi chided the Abe administration for creating the impression of a rightward tilt in Japanese politics.

Japan PM Facebook Foray Draws Allies, Arguments
JapanRealTime

In the year since he opened his Facebook account, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has embraced the social media site in a way that's unlike any of his predecessors, praising it as a direct channel to the public...

[snip]

In a newspaper interview, Hitoshi Tanaka, an ex-diplomat who played a crucial role in the negotiations between Tokyo and Pyongyang over the return in 2002 of five Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea in the 1970s, voiced his concern that the prime minister’s recent comments on wartime history and his push to revise the constitution were being perceived as Japan's "rightward tilt" by the international community.

Mr. Abe went on the offensive on his Facebook page, reminding his nearly 367,000 "followers" and some 4,800 "friends" that Mr. Tanaka claimed 11 years ago that the abductees should be eventually returned to North Korea as initially agreed to with Pyongyang. Mr. Abe called Mr. Tanaka's decision then "a decisive mistake for a diplomat," dismissing him as "unqualified to speak about diplomacy."

(Link)

Right off the bat, though it was a non-sequitur, the prime minister was right about Tanaka's having been wrong about returning the abductees to North Korea. For the North Koreans to get double-crossed in a brutal, calculating way -- by the Japanese, of all people -- taught Pyongyang to not underestimate the mental tenacity of opponents -- a lesson the new DPRK leadership has, over the course of this last year, seemingly had to learn all over again.

More important, however, is what Abe's lashing out at critics has shown about his character.

First, that despite all the buffing from the message masters at home and allies in Washington, Abe remains insecure and reactionary, with an ability to descend into name calling when challenged. (Link)

Second, that those closest to him still think him a child:

Other lawmakers weighed in on the row. Economy Minister Akira Amari tried to downplay the round of name-calling, explaining this week that the 58-year-old prime minister is a "hot-blooded youth" whose endless duties have left him high-strung.

Amari, who has been gaffe-central in the Abe Cabinet through his inexplicable desire to tell the truth behind the fictions (Link) may have finally talked himself out of a job, post-House of Councillors election, with this last unhelpful "explanation."

Abe is 58 years old and prime minister. That he could still be, in the eyes of those closest to him, a "hot-blooded youth," should give everyone pause.

How much the Facebook posts actually reflect Abe's thinking, and how much is the product of pugnacious, defensive aides (and I am looking at you, Seko Hiroshige) hiding behind the PM whilst lobbing metaphorical bombs at "oppositionists" (Link), is a reasonable question.

Third, there is nothing more delicious than Abe being told by Koizumi Shinjiro, a man half the PM's age, to conduct himself in manner more becoming to his office.

Fourth and finally, someone might want to write about how the denizens of this famous land still, at this late stage of the game, lose themselves in social media -- lolling about in the ids they keep so hidden in other forms of discourse.

While we are on the subject of politicians and Facebook, can someone who knows Democratic Party of Japan leader Kaieda Banri tell him that it is OK to remove scurrilous and irrelevant comments from his Facebook page? It may be a sign of a noble character to suffer the slings and arrows of every single lunatic who spews out his venom, then hits the "send" button. However, no one should have to tolerate the vile abuse being dumped on Kaieda's posts.

Yours, Now And Forever

I grimaced when I read the first half of the below editorial. The editors of The Yomiuri Shimbun are right: the Democratic Party of Japan and its leader Kaieda Banri have failed to revise their talking points and sharpen their rhetoric to reflect the new politico-economic environment:

Don't Kaieda and DPJ know how to say anything other than 'No'?

There was a stark contrast between Prime Minster Shinzo Abe and Democratic Party of Japan President Banri Kaieda during their debate in the Diet. Backed by the recent surge of stock prices and a high public approval rate, Abe looked confident--even relaxed--while Kaieda's attacks on him made no impact.

As long as the leader of the largest opposition party continues such a lackluster performance, Diet debates will have no vigor.

On Wednesday, Abe and opposition party leaders had their first debate under the second Abe Cabinet.

Kaieda emphasized the projected side-effects of Abenomics. He said the Abe administration's massive monetary easing would hurt people, especially those living on pensions, by raising the cost of living. He also expressed concern about the government's ongoing discussions on deregulation that could pave the way to increased job cuts at companies.

Abe responded by saying that the amount of pension benefits will go up as commodity prices rise, and stressed that inflation will eventually lead to wage increases.

"We have created 40,000 jobs in the past three months, something the DPJ-led administrations never achieved," Abe said.

Present counterproposals

Since the launch of the Abe administration, the excessive appreciation of the yen has been rectified, and stock prices have been hovering at high levels.

If Kaieda does nothing more than harp on his concerns about Abenomics, we can never expect constructive Diet debates. We expect the DPJ president to express his own views on how to end deflation and spur growth. In other words, Kaieda should present concrete counterproposals.

It was Abe who brought up the issue of the bill to rezone electoral districts in the House of Representatives by eliminating five single-seat constituencies without adding any. It seemed the prime minister was trying to take the upper hand in debating the topic. Abe, who is seeking to pass the bill ahead of other electoral reform measures, asked for Kaieda's cooperation.

Abe said: "The public has been demanding that we rectify disparities in the value of votes. As members of the legislature, don't we have the responsibility to meet this demand?"

Kaieda refused to go along, saying that the main promise [between the DPJ and the LDP] on electoral system reforms was to slash the number of seats. However, we have to say his remarks totally miss the point.

In November, a lower house electoral reform bill to eliminate five single-seat constituencies was enacted, and we have to remind Kaieda that the DPJ agreed on passing it. However, now the party opposes the rezoning bill, which would prepare an environment for the realization of the first bill, insisting that more drastic reform is necessary. It is apparent that the ruling parties would never agree to such an unreasonable demand from the DPJ.

The DPJ, saying that eliminating five single-seat constituencies is insufficient to rectify vote-value disparities, has submitted a bill to cut lower house seats by 30 in single-seat constituencies and 50 in proportional representation blocs. However, other opposition parties refused to go along with the DPJ's proposal.

Parties' divergent interests

The ruling parties have submitted the rezoning bill to a related lower house special committee. However, in protest of the move, the DPJ, Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party), Your Party, the People's Life Party and the Social Democratic Party refused to participate in Diet deliberations on Wednesday.

(Link)

While I am no fan of the prime minister's policies, the points the Yomiuri's editors are making are sound. Kaieda and the DPJ are not playing politics at Abe's and the LDP's level. They are stuck recycling stale rhetoric from a decade ago. Looking at the most recent round of polls, the DPJ is perilously close to falling into secondary status alongside the Your Party of Watanabe Yoshimi.

However, Pravda-by-the Palace being the publication that it is, its editors could not complete an editorial without serving up a slice of sycophantic nonsense so preposterously thick as to crush their argument:

Such actions cannot be expected to work, and only give the impression to the public that the opposition parties are putting party interests before all else and ignoring the issue of rectifying vote-value disparities.

Because we all remember how ferociously The Yomiuri Shimbun criticized the LDP for its constant saying of "No" to anything the DPJ-led governments proposed; how the paper was up in arms about unrectified voting disparities giving unnatural permanent majorities to the LDP; and how the editors have never stopped haranguing the members of the LDP for their putting their own and their party's interests above those of the nation.

Because The Yomiuri Shimbun is an independent news organization, correct?

The same publication that a week ago published a story describing with glee the difficulties DPJ members of the Tokyo Metropolitan assembly face because they are unable find issues separating them from TMD Governor Inose Naoki -- the corollary being that the DPJ, being congenitally appreciative of good governance and unable to oppose just for opposition's sake, finds itself fighting for its survival with one hand tied behind its back. (Link)

Oh, to heck with it. The editorial board of the Yomiuri should save time-- theirs and ours -- and just fill the "From the Editor" space every day with a big "I ❤ You LDP, Now and Forever!"

Image courtesy: Chugoku Shimbun

Care To Try Governing For A Little While, Mr. Abe?

The Yomiuri Shimbun scored an interview with the prime minister. According to the PM, a revision of Article 96 of the Constitution is his number one priority going into the House of Councillors election. (Link)

What? Revision of Article 96, lowering the threshold for constitutional amendment below the current 2/3rds of both houses of the Diet standard? Opening the door for a gusher of revisions, including ones with the sole purpose of extending LDP rule non erit finis?

Abe enjoys a supermajority in the House of Representatives, meaning that right now he and his party can pass any legislation that the New Komeito can be stiff-armed into accepting. Come August, even this restraint will be removed, as barring an unimaginable catastrophe, the LDP will have robust majorities in both the House of Representatives and House of Councillors. Abe can look Yamaguchi Natsuo in the eye and say, "If you do not like my policies, then vaya con Dios, mi amigo." The New Komeito for its part will likely not leave the ruling coalition, partly because breaking with the LDP would open up the possibility the government looking into the activities of NK's mother ship, the Soka Gakkai.

Whether or not the New Komeito stays or goes (and Abe & Company will be smart enough to make sure that a break up looks like the New Komeito jumping rather than getting pushed) Abe and the LDP will have no effective constitutional or coalition partner brakes upon their legislative agenda.

With essentially total control in his grasp and the only threat on the horizon the remote one of the Supreme Court invalidating the 2012 House of Representatives election (Link) Abe sees his primary duty to be…constitutional revision?

Why?

Well, of course we know “why” in the sense of a legacy or mission, as both the LDP and Abe have pledged since the beginnings of their respective existences to rid the country of this constitution drafted by New Deal idealism-inspired staff members of the Occupation.

However, what should be on everyone's lips – most importantly the lips of Democratic Party of Japan leader Kaieda Banri and Your Party president Watanabe Yoshimi – is:

"Why do you need to fiddle around with the Constitution, when you have tyrannical legislative and executive powers? Why not use your constitutional powers and your current popularity to govern the country, seeing as how you do not have to pay the least bit of attention to us at all? The Constitution is not blocking you from running the country as you see fit – only your own timidity and sloth are."

It is a mark of the intellectual and ethical vacuity of the LDP that when it possesses the ability to do anything except mess with the constitution, it wastes its energy on trying to mess with the constitution.

The reason for this pointless obsession with constitutional revision? Oh, Abe & Company (and the Hallelujah Choruses inside Japan’s news media universe and the Washington DC nomenklatura) will give you a list of reasons a kilometer long.

The actual reason, though? Governing a country is work…and who wants to do work when agitation and propaganda opportunities beckon?


Image courtesy: The Yomiuri Shimbun

Kaieda Banri's Chanting For Inner Peace

You may have missed this little tidbit from the tail end of last week -- but Democratic Party of Japan leader Kaieda Banri revealed at a press conference that he chants sutras to quell his anger, such as the rage he felt at Hirano Tatsuo’s defection. (Link – J)

As a general principle, there is nothing wrong with revealing one engages in religious practice as a means of handling stress. However, one has to choose the right venue. Had Kaieda told a gathering of the Japan Buddhist Federation of his chanting, both believers and non-believers could accept the revelation. Believers could take heart in Kaieda's confession of need and his subsequent sense of deliverance while non-believers could say, “Oh c'mon...Kaieda is just fishing for Buddhist votes."

By talking about his religious practice at a general press conference, Kaieda leaves no space for the cynics to breathe. They have to take him seriously...and Amaterasu knows they do not want to.

I agree with those who argue that Kaieda is in a difficult position, hemmed in between a largely hostile news media, a fashionably irresponsible Liberal Democratic Party, the crazies and flunkies of the Japan Renewal Association and the DPJ’s own cohort of DINOs who acquiesced to Kaieda's election as party leader only because a) they themselves ran the party into the ground in 2012 and b) Kaieda will have to resign after the party gets wiped out in the House of Councillors election this summer.

That being said, Kaieda does himself and the DPJ no favors. He simply seems unaware of how his behavior is seen by a mocking press, his peers and the public.

However, for writers in need of a cheesy opening to a story about the downfall of the DPJ -- "They thought that the party didn’t have a prayer...but boy were they ever wrong!" – Kaieda is a godsend.

[Cue the starts-out-with-sweet-but-slightly-embarrassing-sincerity-ends-in-Spike-Milligan devotional music from George Harrison.]

The Second Coming Of Abe Cabinet - The First Opinion Polls

Go figure:

Do you support/not support the Second Cabinet of Abe Shinzo?

Kyodo [Dec 26-27]

Support 62%
Do not support 22%
Don't know/no response 16%

The Asahi Shimbun [Dec 26-27]

Support 59%
Do not support 24%

Mainichi Shimbun [Dec 26-27]

Support 52%
Do not support 26%
No feeling 21%

The Kyodo finding of a 62% support rate is stunning, with The Asahi Shimbun result in the same neighborhood. We will have to see if later polls, when the electorate will have a better sense of just who is in the Cabinet and how radical the New Paradigm Liberal Democratic Party is, will be closer to the Kyodo or the Mainichi findings.

If the 60% level holds, the Abe Cabinet will be starting out with a level of support commensurate with the best of support levels of the six Cabinets preceding it – a remarkable outcome, given the small percentage of the electorate that voted for the Liberal Democratic Party and its candidates on December 16.

Just why the people support the Cabinet tells an interesting tale of salesmanship, voting strength in the Diet and voter desperation.

Why do you support the Cabinet? [Top four answers]

Kyodo

Hope for measures spurring the economy 30%
Nobody else is appropriate 27%
I believe in the prime minister 11%
Is an LDP-New Komeito government 10%

The Asahi Shimbun

Is able to enact policies 30%
Is an LDP cabinet 25%
My reason is indescribable (nan to naku) 18%
Abe is prime minister 17%

As for party loyalties, a noticeable shift has occurred toward some of the top performers of the December 16 election.

Which party do you support? [Results of Dec 17-18 poll in ( )]

Kyodo

LDP 34% (30%)
DPJ 13% (8%)
Restoration 13% (17%)
New Komeito 5% (4%)
Your Party 6 (6%)
Future 2% (3%)
JCP 4% (2%)
SDP 1% (1%)

None 25% (22%)

The Asahi Shimbun

LDP 36% (31%)
DPJ 9% (11%)
Restoration 8% (9%)
New Komeito 2% (3%)
New Party 6% (3%)
Future 2% (2%)
JCP 2% (2%)
SDP 1% (1%)

None 29% (29%)

The odd persons out from the story are the Japan Restoration Party (Association) and the New Komeito. New Komeito voters hiding their true numbers is nothing new. However, the decay in the popularity of the JRP(A) is surprising. The party did, after all finish second in the party proportional section of the ballot, burying the third place Democratic Party of Japan 12.2 million votes to 9.6 million votes. The Mainichi finds support for the JRP rising – but it is as compared to a poll from a month ago, so the results may not be comparable with the Kyodo and Asahi Shimbun findings.

The depth of the hole the DPJ has dug for itself can be grasped from the responses to the questions about expectations for the party and its newly elected leader, Kaieda Banri:

Do you expect anything from the election of Kaieda Banri as the head of the DPJ?

Kyodo

Have expectations 36%
Have no expectations 54%
Don’t know/no response 9%


The Asahi Shimbun

Have expectations 29%
Have no expectations 61%


Do you have any expectations of the rebuilding of the DPJ?

Mainichi Shimbun

Have expectations 29%
Have no expectations 64%


Sources:

Kyodo
http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/News/Sp201212280052.html

The Asahi Shimbun
http://www.asahi.com/politics/update/1227/TKY201212270894.html

Mainichi Shimbun
http://mainichi.jp/select/news/20121228k0000m010068000c.html