Tanigaki Pulls Out The Fire Extinguisher

A bit of good news that might otherwise slip by...

Remember how last month, in response to The Asahi Shimbun's retractions of a number of its stories on the comfort women from over two decades ago, the Liberal Democratic Party's Policy Research Council (PARC), under the direction of the now Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Takaichi Sanae, announced its intention to demand that Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide formulate a new Statement to replace the Kono Statement? (Link)

Funny thing about that demand: it had to get past the desk of the LDP's secretary-general.

Now if the LDP secretary-general were still Ishiba Shigeru, the gentleman who really wants to replace Abe Shinzo as president of the LDP and prime minister, the demand might have had a chance of receiving the necessary stamp of approval. Ishiba needs the votes of the freshmen and freshwomen of the Houses of Representatives and Councillors if he is to have even a chance against Abe or Abe's anointed successor in the LDP's internal elections for president. These Diet newcomers are for the most part stubborn on issues of national pride and national honor. Ishiba would have had no choice but to acceded to the PARC's nihilistic demand.

Ishiba, however, has moved on to the possibly greener pastures (it is still unclear whether his choice is a coup or a trap) of wandering about the least populated areas of the country making promises about economic and demographic revival the government cannot possibly keep. In his place at LDP secretary-general is certified Friend of China Tanigaki Sadakazu, who harbors not the least hope or desire to become the party president again.

In a press conference on Tuesday, Tanigaki was asked about the pending demand for a new Statement to replace the Kono Statement. Tanigaki replied:

"Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga has said on numerous occasions that he will not revise the Kono Statement. I would like to be with him on this."

(Link - J)

Tanigaki's response is weak-sounding. Paradoxically, flaccidity makes the response all the more credible. Tanigaki has a history of tripping himself up whenever he has played the implacable tough guy. Saying that he would merely "like to be with" the chief cabinet secretary on the matter of not revising the Kono Statement, however, is in character and thus plausible. Tanigaki's phrasing also leaves plenty of space for him to tell the militants in his party, "Look, I only said 'like to be' -- not 'will,' you know."

For as long as Tanigaki is secretary-general, it seems, the LDP will not be submitting a formal request for a Statement replacing the Kono Statement. This is regardless of Takaichi's having been replaced at PARC chair by Inada Tomomi whose revisionism no less feral than her predecessor's.

All in all, a very good bit of news -- for the Kono Statement is the keystone of the Japan-South Korea relationship. Mess with it and the architecture collapses.


Original creen shot courtesy: NHK News

A New Comfort Women Statement? Uh-oh

This is PARC chair Takaichi Sanae at her happiest. Really.

In the realm of bad ideas, the latest one to erupt out of the Liberal Democratic Party's Policy Research Council (PARC) is a doozy: a request to Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide that he provide a revision of the Kono Statement in light of the recent retractions of some articles on the comfort women by The Asahi Shimbun and in time for the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. (Link - J)

Press reports of the meeting of the Council yesterday read like a festival of provocation and point scoring. "We must summon those connected to The Asahi to testify in the Diet" and "We must disseminate with determination the results of the government's investigation into the composition of the Kono Statement" were among the demands from the floor. (http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20140821/k10013977241000.htmlLink J - video)

It is unsurprising that the moderately crazies in the LDP, particularly the hardliners in the freshmen classes of 2012 and 2013, would be clamoring for a party response to the Asahi admissions of error. The extreme revisionists contention has been that the comfort women are a fiction concocted by The Asahi Shimbun and anti-Japan non-government organizations in South Korea. The Asahi's long overdue retractions would, in their eyes, require a government response, as a remorseful Statement like Kono's may indeed no longer be necessary.

What is somewhat surprising is how quickly and avidly PARC Chair Takaichi Sanae has taken up the banner of a demand for a new Statement.

Takaichi is considered a shoo-in for a significant Cabinet post in the upcoming Cabinet reshuffle (Link). She has a long record of being a loyal retainer to Prime Minister Abe Shinzo (she was the most junior minister of his first Cabinet in 2006-7; she sat next to him during the LDP party meeting where Abe was elected party president in 2012), is a True Conservative (she is always in front and center of the phalanxes of Diet members of the "Let's Visit Yasukuni Together" league on their shrine visits - see above) and a prominent female member of the LDP at a time the PM wants to make a show of appointing women to the Cabinet (Link). Securing a Cabinet post at this point would seemingly require her to sit tight, make no trouble and have the prize drop in her lap.

So why embrace a movement demanding a change in a fundamental building block of Japan's relationship with South Korea at a time when the prime minister and his advisors are trying to bridge the gap between the two countries? One that furthermore puts an onus on Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga to craft a new Statement when he has way too much on his plate already?

If one wanted to mess up a potential Cabinet appointment, making Suga Yoshihide's life difficult would seem a great way to do it.

One explanation for Takaichi's enthusiasm, and the reason I use the "somewhat" above, is that she is probably tone deaf when it comes to what she believes are matters of Japan's dignity. She has her own small group of lawmakers -- the Association of Creativity and Tradition -- that brings together lawmakers who style themselves innovative iconoclasts with a fantabulist, knee-jerk defensiveness about pre-1945 Japan. The cognitive dissonance of the ideals -- believing at once in the value of disruption and the beauty of traditional order, as is reflected in the group's name -- indicates that in matters pertaining to the constructed concept "Japan" Takaichi-san may not be prone to deep thought.

Another possibility for Takaichi's unshaded embrace may come from a gnawing sense of her having achieved very little in her present position. Despite Takaichi being one of the longest-serving PARC chairs, even close watchers of politics would be hard pressed to think of a single, significant initiative she led during her tenure. Policy making under Abe 2.0 has been almost entirely in the hands of the bewildering forest of commissions, councils and private advisors reporting directly to the prime minister. Movement of legislation through the PARC has been largely a pro forma affair. When political observers think of Takaichi at all, it is for her skirmishes with General Council chair Noda Seiko, diminishing the power and value of both of the institutions they have headed.

In forwarding the PARC's request for a new Chief Cabinet Secretary's Statement to Suga, Takaichi can claim at least one signatory achievement during her tenure, one endearing her to radical, unthinking revisionists -- her only constituency within the party.

Assuming that the PARC's request is forwarded to Suga early next week as scheduled, what happens? As a direct request from the party, Suga cannot reject the request as unhelpful, no matter that it is. He could shelve the request for a while but not indefinitely. The request is for a new Statement in time for the August 15, 2015 anniversary -- which means at some point Suga will have to come out with a clear position on the question of whether he will provide a new Statement or not. The most likely scenario is Suga turning down the request on the grounds that it would detract from the prime minister's new, "forward-looking" Statement on the end of the World War II which the PM hopes will replace the Murayama Statement as the definitive Japanese government view of the war.

Until Suga moves decisively against the PARC's request, his inaction will be read or portrayed by South Koreans as a prelude to a revision of the Kono Statement and thus one more reason to delay the reestablishment of more normal relations between the governments of Japan and the ROK.

Way to go, Takaichi-san.

Who Is Up For A Yasukuni Visit Today?

UPDATE1: as of 09:45 JST, cabinet ministers SHINDO Yoshitaka and FURUYA Keiji have both visited Yasukuni Shrine, with Furuya declaring he signed in as "Minister of State Furuya Keiji." HAGIUDA Ko'ichi has also paid a visit, delivering Prime Minister ABE Shinzo's donation.

UPDATE 2: Minister of Japan Cool And Much Else INADA Tomomi paid her respects in the afternoon in the company of the History and Creativity Association, her small group of Diet member fellow travelers (here is their post-Yasukuni group shot from last year Link)completing the list of the Terrible Trio. Policy Research Council chief TAKAICHI Sanae, as at seemingly every major shrine event, was front and center of the Association of Diet Members For Everyone Making Visits To Yasukuni Together multi-party mass visitation. (Link - J)



Credit Abe Shinzo for having some sense. He has told the press that he will avoid making, either immediately prior to or immediately after the national ceremony commemorating the end of World War II, a visit to Yasukuni Shrine today. With his relations with the leaders of China and South Korea still in the deep freeze (Link), Putin acting like a woman scorned (Link or Link), investors showing less and less confidence in his economic reform program (Link) and world in general in turmoil, he has decided to not set the region on fire with a gratuitous end-of-The-War day visit. (Link - J video)

Instead, Abe will reprise his restraint of last year by having an aide make a a cash donation in his name instead.

So who should we be on the lookout for today at Yasukuni's gates?

Hagiuda Ko'ichi - it has been a quiet couple of months for the man who last year seemed to be speaking directly from Abe Shinzo's limbic system. If the Big Boy from Hachioji (where the Imperial tombs are located, as he will happily tell you) is once again the bag man for Abe's donation to Yasukuni, he should once again be viewed as the wide back door into Abe's chamber of secrets.

The Terrible Trio - Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Shindo Yoshitaka, State Minister for Japan Cool And A Lot Of Other Stuff Inada Tomomi and Chairman of the National Safety Commission Furuya Keiji -- the Terrible Trio -- have said nothing about going but will be going. Shindo and Furuya will probably not survive the Cabinet reshuffle on September 3 (somebody has to lose his/her job to make space for cabinet hopefuls and it is easier for Abe to dump his male Best Friends) so have an incentive to go out in a blaze of glory, signing the registers as "Member of The Abe Cabinet." Inada, who is rumored to be taking over for Taka'ichi Sanae at the Liberal Democratic Party's Policy Research Council (and one cannot think of a better way of cementing the continued irrelevance of the PARC - Link) will visit but probably either early in the morning or in the late afternoon in a private capacity. Not that she has to, mind you: Takaichi herself will be once again the smug front and center of the phalanx of Diet members paying their respects in today's heat.

Shimomura Hakubun - The arch-conservative and token poor person in Abe Shinzo inner circle has had a very quiet one and a half years, indulging in his inner revisionist only once in a florrid and ultimately pointless bid to stop the tiny Okinawan town of Taketomi from using a social studies textbook of its own choosing (Link). Oddly, he has not been mentioned among the cabinet members who are going to be retained in the reshuffle, despite his incredible patience in not carrying out the wholesale smashing of the education system long promised by Abe Shinzo loyalists and allies. If Shimomura shows up at Yasukuni today he will be signaling that he knows he will not be leading the revolution after September.

Any Other Cabinet Minister - If any other of the Cabinet's members pay their respects, it will be pretty much a declaration of his/her being in the "Shatter and splatter/Pitcher and platter/What do we care?/We won't be there!" category of September non-survivors. Since having the image of being "better than Abe at least" in terms of sensitivity to Chinese and Korean sentiments is one of the few selling points a challenger can offer, one cannot expect any of the bigwigs or factions leaders (Tanigaki, Ishihara, for example) to show up.

Ishiba Shigeru - If LDP Secretary-General Ishiba Shigeru shows up today, it means he is most definitely trolling for a "even more patriotic than Abe" reputation. Ishiba is looking to challenge Abe for the LDP presidency in September next year if the LDP's performance in local elections over the next nine months is less than stellar -- which is looking pretty likely (the  next two big tests, the Fukushima and Okinawa gubernatorial elections, look incredibly tough for the party). Ishiba has already planted his flag in more militant territory than Team Abe in the matter of a Diet examination of the recent recantations by The Asahi Shimbun of certain of their stories on the comfort women (Link). A Yasukuni visit today would indicate Ishiba is making a serious play for the affections of the radicals in the party.


Later -Yes, I too will be glad when this day is over, so I can stop talking about The War -- at least until December when Abe does make his annual pilgrimage to Yasukuni.


Image: Prime Minister Abe Shinzo laying a wreath at the atomic bombing memorial in Nagasaki on August 9, 2014.
Image courtesy: Abe Shinzo official Facebook page.

The LDP On Course For Disaster

Okumura Jun has put the question to the Internet: doesn’t the LDP want to win?

The answer seems to be an emphatic "No."

First the party's Diet members elect Abe Shinzo, a walking time bomb, as party president, in defiance of the wishes of the party's prefectural chapters.

Now out of either a mindless automatic bow to party unity or a sense of pure malice, Abe is on course to naming a party secretariat whose member will struggle to contain an impulse to strangle each other, all while trying to engage a confident and at last largely internally coherent Democratic Party of Japan.

It is traditional for the winners in LDP presidential contests to offer high-ranking posts to those whom they defeat. However, Abe's naming Ishiba Shigeru, the man whom he beat in the runoff election after Ishiba had won in the first round, his secretary-general shows an inordinate amount of respect for tradition and total a lack of respect for common sense.

First, Ishiba is smarter than Abe. Try as he might to submerge his emotional responses out of respect toward the Party and hierarchy, he will find it difficult to not telegraph when he thinks a certain Abe utterance or position is idiotic.

Second, one of the main responsibilities of the secretary-general is to mollify and unify the Diet membership. However, as the results of the the presidential votes showed, Ishiba is unpopular with his fellow Diet members. He knows that he cannot rely on even 89 legislators who voted for him, as many of them only voted for him as being the "non-Abe" candidate. How Ishiba is going to maintain the peace when so many of his colleagues detest him is a mystery.

Finally, the secretary-general is seen as the commanding general of the party's electoral campaign. He has final say on district candidates and party lists. How is Ishiba ever going to keep Abe from trying to override or go around Ishiba's decisions as regards the running of elections?

Former Internal Affairs minister Suga Yoshihide, a card-carrying member of the Friends of Shinzo, is predicted to be named Executive Acting Secretary-General (Kanjicho daiko) -- the de facto press secretary of the party. He will, due to his close ties to Abe, find it difficult to avoid the temptation of ignoring Ishiba, his nominal superior, and deliver the unfiltered Abe message, however inflammatory that message may be.

Ishiba will, of course, just have to accept whatever Suga says, rather than the other way around.

As for the job of negotiating the management of the Diet with representatives of the DPJ, that job is being handed, of course, to one of Ishiba's core supporters, Hamada Yoshikazu. Abe's coterie knows that the job will be a thankless, if not utterly impossible, one. That their fervent desire for early elections and confrontation with China will make policy coordination with the DPJ as bad or even possibly worse than it was during the presidency of Tanigaki Sadakazu means that the Diet Affairs chairmanship is the booby prize.

As for chairman of the Policy Research Council, the rumored appointment of Amari Akira, another card-carrying FOS (he sat to the left of Abe during the presidential election. Historical revisionism poster girl Taka'ichi Sanae sat to Abe's right) would complete the hemming in of Ishiba, who by title should be in charge of running party affairs, with persons whose loyalty is to Abe alone.

A recipe for party disfunction if there ever was one.

Which begs my question: will the New Komeito still want to hang around with the sad sack of a party, considering how appalled they were at the Abe policy program in 2006-7?


Later - News organizations are saying that Abe will be appointing the brilliant (he passed the lawyer's exam on his first try while he was still in college) former Minister of Foreign Affairs, former Minister of Defense, faction leader and early Abe supporter Komura Masahiko to the ceremonial post of LDP Vice President.

Komura is the chairman of the Japan-China Parliamentarians League. He would be in charge of the LDP's communications with the leadership of China for as long as the party is in opposition and lead Track II diplomacy should the party retake power.

A positive note? Possibly. More likely, however, is that the LDP will play a double game. In public it will push the Noda government to be more combative toward China. In private, Komura will be assuring his China contacts that the LDP is merely engaging in political theater in order to rewin control of the Diet -- and that relations between the two governments will be on a more even keel should the mismanagement of the relationship with China (wink, wink) lead to the DPJ losing power.

The Ubukata Dump

On Ubukata Yukio's home page, he still lists himself as a Deputy Secretary-General of the Democratic Party of Japan.

He is, however, no longer a holder of that title.

Ubukata had made a splash last month, joining with a group of DPJ legislators in demanding the revival of a intra-party policy research body to replace the abolished Policy Research Council. As a member of the party holding a fairly central post, Ubukata really did not have a reason to demand a voice in party policy making affairs. Nevertheless he went along with a number of mid-career party members who felt powerless the current power structure left too many powerless to affect party decisions.

For reasons that may become clearer over the next few hours, Ubukata has gone rogue. In television appearance after television appearance, he denounced the centralization of power under DPJ Secretary-General Ozawa Ichiro and asked pointed questions why Ozawa has not been forced to explain in excruciating detail the story behind the arrest of three of his former political secretaries.

Unlike the Liberal Democratic Party, whose leadership has remained inert in the face of internal criticism of the party leadership and numerous defections, the DPJ apparatus mobilized with brutal efficiency and speed. The DPJ's Standing Officers Council met yesterday and stripped Ubakata of his party post.

What will be of interest is how this crushing of an admittedly out-of-order critic will play in the media and the public eye. Ubukata has portrayed himself as a paladin of the true DPJ, counter to the apostate vote-grubbing, power-grabbing opaque leadership of Ozawa. It is possible the public, which has an overwhelming dislike for Ozawa's continued tenure as DPJ Secretary-General, will applaud Ubukata's self-immolation as a heroic act of resistance. They also just might see it as merely Pyrrhic bonfire of vanity... or a minor key repeat performance of Hatoyama Kunio's defection from the LDP, minus, of course, all the money that Kunio has to spend to console himself whilst he wanders in the political wilderness.

Of course, with Edano Yukio, the State Minister for Administrative Reform and former chairman of the DPJ Policy Research Council reportedly weighing into the fray, the whole mess is getting a lot more interesting...

Ozawa's Grip On Policy Loosens A Little

One of the decisions made with strikingly little debate and seemingly little aforethought in the aftermath of the August 2009 election was the dissolution of the Democratic Party of Japan's Policy Research Council. I understood the symbolic point being made: that the policy framework set out by the new National Policy Unit (Kokka Senryaku Shitsu) should not be subject to second guessing by the party's own policy crafting apparatus. However, the likely practical and political fallout from the abolition of the party's policy arm seemed to outweigh the symbolic value of the act. Was it really necessary to abolish the party's ideas factory in order to enforce party/government message discipline? A simple suggestion -- "don't make waves" -- would have sufficed.

The decision seemed particularly perilous in light of the default alternative: the concentration of policy drafting in the hands of Secretary-General Ozawa Ichiro. Handing all policy making to Ozawa guaranteed that DPJ proposals would be perceived as having a bias toward winning votes, not the national interest. Eliminating the Policy Research Council also reduced the structural framework for the party's middle ranks to take part in policy making -- which resulted in the party mid-levels predictably demanding a forum.

Having Ozawa in unfettered control of all aspects of DPJ business -- the party purse, party appointments and policy making -- was furthermore bad in optical terms. It certainly seemed to support the Liberal Democratic Party's contention that the DPJ was evolving toward an "Ozawa dictatorship" where the Prime Minister and the Cabinet were just so much democratic window dressing. Since Ozawa could not conceivably be good at everything, having him responsible for everything seemed less a matter of efficiency and more a matter of jealous megalomania.

Monday's horrific opinion polls results (to read all about the carnage in English, go here and here. For Japanese, go here and here and here) seems to indicate that the electorate had crossed a crucial threshold. Voters are no longer merely doubtful about wisdom of the DPJ holding a majority of seats in the House of Councillors; they indeed believe that giving the DPJ control of both houses would be undesirable.

It is interesting therefore that the PM and Ozawa are suddenly talking about the revival of an independent party policy crafting apparatus. With a well-deserved electoral spanking for power mongering now staring them in the face -- the fate that befell Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and the LDP in 2007 -- the PM and Secretary-General Ozawa are all of a sudden of the opinion that, yes, perhaps the DPJ policy drafting needs to be a little more democratic. They have proposed the establishment of a Diet Member Policy Research Study Meeting (Giin Seisaku Kenkyukai) open to all DPJ Diet members. Attendees would learn about new party policy initiatives from policy specialists and research and lobby groups. The Diet members would then be able offer their views of the proposals to the "Manifesto Planning Committee" (Manifesuto Kikaku Iinkai), a joint party\government entity comprised of the DPJ's manifesto realization group headed by Senior Vice Secretary-General Takashima Yoshimitsu and the National Policy Unit.

The likelihood that such an ad hoc, "everyone's welcome to join in" meeting will promote a less capricious crafting of policies is small. Nevertheless, establishing the research group sure sounds policy drafting is going to be more inclusive and open. In light of the unnecessary concentration of power in Ozawa's hands since the election, the proposal does represent a tiny step toward a healthier balance between centralization and empowerment within the DPJ.

If the ruling DPJ duarchy can have a few more these brainstorms over the next few weeks, who knows, the outlook for the summer's elections may be less bleak.

As Regards the DPJ's Policy Making Assignments

Tobias Harris has a post up lauding the Democratic Party of Japan leadership's squelching of a request that the party rebuild its internal policy-generating apparatus. The proposed plan, put forth by a contingent of middle-ranking members, asks for reestablishment of the party policy research council, with sub-committees mirroring each of the ministries.

Policy research divisions mirroring the ministries provides the framework for the emergence of DPJ "tribesmen" (zoku giin)-- permanent advocates within the party of the interests of the ministries. As such, it is indeed a good thing that both DPJ Secretary-General Ozawa Ichiro and DPJ President Hatoyama Yukio responded so negatively to the proposals.

However, keeping talented and creative individuals sitting on their hands, contributing nothing to the policy development process, seems a pointless waste of human experience. It also seems to guarantee the emergence of anti-mainstream study groups of mid-level party members in the DPJ, counterparts to the study groups that bedeviled (and still continue to bedevil) the Liberal Democratic Party.

Furthermore, maintaining the current concentration of the crafting of policy in Ozawa's hands is not desirable. The man is far-seeing but he is not omniscient. The party needs to have a means of generating alternate lines of thought as regards policy, so that the leadership is at least choosing from amongst a number of potential viable options.

However, Ozawa's insistence that freshman DPJ Diet members forget about contributing to policy making is quite reasonable. Ozawa caught no end of grief last fall for having pulled the freshmen off the Government Revitalization unit panels at the last minute. His insistence that the freshmen had far more important work to do getting themselves acquainted with their electoral districts seemed ridiculous given that the last House of Representatives election had taken place only three months earlier. Many of these freshmen appointed to the panels had expertise in finance, accounting and public administration. For many, it seemed that Ozawa was stripping the GRU panels of needed personnel merely in order to spite his intra-party critic, the then-state minister for revitalization Sengoku Yoshito.

However, there is a method in the madness of Ozawa's forcing talented freshmen to give up policy in favor of politicking...and it has nothing to do with concentrating policy making in either the Cabinet or in his hands. Having the freshmen and other fairly fresh DPJ members in their home districts, week after week, meeting and greeting their constituents, forces the LDP into having its Diet members and potential Diet members doing the same. The LDP has found it difficult to mount an effective counteroffensive in part because its forces are pinned down in defensive actions. It takes all the LDP's efforts and resources to simply match the efforts of the DPJ's cohorts, whose travel expenses and salaries are paid for by the taxpayer.