The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Holidays in this blessed land and the United States are arguments against posting.

However, a while back -- a very long while back -- I wrote a post on House of Representatives member Kobayashi Koki's departure from the Democratic Party of Japan. I was unkind toward the little-known (well, outside of this blessed land, at least) legislator. I wrote in conclusion:

So long you Tokyo University Faculty of Law graduate, former Ministry of International Trade and Industry bureaucrat, former Liberal Democratic Party district seat holder, expelled from the LDP by Koizumi Jun'ichiro for opposing postal reform and stripped of your seat by Koike Yuriko, only to be returned to the House of Representatives as a proportional list seat winner for the DPJ -- you will most certainly not be missed.

A commenter asked for a rationale for my vehemence:

huh?

opposing postal system "reform" and the consumption tax hike on the middle class doesn't seem to be worthy of such animus.

what am I missing?

I admit, calling Kobayashi "one of the total wastes of human skin Ozawa Ichiro brought into the Democratic Party of Japan for possibly no reason other than to make himself look better" seems an inordinate investment of invective for someone who is a minor character -- and not a particularly nasty one, either.

However, Kobayashi, the uncrowned king of the retreads, is the gift that keeps on giving, back in the tiny print for his boundless opportunism.

Kobayashi, a proportional seat holder -- i.e., someone who has a seat because of his party, not himself -- defected from the DPJ in August, ostensibly in opposition to the bill raising the consumption tax -- a vote that took place in the House of Representatives in June. Kobayashi quickly started a political cohabitation with Kawamura Takashi's Tax Reduction Japan (Genzei Nippon) proto-party -- helping the Nagoya mayor and irrepressible buffoon in gathering under one umbrella the five Diet members he needed for TRJ to register as a party eligible to run candidates in the proportional seat races (Link).

Earlier this week the anti-tax Kawamura went a-courting Hashimoto Toru's Japan Restoration Association, a party which advocates a raising of the consumption tax to 11% -- a wooing that earned Kawamura a scornful tongue-lashing from Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko all the way from Phnom Penh.

Kawamura went away not only empty-handed, but minus Kobayashi, who dropped off his letter of resignation from TRJ. Kobayashi had taken a gander at the JRA and decided he wanted a piece of Hashimoto's action.

Kawamura, bereft of a fifth former Diet member for TRJ, went running yesterday into the arms of Anti-TPP, the anti-nuclear power/anti-Trans Pacific Partnership proto-party of Diet pinup boys Kamei "Pavarotti" Shizuka and Yamada "Mr. No To Everything" Masahiko. The trio agreed to a merger, giving their new party the catchy moniker of the "Tax Reduction Japan - Anti-TPP - Withdraw From Nuclear Power Party" (Genzei Nippon - Han TPP - Datsugenpatsuto).

Anti-TPP, which Kamei and Yamada founded on November 19, sets the new gold standard for party lifetimes. It bests the record set by Ishihara Shintaro's Party of the Sun, which, by lasting 4 1/2 days before merging with Hashimoto's JRA, had set a seemingly unbreakable record for brevity of a party's earthly existence. (Link)

Getting back to Kobayashi, it turns out that he did not, prior to handing in his letter of resignation from TRJ, actually talk to anyone at JRA about his joining that party. Lo and behold, when asked about Kobayashi's desire to switch parties, JRA party secretary-general Matsui Ichiro replied, "We have not discussed it. And we are not going to."

Zing!

Cue Kobayashi returning, hat in hand, to TRJ. Asked about Kobayashi's letter of resignation, Kawamura replies, "I am going to hang on to it." (Link - J)

As I admitted, Kobayashi is not an enemy of the people. However, he is, despite his education and training, a raging mediocrity, a lurid illustration of how badly led and cheated -- a member of the House of Representatives costing the taxpayers, in total, about 100 million yen per year -- the good citizens have been.

Later - Reviewed some of my previous posts on Kobayashi. I had forgotten all about the Paul McCartney montage.

Ah, the Koizumi years...

On A Dark Desert Highway

Yesterday Nagoya Mayor, former Democratic Party of Japan district seat holder and man of questionable taste and judgment Kawamura Takashi (Official Homepage) held a press conference yesterday announcing that having attracted to his Genzei Nippon (Link) movement the number of Diet members necessary to render it a political party eligible for both public election funds and capable of fielding candidates in the proportional list part of the national ballot, he had filed for eligibility and received it.

Nagoya mayor's Genzei Nippon becomes national political party
Kyodo

NAGOYA — Nagoya Mayor Takashi Kawamura's political group Genzei Nippon (Tax Reduction Japan) became a national political party Wednesday.

The party, trying to promote itself ahead of the next Lower House election, which must be held by summer 2013, was able to register on a national level with the government after finally meeting the requirement of having at least five Diet members, including Koki Kobayashi, who will be its head as Kawamura's proxy.

Kawamura, a former lawmaker of the Democratic Party of Japan, aims for the party to field as many candidates as possible in the next House of Representatives election. Its key goals are to oppose tax hikes, phase out nuclear power and halve Diet members' annual salaries.

Kawamura said he is seeking to create "a third and big political force" that can take on Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's DPJ and the Liberal Democratic Party, the main opposition party, in the next election by working closely with other small parties, including one to be formed by Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara.

Genzei Nippon was able to be established as a national-level party after Atsushi Kumada and Tomohiko Mizuno, both Lower House members, left the DPJ on Monday and signed up, boosting its Diet members to the required five...

(Link)

According to the Chugoku Shimbun, Kawamura filed the registration materials for full national party status with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Elections Commission. The TMG Elections Commission, after looking over the materials and seeing nothing out of order, accepted them. The TMG Elections Commission then forwarded to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) notice of its having accepted the application. The Ministry, which is in charge of the disbursal of public election funds to parties based upon the number of Diet members in a party, acknowledged the TMG Elections Commission's having accepted the registration material (Link- J)

Presumably included in the packet of documents Kawamura filed with the TMG Elections Commission were affidavits from the five members of the Diet that they are not members of any other party -- i.e., they will not be double dipping from public funds. House of Representatives members Kumada Atsushi (Osaka District #1) and Mizuno Tomohiko (South Kanto Proportional) did hand in their resignations to DPJ leaders on Monday. Presumably, the affidavits Kumada and Mizuno submitted swear that each is no longer a member of the DPJ.

Kawamura's, Kumada's and Mizuno's document submissions are in the clear, right? The TMG's Elections Commission accepted the applications, did it not? The MIC acknowledged the Elections Commission's findings, so everything is cool, right?

Interestingly enough, the answer is probably "No." Kawamura, Kumada and Mizuno could be on their way to paying hefty fines or even doing jail time for fraud.

Despite its held-together-by-safety-pins image, the DPJ is the Hotel California: You can check out any time you like / But you can never leave. Oh sure, you can leave, but if and only if the relevant party central bureau accepts your resignation. The stipulation is in the DPJ By-laws, under the section marked, "Separating From The Party."

So what happens if the relevant central bureau does not accept your resignation? Funny thing, if you are worth more to the DPJ dead than alive, then the party can keep you dead.

Remember Sugimoto Kazumi? You do not? Well, here is a reminder (Link). Oh right, that guy, the Kennedy School of Government Masters degree holder who on October 5 declared his intent to defect from the DPJ to the Your Party. It was only on October 29 (Monday) that the party board of directors (yakuinkai) announced that they would be sending to the executive council (jonnin kanjikai) their recommendation that Sugimoto be expelled rather than be allowed to resign. Determining that having Sugimoto around was more trouble than his continued dangling in the wind was worth, the executive council took only a few minutes on Tuesday to approve the expulsion recommendation of the board of directors. The executive council's decision was transmitted to the DPJ-Club of Independents-People's New Party caucus, which filed notice of Sugimoto's no longer being a DPJ member with the Office of the House of Representatives. Having received notification that Sugimoto had been sprung, the Your Party caucus registered Sugimoto as one of its own. (Link - J)

From submission of resignation letter to actual registration as a member of new party: 25 days.

Now in the case of Kumada and Mizuno, members of the DPJ directorate decided on October 30 that they will not accept the pair's resignation letters. House of Councillors Secretary-General Ichikawa Yasuo, famous for making the most stupid utterance ever by a Defense Minister (a monumental achievement that) but seemingly a wily politician, wanly mused, "I have this sense that you cannot say that there will be a disposition [of Kumada's and Mizuno's resignations] during the current Diet term."

One indication of how determined the DPJ directorate is to leave Kumada and Mizuno hanging is its decision to not even try to recover from Kumada the 3 million in cash he just received from the party -- all first and second-termers having just received 3 million as an enticement to keep them from bolting for the exits. (Link - J)

Now here is where things start getting really weird.

MIC has acknowledged the TMG Election Commission's determination that Genzei Nippon's application for full-fledged party status is valid. However, MIC will not dispense public funds to Genzei Nippon unless MIC receives from the Office of the House of Representatives and the Office of the House of Councillors a comprehensive list of the members of the party (Link -J). Since the DPJ can out of pure malice postpone a decision on the resignations of Kumada and Mizuno forever (in Kumada's case, the party will at worst wait until twelve days before the House of Representatives' election, this so that the party can register a new candidate to run in Kumada's constituency) the political party Genzei Nippon will exist at MIC but not exist in the respective Offices of the Diet...and since MIC will not receive from the respective Offices the necessary documents regarding Kumada's and Mizuno's membership in a party called Genzei Nippon, MIC will not be able to disburse public election funds to Genzei Nippon, a party that by its own records, is eligible for public funds.

However, the twists do not stop there. Since Kumada and Mizuno presumably submitted to the TMG Elections Commission signed affidavits swearing that they are no longer members of the DPJ, the DPJ could either file lawsuits (unlikely, as lawsuits take months if not years to resolve themselves) or police complaints claiming the pair have filed false documents. If the DPJ is in a particularly foul mood at Kawamura, a former party member, for poaching Kumada and Mizuno, it can file a complaint against Kawamura as well, for knowingly submitting false affidavits as a part of his proto-party's application to the TMG Elections Commission.

Kumada and Mizuno, who are both dumber than a sack of hammers...

[You want proof? Take a visit to Kumada's profile page from his official website (Link). Yes, this is the curriculum vitae of a 41 year-old male, graduate of Kyoto University's Faculty of Law, former employee of Mitsubishi Electric and district seat holder in the House of Representatives.

As for Mizuno, nominally a proportional seat holder from the South Kanto Bloc but in reality the Diet Member for Dentistry, this is his second attempted defection to Genzei Nippon. In early September he was outed as one of the Diet members Kawamura was wooing to join to his movement. Kawamura even scheduled a press conference to announce Mizuno's departure from the DPJ. Mizuno, however, lost his nerve and called off the announcement. (Link - J)]

...are probably not aware of how much trouble they are in. Kawamura might be aware of just how perilous his submission of documents was. He is, however, nuttier than a pecan pie (Recall that in February he told a delegation of visitors from Nagoya's sister city of Nanjing that the Nanjing Massacre was not as bad as they say) and reckless enough to not care.

Ichikawa's musing about the DPJ deferring action after the end of the Diet session is likely a portent of a vicious comeuppance for the the pair, who had the temerity (or thanks to a generous bribe, an obligation) to submit their resignations on the morning of the opening of the Extraordinary Session, when their acts would cast the greatest shadow possible on Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko. The end of the Diet session means the end of Kumada's and Mizuno's immunity from prosecution (Constitution of Japan, Article 50).


Later - A section of this text has been edited for clarity and accuracy.

Extended And Revised Thoughts On The Decision To Retry Ozawa Ichiro

Yesterday, the three lawyers appointed by the court to prosecute Ichiro Ozawa under Japan's Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution system announced they would be appealing the not guilty verdict the Tokyo District Court handed down on April 26. The decision to appeal comes less than 24 hours after the DPJ's Standing Officers Council voted to end the suspension of Ozawa's party privileges and 24 hours before the deadline for the three lawyers had to file an appeal.

Given that the lawyers had two weeks to make this decision, their choice to do so within the same news cycle as the DPJ executive's having made its move on reinstating Ozawa indicates that it is politics, not the law, that is driving this case.

Three major cases come to mind of countries with democratic elections where the courts have been used to prevent a challenger of the system from seizing upon his chance to take power: Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Russia and Ichiro Ozawa in Japan.

Elevating Ozawa to the level of the other two may seem perverse. After all, he has never spent a day in jail while the other two have languished in prison for years.

However, the cases are comparable in the use of pliant prosecutors and flimsy charges to effectively short-circuit the democratic process, to the benefit of politicians and corporate managements grown fat and lazy on crony, state-assisted capitalism and patronage.

While the cases of Anwar and Khodhorkovsky have served as reminders of just what kind of states Malaysia and Russia were and are, the judicial houndings of Ozawa and his aides have raised few warning bells worldwide. Indeed, the persecution of Ozawa has some in Washington dancing in the aisles. The 2009 arrest of Okubo Takanori, the beginning of the process that has led to yesterday's decision to retry, not only prevented the installation of a prime minister wishing to redefine the Japan-U.S. relationship as a more equal partnership but one seeking to meet the challenge of a rising China with an extended open hand rather than a closed fist.

The continued court cases against Ozawa and his subordinates also eat away at the support for the DPJ, which many in Washington see as a party too spiky and independent for the smooth operation of the Japan-U.S. military alliance.

However, those craving to see the return to power of a seemingly more U.S.-friendly and purportedly more competent LDP are either ignorant of history or in the pay of the wrong sorts of people. The LDP, as an illegitimate ruling party – which means its continued hold on power was dependent upon the suppression of votes – was a terrible interlocutor for the United States and the world. It was the party of delay, always whining about its inability to make good on its promises until “after the next election” – a plaint that tested the listener’s capacity to reason out, “But wait, after the next election, there will be another election, and after that, yet another…” Given their electoral lock on the country, LDP governments cared little that policy makers, journalists and scholars saw through this “wait until after the next election" canard  – and that under its thrall Japan would always underperform and punch below its weight. Under the"serious" and "seasoned" LDP, trade and IPR talks would drag out for decades, the Futenma-to-Henoko move went nowhere and the Self Defense Forces remained marginalized and internationally insignificant.

Some might argue that there are immediate benefits to this decision to retry Ozawa, that hobbling him will smooth the passage of important legislation tackling the national debt emboldening the Noda government to be more aggressive in pushing Japan into negotiations on joining the TPP. Unfortunately, opposition to the government's plans to raise the consumption tax, cut spending and join the TPP negotiations runs across the political spectrum. It is not just Ozawa.

There is the further problem that turmoil in Tokyo has promoted the rise of regional challengers to the main national triumvirate of the DPJ, the LDP and the New Komeito. The most successful and obvious of these is the Ishin no kai of Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto. These new regional movements are the wild cards now in Japan’s national politics. The old boys and the rare old girls of the bureaucracy and the non-profit foundations probably assuring their counterparts in the world's capitals that these new political forces can be tutored in the ways of behaving themselves on the international stage. However, there are no guarantees of that Hashimoto, Mayor Takashi Kawamura of Nagoya or other regionalists will listen to what their tutors tell them.

The legal persecution of Ozawa has had a corrosive effect on the development of a two-party system, where two legitimate, centrist, responsible parties with largely equal access to national office slug it out over differences in policy. Those who wave off what is happening with a dismissive “Ah, this is just the law finally catching up a grubby old time party hack, nothing new” have agendas of their own, obsfucating the truth being one of them.

Oh, Kawamura-san...

...what would we do without you for entertainment?

I have not been respectful of Nagoya Mayor Kawamura Takashi, calling him "a buffoon" and "nuts" (the latter of which was only last Wednesday). Honestly, do the words "serious" and "mature" come to mind when you see his home page?

So surprised should no one be about this:

Nagoya mayor denies Nanjing Massacre occurred, drawing fire from China
Kyodo
NAGOYA -- Nagoya Mayor Takashi Kawamura on Monday told a visiting official from Nanjing, China that he doubts a massacre of civilians by Imperial Japanese Army soldiers occurred in Nanjing in 1937 during the Sino-Japanese war, immediately drawing fire from China.

The 63-year-old Nagoya mayor, whose father was in Nanjing when the war ended in 1945, told Liu Zhiwei, a member of the Chinese Communist Party's Nanjing City Standing Committee, he believes that only "conventional acts of combat" took place there, not mass murder and rape of civilians.

"Why were people in Nanjing kind to Japanese soldiers only eight years after the incident?" Kawamura asked, referring to his father's experience. "I could go to Nanjing and attend a debate on the history of the city, if necessary," he said....

(Link)

That Nanjing and Nagoya have a sister-city relationship just makes Kawamura's brain flatulence all the more inappropriate.

The Revolutionary Council Overreaches

It was strange watching the video of Osaka City Mayor Hashimoto Toru presiding over the meeting of an Ishin no kai steering committee as the delegates ratified list of ultimate goals for the quasi-party, if and when it participates in national elections.

The list of the Ishin no kai goals includes:

- abolition of the House of Councillors

- direct elections of the Prime Minister

- abolition of the prefectures in favor of larger regional units resembling the German lander (the various plans known collectively as the doshusei).

- abolition of the grants from the national government tax revenues to local areas (chihokofuzei) in favor of direct taxation carried out by the local areas themselves

[By the way, where are the sources of the chihokofuzei grant monies?

32% of income taxes
32% of taxes on alcohol
34% of corporate income taxes
29.5% of the consumption tax
25% of tobacco taxes (Source)

Not a bad cut of national revenues...]

- elimination of national pension payments to the wealthiest taxpayers after their retirement (nenkin hokenryo no kakesute - J)

What was so strange about the video clip was how disengaged Hashimoto looked (especially since that last idea is his). Whether it was out of boredom, madness or a desperate attempt to anesthetize himself to the berzerk radicalism of his minions, Hashimoto was simply not there, emotionally or intellectually.

The list of campaign promises, which the Ishin no kai, in complete agreement with its ersatz Meiji Restoration revivalist ethos has called its "Eight Policies from the Ship" (senchu hassaku) in imitation of Sakamoto Ryoma's famous missive, has already drawn guffaws from the established political parties. The leaders and spokesmen of the parties had a field day yesterday, pointing out that item after item would require not just a revision of numerous laws but even amendment of the Constitution, a document which has not seen the alteration of even a single punctuation mark since its promulgation on November 3, 1946. (J). That any and every amendment would require not only its passage through the Diet with a two-thirds vote in both Houses but approval from the voters in a national referendum (the governing rules of which came into effect less that a year ago - J) casts the Ishin no kai wish list into the realm of fantasy.

Applause did come from some quarters yesterday. Predictably, the terrible twins of the Chubu Region Aichi Governor Omura Hideaki and Nagoya Mayor Kawamura Takashi had nice things to say about the quasi-party platform (J). Omura echoes every decentralization plan coming out of Osaka and Kawamura, well, he is just nuts (but in a damnably warm and clever way. His tour de force has been providing the depleted Tohoku with wave after wave of Nagoya civil servants to replace persons lost in the triple disaster or for the training of their replacements -J).

The surprise was the positive reaction of the Your Party to the Ishin no kai proposals. Your Party leader Watanabe Yoshimi praised the list, saying that in terms of bringing the national bureaucracy under control, decentralizing of authority and making Japan a nation of prosperity, the goals of the Ishin no kai and the Your Party are completely in sync (J).

Maybe he just scanned the text.

Major media outlets have panned the proposals. The Asahi Shimbun suggests that the ideas expressed needed a little more intra-party discussion before being released (J). The Sankei Shimbun wonders what happens to the Emperor as head of state, if the prime minister is popularly elected (J).

Up until now the Ishin no kai has been on a roll. It had, possibly because the reality of what it represented had not been spelled out, been gaining popularity in the public imagination.

It remains to be seen whether the release of this wild wish list slams the brakes on the what had been until a hurtling "Go Go Hashimoto" freight train.