On The TPP Negotiations And Abe Shinzo's Sense Of America

Friend Stephen Harner finds much to harrumph about regarding the purported proposals on the steps the government of Japan can take to increase the sales of U.S automobiles in Japan made during this most recent round of talks on the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership by the U.S. negotiating team. (Link)

And yes, Harner's post does not even touch upon the anachronistic and preposterous U.S. light trucks tariff, or the ridiculous U.S. suggestions as to a timetable for its abolition.

My only quibble with Mr. Harner's piece is his ending. I am reluctant to believe Prime Minister Abe Shinzo is willing give away much to secure a deal with the U.S. on TPP. Abe probably believes that pushing hard on the construction of a Futenma Replacement Facility at Henoko in Okinawa and some sort of increase in the capacities of the Self Defense Forces to participate in international security affairs are together more than sufficient for him to pick up the big pencil and check off the "Took Care Of The Alliance" box. Making positive noises about TPP helps maintain international investor interest in Japan, particularly in the all-important Japanese equities markets. However, the decision to have Japan participate in the TPP was made by the now much-maligned Prime Minister Kan Naoto of the Democratic Party of Japan. The negotiations have dragged on -- but as a legacy, not a core, Abe Cabinet economic initiative.

Furthermore, as Tobias Harris sagely noted, TPP is, for Abe Shinzo, a part of the "second" opening of Japan (Link -- not the third one, as Prime Minister Kan insisted the trade partnership would be. (Link)

That little bit of contemporary revisionism on Abe's part tells a grand tale of his willingness or not to kowtow to America.

Can This Piece of ...Not Fully Considered Legislation

So close...but no.

The latest edition of The Economist does the great service of alerting its readers as to what is becoming the bugbear of the extraordinary Diet session: the Liberal Democratic Party leadership's desire to pass an Official Secrets bill. Unfortunately, the article misses more than it hits. (Link)

The crux of the matter is whether or not the country even needs the legislation. As the article points out, there are already laws on the books meting out special, long (in Japanese terms) sentences for leaking military secrets -- the most important class of secrets. However, the instances of SDF personnel intentionally leaking or stealing classified information that we know of are few and pathetic. The police thought they had a huge case in 2007 when the pick up of a Chinese national on a passport violation led to the discovery of Aegis radar data on the laptop of her husband, a Maritime SDF officer. However, the case against the MSDF officer collapsed in confusion over whether or not the data was a file miscopied in an exchanges of pornographic images done with other SDF officers or indeed was a part of the openly available teaching materials of an MDSF training facility in Hiroshima Prefecture. Eventually the officer, who was facing a possible 10 years in prison, was given a four year suspended sentence. (Link)

As for other government employees, as the cover up of the Green Cross HIV-tainted blood product sales and the refusal of successive governments to acknowledge the existence of the three so-called secret accords on the Okinawa turnover demonstrate, Japanese officials, even retired ones, have no problem keeping secrets. In the latter case, officials continue to protect the secrecy of the accords even after the U.S. copies of the documents in question could be viewed in U.S. government archives (Link). That one would become unemployable, lose one's pension, be ostracized from one's social networks and be liable for arrest on even a minor charge of mishandling public information has been more than enough of a deterrent against leaking information in need of protection.

Indeed, as the case of the Green Cross HIV-infected blood products showed, the problematic tendency is that Japan's public servants do not, indeed, serve the public. Health, Labour and Welfare ministry officials refused to acknowledge the existence of documents supporting the assertions of HIV-infected claimants until a crusading, non-LDP minister of health named Kan Naoto forced his subordinates to cough up the documents the bureaucrats had claimed either did not exist or could not be found. (Link)

The proximate stimulus for the current bill -- the contents of which, in a bit of trial baloonery, the LDP has assured friendly reporters is "largely settled" (osuji goi shita) with the LPD's cautious coalition partner the New Komeito (Link - J) -- seems to be the prosecutors office's inability to find a serious crime in the incident three years ago of an irate Japan Coast Guard officer's uploading to video sharing sites of the recordings demonstrating conclusively that a Chinese fishing ship had been steered into collisions with two Japan Coast Guard vessels. The then DPJ-led government had desperately sought to suppress the videos in an effort to prevent the spiraling out of control of a diplomatic crisis over the arrest of fishing vessel's captain.*

The government (actually, if we are going to be pointing fingers, the preening, tone-deaf and self-adoring Chief Cabinet Secretary of the time) had sought to cover up the facts of the case against the captain. However, a maniac had viciously attacked Japanese government employees. In the case of the rear ending of the JCG Yonaguni, the Chinese captain rammed his boat into a manned vessel that was neither in his way nor moving. Covering those facts up, or even trying to, never should have been accorded the mantle of realist diplomacy. It was a dereliction of an elected politician's duty to protect Japan's national interests -- or at very least, the health and welfare of Japan Coast Guard personnel. It was also, as the Banyan blog argued at the time, a politically costly insult to the intelligence of the Japanese public. (Link)

Which highlights the reason why the Abe government should abandon the secrets bill -- or if some tightening of the legal consequences of information leakage has to be passed in order to please the intelligence communities of Japan's partners, why the government should scrap the current bill in favor of one drawn up by a cross-party team of the smartest legal minds in the Diet, including, most importantly, legal experts of the Communist Party: the legislation will not be used to protect secrets. Instead it will be used most often, if not exclusively, to declare secret, either pre-emptively or ex post facto, horrible mistakes and crimes.

Ask former prime minister Kan Naoto, who was not only the hero in the Green Cross scandal but the unfortunately hands-off prime minister at the time of Chinese boat captain incident and the hero again in his shaming of the executives of the Tokyo Electric Power Company and central government bureaucrats trying to keep him from getting a handle on the situation at the Fukushima Dai'ichi nuclear power plant. Mr. Kan can probably talk from dawn until dusk about the obstruction, lying and malfeasance done in the name of the greater public good.

Later - The press is reporting that the New Komeito's project team on the Official Secrets bill (in J. - Tokutei himitsu hogo hoan) has given its a approval for a revised version of the bill that purportedly has provisions guaranteeing the freedom of the press and the people's right to know. When one considers how much those principles were trampled when officials lacked an ability to class certain information as officially secret, one is left to wonder how these new countermanding rights are supposed to be engaged and enforced. (Link - J)

----
* One largely forgotten part of the Chinese fishing vessel story: the captain was not initially arrested for ramming the JCG vessels. Instead he was arrested on the charges of illegal fishing. While this is standard Japanese law enforcement practice -- arresting a suspect on a laughable minor charge until the suspect confesses or evidence can be collected proving the existence of a major crime -- charging the captain with illegal fishing was an assertion of sovereignty charge, which the Chinese government could argue violated a mutual understanding that it had with the Japanese government to merely encourage fishing rules violators to run back to their home countries, rather than a violation of the free and safe use of the seas charge, which was the actual crime of the Chinese captain.

Where The Abe Cabinet Will Lead Us - A Preview

Two worthies well worth listening to -- Columbia University professor Gerald Curtis and Sophia University professor Nakano Koichi -- will be speaking this noontime at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. (Link)

I must admit a curious relationship with both men. Professor Curtis gave a very kind public plug for Shisaku last month, with the caveat (an unnecessary one, really) that "Michael is not always right." Professor Nakano does not know quite what to make of me, even after we have served on discussion panels together. I am guessing, though, that I am not his favorite person.

Which is odd, because of the two, I more inclined to agree with Dr. Nakano than Dr. Curtis, specifically on the outlook for the governing style of the Abe Cabinet after the July 21 election. Professor Curtis is largely sanguine, expecting that the postwar habis of political parties and governments holding back from the full use of their powers will carry on past July 21. I believe, and I suspect Dr. Nakano believes that once clear of the House of Councillors election the Liberal Democratic Party's worst elements will run amok, bulldozing long-desired revisionist and remilitarization claptrap through the Diet, constrained by only by the occasional mild protest from a cowering New Komeito and/or their own sloth.

Dr. Curtis has assured me that fear public criticism will keep Abe and Company from making use of the near dictatorial powers they will enjoy after July 21. The good doctor may have a point: the Abe government has heretofore not made much use of its supermajority in the House of Representatives...if by "not made much use" one means, "if one ignores the use of the supermajority to pass the redistricting based upon the egregious +0/-5 electoral reform legislation perpetuating the inequalities in the electoral system critical to LDP dominance." (Link - J)

I am not sure that today's LDP, composed of folks who could not stop attacking Prime Minister Kan Naoto even as the country was plunged in its worst crisis since World War II, is so genteel as to be reined in by admonitions from the nation's editors and television personalities.

If I were at the press conference I would also like to hear what both professors make of the recent drops in voter participation...and not just for the knife to the back such opting out from voting has been for the Democratic Party of Japan. I would like to know how the two professors will incorporate the terrible voter turnout numbers for the last two big elections (last December's House of Representatives election and the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election of June 23) and the projected poor turnout for the July 21 election into their theories on how Japanese democracy works, or, if they wish to categorize it so, how Japanese democracy does not work.

Afloat Upon A Raft Of Unusual Stability

Just how aberrant are the levels of support for for this Abe Cabinet, compared to the support ratings for the cabinets of previous prime ministers?

Here is the graph of the cabinet support ratings of the first year (in Hatoyama Yukio's case, the seven months) in office of every prime minister since Keizo Obuchi (1998-2000).



[Click on the image to see a larger version in a new window.]

Freakish? You bet. Not even the cabinet of fabled outlier Koizumi Jun'chiro (green dotted line) enjoyed the stability of support that Abe 2 (thick red line with nodes) has enjoyed over its first five months in existence.

The real sad sack tale? Kan Naoto (dotted yellow line). Starts out with 61% support in May; has 65% support in September.

What happens in between, in July and August? A collapse of support to 39% and 41% respectively -- just in time for the July 2010 House of Councillors election. The ruling coalition loses control of the House and thus control of the legislative agenda. Short circuited is the Democratic Party of Japan's plan to rule the country based upon a new set of priorities and principles. Kan and his successor Noda Yoshihiko must go hat in hand to the Liberal Democratic Party, begging the LDP to please, please, please vote for bills drawn from the LDP's policy program.

None of that kind of nonsense going on now, is there?

Data source: NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute

About That Revolution You Are Fearing

The insurgency began
And you missed it...

- REM, Begin the Begin (1986)

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

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

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

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

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

(Link - J video)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No Country For Gentlefolk

Harold Abrahams - "You know, gentlemen, you yearn for victory just as I do. But achieved with the apparent effortlessness of Gods. Yours are the archaic values of the prep school playground..."

- Chariots of Fire (1981)

According to Yuko Nakano, research associate at the Center of Strategic and International Studies:

The LDP, with its coalition partner Komeito, controls 325 seats in the Lower House which is more than the two-thirds majority that is needed to overrule the Upper House. However, the ruling parties cannot fall back on this "super majority" every time they try to pass important legislation. Such a legislative practice can be seen as a sign of "arrogance" by the public and the LDP and Komeito do not want to create a public backlash against them, especially before the Upper House election next year. It is precisely for this reason that the LDP and the Komeito may seek some form of partnership with others in the parliament.

(Link)

According to Okumura Jun of Global Talk 21:

The LDP will maintain its position as a dominant mainstream party by virtue of its 1/4 bedrock share of the voting electorate plus an enduring coalition with Komeito (and its 1/10 bedrock support base) that includes intimate coordination at the SMD level (making Komeito the virtual pacifist-wing of the LDP). Moreover, the coalition has a House of Representatives supermajority that must be used sparingly from a media-management perspective but will enable it to pass annual tax legislation, which, coupled with the ~FY2012, blanket deficit-bond authorization, will enable it to keep the government running without regard to the configuration of the House of Councilors. This means that if the LDP does badly in the 2013 HoC regular election, it can jettison Abe in favor of a baby face and continue in power without calling a HoR election until December 2016, when its current term ends. The outcome of the 2013 HoC election is crucial for Abe's long-term survival as prime minister, but is only a speed bump for the LDP.

(Link)

Were it that it were so. Were that there were a body of unwritten rules recognized by all; a compulsion to obey those rules out of a desire to be seen responsible and just; and an eagle-eyed news complex to keep one in line if one transgresses.

However, the above highlighted portions have nothing to do with Japanese politics of December 2012 and beyond. History tells a different tale as to the mores of this blessed land:

- On July 30, 2006, the last business day of the regular session of the Diet, when the one Abe Shinzo was basking in the sunlight of a majority in the House of Councillors and a supermajority in the House of Representatives, bill after bill was rushed through in the morning House of Councillors session on identical votes of 123 to 96, 123 to 96, 123 to 96 During lunch, the powerless opposition decided to give up, with only the Communists returning for the afternoon session. (Link - J)

- On March 19, 2011, eight days after the disaster of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and seven days since the meltdowns of the Fukushima Dai'ichi nuclear plants began, Prime Minister Naoto Kan called his Liberal Democratic Party counterpart Tanigaki Sadakazu. Kan proposed the establishment of a government of national unity with Tanigaki as the vice premier.

Tanigaki spurned the offer. The LDP's attack dogs went into action on the talk shows, rubbishing Kan's offer to share power in a time of national emergency.

- On March 21, 2011, two days after the LDP's spurning of Kan's offer, the news media began spreading the vile rumors that Kan had halted a last ditch injection of salt water into the reactor cores and interrupted plant worker efforts in an emergency visit to the plant on March 12. On March 28, Kan had to withstand withering Diet questioning of his judgment and calls for his resignation for contributing to or even causing the nuclear disaster...

...except of course that Kan during his emergency visit to the plant had given the order to enter the #1 reactor building that the plant managers had been awaiting from the management of Tokyo Electric Power...and the interruption of the injection of salt water had never taken place, the heroic onsite plant director having overruled a direct TEPCO order to stop the injection.

- On August 29, 2012 the LDP, angered by Prime Minister Noda's letting slip an LDP deadline for a Diet dissolution, voted for a motion of censure against the Noda government. However, due to a procedural rule, the LDP could not vote for its own motion of censure. It had to vote for a motion submitted by seven other opposition parties in the House of Councillors, including People First, the party of LDP's arch-enemy Ozawa Ichiro. The language of that censure motion condemned the raising of the consumption tax and the Triparty Agreement of the Democratic Party of Japan, the LDP and the New Komeito which had ensure the passage of the consumption tax bill. The New Komeito, seeing it impossible to vote for a censure motion that condemned its actions, walked out before the vote. The LDP contingent remained, voting against itself.

- On December 15, 2012, all the major newspapers published editorials on Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko's dissolution of the Diet. The Yomiuri Shimbun, the enemy of the DPJ, declared unwavering support for the dissolution whilst outlining in detail how the election would be illegal. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun somehow found the illegality of the election less important than Prime Minister Noda's having missed the LDP's August 8 deadline for a dissolution. The Sankei Shimbun endorsed the dissolution without a mention of the legal and constitutional issues at all.

The most crushing, however, was the The Asahi Shimbun editorial. In what can only be seen as a concerted effort to complete an alignment with the most famous lines of William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming" – "The best lack all conviction, while the worst. Are full of passionate intensity. "— The Asahi Shimbun acknowledged the illegality of the upcoming election only to endorse the dissolution as "something one just had to live with" (yamu o enai suru mono). (Link)

Adhere to an unwritten rule? The news media was unwilling to demand that the Prime Minister and the House of Representatives obey the law!

If there decency is to survive the incoming administration, hope must be placed in the influence of the New Komeito.

However, hope, they say, is not a plan. Rather than relying on heretofore unseen gentility in the LDP and a sudden growth of a spine in a crusade-leery news media complex, we need a new set of rules befitting the challenges ahead:

Jim Malone - "He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way!"

- The Untouchables (1987)

The TMD Governor's Election As Bellweather

The constantly morphing scrum in advance of the December 4 cutoff date of the candidate lists for the House of Representatives election is leaving the voters simultaneously amused, annoyed and bored -- a state of affairs that would be hilarious if not for the facts that:

- whichever party or alliance comes out on top, it will have to deal with an uncontrollable House of Councillors (thank you, Michael Penn)

and

- the country is going to be tossed into the same maelstrom again in eight month's time, when the half of the House of Councillors seats are up for election.

In contrast to the national vote, where four parties of the right, right, center-right and left are battling for the bulk of votes, with micro-parties (sorry Your Party, you are on the way down) battling over the crumbs (the New Komeito voters being a largely fixed quantity) the contest for the governorship of the Tokyo Metropolitan District has resolved into a clear battle between two competing ideological alliances (with an obligatory minor cast of hopefuls and freaks, of course).

On the one side is the conservative alliance of the Liberal Democratic Party, the New Komeito and the Japan Restoration Association. They are all backing former Vice Governor Inose Naoki. On the other is the liberal alliance of the Communists, Socialists and the Party of the Future (Mirai no To) behind former Japan Bar Association President Utsunomiya Kenji. The conservatives here are a really conservative, seeking a retention in office of the man who has been the TMD's real governor, Ishihara Shintaro having been the Tocho's figurehead and dreamer-in-chief. The liberals are really liberal, in the pejorative sense: hopeful that correctness of thought takes precedence over experience.

Utsunomiya's campaign has a further shadow over it: the citizens of the TMD have little to complain about. The TMD's has flourished over the last decade, despite Ishihara's numerous boondoggles. By any measure, the TMD, where most of the country's thought leaders and foreign correspondents live, is the outlier among Japan's prefectures. It has enjoyed continued prosperity, continuous growth (more people live in the inner 23 wards now than at any time in history) and relative youth (Okinawans give birth to way more children but Tokyo is a magnet for the 20-35 cohort).

The Utsunomiya campaign picked up a nice endorsement yesterday from former prime minister Kan Naoto, a liberal (in the positive sense) champion. Kan, however, is facing a surprisingly tough race in his home district (Tokyo District #18 - 10 terms) -- an indication of a possible wipeout of the Democratic Party of Japan on December 16. In the 2005 postal reform election, Kan was the only DPJ member to either win or retain his/her seat in the TMD. If he is struggling, the outlook for the party is grim.

As regards the DPJ as a whole, it has opted out of participating in the TMD gubernatorial election, telling its supporters to make their own choice. An inability to either field its own candidate or line up behind one of the nine candidates (all of them men) is a bad sign. It is a passive parallel to the strategy the party is deploying the House of Representatives election: be the mild alternative, engaging the 40% to 45% of the electorate that remains non-aligned voters in a negative way, offering the DPJ as the default, middle-of-the-road choice.

Come December 16, the emotionally detached DPJ may find out what Texas humorist Jim Hightower meant when he said, "The middle of the road is for yellow lines and dead armadillos."

Hatoyama Steps Down In Anger

A long, long time ago I listened to a rambling lecture by a famed professor of African Studies. Almost nothing remains of that lecture (my notes vanished long ago). I cannot even remember the name of the course.

All has evaporated save one phrase. The professor had interviewed insurgents who had fought the British colonial establisment in the Mau Mau Rebellion. He had asked them what they had thought they were doing, killing so many of their own. "We were just purifying the tribe," one informant responded.*

Noda Yoshihiko has been peacefully Mau Mauing the Democratic Party of Japan, purifying it of its anti-market liberalization, anti-contractionary policy dissidents. Yesterday the purification drive bagged its biggest target yet: former Prime Minister and DPJ co-founder Hatoyama Yukio.

Out of preening arrogance and an inability to sense a change in the political winds, Hatoyama had expected to run as a dissident. The second-generation DPJ leaders currently in control of the party told him that there was no way they could allow him to run as a non-adherent to the party's platform. They insisted that he, just all the other candidates, keep a pledge to the party manifesto ("How about you? Do you promise to follow the party manifesto for as long as your term lasts?" would be a proper smart-aleck response).

Hatoyama has balked. His former political secretary Nakayama Tomoyasu (Link – J) a DPJ member of the Hokkaido Prefectural Assembly, denounced the DPJ leadership's enforcement of a loyalty oath, saying:

When was it that the DPJ turned to the politics of terror? It is normal that a person cannot not become a candidate, when confronted with a fumie-like request. (Link – J)

Calling something a fumie is a provocation of the first order. The practice of ferreting out Christians during the Edo Period by having suspected believers step on images of Christ or the Virgin (or both, as is the case of the Pietà fumie above) is code for the worst sort of repression of freedom of conscience -- the Meiji to Early Showa Eras' ferreting out of Communists, Socialists, Sokka Gakkai and other unapproved religious organization believers being still largely off-limits as a source of political metaphors for oppression (though "just like the Kempeitai" seems to be an acceptable construction).

Expect Nakayama and the DPJ to part ways soon.

The departure of Hatoyama Yukio was not inevitable, of course. He had founded the party with Kan Naoto in 1996. It was his money and the money from his mother, heiress to the Bridgestone Tire fortune, which had bankrolled the party in its early years and kept the wheels greased until the party's big electoral win in 2009.

If Hatoyama had kept his mouth shut, signed the pledge, only to repudiate it after the election, he would have had seniority and history backing up his wish to have a say in the selection process of Noda Yoshihiko's successor.

Indeed, waiting to pick up the pieces after an electoral wipeout seems to be Kan's strategy. Having indicated that he did not support an early dissolution of the Diet prior to Noda's taking the plunge during the Diet Party Leader debate, Kan has remained out of sight and out of hearing.

Hatoyama has sworn he will not run for reelection (Link – J). Given his record, chance are good that he will reverse himself in a few days' time, saying that he cannot not abandon his political support group (koenkai).

Prime Minister Noda's rapid fire announcements of a DPJ commitment to Japan's entering into negotiations for accession into the Trans Pacific Partnership and a Diet dissolution without the DPJ winning a deal on electoral reform has driven out prominent dissidents like Yamada Masahiko (Link – J and Ozawa Sakihito (Link – J).

The departure of a double handful of lawmakers from the DPJ since the TPP announcement has dropped the DPJ-People's New Party alliance below the 50% mark in the House of Representatives even before the expected electoral drubbing. It has also destroyed, as the Nakayama Tomoyasu quote above indicates, the image of the DPJ as the big tent party of the center-left, an electoral counterweight to the big center-right tent of the LDP.

"Purifying the tribe" – forcing out those who would oppose the leadership's sharpening of the DPJ’s policy message – may bear electoral fruit, especially as LDP leader Abe Shinzo flounders in his defenses of his party's promises (Link). Though the final LDP manifesto has yet to be uploaded to the party’s website, the details that have leaked out so far are sure to be sending shivers up the spines of voters (See the first footnote to Corey Wallace's post on the Japan Restoration Association/Party of the Sun merger agreement -- Link).

With the dissidents gone, Noda can offer a believable pro-market liberalization/strong defense/reinforced social safety net policy platform in contrast to an unrealistic (and lengthy) LDP wish list.

Noda has another reason why he should choose unity of message over unity of party: the House of Councillors. As Shingetsu News Agency head Michael Penn pointed out in his Monday report to clients, in response to my predictions of a post-election LDP-Third Pole tie-up:

In a 242-member chamber, it takes 122 seats to pass legislation...On their own, the LDP and New Komeito, even should they win big with a majority in the House of Representatives, will still be a minority of roughly 103 seats in the House of Councillors.

If they tie up with the "Third Pole"—including both the JRP and Your Party—they would reach the agonizing number of 121 seats, meaning that they would still need to cobble together some support from a microparty like New Party Daichi or Green Wind in order to pass legislation. **

Noda has most likely been looking at this arithmetic and concluded that the LDP will have to come knocking at the DPJ's door. Having a unified party will strengthen his hand (or the hand of a successor, should DPJ losses be so great that Noda’s position becomes untenable) in negotiations with the LDP over a common policy program. LDP Secretary-General Ishiba Shigeru confirmed yesterday that his party's plan is to work with the DPJ for at least the first few months of next year, until the run-up to the House of Councillors election ends their collaboration (Link – J -- this link comes courtesy Michael Penn)***.

The math is indisputable. It is not clear, however, that the LDP has the flexibility to enjoy a temporary dalliance with the DPJ. True, the parties post-Noda announcements and post-resignations are close in terms of core policies – if one ignores, of course, what the crazies seem to have produced as an LDP election manifesto. An NHK poll over the weekend furthermore found that of all the post-election arrangements, an LDP-DPJ grand coalition was the most popular choice (Link - J). Nevertheless, it would seem easier for the LDP leadership to explain a hook up with a plethora of mini- and micro-parties and independents than the party's choosing its primary rival as a partner.

What the voters think of all these expulsions and extended hands depends a lot on the messenger -- and this election is notable for the lack of a single likable party leader.


Later - A more discombobulated view of the above, from the Yomiuri Shimbun, coincidentally using the same language. (Link)

Even later - Hatoyama has had a one-on-one meeting with Prime Minister Noda announcing his retirement from politics. (Link - J)

We are being asked to believe that the two spoke thusly to each other:

Hatoyama - "At the end of a long process of reflection, I have decided to not be a candidate in the upcoming election. I wish to withdraw from the political world and begin my walk through the third stage of life."

Noda - "I wish to express my heartfelt thanks for the numerous contributions you have made."

I would prefer to believe that the pair reenacted Art Buchwald's version of the note exchange in between JFK's French White House chef René Verdon and President Lyndon Baines Johnson:

Verdon - Mr. President, I am leaving (Je m'en vais).

LBJ - I am so sorry to hear this (Je m'en fous).


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

* The "purification" did nothing for the Mau Mau in terms of winning themselves or their sympathizers power in post-colonial Kenya. Even though the first president Jomo Kenyatta had been falsely accused and tried for being a leader of the Mau Mau, his government was comprised largely of persons who had collaborated with the British authorities. A ban on public discussion of the Mau Mau in Kenya remained in place until 2003.

** Since New Party Daichi and Green Breeze (Midori no Kaze) are left-wing micro-parties, Penn is being facetious.

*** As predicted Ishiba and Abe have been talking at cross-purposes. We shall see how long it is before Abe offers a revised version of Ishiba's statement as regards a grand coalition.

Image courtesy: Kyushu National Museum (Kyushu Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan)

In Defense of Noda Yoshihiko's Leadership

Two analysts whom I respect greatly yesterday issued negative assessments of Prime Minister and Democratic Party of Japan leader Noda Yoshihiko's leadership.

In a post to his blog GlobalTalk 21, Okumura Jun writes:

The October 22 evening edition of Nikkei has a chart listing the ministers that resigned or were dismissed during the three years of the DPJ regime. It tells us that Hatoyama lost two, Kan lost four, while Tanaka is Noda’s second loss. So one head better than par for the course? Not quite.

[Snip]

Noda's two losses by contrast were precipitated by political and legal misdemeanors by obviously under-qualified if personable politicos being rewarded for their political attributes.

But that's not all. Prime Minister Noda in what must be a national record has conducted three cabinet reshuffles in little more than a year in office. This is not exactly mitigated by the fact that two of those reshuffles were actually pretexts to get rid of a couple of appointees in each case who had exposed their lack of political toilet training and had to go.

Six incompetents kicked out, or three cabinet reshuffles in little more than a year. Pick his poison; whichever explanation you choose, he makes Hatoyama look good and Kan look at worst average as far as personnel management goes. And that’s probably not an easy feat to accomplish.

(Link)

In a comment to my post of the wee hours of Monday, October 22 on Maehara Seiji’s act of political arson (Link), Corey Wallace of σ1 writes:

As for the main argument of your piece, I guess my point really is, yeah Maehara is a prat, but he hasn't really blown up any "plan" mainly because the plan was a pointless and ineffective one the moment that Noda chose the cabinet he did (irrespective of the Tanaka issue) and the party's leadership essentially sacrificed the middle and younger ranks of the party by signaling that they would turn over on the electoral redistricting. Maehara has made it easier for the LDP etc to badger them during the temporary session. But it may be for the best. It seems the senior leadership's plan is to extend the life of the administration as long as possible, even if it leads the party into even more devastating annihilation in an election. As long as they survive, the rest of the party be damned (and yes, Maehara is part of the senior leadership). A look at the opinion polls tells you what the public want, and the current Noda's administration survival is the lowest on the list for what they want to see happen over the next few months, perhaps only above the government running out of money.

My friends, respect you both I do, but you are both wrong.

As to the charge that Noda has a bad record of personnel management, consider the DPJ Hatoyama and Kan left him and what he has been able to do with it. Beside (because he most certainly not under) Hatoyama Yukio, Ozawa Ichiro managed to grab every atom of policy making power to himself, alienating the entire middle tier of the party's membership. The struggle reaching a climax in the Ubukata rebellion (Link) that ended in a humiliating stepdown by the imperious Ozawa.

When Hatoyama stepped down, and took Ozawa in a headlock down with him, Kan Naoto took over a party with a major image problem and deep internal fissures. Kan decided that Job One was the restoration of the party's reputation and mollification of the party’s middle ranks – most of whom had been in the party longer than Ozawa. This meant an openly declared policy of "de-Ozawafication," quarantining Ozawa – a process considerably aided by Ozawa's indictment on political funding fraud charges – and also trying to salvage a workable policy program from out of the mountain of impossible-to-fulfill promises made in the Ozawa-drafted 2009 policy manifesto.

However, Kan could only go so far in the de-Ozawafication process, as Ozawa still had sway over at least 150 legislators. So while Kan kept his Cabinet largely clean of Ozawa acolytes, he had to always be cognizant that he and his allies stood on the precipice as regards party unity, that a step too far could split the party in half. Had not 3/11 intervened, Kan could have indeed presided over such a split.

The recovery and reconstruction effort, and the absolutely disgraceful attacks on Prime Minister Kan by members of the Liberal Democratic Party and others in the opposition, submerged for a while the internal battle between the Ozawa followers and the DPJ main line.

However, Ozawa's frightening hold upon his followers and their willingness to follow him even on the most self-destructive of paths was demonstrated in the election to replace Kan. In a move that strains credulity even today, Ozawa picked as his champion Kaieda Banri, a man who had not only written a book denouncing Ozawaism but one month prior to the leadership election had broken down in tears during Diet testimony (Link). Despite the history of bad blood and real possibility of electing an emotionally unstable man party leader, Ozawa's followers provided the lion's share of 143 votes and a top-place finish Kaieda received in the first round of voting.

Noda eventually prevailed in the runoff, 215 votes to 177 – but what to do about those 177 votes? Noda, in his own attempt to keep the party together despite Ozawa’s machination, promised to be a "no sides" leader, willing to share power with Ozawa followers and allies.

Noda made good on his promise, appointing Ozawa allies Ishikawa Tatsuo and Yamaoka Kenji to his Cabinet – ministers who almost immediately came up croppers. Both were censured and had to be replaced in January 2012. (Cabinet Reshuffle #1)

In June, Noda, facing an uphill battle to get the LDP and the New Komeito to the altar on voting for the package of bills including the consumption tax, decided he little choice to but to rid his Cabinet of four vulnerable ministers, two of whom had been censure by the House of Councillors. (Cabinet Reshuffle #2)

The reshuffle did its job, which was to shut the LDP and the New Komeito up about the Cabinet, so that Noda could get down to the difficult business of working with the opposition to pass the tax rise, knowing that if he succeeded on the policy front, Ozawa and his closest followers would jump ship.

Which they did on July 2.

In September Noda breezed through a required leadership election (Link). Since he had won so convincingly, he had no overt reason to reshuffle his Cabinet. However, to do nothing would have been very poor public relations, especially given the low public popularity ratings for the Cabinet. So he moved his most important young allies around in a game of musical chairs in between the power positions in the Cabinet and party leadership. As for the second- and third-ranking Cabinet posts, he handed them out to all the different groups inside the DPJ, whilst deftly avoiding giving anything to any of the three men who had had the temerity to challenge him in the leadership race (try to get away with that trick, LDP presidents-elect!).

For a man with a less-than-10 vote majority in the House of Representatives, the handing out of minor Cabinet posts to the champions and princes of the various sub-groups inside the party was not just smart but necessary.

The opposition called Reshuffle #3 a travesty. Watanabe Yoshimi of the Your Party came up with a trio of epithets: the "Warehouse Clearance Sale Cabinet," the "Goodbye Memorial Cabinet" and the "Graduation Photograph Cabinet" (Link - J). Even I who tries to avoid running with the herd got carried away and called it the "So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish" Cabinet. (Link)

That Tanaka Keishu should have snuck in is hardly surprising. He is the standard bearer of the old Democratic Socialist Party (Minshato) that merged with the DPJ in 1998 but still retains a group identity within the confines of the party. Tanaka of course had a huge warning sign flashing over his head: he had lost his Diet seat in 1990 as a result of the Recruit Scandal. However, he is an old man, with no Cabinet posts under his belt and a much-interrupted and probably doomed Diet career. He was, as I have suggested before, the Prime Minister’s one selection made out of pity.

Politics, however, is a pitiless business.

As to idea that Prime Minister Noda is merely extend his stay in office is a misreading of Noda's approach to politics. With a razor thin majority in the House of Representatives, the Opposition blocking the passage of legislation in the House of Councillors, Cabinet and party support ratings in the cellar and with only nine months left in the terms of the Diet members, he is by definition playing an end game.

But what an end game it has been! He fooled Ozawa Ichiro into walking out of the DPJ with only a half a bushel of followers and no money in his pockets. He drove LDP president Tanigaki Sadakazu into humiliating retirement, whilst extorting from him the votes he needed to pass the consumption tax. He maneuvered the LDP to vote for a censure motion condemning itself. He told current president Abe Shinzo, in their first meeting after their respective reelections, to go acquire carnal knowledge of himself should he press on the issue of early elections -- hence the magnitude of betrayal in Maehara’s Seiji's musings on Sunday. (Link)

For the DPJ, the war is lost. The party will be swept away in the next elections, in both Houses. There is nothing that the party can do, nothing that its individual members can do to avoid the deluge. So why not go down fighting, tooth and claw, with devastating tenacity, until the very end?

Unless, of course, Noda and the party choose the Unimaginable Alternative...

Do Not Study Too Hard, Hosono-san

Contrary to a heretofore unknown rule that cabinet members should not challenge the prime minister in party elections, Minister of (deep breath) the Environment, the Restoration from and Prevention of Nuclear Accident and Nuclear Power Policy and Administration (i.e. - the haaardest working man in the government), unfaithful husband and hot young hunk of political man meat Hosono Goshi is reportedly studying a run for the post of leader of the Democratic Party of Japan. It seems a host of front benchers from amongst the supporters of former Prime Minister Kan Naoto, Policy Research Coumcil Chairman Maehara Seiji and former Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Kano Michihiko, want Hosono to become the DPJ's face, giving the party at least a chance at fighting the brainless default vote for the Liberal Democratic Party or much worse, the as-yet unnamed and unfounded national party of 42 year-old Osaka wunderkind Hashimoto Toru.

"Studying" (kento shite iru/kento ni haita) in a political context usually means quite the opposite of the usual meaning of the word. When a government official or a party official says, "We are studying the matter" what he/she is usually saying is, "You have asked an incredibly stupid question about a wild hypothetical. I have not the least intention of answering your question you rancid excuse for a journalist. Now sit down and shut up."

However, in this instance, Hosono, whom we know can sometimes put his brain in park, may indeed be studying a bid for the party leadership in the usual sense of the word "study."

Why will Hosono, after his brief period of study (he will be making an announcement today) likely not challenge incumbent prime minister Noda Yoshihiko, who otherwise would have a lock on the DPJ leader election?

Having a fourth DPJ prime minister since August 2009 makes the party look stupid - This was the reason Maehara gave to his supporters when he met them at lunch yesterday (J). Unfortunately, Maehara group members went to Hosono in the evening and before the cameras presented him with a written request to run. Hosono received the request, responding, "The election of a party leader is to be approached with trepidation. In that, my feeling has not changed." (J)

Seen another way, were Hosono to run and win, he would be the fifth party leader since 2009, an even further indication of party flightiness.

Putting a new bright face on the party does not work - The LDP tried to save the House of Councillors election of 2007 by naming the young Abe Shinzo, a man with a history of underachievement, as the party's fresh face. It then revved up the public relations machine (remember the egregious Newsweek Asia edition cover story comparing Abe Akie to Jacqueline Kennedy?).

The result was not quite as salubrious as planned. (E)

Then there was Fukuda Yasuo's surprise resignation in 2008 in order to open the way for the happy-go-lucky, Akihabara-loving Aso Taro to be the face of the party in a snap election in the fall.

That did not pan out, due to a little something referred to as the Lehman Brothers Crash.

Then there was Hatoyama Yukio's sudden resignation as prime minister in June 2010, simultaneously purging himself and the scandal-hobbled Ozawa Ichiro from the leadership, allowing Kan Naoto, Mr. Clean, to take over in time to save the DPJ from a loss of its majority in the July House of Councillors election.

That did not work out as planned, either. (E)

Policies and party image, it seems, matter.

Why take the hit when you can pick up the pieces? - With the DPJ likely to suffer a crushing losses in the next round of elections, the leader, whoever he is, will have to resign to take responsibility for the defeats.

Why be that leader? Why not bide one's time and run for the party leadership in the aftermath of the electoral debacle, taking up the role of the architect of the party's resurgence?

Later - The news media are reporting that Hosono, unlike that fateful night under street lamp with Yamamoto Mona, is doing the sensible thing and not succumbing to flattering attention. (J)

Slackjawed With Amazement at the Kurokawa Report

For me to list all the non-sequiturs, self-contradictory passages, half-truths, prevarications ("It is possible that..."), unsupported accusations, self-evident statements presented as revelations (Prime Minister Kan Naoto's visit to the plant "diverted the attention and time of the on-site operational staff." Oh cut the crap: the presence of a wasp in the control room would have had the same effect) and the reticence to assign blame in the final report of the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Commission (Kokkai Tokyo Denryoku Fukushima Genshiryokuhatsudenjo jiko chousa iinkai), I would be typing all day, all night -- for weeks.

It is really that bad.

If the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission or the International Atomic Energy Commission had any sense, they would immediately hire a team of Japan scholars to tear this [unfortunate choice of words removed - Ed.] apart, and form special investigative commissions of their own to compare and contrast all the official reports produced so far.

The download page of the Kurokawa Commission report crashed a little after 9 pm last night (and is still down at the time of the publication of this post), preventing access to the most important versions of the documents. The reports themselves, when one could access them, were presented in impossible to copy-and-paste formats and in a maze of links and pages, indicating how little the powers-that-be have wanted the world and/or the citizens of Japan to take look at the Commission's findings and come to their own conclusions.

That the English language version of the report has the commission president blaming Japanese culture for contributing the disaster, whilst the Japanese language version omits this little chestnut, is simply so revolting an appeal to international stereotypes regarding the people of this blessed land that my morning coffee today tastes like sewer water -- and Amaterasu knows I love my coffee.

Later - This post has been edited to remove non-worksafe language.

Fukushima Dai'ichi - The Greater Truth Or The Big Lie?

As one with a deep and considered faith that former prime minister Kan Naoto led this blessed land through its darkest days of the postwar era with a proper mix of grit, effort and screaming at idiots and liars, Thurday promises to be a very important day:

THE NATIONAL DIET OF JAPAN FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR ACCIDENT

INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION COMMISSION

TO RELEASE REPORT ON FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR ACCIDENT

On July 5, Chairman Kiyoshi Kurokawa of The National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) will deliver its final report to Mr. Takahiro Yokomichi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Mr. Kenji Hirata, President of the House of Councillors

The long-awaited report comes at the end of a six-month investigation into the nuclear accident of March 11, 2011

The Commission, the first of its kind in the history of Japan’s constitutional government, received its mandate from the National Diet to investigate the causes of the accident, the causes of the subsequent damage and the effectiveness of the emergency response.

The Commission was also charged with investigating Japan’s nuclear policies and regulations and to offer recommendations to prevent a similar occurrence.

The Commission held over 900 hours of hearings and interviews with over 1100 people. It was able to use the powers of the legislative body to obtain necessary documents and evidence

The Commission acted on behalf of the Japanese people—independent from any elected member of either House of the Diet, from the restrictions of the government bureaucracy, and from the financial influence of the nuclear power lobby

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

July 5, 2012

Date and Time: July 5, 2012, Thursday, 11:00 start

Venue:

Conference Hall (1F) in the House of Councillors Members Office Building
Address: 2-1-1, Nagata-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo

-11:00-11:10am

Final Commission Meeting confirming the Report (to be broadcasted online with simultaneous English interpretation

Conference Hall (1st floor) House of Councillors Members’ Office Bldg

Open to the public and the press. Attendees must preregister—registration information is available online

-19:00
Press Conference (to be broadcasted online with simultaneous English interpretation

A presentation by the Chairman and all Members of the Commission will be followed by a Q&A session

Conference Hall (1st floor) House of Councillors Members’ Office Bldg

Open to the press only. Attendees must preregister—registration information is available online.

* An English edition of the Executive Summary will be available in a print version and on the website; an English translation of the entire report will be available for downloading at a later date. Past hearings (including those of former Prime Minister Naoto Kan and current METI minister Yukio Edano) and commission meetings can also be viewed in English on our website.

(Source)

A lot of folks, namely the Liberal Democratic Party, the nuclear village and the mass media outlets that reprinted, uncritically, the slanders of their sources inside Tokyo Electric Power and the national bureaucracy, have a lot riding on the report's railroading Kan, the then Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano Yukio, other members of the Kan Cabinet and the Democratic Party of Japan's political appointees in government. The committee's lead investigator, corporate mischief maker Nomura Shuya, gave a mendacious and manipulative presentation of what might be the commission's findings on June 9 -- a performance that earned Nomura a veiled rebuke from Dr. Kurokawa in the written review of the meeting.

Dr. Kurokawa will be presenting the findings of his commission in a presumably less fraught environment at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) on Monday, July 9, from from 16:40 to 18:10. Registration for this presentation closes on Friday, July 6. (Link - J)

It is possible that the news media entertainment complex of this blessed land will present the finding of the Comission in a comprehensive, fair and self-critical manner.

Possible, but not likely.

The End Game

The Democratic Party of Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito, the only three parties that matter -- a state of affairs so grating to the other parties in the Diet that the three leftist microparties and the one libertarian miniparty are joining hands to protest the "price fixing going on behind closed doors" (J) -- are putting the final touches on a final agreement on the shakai hosho zei ittai kaikaku an, the bills enabling the combined reforms of social security and tax systems. (J)

There are some hurdles standing in the way of the three parties coming to an agreement by the Prime Minister's deadline of June 15. The LDP wants the Noda government to repudiate the DPJ's 2009 manifesto pledge to rewrite pension law so as to guarantee that all pensioners receive a minimun 70,000 yen per month from the national pension plan. The LDP and the New Komeito together want Noda to repudiate the DPJ manifesto pledge to repeal the special eldercare system for persons over 75 years of age, a terribly unpopular and initially confusing program of mandatory healthcare prepayment the two parties sweated blood to pass when they held the reins of government. The three parties are also at loggerheads over what, if anything, they should do to lessen the impact of the imposition of the consumption tax on those person living at or below the poverty line.

Now according to the news noise machine, Prime Minister Noda is desperate and willing to sacrifice the DPJ's identity (E) or prepared to discard policies intrinsic to the DPJ's unity (E) all for the sake of winning the LDP's and the New Komeito's votes in favor of the passage of the bills raising the consumption tax.

Maybe. It depends on what one believes DPJ policies are.

If one takes the simplistic route, that DPJ policies are all the policies listed in the 2009 and 2010 manifestos, then the above assertions are true.

If, however, one takes the position that the policies listed in the 2009 manifesto were the ones Ozawa Ichiro tossed together trying to buy the support of every special interest the LDP, in its internal shift to becoming a modern, urban-based party, had left lying in the dust, without any concern as to whether the resulting program was internally consistent or affordable -- i.e., LIES -- then:

a) the DPJ is a party of lies and liars, and thus their promises are worthless rhetoric, not policies, or

b) the promises made in the 2009 manifesto, which Kan Naoto tried desperately to render more concrete and believable in the 2010 manifesto, were never the policies of the DPJ, just electoral dandruff clinging to Ozawa Ichiro's jacket.

When Ozawa loyalist and true believer Kawauchi Hiroshi wails about the impending deal on the sheaf of bills reforming the pension and tax systems...

"The LDP's proposal is unacceptable. If we were to agree, the DPJ would become the LDP."

...he is not only showing that he is more a courtier than a politician but also a poor student of history. Fiscal consolidation, realistic pension funding schemes and a willingness to sacrifice growth for stability are core policy positions of the original DPJ. These were the principles undergirding the August 2005 party platform, under then party leader, now Deputy Prime Minister Okada Katsuya.

That DPJ co-founder Hatoyama Yukio forgets what he used to believe and defends the 2009 manifesto as holy writ (J) is neither implausible nor particularly significant. Like the White Queen, Hatoyama can believe a half a dozen impossible things before breakfast.

What the representatives of the DPJ, the LDP and the New Komeito are going to be banging heads over today are the remnants of the fight. The DPJ has a rather weaker position due to the PM's having set a deadline. This prevents the DPJ from exercising its ultimate weapon of extending the Diet session, forcing everyone to just sit on their tailbones until the LDP and the New Komeito fall into bickering in between themselves over just who is preventing the passage of their favorite bits of legislation. It should surprise no one that the DPJ has chosen this moment to float a trial balloon for a radical restructuring of both the LDP's and the DPJ's plans to reform the House of Representatives which hews close to what the New Komeito has been proposing and which would mess up the proportional seat voting for the LDP (E) -- just at the moment the LDP is showing strength in that half of the ballot.

All could go haywire at the last moment. Someone could say something untoward about someone else's sister, leading to a termination of negotiations.

All indications are, however, is that what we are seeing is the end game, one where the LDP and the New Komeito will wander away from the table having agreed to have their members vote with the government on a raft of bills, with neither the promise for elections nor the Noda repudiation of Ozawa Ichiro which the two parties had been demanding.

A Union Is Pulled And The Government Is Better For It

At a cursory glance, I have been going a bit overboard on what a bad idea it is to merge Japan's two systems of childcare (Part I and Part II). I saw the unification of the hoikuen and yochien systems as reform for reform's sake: not offering a clear solution to a problem largely restricted to Tokyo and its bedroom suburbs; certain to spawn rivalries in between the personnel of the forcibly merged systems; and encouraging decay in the regulation covering childcare facilities.

Well, the plan to merge the two systems has been dumped. It is being killed in order to win the Liberal Democratic Party's support for the legislation of the combined reforms of social security and tax systems (shakai hosho zei ittai kaikaku, or ittai kaikaku for short). Health, Labour and Welfare Minister Komiyama Yoko (glaringly the only woman in the Noda Cabinet) has stated she will not fight for the unification. (J)

Now commentators would want us to think that this retreat from the promise made in the Democratic Party of Japan's 2010 Manifesto is a demonstration of the hopeless inability of the DPJ to follow through on its promises.

There is of course, another way of looking the situation: that the sacrifice of this promise and others like it are strategic and cheap -- giving up what have upon reflection been very bad or at least unaffordable ideas (eliminating expressway tolls; the 26,000 yen-a-month child allowance system) in return for what would be difficult-to-obtain cooperation from the LDP and the New Komeito on significant reforms, many of which the LDP and the New Komeito were too cowardly to impose upon the country when they held power.

Prime Minister Noda should therefore send gift sets to former party leaders Ozawa Ichiro and Kan Naoto, thanking them for stuffing the 2009 and 2010 manifestos with so many expendable promises.

Why Does This Not Shock Me?

The Sankei Shimbun, in a bit of title legerdemain, has made it seem as though it has been given an exclusive look inside the Diet commission report on the Tokyo Electric Power's Fukushima Dai'ichi nuclear power plant disaster -- and that the conclusions are damning:

東電の調査報告書案「官邸の介入、無用な混乱助長させた」

"The Draft Tokyo Electric Power Investigation Report: 'The Intervention of the Prime Minister's Office Fomented Needless Confusion'"

Read that headline too quickly and after hearing so much about the Diet-appointed commission investigating the disaster, and you might misassociate the news flash with a leak from the Diet commission draft report.

Only when you read the article do you realize that what Sankei is promoting as an exclusive is a leak from Tokyo Electric Power Company's own internal report that the company is compiling to compete with the Diet commission's report. TEPCO's report find (gasp) that the Kan government's bypassing of TEPCO's information controls interfered with operations at the Fukushima Dai'ichi plant.

(Link)

Why am I not shocked -- at TEPCO's conclusions and the way the Sankei Shimbun has filed this story?

Nomura Shuya's Preemptive Strike

Does the world know who Nomura Shuya is?

He is a lawyer with Mori, Hamada & Matsumoto, a corporate law firm specializing in M&A, restructuring and finance. He is a professor of law at Chuo University, teaching commercial law, civil law and business law strategy. Just how he has time for any work for his law firm or preparation for his classes is a question, as he has been on 68 different government committees or government report drafting boards since 1998 (J).

Nomura furthermore has a weekly appearance on the Nihon Terebi network's late night newscast. Nihon Terebi is owned by the Yomiuri Shimbun and both have a strong anti-Democratic Party of Japan bias, the television network even more so than the flagship newspaper. Nomura crows about his media appearances on his website (J).

Nomura is also a member of the Diet-appointed Tokyo Electric Power Company Fukushima Dai'ichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident Investigation Committee (Tokyo Denryoku Fukushima genshiryoku hatsuden jiko chosa iinkai), the second official and third major investigation into the government's response to the meltdowns, explosions and release of radioactive materials at the Fukushima Dai'ichi plant.

That being a contributor to Nihon Terebi newscasts during his tenure as a committee member should be considered a glaring conflict of interest has obviously never troubled Nomura's conscience.

The committee held an open hearing on Saturday. Nomura took advantage of his time to read out a series of rhetorical questions, throwing into doubt Prime Minister Kan's decision to by-pass the institutional route of receiving information on the situation at the plant from the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which would be receiving its information from Tokyo Electric Power Company's Tokyo headquarters, which would be receiving its information from its workers at the plant. Finding this route utterly dysfunctional, due to the NISA's almost amateurish information collection and dissemination capacities and TEPCO's obsessive secrecy, the prime minister and the rest of the Cabinet carried out direct communications with the plant managers.

Nomura seems to have made a calculated bet that the mediasphere would misrepresent his musings as statements of the committee's findings. Some media outlets, such as TV Asahi, found themselves struggling mightily with the gravitational pull of Nomura's presumed authority as the committee's chief investigator, but still maintained some measure of integrity by presenting Nomura's questions and his "there are those who are of the opinion that" gambits as questions, not statements of fact (J - Time Sensitive). Most of the news media succumbed, presenting Nomura's musings as a preliminary release of the findings of the committee, employing casuistry to cover their tails should the conclusions in the final report, due at the end of this month, be at odds with the headlines of Sunday (see the Yomiuri Shimbun's gutless use of the word shiteki in this article - J).

As for the careless non-Japanese news media, members stumbled over themselves to get the story out and wrong. (E)

The takeaway from Nomura's performance, that a desperate government's bypassing of a corporation's executives and the bureaucrats of the agency in charge of promoting the industry in question led to confusion in the response to the emergency, must have the partners at Mori, Hamada & Matsumoto smiling.


Later - This post has been edited for clarity.

Later still - - Damning excerpt from committee chair Kurokawa Kiyoshi's review of the meeting of June 9.

また、危機管理体制の構築、リスクコミュニケーションの在り方等について、第二回論点整理として、現時点の論点を暫定的に示した。なお、論点整理は、国会事故調の論点の全てを示すものではなく、また、国会事故調としての結論を示すものではない。国会事故調の最終的な調査結果については、一括して最終の報告書に反映される

"In addition, as for the structure of the crisis control system, the way of communicating risks, et cetera, the second set of points of contention, the issues at the moment have been indicated in a provisional way. Still, the clearing up the points of contention has not been an indication of all of the points of contention the accident investigation committee is considering, nor is it indicative of conclusions made by the accident investigation committee. As for the final results of the investigation of the accident investigation committee, these will be reflected comprehensively in the final report."

(Link - J)

Much, much later - The Yomiuri Online's dishonest account of the goings-on at the meeting (E), now happily immortalized on the world's data servers.

Ecce Homo

Today former prime minister Kan Naoto is appearing before the Diet's "Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima Power Plant Accident Investigative Committee" (Tokyo denryoku Fukushima genpatsu jiko chosa iinkai). Kan's testimony is the culmination of the Committee's investigations, which have seen former minister after former minister summoned to tell his version of what happened during the first few hours, days and weeks of the Fukushima Dai'ichi disaster. Former Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano Yukio had his day before the Committee yesterday (On a Sunday! The Diet is normally like Melina Mercouri -- never on a Sunday!).

Today, however, is the grand finale, the final act, where the biggest fish in the sea is hauled out and interrogated about his actions and decisions in the most hectic and desperate days this blessed land has known since 1945.

The Committee's chairman is Kurokawa Kiyoshi (bio), a Fellow at National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) and an emeritus professor of Tokyo University. Despite the pointed, possibly highly technical questions it might ask, the Committee is likely to not be the kangaroo court the opposition and members of the news media desire.

Nevertheless, the news media and the opposition will hover like vultures over Kan's testimony, trying to find sentences to misconstrue, quote in isolation and otherwise tease and torture until meaning is drained from them. The colossal politico-media-entertainment squid bought into and promoted a narrative that the PM was an impediment to those who were fighting a panicked and ultimately failed effort to prevent meltdowns, explosions and the release of many terabequerels of radiation. Its members even went so far as to accuse him of initiating cascades of events that worsened the disaster.

So far, the news has accentuated the negative:

Japan refused US offer of nuclear experts in PM office

Edano: PM's office did not block use of 'meltdown'

Japan government spokesman says he didn’t deliberately mislead public on nuclear crisis
(Check out the accompanying photo. Shameless!)

As can be expected, each of the participants has used the occasion of his testimony to exonerate himself (E - photo issue as above). As a consequence, the final report of the Committee is likely to present a braid of different narratives, rather than a definitive chain of causation.

Most desperate to get their version out are the Tokyo Electric Power executives, who were not interviewed for the most recently compiled comprehensive investigation into the Fukushima nuclear disaster, produced by Funabashi Yoiichi's Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation (Link - J). If anybody has had a story to tell (and I do mean story) it is TEPCO executives, particularly as then president Shimizu Masataka checked himself into a hospital less than two weeks into the crisis. (E)

In the end, the report will disappoint those who want someone to blame. A giant earthquake and a towering tsunami hit a nuclear power station designed to resist the greatest natural blow this blessed land had heretofore experienced, not a black swan event. With the main and backup systems gone, everyone, with the possible exception of the TEPCO executives and the unprepared public information service of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, performed heroic ad hoc efforts to bring the nuclear reactors under control and ensure the public's safety.

So while the wire services, the nightly news on the anti-DPJ channels and even the reports the neutral channels, out of a misunderstanding of the concept of fairness, will bore in on the confusion and improvisation in March and early April 2011, and tomorrow's newspapers will echo and elaborate upon tonight's themes, the truth is that individuals like former Prime Minister Kan and plant manager Yoshida Masao, by following their better instincts, led others to do the same, and prevented a disaster from becoming a cataclysm.

Hold up your chin, blessed land, for producing men and women such as these.

Mr. Noda's Ambivalent Attitude Toward The National Bureaucracy

The conventional wisdom state that Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko is a tool/enabler of a resurrected national bureaucracy.

Signs of the return of bureaucratic power include:

- the reinstitution of the right of bureaucrats, particularly the head of the Cabinet Legislative Office, to testify in the Diet

- the full acceptance of a plan to raise the consumption tax to 10% -- a longtime dream of the Ministry of Finance (actually their dream is to send the consumption tax rate even higher).

This a corollary of Noda's having moved directly from the position of Finance Minister to the premiership. Former prime minister Kan Naoto made the same move in June of 2010, and seemingly the first words out of his mouth upon taking over as the country's leader were that taxes will need to be raised. This statement sent Kan's and the Democratic Party of Japan's popularity ratings southward and is credited as having been a significant factor in the the DPJ's losses in the July 2010 House of Councillors election -- losses that handed control of the House to the opposition, derailing the DPJ's ambitious plans to change the way the country is run.

In the popular view, any politician who serves as the minister of finance succumbs to that bureaucracy's mantras, becoming a glassy-eyed novitiate in the cult of raising the consumption tax ("Must-raise-the-tax. Must-save-Japan")

- the deceleration in the campaign to cut the funding of projects of questionable merit made by the ministries and the quasi-government entities that provide retiring bureaucrat with cushy sinecures

- the acceptance without question or amendment of the budget compiled by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, including spending for a restart of the Yamba Dam project -- the cancellation of which was the signal in 2009 that the new DPJ-led government was willing to go to the wall to effect change in the country

- the selection of the F-35 as Japan's next generation fighter, which seems to have no justifications other than simultaneously pleasing the United States government and satisfying the Ministry of Defense's lust for stealth -- even if Japan's beleaguered defense contractors get nothing out of the deal and the stealth technology remains entirely in the hands of the United States

[Please add to the list, if you can, in comments]

It is tempting to believe that the PM is allowing national bureaucrats (kokka komuin) to run amok because he needs them as allies or at least neutral parties. He cannot be fighting simultaneously on two fronts against both the bureaucrats and the political opposition, as the first DPJ prime ministers Hatoyama Yukio and Naoto Kan tried to do, with catastrophic results.

Evidence exists, however, that the above is only half of a double-sided game the PM is having with the national bureaucrats, the left hand taking while the right hand gives. Noda did nothing to stop his party from swallowing whole a New Komeito bill cutting bureaucratic salaries by an average of 7.8% for the next two years, with a retroactive cut of 0.23% for this year and no collective bargaining rights, the last item being a promise the DPJ made to the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo), a crucial vote machine for the party. He has a government-appointed panel recommending a four million yen cut in the lump sum bonus bureaucrats receive upon retirement, as well as an accelerated program of early retirement buyouts. ( J)

Prime Minister Noda has said and done nothing about Deputy Prime Minister Okada Katsuya's staggering cuts in the intake of new recruits into career track positions, this taking place on top of previous cuts in the number of national bureaucrats:

Number of career-track hirees
by the office, commission, ministry and agency
April 2012 --> April 2013

Cabinet Secretariat 10 --> 4

Cabinet Legislative Office 2 --> 1

Cabinet Office 35 --> 20

Imperial Household Agency 32 --> 16

Japan Fair Trade Commission 37 --> 22

National Police Agency 164 --> 100

Financial Services Agency 42 --> 22

Consumer Affairs Agency 2 --> 1

Ministry of Internal Affairs
and Communications 120 --> 73

Ministry of Justice 1,475 --> 942

Ministry of Foreign Affairs 141 --> 80

Ministry of Finance 1,482 --> 929

Ministry of Education,Culture,
Sports, Science & Technology 66 -> 36

Ministry of Health, Labour
and Welfare 625 --> 298

Ministry of Agriculture,
Forestry and Fisheries 235 --> 120

Ministry of Economy
Trade and Industry 181 -- 107

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure
Transport and Tourism 1078 --> 682

Ministry of the Environment 34 --> 27

Ministry of Defense 575 --> 300

Source:
Ministry of General Affairs and Telecommunications

With these assaults on the income and the number of national bureaucrats (who will have to do the same amount of work as their predecessors, despite their reduced numbers) is it any wonder that the number of those taking the entrance examinations to become national bureaucrats dropped 13% in between 2011 and 2012? (J)

So is Prime Minister Noda just so much putty in the hands of the bureaucracy? The numbers do not seem to support that view.

The Emperor After The Fall

Today is The Big Day -- when the judge in the Ozawa Ichiro trial on violations of the Public Funds Control Law Political Funds Control Act hands down his verdict and if Ozawa is found guilty, his sentence. The news is full of analysis of the meaning of the Ozawa verdict, including these two pieces by Toko Sekiguchi (E) and Aurelia George Mulgan (E).

I hate to be the grump in any instance -- but the verdict today is largely irrelevant. As Sekiguchi points out in her piece, Ozawa will appeal if he is found guilty. If he is found not guilty, the Association of Those Seeking the Truth (Shinjitsu o Motomeru Kai) will have failed in its quest to milk the arrest of Okubo Takanori for some evidence to put Ozawa away. Given that the members of this group, whoever they are, all seem to be in retirement and thus with plenty of time on their hands to cause mischief (the Devil makes work for idle hands, after all), it is likely the Association will just find another blind alley to send prosecutors running down.

(An aside: the slavering anti-Ozawa weekly Shukan Bunshun decided that yesterday, the eve of the verdict, was the perfect day to release an exclusive story about a heretofore unknown child Ozawa fathered out of wedlock. Classy rag, that Shukan Bunshun.)

Whatever the purported goals of the cases against Ozawa and his aides, the political purpose has been served. The arrest of Okubo forced Ozawa to resign as head of the Democratic Party of Japan on the eve of the election that was to push the Liberal Democratic Party off its perch and install a DPJ-led coalition government. The resignation as party leader prevented Ozawa becoming prime minister. While Ozawa was able to engineer the election of his ally-puppet Hatoyama Yukio as his replacement, with Ozawa taking the role of effective party leader through the post of DPJ Secretary-General, Ozawa was denied the prize which he had long desired and had long labored to seize. As for the arrests of former aides Ishikawa Tomohiro and Ikeda Mitsutomo, on the basis of evidence of violations of the Public Funds Control Law found by the prosecutors after a proctological search through the documents seized in relation to Okubo's arrest, these weakened Ozawa's position in the party, making it possible for middle-level legislators to challenge his stranglehold on party policy making.

Ozawa's indictment on January 31, 2011 (E) gave the anti-Ozawa members of the DPJ, including prime minister Kan Naoto, the leverage needed to force party secretary-general Koshi'ishi Azuma, an Ozawa ally, to suspend Ozawa's party privileges.

Stripped of all formal party positions and even access to party funds for his own reelection. Ozawa had to exercise influence indirectly through the first-term and second-term legislators in Houses of Representatives and the House of Councillors whom he had hand-picked as candidates, and through the largely second- and third-grade legislators who had followed him through party after party. These nominal disciples number about 150 legislators, a third of the DPJ's membership in the Diet.

However, without his hands on the money spigots of the party, particularly the public financing provided to finance elections, Ozawa has had to rely on the bonds of affection, loyalty and his own funding apparatus to keep his allies faithful. This bond has weakened, however, as Ozawa's time in internal exile has dragged on. On issues of policy, such as opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the rise in the consumption tax, he has had to ally himself with other disaffected elements of the party, such as Mr. No To Everything Yamada Masahiko. He also found himself, in June 2011, on the verge joining hands with the LDP, the party he had worked so hard to unseat and dismantle, in a vote of no-confidence against Prime Minister Kan. Only a last-minute and ultimately empty face-saving compromise worked out by the feckless Hatoyama prevented Ozawa from fulfilling the media's negative portrayal of  him as a selfish destroyer of parties and governments.

Even this indirect influence over party policy making has evaporated, however. In a show of principle and utter political naïveté, Ozawa's allies in the DPJ dragged out the party debate over the legislation raising the consumption tax from a projected 3 days to 3 weeks. Exasperated, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko cut off debate, giving the final decision on the legislation to Policy Research Chairman Maeda Maehara Seiji -- an outcome that effectively negated the entire three weeks of debate. In response, four of Ozawa's acolytes in government positions and 30 in party positions resigned their posts. Eager to preserve party unity, the party leadership refused to accept the resignations, giving the legislators and Ozawa a chance to reconsider their actions. After six days of waiting, the government accepted the resignations of the government appointees on April 5 (E). It still left the door open, though, for those who had resigned party posts.

The party, however, very quietly shut that final door on Monday (J,) accepting resignations of the Ozawa allies who had resigned their party posts.

So as the political commentariat and twitterati await the verdict with bated breath, the political impact of the outcome is less significant than political observers will admit. Ozawa is now more shadow than shadow shogun. The current leadership group, knowing his tendencies, will not permit his appointment to any position of power. He will not be allowed near the party's pot of political funds. His followers have abandoned the positions they could have used to influence or if necessary gum up policy making.

Ozawa has been the most influential, hated and fascinating politician of the last 30 years. However, whatever happens today will not shake the political world to its roots. Its branches may shiver a bit -- but that is all.

 Later - My apologies for the HTML failures that led to half the original text being swallowed up into the ether.

Still later - Many thanks to alert readers O.J. and M.P. for catching the errors.

Energy And The Future Of The DPJ

There have been so many issues raised that have been purported to be the mark of death for the Democratic Party of Japan at the polls.

The first and least plausible was a lousing up of the Japan-U.S. alliance over the government taking a less antagonistic stance toward China and rethinking the Futenma-to-Henoko plan -- a plan which at present looks deader than the Okinawan Sho Dynasty.

The second was the raising of the consumption tax from 5% to 10%. Prime Minister Kan Naoto's simply talking about the tax was supposedly a main cause of the DPJ's poor (but not horrific performance) in the House of Councillors election of 2010. The explanation might be plausible had former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio and Ozawa Ichiro not handed Kan a severely skeptical electorate, enervated by both Hatoyama's inability to know his own mind and Ozawa's putting on a show of seizing dictatorial control of the nation's policy making apparatus -- neatly fitting into narratives of DPJ amateurishness cultivated by the party's enemies in the bureaucracy, the press, the permanent commentariat and the opposition alliance of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito.

In any case, the collapse of consumer spending after the imposition of the first step toward 10%; the opposition of Ozawa Ichiro, Yamada Masahiko and others in the DPJ leading to a schism of the party; the violation of the campaign pledge to immediate take a tax rise to the voters to seek their approval -- any and all of these were to doom the DPJ at the ballot box.

The third spine breaker was supposedly Kan's enthusiastic support of the country's becoming early participant in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a program taken up, as in all things, wearily by his successor Noda Yoshihiko (seriously, is therei nothing that Noda does with zest out of joy, rather than out of what seems a resentful sense of duty?). Trying to play catch-up on the TPP is a supposedly transparent attempt to curry favor with the still pro-LDP Nippon Keidanren, Keizai Doyukai and the multinationals at the expense of Japan's parasitical farmers and protected insurance and healthcare giants, with those groups joining to paint entrance into the TPP as the end of Japan as we know it. Hysteria whipped up by these presumed losers in a post-TPP accession economy would doom the DPJ in rural areas and among elderly voters, ensuring a wiping out of the party.

However, what is going to kill the DPJ -- or appears to be killing it -- is none of the above but an entirely new and unexpected phenomenon: a mass rejection of the restart of Japan's idled nuclear power plants. The prefectural governments are up in arms (as I noted in passing, the government of Shiga and Kyoto prefectures had severe reservations regarding the restart of the Oi reactors. Yesterday, they made their demands public (J). Local communities are in seemingly unflinching opposition; the DPJ is split (E - did I not say that everything Sengoku Yoshito touches turns to mud?) and the electorate has switched to being largely for it to being largely against it - by a margin of nearly two-to-one. (J)

As a result of the nation's new nuclear antipathy, the popularity of the Noda Cabinet and the DPJ have plummeted into the Death Zone, with support for the Cabinet dropping over 5 percentage points over the last month (J). The entity most likely to profit from these falls are not necessarily the current opposition the LDP but the Ishin no Kai, which, along its pie-in-the-sky political program is likely to absorb the anti-nuclear power plant restart stance of its leader Hashimoto Toru. (E)

All of which is of particularly morbid interest as Japan's power and energy positions are likely not nearly as dire as the conventional wisdom holds. Todd Kreider of Kanazawa University, who can be "difficult" in discussions, has a crushing April 13 post to the NBR Japan Forum claiming that contrary to the hype, energy-security-wise, this blessed land is in pretty good shape. (E) *

Ironic it would be for the DPJ to go to its Waterloo over a problem that might not even exist.


Later - The raw results of the Asahi Shimbun poll on energy attitudes are what most everyone is talking (J). Interestingly, the Asahi poll gives support levels for the DPJ double those of the Jiji Press poll above -- and more importantly for the DPJ's fortunes, above those for the LDP.

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* As for all links to individual NBR Forum posts, if you cannot access the page directly, go to the main page, scroll down to the "Join the Forum" section and click on the link "Visit the Japan Forum's online message archive."