The Spoilt Democratic Vote (Nut, Meet Bags - A Reprise)

Thanks to the many who left comments on my last post on the depressing published number of persons voting for Suzuki Nobuyuki, a candidate for a Tokyo Metropolitan District seat in the 21 July 2013 House of Councillors election. Your attempts to put me at ease or encourage me to have a little perspective kept me looking at the impossible-to-believe purported 74,465 Tokyo voters who were so driven by intense xenophobia as to write down on their ballot papers the name of a candidate whose main proposal is the closure of Japan's borders to citizens of South Korea.

In my heart, I knew, just knew that that number had to be wrong -- that 1.4% of Tokyo residents could not be so marginalized and filled with blind, ethnic hatred as to vote for such a man.

As it turns out, I was right: the number is wrong. Provably so. The question is only to what extent.

Alert readers probably noted my awkward insertion in the first paragraph of two past participles: "published" and "purported." It is right to ask what is up with that.

A look at the actual results of the votes counted on election night shows that Suzuki Nobuyuki was not credited with having received 74,465 votes, as the news agencies reported. The Tokyo Metropolitan Election Committee credited Suzuki Nobuyuki with having won 74,465.376 votes.

Yes, you read that right.

According to the TMD's electoral authorities, Suzuki Nobuyuki received a non-whole number number of votes.

What?

By any chance did anyone else receive a non-whole number number of votes in Tokyo in this last election?

Yes. One candidate is credited with having received 552,714.570 votes.

Who?

The candidate for the Democratic Party of Japan: Suzuki Kan.

Same surname?

Same surname.

When two candidates share a name, whether it is a surname or a given name, ballots marked with that one name alone are set aside, rather than being destroyed as invalid (for those wondering, in this month's House of Councillors election 3.15% of district ballots nationwide were deemed invalid, 2.24% of district ballots in the TMD). These set-aside ballots are then counted up, with the total then divided and a proportion of the votes given in equal measure to the candidates sharing the name. This is true even when the number of these ballots not divisible by the number of eventual recipients, meaning that a last vote has to be divided into fractions of a vote.

So we know, based upon the official count, that persons wishing to vote for either of the two Suzukis on election day failed to fill out their ballots in a manner that clearly indicated which Suzuki -- the DPJ candidate or the xenophobe -- they were choosing. As a result they had their votes split up by the election committees.

Just how many folks wrote just "Suzuki" - in hiragana, in katakana, in kanji or some combination thereof -- and had their votes set aside and divided up equally between both Suzukis? One would have to ask each and every one of Tokyo’s election committees for their particular total of set aside vote totals.

All 62 of them.

That is a lot of phone calls (Professor Steven Reed of Chuo Daigaku, a project for one of your students).

The gist: for an unknown number of DPJ voters, writing down the surname and just the surname of their candidate would lead to their votes being divided in between their man and a far-right nightmare candidate.

Suzuki Kan's campaign tried to avoid this outcome by asking, not with a great deal of fervor, mind you, that voters write down his full name in hiragana -- i.e., すずきかん .

To his credit -- and credit is in very short supply here -- Suzuki Nobuyuki's campaign posters had his name in kanji - i.e. 鈴木信行. So some attempt at differentiation was made, even though, if only the surname was on the voter's ballot, the ballot would get tossed into the bin of set aside ballots no matter what the writing system used.

One problem is, of course, that writing a person's full name in hiragana feels wrong, especially when the surname is one as common as "Suzuki." Another is that Kan is a really, really, odd given name -- the mind rebels when even thinking about it, much less writing it.

Confusion of identical surnames was further heightened by proximity. By the most perverse of coincidences, the two Suzukis drew successive slots, #14 and #15, on the Tokyo district candidate list. This meant that on the campaign poster boards and in the voting areas, the two candidates out of the 20 on the ballot with two most similar names were right next to each other.

So there were two potential sources of the bleeding of votes from one candidate to the other:

a) ballots where the voter put only the surname and
b) ballots where the voter managed to put a full name down, only it was not the Suzuki he or she wanted but the full name that seemed right.

In the latter case, assuming that voters made personal name switching errors at a constant rate (i.e., setting aside the reality that Nobuyuki sounds pleasanter to the ear than Kan), for every vote Suzuki Nobuyuki lost to a mistaken vote for Suzuki Kan, he received over 7 votes in return (552,714 / 74,465 = 7.422).

How many hundreds or, in my estimation, tens of thousands of votes switched sides is not knowable. Just random error or not realizing there was another Suzuki on the ballot would lead to a significant flow of votes from Suzuki Kan to Suzuki Nobuyuki.

Detractors could point out that 2013 was not the only time the two Suzukis faced off against each other. Indeed, the two were on the ballot in the 2007 House of Councillors election. In that year, Suzuki Kan was credited with having received 780,662.470 votes, while Suzuki Nobuyuki was credited with 21,548.472 votes. The difference, a detractor could say, is that in 2007, Suzuki Nobuyuki was up against Tojo Yuko, the granddaughter of Tojo Hideki, for the maudlin, Japan-is-a-victim vote. With Tojo gone to meet her beloved grandfather, Suzuki was the one choice nut on the ballot.

Point accepted.

The two elections are not entirely commensurate, though. Suzuki Kan in 2007 was the beneficiary of awareness and coverage of DPJ candidates, making it harder for voters to vote for Suzuki Nobuyuki in error. The candidates were also not adjacent to one another, though at #13 and #15 on the 2007 list, they were still in general proximity of one another.

Whether one believes the resulting flows of votes great or insignificant, the presence of two Suzukis certainly means ballots were cast for the wrong Suzuki.

Funny thing about Suzuki Nobuyuki. Even though he was present at the creation of the Isshin Shimpu Party in 1995, was named leader of its Tokyo branch in 2005 and has been supreme leader since 2010, he seems to have run for public office only twice: in the 2007 and 2013 House of Councillors elections. He did not run for a seat in 2010. Indeed, Isshin Shinpu did not have a candidate in the 2010 election.

It seems the only times Suzuki wanted to run is when the DPJ's Suzuki was an incumbent seeking reelection. Hmmm...

Any guesses as to which party, or the supporters of which party, would pay encourage the Isshin Shinpu party to run a candidate capable of stealing votes away from the DPJ's candidate? Could it be the same folks who kicked in some cash encouraged the Isshin Shimpu to run a Matsumura in 2004, when the Communist candidate's name was Imamura?

The one bright, shining aspect of this narrative: unlike the alternative, a Tokyo where legions of subterranean xenophobes now lurk, the Tokyo of dirty electoral tricks -- the hiring of candidates to run in order to confuse voters regarding the identity of rivals -- is the Tokyo I know. It is the same Tokyo that in the 2010 House of Councillors election had two district candidates with the same surname, with fractional results in the end for both, where one of the candidates was an unknown independent and the other was...wait for it...a DPJ House of Councillors member seeking reelection.

I can live in city of silly confusion and trickery. A city of prejudice and jut-jawed ignorance (Suzuki Nobuyuki is a high school dropout) -- that I find hard to bear.

Smooth (Alleged) Criminals

Yesterday, convicted felon Ishikawa Tomohiro, member of the House of Representatives for the Hokkaido-based New Great Land Party (Shinto Daichi - Link - J) tendered his resignation from the Diet. His explanation for why he had to give up his seat less than half-a-year after the December 2012 general election: the Tokyo High Court's having upheld in March his convictions on charges stemming from the filing false political fund records during his stint as personal political secretary to House of Representatives member and Life Party leader Ozawa Ichiro, who himself is no stranger to the justice system.

According to Ishikawa, he needs to quit politics temporarily in order to concentrate on the final, Supreme Court appeal of his conviction and by so doing avoid prison time (an impossible dream -- ask any lawyer).

To replace the scandal-tainted Ishikawa, New Great Land is elevating the #2 on the party proportional list for Hokkaido – a 27 year old (the minimum age is 25) woman, a former NHK director with a clean record.

All to the good, right?

Errr, not exactly.

The young woman in question in Suzuki Takako, eldest daughter of Great Land party leader Suzuki Muneo (Link – video J) – the Diet's former poster boy of corruption who himself has been twice convicted -- and held in a cell for a year and a half -- on corruption and embezzlement charges.

With all apologies to Ms. Suzuki, winning a seat in the House of Representatives through a private deal cut by two cons, with nepotism the big winner, does a great disservice to the image of Japan's democracy, such as it may be.

That Ishikawa's sentence was way too severe, and his arrest and conviction politically motivated, does not make the transaction any less dispiriting, unfortunately.

Final Tally

The seat totals in the House of Representatives, as confirmed by national broadcaster NHK at 5:04 a.m.

Oops! I Did It Again 294
New Sentinel 31

Deservedly Chastized 57
You're Scaring Me 54
Politics Is So Icky 18
No Future 9
Cash Burn 8
Left Behind 2
Post Office Players 1
Great White North 1
Anonymous #1 0
Anonymous #2 0

Independents 5

Key points:

- The OIDIA and NS have a supermajority of 325 seats. They can ignore the House of Councillors in all matters except appointments. This is a great gift; it is also a great burden. Given the power to deliver on domestic and international promises, the alliance has to produce results.

- 10 million voters who had participated in the last two House of Representatives elections stayed away from the polls this time. The result was the lowest voter turnout for a general election in the postwar era.

Into The Darkness

Into the darkness
Soon you'll be sinking
What are you doing?
What can you be thinking?

- Graham Nash, "Into the Darkness" (1982)

Here is a trio for the ages...and it sure as heck is not Crosby, Stills & Nash.

On the left is Yamaoka Kenji, the yes-man who makes all other yes-men look good by comparison (and who has redefined the verb "to hover"); in the center Ozawa Ichiro ("It's not about me. Oh, who do I think I am kidding? It's always about me!); and to the right Suzuki Muneo, who is an entire library of bad.

This is a photo from the grand opening of the Nagata-cho offices of the Kokumin seikatsu ga dai'ichi to, the People's Life First Party (Corey Wallace had a way better translation of the party name). The acronym for the party's English name is LF.

Everything about yesterday's LF headquarters opening screams, "We have no money!"

- the cheesy sans-serif font of the party name (J) -- though the graphic designer does deserve some credit for having the dot in koku in red.

- the even cheesier party logo, which is the Democratic Party of Japan's logo turned on its side, in green, with the characters sei and katsu inside the circles.

- the unbelievably cheesy two-page pdf of the party's program (J). No, I am not kidding, this is the actual document, courtesy LF Acting President (daihyo daiko) Yamaoka Kenji's blog post about the opening.

- the tiny bottles of green tea, cans of oolong tea and whatever it is that the person in the foreground is holding up at the ceremonial toast:

- the absence of a URL in any of the images of the opening. It is hard to believe -- no, it is impossible to believe -- but after a month since breaking away from the DPJ, the LF, a party with 49 members, still does not have its own website.

- the presence according press reports of 40 members of the Diet at the unveiling, including members from Nihon Daiichi/True Democrats -- meaning that 20% of the LF's Diet contingent did not show up at the grand opening.(J)

As Aurelia George Mulgan noted even before the dust had settled, the July 2 breakaway from the DPJ marked the first time Ozawa walked out of a party without the party's cash hoard in hand. Since LF was not existence on January 1 of this year, it received not a single yen of the more than 8.3 billion yen in public campaign finance handed out on July 20 (J). Indeed, LF, should it choose to accept public funding, will not be receiving its first dollop of cash until April 2013. (J)

While the majority of LF members are either still enamored of Ozawa or at least see an advantage of going along with the charade, more than a few must be sitting at their Diet desks, their head in their hands, asking, "What have I done?"

Image credits:
Top: Jiji Press
Middle: Hokkaido Shimbun
Bottom: Jiji Press

Just Catching Up

Following up on the recent post on the new societal panic, the double deaths of caregiver and dependant living in virtual isolation (virtual in that the most famous cases have taken place in urban environments) is a The Mainichi Daily News editorial on the subject (E).

In the recent post on the hanging of Ozawa Ichiro's portrait in the Diet, there was the mention that the House of Representatives Steering Committee had approved the hanging of troubled lawmaker Suzuki Muneo's portrait in the House as well.

Here it is folks, in all its ragged glory.

Let's call the style "Hokkaido Primitive."

Some might say that the portrait makes Suzuki look demented. Some might argue that for Suzuki, demented is a step up.

And yes, that is Sato Masaru on the left, the former Ministry of Foreign Affairs bureaucrat who spent 512 days in pre-trial detention for refusing to answer questions about Suzuki's under-the-table dealings and the man who called Suzuki "MOFA's Rasputin."

Image courtesy: Jiji Press

He Who Laughs Last

I'm sure my critics will say
It's a grotesque display.
Well they can bite me baby
I perform this way.

- Al Yankovic, "I Perform This Way" (2011)

Despite the best effort of Shukan Bunshun, Kaieda Banri (Wait, was he not Ozawa Ichiro and Hatoyama Yukio's candidate in the last DPJ election? Yes, but he was also the 1996 author of this tome. Ambition has many colors) and mysterious associations working their magic from the shadows Ozawa Ichiro has survived to serve more than 25 years in the Diet. After passing the 25-year milestone, members of the House of Representatives are entitled to a number of perquisites, one of which is the hanging of his or her portrait in the Diet Building.

Ozawa, being a retiring, secretive individual of course...wait, here he is, beaming in front of his portrait as it is being hung for the benefit of the cameras both still and video. In a dose of purest irony, the portrait is hung in the room where the Committee for Judicial Affairs has its meetings.

The portrait has its host of critics. To be sure, it sure clashes with the more genial and relaxed mood of its immediate neighbors.

The Liberal Democratic Party's Hirasawa Katsuei -- "Mr. Abductees Issue" to you and me -- has complained that it gives him the creeps (iwakan - 違和感). "I feel like it's staring at me," he complains. (J)

Hirasawa and others have declaimed that now, while Ozawa is still on trial for violating the political funding laws, is hardly the time to hang his portrait. Such complaints have very little traction, however, given that the House of Representatives Steering Committee has just greenlighted a similar hanging in the Diet of the portrait of jailbird Suzuki Muneo, the multi-year winner of the "Most Corrupt Member of the Diet" in public surveys. (J)

But while Ozawa is beaming, possibly even laughing in the above photo images, I am not sure whether or not the joke is on Ozawa's many enemies or on himself.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, a close-up of the portrait, painted a former graduate of Ozawa's political training school:
I have heard it said that truth is beauty, and beauty truth.

Though my artistic judgments have landed me in trouble of late, I will venture that the adage is hereby proven wrong.

Image courtesies:
Top: Tokyo Shimbun
Middle: Jiji Press
Bottom: TV Asahi

Growth Neither Nominal Nor Real

Over the last few days I have had the chance to fulfill a longtime wish: to read Aurelia Mulgan George's Power and Pork: A Japanese Political Life (2006).

It is sobering to read the book six years on, in light of all that has happened since.

At the time of the study's going to print, Matsuoka Toshikatsu, the subject of the study, achieved his life's goal of being named Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, requiring that Dr. George hurriedly insert a few paragraphs on his nomination into the last pages of her manuscript – all which was all to come to naught a few months later when Matsuoka committed suicide, this in order to avoid further Diet inquiry into just the sort of sordid accounting and fund-raising shenanigans Dr. George documents.

"A Political Life" turned out to be a grimly prophetic subtitle.

But it is not only Matsuoka's suicide that provides a somber coda to the work. Nakagawa Sho'ichi, Matsuoka’s predecessor at MAFF and a lifelong antagonist was himself to die at a young age (56) under circumstances that suspiciously looked like suicide, after his untreated alcoholism undid his life's dream of becoming prime minister. If Nakagawa's death was indeed suicide (the investigation into the actual cause of death was willfully unenthusiastic) it was repeat of the death of his father Ichiro, who committed suicide in 1983.

Ichiro's political secretary Suzuki Muneo, who comes across as the sleazeball mentor of Matsuoka, was sent to prison for his funding escapades, but is now rehabilitated as the leader of a regional political movement and a member of the House of Representatives allied with the ruling Democratic Party of Japan – a political marriage of convenience Suzuki parlayed into the chairmanship of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs – the committee overseeing and investigating the activities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the ministry Suzuki had so thoroughly and extensively perverted through intimidation and interference during the years covered in the study.

As for the misuse and misallocation of government funds perfected by Matsuoka and Suzuki during the "Lost Decades" that burned a hole in the Japanese government’s pocket, wasting trillions of yen on makework projects whose operations and maintenance costs far exceed any societal benefit derived from the support they gave temporarily to Japan’s GDP figures, "bad" economic stimulus that has left the country in an Alice in Wonderland state where the government has a net debt greater than 100% of GDP, funds half its budget through bond sales rather than revenues, deflation devours debtors and risk taking, government bond yields are but a shade above 1% despite massive debts and deficits and the current government's policy response – which it labels reform – is to cut spending and raise the consumption tax, despite ironclad economic laws mandating that such actions will shrink the size of the economy, thereby further reducing tax revenues, requiring greater bond issuance to fund the same size national government budget...while the reforms of the Prime Minister's Office's powers to determine policy have evaporated away, leaving Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko buffeted back and forth, a feather in the gale.

It leaves one crying, like the poor father at the end of Coup de Foudre/Entre Nous:

"Quel gâchis! Quel gâchis!"

House of Councillors Election 2010 - the District Elections

The other day I took a look at the historical vote totals in the proportional party list half of the House of Councillors elections, then tried to make a prediction (since updated) of how the proportional seats will be apportioned out in the upcoming election, if current trends in the public opinion polls reflect of the preferences of the voters on July 11.

Now as which candidates will win the 73 district seats up for grabs on July 11, a number of factors will affect the outcomes.

- In this telegenic ages is the candidate a handsome, outgoing, energetic person or a warmed over lump of human flesh? (Then again, in 1995 the elfin Aoshima Yukio, a member of the House of Councillors, ran for Governor of Tokyo by making only the mandatory taped five minute free televised speech, then spending the rest of the campaign period locked in his apartment -- and still won.)

- Does he or she have any scandals or embarrassing statements to live down?
(Then again, in 2004 Suzuki Muneo and in 2007 Tsujimoto Hitomi, both convicted felons at the times, both finished just out of the running in their House of Councillors district races. Both are now members of the House of Representatives)

- Is he or she an LDP hopeful in Eastern Japan or a Democrat in Western Japan, as the country is largely split into a Democratic East and and an LDP West?

Nevertheless, there are some questions that seemingly will have significant impacts, particularly in the rural, single seat prefectures, where the reversal of Ozawa Ichiro's reforms of the DPJ will tend to support a reversion to historic norms in voting patterns.

To whit:

- Where will the estimated 300,000 to 1,000,000 post office-related voters cast their ballots? It is not likely that they will plunk down their vote for the Democratic Party of Japan after the government let the postal reform bill die on Wednesday. However, can the postmasters and their unions go back to supporting LDP candidates, seeing as how the LDP was the party that passed the original privatization law, in overwhelming fashion and furthermore, lacks the votes in the House of Representatives to be a force capable of sponsoring legislation in the post office's favor?

- How will the farmers vote? They received their price supports, as promised in the 2009 DPJ manifesto and the current manifesto promises continuing efforts. However, the guarantor of the farmers actually receiving similar supports in the future was former DPJ Secretary-General Ozawa Ichiro, who is gone from the scene, at least for no. The new DPJ leadership team seems to be entirely the sort of urban- suburban- white collar cost-cutting and budget rationalization crowd that will target farmers and other primary good producers as inordinately well treated members of the public.
Should farmers, fisherman and foresters trust that the Kan Naoto/Edano Yukio-led DPJ will continue to coddle agriculture in the name of preserving food security? Or will the debacle of the foor-and-mouth disease in Miyazaki prefecture prompt every single farmer in the land to abandon the DJP?

- The government of Hatoyama Yukio failed to follow through on the DPJ campaign promises regarding the elimination of expressway tolls and rescinding of the temporary fuel taxes. Unsurprisingly, the nation's parcel delivery and short- and medium-haul trucking industry is furious. Will they go back to voting for the LDP, even though the LDP has no fiscally sound way of satisfying the requests of the trucking industry?

- Are the voters still in the "let's throw the bums out" mood they have been in since pretty much 2001? Due to the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, should the DPJ can pretty much write off Kumamoto and Kagoshima Prefectures, the neighbors of the stricken Miyazaki? Will Aoki Mikio's selection of his son to take over his seat in Shimane Prefecture blow up into a minor public relations fiasco for the LDP in the Chugoku region?

- Will a relatively early election increase turnout, generally seen as a plus for the DPJ?　　July 11 is well before the midsummer break for the schools; before the time workers start to leave their electoral districts on their summer vacation; and before much of central Japan heats up like a furnace, wilting both campaigners and voter patience?

However, the big kahuna in this whole election -- and the only reason that Ozawa Ichiro was able to cling to the position of Secretary-General for so long, despite every indication that his presence in a leadership position was unacceptable for 80% of the electorate -- is the LDP's district performance in the likely absence of electoral cooperation between the LDP and the New Komeito.

Look at these two sets of numbers:

2009 House of Representatives

Total votes for party proportional seats,
by party

DPJ 29,844,799
LDP 18,844,217
New Komeitō 8,054,007
Communist 4,943,886
Socialist 3,006,160

Total votes for party candidates,
by affiliation of candidate

DPJ 33,475,799
LDP 27,301,892
New Komeitō 782,784
Communist 2,978,354
Socialist 1,376,739

In 2009, when the LDP and the New Komeito were coalition partners, LDP district candidates received a net 8 million votes from New Komeito voters - a full one quarter of all votes cast in the districts for LDP candidates.

If the members of the New Komeito do not ride to the rescue of the LDP at the last minute, it is unlikely the LDP will defend all of its current seats or seize a single DPJ seat in the upcoming election.

This must have been Ozawa's ace in the hole - the reason why the DPJ's plummeting poll numbers did not fret him.

I will do a district-by-district run down for the country...but it hardly seems worth the trouble. Without the New Komeito by its side, the LDP is set up for a huge fall.

Regrets, I've Had A Few

I did not know whether to be charmed, appalled or frightened last night when the television networks asked Prime Minister Asō Francisco Tarō to give his explanation of why the voters rejected his party. This was an hour after NHK, an aggressive holdout, had broken down and allowed its ticker of seats won by the Democratic Party of Japan to exceed 241, joining the other networks (except, unsurprisingly, Fuji TV) in recognizing that the DPJ had won control of the House of Representatives.

Despite being fully aware that his Liberal Democratic Party had fallen from power, Prime Minister Asō began going through the main points of his party's elections manifesto...and not just once, either. In interview after interview, he outlined how well-thought out the LDP's policy program is. He seemed incapable of processing the idea that his party's election promises were defunct, a subject for historians and non-fiction writers.

He was still in campaign mode -- in an scary semi-delusional way.

Francisco needs a rest. I hope they let him have one. He will go down in history as the man led the LDP into the political wilderness...and not just into the wilderness but into the wilderness with a kilo of buckshot in its backside. He will suffer greatly for this. For all his many faults, the least of which is an undisciplined tongue, Asō Tarō clearly loves his country, "warts and all" as the saying goes. I wish him well.

As for the night's other losers, I will probably miss only Kamei Hisaoki, the secretary-general of the People's New Party. Of all the politicians who appeared regularly on television, he alone always made sense, calling upon the better nature of his fellow politicians (a hopeless task) and his fellow citizens (a much easier row to hoe). I hope the networks will continue to have him comment on the day's affairs, so that we continue to hear the voice of one of the truly rare advocates of simple human decency.

As for the undeserving winners, well, there is small band of them -- and not all or even many of hail from within the LDP. Tsujimoto Kiyomi, a convicted felon who faked the existence of a secretary on her Diet accounts, won a district seat (OK, so it was in Osaka - proving there is no accounting for taste). No matter how many times I might have this result explained to me, I am certain I will not understand it.

As for another example of the happy underserving, well, I once heard it said that if Armageddon came, and destruction rained down upon the world, the last things to survive would be rats, cockroaches and Cher. I am fairly certain now that this formulation is incorrect. If Armageddon really comes, and destruction rains down upon the world, the last things to survive will be rats, cockroaches and Suzuki Muneo.

As for the question I asked the other day, the Wall Street Journal is saying that the DPJ leadership is going to ask former party leader Ozawa Ichirō to take charge of the party's 2010 House of Councillors campaign. It is going to be hard enough to keeps the hounds of the press -- many of whom have just lost their raison d'être as the lapdogs of a particular ruling party politician -- from continuously harrassing prime minister apparent Hatoyama Yukio over the fraudulent assignment of donor names to phoney donations to his political campaign fund. To have Ozawa in the Cabinet and the legal troubles of his closest aide clogging up the airwaves would be just too much for the new government to handle.