Notes On The Upcoming Election

Notes in preparation for a conference panel appearance discussing the December 16 election, now just three days away.

Post-election government

There is a chance for a dramatic improvement of government control over policy and events. The Mainichi Shimbun and JNN are predicting that the LDP and its ally are on course to win over 320 seats. If the two allies do surpass the 320 mark, they can on their own override any decision or inaction on the part of the House of Councillors (except for appointments, which require the agreement of both Houses).

If the alliance partners do not reach 320 seats on their own, they will still have a choice of coalition partners, either a seriously diminished Democratic Party of Japan under new management (Noda will have to resign his post) or the upstart Japan Restoration Party.

However, the projections are dependent on public opinion polls that still show large segments of the voters undecided. In the case of the Mainichi/JNN projections, they are based on the December 4-5 Kyodo poll, now 10 days old (a lifetime in this election cycle) where the 48% of voters had not yet decided on a political party for which they would be casting their ballot and 56% had not decided on their favorite district candidate.

Late breaking votes, if the undecided show up (the advance polls on likely voter participation rates are not encouraging), could salvage some degreee of dignity for the DPJ and its candidates. Fear of an out-of-control Abe Shinzo premiership is high.

Policy outlook

Projected next prime minister Abe Shinzo is desperate to erase the memory of his failed 2006-7 premiership.

In order to avoid a repetition of the 2007 debacle Abe has to make changes. But which month in 2007 will he take his lesson from? From July, when the voters delivered a stunning rebuke to his policy program, snatching control of the House of Councillors from LDP hands, creating the "twisted Diet"? Or from August 2007, when his health and his grip on events spiraled downward from trying to be what he was not? He had played the pragmatist, visiting China in his first overseas visit after becoming prime minister, avoiding his annual pilgrimages to Yasukuni – and hated every second of it.

From Abe's campaign rhetoric and his expression of regret at not visiting Yasukuni, we must assume that the lesson of choice is the latter one. If so, we have an ugly, unpleasant winter ahead of us.

Bureaucracy vs. the Politicians

While the DPJ's fall from power represents a victory for the government bureaucrats-- who sought to kneecap the new government at every turn (see what they did to MEXT minister Tanaka Makiko after she swore she would not approve any conversions of schools into colleges unless quality controls were implemented)-- the victory is only a temporary respite. The long-term outlook for the bureaucrats is poor. Mismanagement of the economy has undermined their carefully cultivated image of brilliance. The decline of tax revenues has limited their ability to reward their allies or recruit new followers in sufficient numbers to guarantee their continued dominance (Link) Their pursuit of amakudari positions and their retirement bonuses have earned the scorn of the citizens, who are the ultimate paymasters for everything.

A Rightward Shift In Japanese Politics

The left-right duality and continuum may be useful for analyses of European politics. However, the left-right divide probably obscures more than illuminates Japanese politics. The political parties, if they are lined up, are Right – Right - Center Right and Center Left, with a tiny left fringe—which to an outsider would look incredibly unbalanced rightist political environment.

It is probably better to graph at the Japanese political realm on grid than on a single line. If the vertical axis is Rational vs. Emotional and the horizontal is Credible vs. Incredible (or Viable vs. Not Viable) then the parties and individual politicians are probably more evenly spread out.

Furthermore, the "rightward shift" is not a significant element in domestic political discourse. South Koreans and Chinese are pointing at Japanese domestic politics screaming, "Rightward shift! Rightward shift!" in order to advance their own agendas. However, in historical terms, the current election looks a lot like the Kaku-Fuku War entering its fifth decade of existence. This is a long-term oscillation in Japanese politics, in between two family lineages, here pitting the anti-mainstream authoritarian bureaucratic Fukuda-Mori-Machimura faction and its firebrand current champion Abe Shinzo against the mainstream, round-shouldered populist DPJ (where the Tanakas are) and Tomorrow parties, where lurks, behind the façade of Kada Yuriko, Tanaka Kakuei's greatest disciple Ozawa Ichiro.

Lineage capture of institutions and multi-generation lineage warfare are fundamental elements of Japanese civilization. "Left-Right"? Not so much.

Historic Election

This is a historic election – but in only negative terms.

First, Noda's offer of dissolution came out of the blue and burdened with the opposition of important members of the party directorate. These ignored DPJ leaders are looking forward to seizing control of the party from out of the hands of Noda and his allies after the projected debacle of December 16. So certain seems a wipeout that more than a few analysts see failure as not a bug but a feature of the dissolution – that Noda has sought to purify the DPJ (Link) in preparation for a coalition government or a merger of the surviving rump with the LDP.

Second, this election is historic in that the politicians of Japan have never shown as much contempt for the electorate as this current crop of hopefuls. The message the politicians are sending to the voters? "You know, we think you are stupid."

The Atlantic Needs To Try Harder

Someone writing about Chongryon (in J. Chosen soren). Neat!

Not so neat.

The Strange Rise and Fall of North Korea's Business Empire in Japan
The Atlantic

Armin Rosen

Since its 1950s founding, a Pyongyang-linked group called Chongyron has run everything from banks to newspapers, pushing propaganda out and pulling hard currency in. But now that's ending.

It's been a big couple of weeks for North Korea's 29-year-old dictator. Kim Jong Un appointed himself titular head of the country's military last week and took his marriage public on Tuesday. But amid the celebrating, Kim's Stalinist regime suffered a little-reported setback on the other side of the Sea of Japan. At a time when North Korea is as desperate as ever for hard currency, one of its few reliable generators -- and one of its few links to the outside world -- has gone broke, likely ending the bizarre but significant half-century history of Japan's once-formidable North Korea lobby.

In late June, a Japanese court ordered Chongryon, a business, education, and banking organization formally representing pro-North Korean members of Japan's ethnic Korean minority, to auction off its ten-story office building in downtown Tokyo, effectively ending its mission of bringing money into North Korea and pushing propaganda out. The group's problems are essentially financial: Chongryon owes the Japanese government nearly $750 million for a late-90s emergency bailout that rescued the group's network of credit unions, which were rapidly de-capitalized because of remittances to North Korea during the country's devastating mid-90s famine, an economic and humanitarian catastrophe that killed up to 2 million people...

(Link)

The author talks to Kong-do Oh, who is as knowledgeable a person as there is about what has gone on in North Korea, what is going on there, and about those who have either escaped from or are passing in and out of that country.

The author talks to Michael Green, getting Dr. Green to wax anti-Liberal Democratic Party over the Tanaka-Takeshita Faction's embrace of the DPRK and its Japan-based operatives and operations.

But why must all good things come to an end? Why does the author...

- claim that Korean residents of Japan suffer discrimination even today, offering as evidence an inoffensive but informative Minoru Matsutani article on the new foreign registration law (E)? The Matsutani article makes no a claim of discrimination, unless you consider the convenience of going to the local ward or municipal office for one's new foreign registration card, as the non-naturalized have always done, discrimination. Of course the law discriminates, but not in a pejorative sense.

- state that Koreans of the two nations of the Peninsula make up the largest group of foreign residents of Japan? That status belongs to the Chinese (J). This has been the case for several years now.

- provides as a reference for Chongryon's use of pachinko parlors as as main funding mechanism a page from an aggregator "Japan stuff" website that does not even once make such a claim? What there is on the linked page is a further link to the website of an anonymous British blogger who makes this claim, without supporting evidence.

- quote the English-language page of a North Korea friendship organization as the source for numbers of Chongryon's members at the height of the organization's wealth and influence?

The fall of Chongryon over the government's bailout of its credit unions should be a fascinating tale. However, this is not the article to read about it.

How this rubbish slipped past the editors at The Atlantic is beyond me.


Later - The need to run an errand prevented me from noting the caption to the seven-year old file photo accompanying the article. You will love it; I am sure. Just click on the below image for a larger view.

The operatically minded have to ask: what has made Rosen so cavalier?

After the Storm

A monstrous typhoon has passed through the country. A few unfortunates lost their lives; many more people suffered injuries, several dozen lost their homes. The power went out in many places as wires ripped from their moorings. Most of the country's jets were grounded; most of the express train runs were cancelled. Yet much of the country's transportation and distribution network still functioned, despite the heavy rain and the wind. A staggering percentage of the labor force commuted work. Television crews, sent out to document the projected devastation, had little to capture in the way of storm dramatic storm damage. The slathering of the coastlines and riverways in concrete, the aesthetically asinine replacement of wood frame houses and public buildings with steel-framed, ceramic tile encased strongholds, lamented often enough here, seems to have preserved the populace from suffering catastrophic losses.

As, I suppose, they were designed to do.

Would it not be ironic that in the aftermath of the defeat of the Liberal Democratic Party, whose passionate intertwining with the construction sector led to the birthing of uncounted thousands of public works projects costing uncountable trillions of yen transforming Japan into a fortress against nature, leading to the party's being shackled to reputation of environmental and fiscal nihilism -- that the purportedly wasteful and pointless flood-control and wave-action defenses actually turned out to be crucial to beat back rising seas and supertyphoons?

That Japan, courtesy the LDP, would turn out to be the only country prepared for the consequences of climate change?

Apples and oranges

Over at Global Talk 21, Okumura Jun has an excellent analysis up of the current political status of the prime minister, at least according to an exegesis drawing upon the public opinion polls of Fuji Television.

Okumura-san indicates that he has his doubts as to one of my recent assertions--that the prime minister can win back some of his lost popularity simply through having a run of good days either through accommodating the opposition in order to pass legislation or, when the lay of land is right, challenging the opposition when it adopts a transparently opportunistic policy stance.

Of course the Fukuda administration could always try to win on policy. But I don't think that sweating the small stuff, such as tinkering with the Late-Term Elderly Medical Care Insurance system, is going to have a major impact. I don’t believe that the Hokkaido SG-8 Summit and a squishy agreement on greenhouse gases or any other combination of diplomatic or national security issues are going to be winners either.

Okumura-san goes on to speculate that the only policy program likely to attract enough public attention to affect the popularity numbers is the budget agenda-setting reform package scheduled to be tackled in a lengthy extraordinary session in the fall.

Given that the number of days until the end of the regular Diet session is growing few indeed, Okumura-san is possibly right.


But taking the Fuji Television Cabinet support figures for the Cabinet of Abe Shinzō and comparing them with the Fuji TV figures of the present Cabinet, Okumura-san may be making a fundamental error.

The two sets of numbers may not be comparable.

The Fukuda Cabinet and the current leadership of the ruling coalition parties are unpopular for failing to understand the mechanics of how to cope with a functioning, if limited, opposition. The people are furious that the ruling coalition has tried to force legislation and appointments, knowing full well that the Democratic Party of Japan and its allies were going to oppose them in the House of Councillors.

The voters do not like to see their representatives engaged in contests over who can be the most pig-headed time wasters of all.

Abe Shinzō, his Cabinet and his administration became unpopular not because they were ineffective. Quite on the contrary, they became unpopular because they could do whatever they wanted...and they were running amok.

What did they decide was going to be their major task in in December, after the successful visit to China? Was it revealing the state of the pension accounts and promising to putting them to rights? Noooooo. It was

a) the establishment of a Ministry of Defense and
b) the readmission to the LDP of the exiles, the Diet members expelled from the party by Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichirō for having opposed his plan to privatize the post office.

That second priority -- b) -- set off a detonation. The bald move repudiated the imputed will of the people, slapping them in their faces. The people had handed a landslide victory to Koizumi's LDP in the 2005 House of Representatives election...and now Abe was telling the voters that their judgment had been flawed.

This was only the first of a series of actions that Abe and his cabal foisted upon the nation not because they were popular or solved particular problems but because Abe and his long-denied fantabulist brothers and sisters finally had their hands on the tiller--and coalition majorities in both House of the Diet.

- Education reform emphasizing patriotism and order.

- The legal basis for a national referendum permitting amendments to the Constitution.

- Mandates, both open and secret, forcing the national broadcaster NHK to feature stories on the abductees at every opportunity.

At the same time, real scandals--in the pension system, in the offices of the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries--were left uninvestigated, shunted to the side because the ruling coalition had unbeatable majorities in both Houses of the Diet.

Throughout the regular Diet session, the government railroaded every single piece of legislation through. Not one concession was made to the opposition.

The voters saw what was happening...and Amaterasu bless them, in July of 2007 they said, "No more of this. You will not do whatever you want. You will have limits on your freedom of action."

In his current post, Okumura-san notes that Abe Shinzō's popularity rose with the Cabinet reshuffle in August 2007. What he leaves out is that everyone agreed that the Second Abe Cabinet was a cast of all-stars--far more experienced and moderate than the Cabinet it was replacing, its members far more likely to accommodate a revitalized and now constitutionally relevant opposition.

Guess what? For the most part, those all-stars whom both Okumura-san and I hailed-- these are the ministers we have now. The folks inside the ruling coalition just do not get any better--Minister of Law Hatoyama Yukio and the yonyaku, excepted.

The reason the Cabinet is unpopular now is that the yonyaku, not the Cabinet, misunderstood and mishandled every bit of legislation and every appointment since September. The yonyaku, trying to rebuild the LDP's relationship with its traditional client base, failed to cut deals with the DPJ, choosing instead to try demonstrate its worthiness through a show of the indomitability of the ruling coalition's will.

As if that was what the people wanted. Ever.

What the people wanted was for Fukuda to be Fukuda; for Yosano to be Yosano; for Kōmura to be Kōmura; for Masuzoe to be Masuzoe...for the men and women of good intentions and wisdom to work out compromises with the opposition.

That is what the Cabinet was expected to do. It is not popular now because its members were not given the chance to run the government based on the political situation--but based on what the grandees of the LDP wanted the situation to be.

There has been, all in all, a stunning lack of realism in the actions of the ruling coalition since its wounding in the 2007 House of Councillors election.

Hence my feeling that things are on the mend for the prime minister. Just doing what governments do every day--passing nice-sounding but meaningless legislation to cover everyone's backside, accepting legislative amendments proposed by the opposition, calling opposition leaders aside for private talks about potential political appointees, watching the calendar--will be a vast improvement over what we have seen over the last eight months.

If Fukuda Yasuo and the members of his Cabinet (pax Hatoyama) can just do government--not revolution, not shock therapy,just government--then there is a chance that the political climate in Nagata-chō could more clement for the PM. There is evidence that Fukuda has at least chucked the "thank you for all your votes at the party presidency election" persona in favor of a "I will keep my own council and if you don't like it you can find somebody else to be your prime minister"--something he should have done in January.

Which presages peace and stability until the autumn...when the postponed death of Tanakaism will have to be faced at last...and when the LDP will be forced to look itself in the mirror and decide what it is to become.

Later - Apologies for all the typos in the original version of this text.

In Rude Political Health

In what is a probably astute gesture of restraint, the leadership of the Democratic Party of Japan has reportedly backed away from the plan for a vote of censure in the House of Councillors.

A DPJ candidate's defeat of the Liberal Democratic Party candidate in the Yamaguchi #2 by-election and the prime minister's disastrous public polling numbers have robbed a bill of censure against the PM, a member of the other house of parliament, of much of its former luster. The DPJ has proven itself relevant: it does not need an act of political theater to convince the public of its sincerity and importance. On balance, a censure motion now poses more of a risk to the DPJ's standing than the DPJ can perhaps stomach. Proceeding to a vote on a legally dubious bill could boomerang, leading to the public to call into question the DPJ's credibility.

As if to balance its new restraint in regards the censure with excess elsewhere, the DPJ has announced a plan to proceed with a bill terminating the new over-75 elder care system.

The move is smart in seikyoku (political street fighting) terms. The elderly vote in far greater numbers, both in aggregate and proportionally, than the young. In terms of regional power, retirees are a larger fraction of the voting public in the low population rural prefectures, where the move of a few thousand votes from one column to the other could switch a district from LDP to DPJ control. Elderly-dominated districts are also over-represented in the Diet due to the incomplete equalization of the declining rural districts with stable or growing urban-suburban ones. Appealing to the old cannot only win you more votes within a district, it can win you more districts period, due the dominance of elderly voting a larger number of districts. Add to this structural justification for pandering to the retirees a tone-deaf ruling coalition incapable of even breathing without offending—and you have what must be a seductive opportunity to position the DPJ for a seizure of power.

Such positioning is Ozawaism at its worst. It is Tanakaism reversed: the irresponsible promising to undo all unpopular LDP policies—even the difficult and necessary ones—in order to win the next election. It is irresponsible and dishonest—justifiable only to revolutionaries to whom the end of winning political control justifies the means. That Kan Naoto—a former minister of health and welfare—should be the DPJ's spokesman for this facetious termination bill is disturbing. He of all the leaders of the DPJ should know that health insurance system is doomed to a financial unraveling unless fundamental reforms of elder care are undertaken.

In seisaku (political policies) terms, the recently instigated elder care system seems a fair solution to the looming elder care crisis. With the young a decreasing fraction of the total population, relying upon on the underconsumption of healthcare by the young as the subsidizer of the healthcare of the very old puts one on a collision course with reality—no matter what one may think of the social justice aspects of the intergenerational transfers...

(I am an apostate. I hold as self-evident that the young today have high paying jobs in an advanced industrial society thanks to the savings, self-sacrifice and hard work of preceding generations. Whining about being taxed to death in order to coddle rapacious old folks grants to the individual an unearned aura of autonomy across time.)

The decision to deduct (tenbiki) a regular extra insurance fee from the pensions of persons over 75 years of age in return for lowering the patient's visit costs to 10% of the total cost does penalize very healthy seniors. Then again, all insurance systems penalize the healthy.

Having a regular fee deducted from one's pension and a low per visit cost avoids a major problem with the elderly: self-rationing of healthcare. One wants the healthcare system to discourage frivolous visits to the doctor—one of the reasons (aside from the obvious fiscal ones) that the authorities over the last decade have increased the percentage an individual pays out of pocket from the original 10% to 20% and 30%. However, one would want the very old to seek treatment for minor ailments before they deteriorate into major and expensive-to-treat illnesses. One would want the system to stimulate the individual retiree into rationalizing a visit to the doctor as a way of recouping for himself or herself at least some fraction of the money the government has forcibly taken from his or her pension.

The regular pension deduction and lower per-visit cost also addresses one of the real problems of the cost curve of healthcare over time—that the last six months of a person's life are the most expensive. As organs and internal systems fail, doctors and hospitals deploy all kinds of life-prolonging medications and devices...

(One unfortunately misinterpreted gesture has been the government program encouraging physicians to give their patients questionnaires asking them to specify about what kind of life-prolonging treatments they would not want deployed in case of incapacitation. Some critics [Veracity Alert - The following is according to Shūkan Gendai - quote at your peril] of the system have depicted the gathering of this information as a preliminary step to charging higher monthly fees to those individuals expecting more aggressive and expensive life-prolonging strategies. They have pointed to the assigning of a point system to certain kinds of treatment as evidence--as if a person amassing a certain number of points after saying "yes" to a particular number of life-prolonging treatments would be then charged an "X" amount in fees. The actual goal of the point system is almost certainly to help hospitals decide on how much to spend on certain technologies and treatments, and avoid overinvestment into life-prolonging technologies the patients do not want employed.)

To expect an individual to have liquid savings able to cover 20% or 30% of the cost of these end-of-life treatments, especially as life-prolonging technologies advance in their ability to increase lifespan, is simply not reasonable. Better to have each person pre-paying over the course of her or his retirement into a general fund, creating a special drawing right for the individual for the time when her or his vital systems begin to shut down, leaving the individual at that time liable for only 10% of the cost out-of-pocket.

Now, if the above is indeed a proper description of the new elder care system, it would take a special kind of genius to be so unnerved as to never, ever attempt to explain it. Perhaps the LDP and the New Komeitō deserve to be sent to perdition for having both delayed the introduction of this system and left it to the bureaucracy to justify.

However, the cowardice of the ruling coalition is no excuse for the DPJ's turning its back on reform. The public is not stupid: it will ask what the DPJ's plan is for the long-term financially stability of the healthcare system. Being in an advantageous position on the electoral map is a fine and wonderful thing—and elections are about winning. However, as a party that will win at best a plurality of seats in the House of Representatives, requiring the cobbling together of a coalition in order to form government, the DPJ should be at least considering the possibility that a reputation for conscientiousness could make the signing up of allies a slightly easier task.

Kan Naoto speaking out in favor of reverting to the previous system puts pressure on the DPJ's House of Councillors membership to speed up the consideration of the termination bill. Submitted to the House of Councillors in February, the bill has yet to see the inside of a committee chamber. A suspicious mind could even posit that the DPJ councillors have been stalling on their allies—all of whom are enthusiastic supporters of a rescinding of the new system.

Perhaps being in charge of one of the houses of the Diet has made DPJ's House of Councillors members the party's "responsible wing" —which would be a neat reversal of the traditional image of the House of Councillors membership as the breakfast cereal (i.e., the flakes and nuts) of every political party.

Oh Bully!

On the day I predicted we would witness the death of Tanakaism, Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo has called yet another unscheduled press conference.

I wonder what he will have to say.

Tanakaism: The Final Days

On March 31, 2008 the Liberal Democratic Party will die.

Well, perhaps not the Liberal Democractic Party. But definitely a Liberal Democratic Party...the great, voracious beak of the octopus--the clownish, spiritually debilitating hogfest that has been the party's heart since a mawkish small-time construction company owner named Tanaka Kakuei bobbed, weaved, pocketed and disbursed his way around all the pre-war elites and grand poobahs to a place at the head of the table--the wealth-destroying bachannalia of concrete and cash so crass and transparent in its corruption that it made Abe Shinzō and the fantabulists look good by comparison.

To not appreciate the primacy of road building in the country is to not understand the country at all. The archipelago is draped in dense network of roads... a network not just of the roads themselves (and the bridges, the tunnels, the landslide-prevention measures) but of contractors, sub-contractors, subcontractors' subcontractors, former bureaucrats, part-time farmers, the postal savings system, the Ministry of Land and Infrastructure and thousands of politicians who have nothing else to do but live off the system -- that are The System.

When Inose Naoki wrote his Nihonkoku no Kenkyū (日本国の研究 - The Study of the Country Japan) he did not start with a description of the Iron Triangle of bureaucrats, industrialists and politicians. He did not talk about the lifelong employment system, about kaizen or about the prevalence of rote memorization in the schools. He did not talk about the kami, self-sacrifice, dependent behavior or the ideology of the Meiji.

He wrote about infuriating excellence of Japan's logging roads--roads without traffic, going nowhere, scarring the countryside--by design.

Over the last thirty-five years, nothing has been more important to a rural politician than the ability to dole out road construction contracts--indeed, for many politicians, securing of road construction contracts and getting reelected are the yin and the yang of government. One exists for the other--and for nothing else.

[Attending local social functions, the other mandatory activity of the rural politician, exists to prove to constituents that said politician is indeed still alive...which is not a joke, as we learned last year.]

The gasoline tax is the blood of the Tanakaist polity. So sure have politicians been of its power to motivate the base that they never even bothered to remove the zantei (interim, temporary) label from the levy. They knew, simply knew it would always be there--they indeed could not imagine political life without it.

When Koizumi Jun'ichirō set about saving the LDP by destroying it, he did so by siccing his two disrespectful, presumptuous attack dogs upon the road construction gang. His left hand loosed Inose upon the Dōro Kōdan (Japan Public Highway Corporation), forcing its breakup and the cleaning up of its finances. His right loosed Takenaka Heizō upon the Post Office, the piggy bank of the road construction state, forcing its breakup and privatization.

Since Koizumi's stepping down from the prime ministership, the road construction gang has been trying reassemble itself and get its hands back on the steering wheel. It got a huge boost of adrenaline in July of 2007 when Abe Shinzō's revisionist vision failed to entice the public into voting for the LDP. The stunning loss to Democratic Party leader Ozawa Ichirō's hoary and utterly insincere promises of transfers of wealth from the city to the countryside revived the hopes of the road construction partisans.

[Just an aside--does anyone else think that Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintarō's promise to send 300 billion yen of Tokyo tax money to the hinterlands might have more to do with buying rural LDP member support for his son Nobuteru's run at the LDP party presidency than buying central government support for Ishihara Senior's quixotic bid to have Tokyo host the 2016 Olympics?]

Humpty Dumpty, however, is finding it hard to get back together again. Despite the full-court press of the traditional sanyaku (Koga Makoto is strangely absent from the debate) the LDP's road tribe could not get its act together in time to push the gasoline tax extension bill through the Diet. The party executive and local assemblymen staged a high-profile emergency meeting on January 23 to scare the Diet into voting for the extension...then, when that failed to have the expected effect, staged another emergency meeting on February 8, this time dragging in the prefectural governors, including the always-good-for-a-made-for-television-event Higashikokubaru Hideo of Miyazaki Prefecture.

To no avail.

The Tanaka Democracy has had an incredible run, staying a viable pantomime of electoral democracy well past the point where it descended into farce (when the both the population and the number of full-sized cars on the road are shrinking, how is it possible to argue that the country needs more and better roads?) The recent explosion in the number of talk shops, the new transparty alliances, the nervous runs for membership in the factions (I do not share all of Okumura Jun's faith in the resurgent significance of the factions. Frankly, I believe LDP politicians are joining factions for the same reason some people surf the Internet: it sure beats working), the hopped-up patriotism of the revisionists--all point to a deteriorating certainty in the ability of politicians to simply buy off the party's base.

It turns out the money is not there--Tanakaism has done to the peace-loving, low-tax Japanese state's finances what the military-media-industrial complex, outrageous defense expenditures and unending warfare have done to the finances of the United States. The gasoline tax, if it is saved, will be shoveled into the general fund, where it will be used to fill other holes than those found in road top surfaces. In the nebulous vastness of the general fund's flows--or, horror, of horrors, in a carbon-abatement levy--the link between one's local LDP politician and one's bank account will no longer be not crystal clear.

At which point, the LDP--Tanaka Kakuei's LDP--will be dead.