My Morning News for 29 October 2015

Rockin' the DPJ's Boat

Not much good is coming from DPJ head honcho Okada Katsuya's meeting last month with the Japan Communist Party's Chairman Shii Kazuo on the terms of the two parties cooperating ahead of next year's House of Councillors election. Okada nixed the JCP's offers of a coalition (Link) up to and including a seductive and bewildering JCP promise to (provisionally) accept the constitutionality of the Self Defense Forces and the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty (Link). The conservative wing of the DPJ, led (provisionally) by the party Policy Research Council chief Hosono Goshi, are screaming that coalition/cooperation with the JCP would plunge the DPJ into existential crisis.

One should always be wary of the declarations of the DPJ's perfidious conservatives. However they are right in this instance: the upside of electoral cooperation is outweighed by the message of incompleteness which it telegraphs:

"We do not have what it takes to fight the Liberal Democratic Party toe-to-toe; vote for us."

DPJ Leader Okada is in a tough position. He cannot simply say, "No" to the Communists, as they could be allies after the election. However, by not immediately rubbishing what Shii says, Okada creates the opportunity for the ambitious Hosono and his supporters to open up old ideological wounds.

In the meantime former Minister of Foreign Affairs Matsumoto Takeaki, one of the perfidious conservatives (How conservative? His website is a single page), delivered his request to resign from the DPJ,  citing irreconcilable differences with the party secretariat (Link - J). The departure of the former cabinet minister is painful but not unexpected: Matsumoto has been playing footsie with the Japan Innovation Party's Matsuno Yorihisa for quite some time (Link). The son of the Kaifu Cabinet's Director-General of Defense, Matsumoto serves in a safe and conservative district.

See ya, ya LDP wannabe.

As for the DPJ, neither the current leadership group nor the rank and file have found a message resonating with the non-aligned voters. Without a means of cajoling the uncommitted to make the journey to the polls next July, grim indeed are the party's chances of defending the 15 prefectural and 26 proportional seats it has up for grabs in 2016.

Ceci N'est Pas Un Poisson

On Tuesday, the new head of the LDP's Taxation Committee, former METI minister Miyazawa , met his coalition party opposite Saito Tatsuo for the first time since LDP president Abe Shinzo kicked the former tax sumpremo Noda Takeshi upstairs. The subject of the meeting was a split in the application of the next rise in the consumption tax, scheduled to take place on 1 April 2017. Both sides agree that certain everyday items should continue to be taxed at the present 8% rather than at the scheduled 10%. However, the parties are wide apart on what those items should be, with the LDP proposing to limit the lower rate to "fresh food" so as to blunt the loss of revenues. The Komeito, by contrast, wants all food and non-alcoholic drink to be taxed at the lower rate, shrugging off the tripling of the loss in revenues under such a broad definition. (Link)

The beauty of the Komeito's suggestion is its relatively simplicity: if people eat a product in the form in which it is sold, then it is taxed at the lower rate. The LDP's attempt to define "fresh foods," by contrast, leads to peculiar outcomes, the current favorite being that a large chunk of raw fish is fresh food while that same piece of fish sliced for consumption as sashimi is not.

Cue the TV announcers reporting from a supermarket, holding trays of fish both sliced and unsliced.

For two guys sitting and talking for an hour last Friday all about the consumption tax rise, check out me and Timothy Langley on the latest edition of Tokyo on Fire (Tokyo on Fire - Episode 30).

We Don't Need No Stinkin' International Court of Justice

As mentioned here last week, in response to the International Court of Justice's ruling that Japan's research whaling program violates the terms of the 1986 moratorium of the International Whaling Commission, the Abe Cabinet vewy, vewy qwietly proposed on October 6 an astonishing exemption of whaling from the ICJ's jurisdiction. Just how quietly became evident as the nation's broadcasters and new organizations reported on the story as news for the first time yesterday (Video - J). The Yomiuri Shimbun's English account, with its "learned Wednesday" of a story reported here a week ago, is especially precious. (Link)

What is mind boggling is that the unilateral exemption of whaling from ICJ jurisdiction contradicts Japanese government strategy, not just as regards the whaling issue but all of international relations. The government of Japan has traditionally and this Abe government particularly interested in arguing for a need to respect the rule of law in international relations. This strategic choice, due in part to Japan's position as a reticent military actor, puts Japan on a moral and tactical higher plane than its grand regional rival China, which is more likely to cite the judgment of history as the justification for its actions.

Why no one in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has pointed out the government is throwing out the baby with the bathwater only adds to an ineluctable sense of wonder at this evolving story.

Gotta Dance, Gotta Dance

Professor Jennifer Robertson of the University of Michigan should be feeling pretty spiffy today. In 1989 she produced a then pretty out-there paper on how the Takarazuka Review informed the behavior and public discussion of lesbians in the Late Taisho and Early Showa periods. (First Link Displayed)

Yesterday Masuhara Hiroko and Higashi Koyuki were first in line to register as partners under Shibuya's City new (and so far the country's only) program creating a legal equivalent of gay marriage. In a nice bow to history, Higashi, the tall one (naturally) is a former Takarazuka otoko yaku (male lead). (Link)

Hitting The Road

Playground (2015). Image by MTC.

Why should I care?
Why should I care?

- Pete Townsend, "5:15" (1973)

There's no success like failure
and failure's no success at all.

- Bob Dylan, "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" (1965)

It was not a terribly good weekend for Democratic Party of Japan leader Okada Katsuya. Liberal Democratic Party/Komeito coalition-backed candidates won 10 out of 10 governor seats up for election. The LDP came out as the top seat holder in 40 of the 41 prefectural assemblies holding elections, the sole blot on the perfect record being in Osaka Prefecture. The DPJ finished out the day with fewer total seats in the both the prefectural and the 17 specially designated city assemblies. And to top it off someone hacked Okada's personal Twitter feed on Saturday, generating a flood of spam tweets to all of those following his feed.

The LDP did all right. Its candidates certainly won the governorships. However, only two of the races -- Hokkaido and Oita -- were competitive. In truth, not even the Oita race was competitive, as in former Socialist bastion Oita former Socialist prime minister Murayama Tomiichi campaigned for the LDP-Komeito candidate, an old friend of his. The LDP raised the number of prefectures where it holds an outright majority in the assembly from 21 to 24. It finished the day with 50.48% of all prefectural seats nationwide. On the minus side, the LDP's total number of prefectural seats fell by 43 to 1153.

The big winners were the Japan Innovation Party, the Komeito and the Communists. The JIP increased its national total in the prefectures from 62 to 70 seats and won a plurality if not a full majority of the seats in the Osaka prefectural assembly. The Komeito won every seat it contested on the prefectural level, going from 169 seats to 169 seats (demonstrating once again the party leadership's knowledge of its voters) and raised its seat totals in the specially designated cities from 172 seats to 174. Indeed only one Komeito candidate failed to win a seat on Sunday, coming up short in a race for a seat in the Osaka City assembly.

The Communists, in many races the only opposition candidate, had a field day. The JCP blasted from 75 total seats to 111 in the prefectural assemblies. The JCP now owns at least one seat in every prefectural assembly, including the six not holding election this cycle - a historic first for the party. In the specially designated city assemblies, the JCP moved past the DPJ as the #3 party in the nation, raising its seat totals in these cities from 103 seats to 136 (the LDP is #1 with 301 seats, the Komeito #2 with 174).

All the wins and losses, however, come with a caveat: voter turnout was terrible. New record lows for voter turnout were set in 38 of the 41 prefectures holding assembly votes. In the specially designated city assembly races, 12 of 17 suffered new record low turnout. On average, voter turnout in the gubernatorial elections was down over 5% from turnout in 2011, the one big exception being the competitive race in Hokkaido. However, even in the Hokkaido gubernatorial race turnout declined, from 59.62% to 59.46%.

Average turnout for prefectural assembly (brown line) and gubernatorial (blue line) elections since 1947. Image courtesy Tokyo Shimbun.



Bad turnout of course favors the parties with strong with strong internal mechanisms guaranteeing dutiful voting by its members and clients. It disfavors, and indeed is a symptom of the weakness of, parties that rely attracting floating voters for their victories.

Hence, the DPJ did as well as it should have done -- which is not well at all.

There is a serious amount of specious framing going on of the results as well. News accounts have portrayed the DPJ's losses in the prefectural assemblies as devastating, with the Yomiuri Shimbun crowing:

In prefectural assembly elections in 41 prefectures, the total number of seats won by DPJ-backed candidates fell 82 from the previous elections to 264.

Of course, the Yomiuri's editors know full well that the DPJ of 2011 is not the DPJ of today. The DPJ that ran candidates in 2011 was the big tent DPJ, before the departures of Ozawa Ichiro and friends over the consumption tax rise and the skedaddling of the mostly Kansai-based opportunists to Hashimoto Toru's Isshin no kai.

A look at the numbers

Image courtesy: NHK News

shows that the DPJ was defending only 276 seats on Sunday. The party's candidates won 264 prefectural seats, a decline of -4.3% in the national total. The purported big winning LDP (for that is the way the Yomiuri characterized the LDP's results in its English-language edition) was defending a 1196 seats total. Finishing with 1153 means a decline of -3.6% nationally.

Not that dramatic a difference if you ask me.

The results on Sunday, however, do demonstrate the hurdles Okada-san and the DPJ have to overcome in order to return the party to good graces with the voters, if not with political reporters and editors:

- get people excited about voting again (like I said in this article)

- dump the chase-a-scandal-a-day tactics in the Diet. Spending time grilling cabinet members about their political funding organizations did not make the DPJ more popular this winter. The days of haranguing and the decidedly minor revelations did not affect the public opinion polling of the Cabinet or the LDP. (The videos of the latest NHK poll results are available here and here.)

The latter is easy. The former, however, is hard. The DPJ rode in blissful ignorance on the escalator to power in 2009, propelled upward by a 25 year cycle of "Anyone But The LDP" public revulsion at Japan's ruling party. When being just "anyone else" is sufficient for victory, one can be, as the DPJ was in 2009, just a pale-lipped copy of the LDP, with the LDP's political DNA still visible beneath the overlay of an opposition party.

We now live in an era of "One Strong, Many Weak" (ikkyo tajaku). A superpowerful LDP feeds off of and encourages lower voter turnout, resulting in Japan's wild deviation from Duverger's Law (don't laugh at the link).

For the DPJ to become more relevant and for democratic processes to revive Okada and his loyalists have to come up with popular policies, not just popular-sounding policies. The party has to nurture a generation of new politicians while submitting its existing apparatus and message to rigorous and regular testing.

Otherwise, this happens -- and will keep happening.

The effort may be futile. As I have stated any number of times, a hard conservative Abe Cabinet and LDP, running the loosest and most liberal economic policy in the developed world leaves very little room on the political spectrum for the DPJ to plant its flag on.

However, if the results of Sunday demonstrate anything to Okada and Company, it is that the DPJ's present path and strategy have no future.

Change or decay -- it will be one or the other.


* * *

With this, I will be taking a break from regular posting for a while. I need to devote my energies to a new venture. I may pop in and out every so often, if changes in the political climate merit comment.

Time, as Robert Allen Zimmerman would have it, for my boot heels to be wanderin'.

Abe, Abe Uber Alles

No, this is not one of those childish comparisons of Abe to Hitler, complete with photo of Abe with a penciled in mustache.

No, this is a post praising Abe for succeeding in driving the country forward according to his plan and pretty much according to his schedule, with virtually zero political consequences.

Yesterday, the House of Councillors passed what was nominally the largest budget on record. True, passage came 9 days after the start of the new fiscal year, necessitating a brief bridge budget to keep the government offices open. Still considering that calling a December House of Representatives election blew the budget compilation process right out of the water...and furthermore considering that the opposition spent the last two months pounding away at the discrepancies, errors and dissimulations in the campaign finance declarations of members of the Cabinet, the dispute over the safety of nuclear reactor restarts, increasing economic disparities or the continuing strife in Okinawa, passing the budget only nine days late should probably be seen as something of a minor miracle.

While we are on the topic of the obstructionist tactics of the opposition, they ended up being an immense waste of time. The Cabinet's popularity stayed basically steady; the a-historially high levels of support for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party did not budge; and support for the mainstream opposition Democratic Party of Japan and the Japan Innovation Party stayed limited (5% to 8%). After expending two months of Diet time in attacks, the ruling party and opposition are pretty much where they were before the Diet session opened.

Opposition parties at some point will have to shake off the habit of chasing after minimal violations (like Minister Matsushima Midori's fans), admitting that these harrying tactics have never been more than facilitation of factional and individual fights within the LDP. Abe has outmaneuvered and marginalized every possible rival within his party sos plashing the PM with mud cannot raise the prospects of intra-party rivals to try to replace him.

Oh, what a lucky (or clever) party leader the PM is.

Even Abe's supposed Achilles' heel -- his revisionist views of history. Of the three East Asian leaders who set forth on the journey to consolidate their political base, it is Republic of Korea President Park Geun-hye who finds herself odd person out. China'x Xijinping and Abe have tranformed themselves into the unquestioned and popular (if we make the Abe Cabinet's popularity equivalent to Abe's personal appeal -- which I suspect it actually is not) leaders of their parties and their governments. Park has not.

We should not be surprised if we see a shift in the emphasis of Xi's diplomacy away from the presumably pliant but weak Park to the stubborn and difficult yet in command Abe.

Not surprising that the equities markets gave a cheer this morning, the Nikkei jumping above 20,000 for the first time in 15 years.

For like a colossus is our Abe, perhaps hollow inside but hard without, standing aloof and tall, way above all who surround him.

Damn.

Very Kind Of Them #45

The folks behind the Number 1 Shimbun, the house publication of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, offered to publish some of my musings about last month's Democratic Party of Japan leadership election.

Very, very kind of them -- and brave. (Link)

Post-Election Analysis - Here We Go

As noted earlier, the most miserably pointless and demoralizing election in memory (How pointless? Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has decided to not make a single change in his Cabinet -- and you will not believe the reasons given for this decision: Link - Video J) has, for no good but plenty of bad reasons, unleashed a torrent of some of the best writing on Japanese politics ever.

It is worthwhile to offer another list of links to good reads:

Tobias Harris - "When Is a Blowout Not a Blowout?"

Mr. Harris and I, working from the same facts, came to essentially the same conclusions in the first hours after the election. I, writing for my blog, published first. Harris, because he is an assiduous worker bee, published a more comprehensive and readable article on someone else's calendar.

Sheila Smith - "Another Four Years of Abe"

Smith points out a major problem facing Abe: what to do about Koizumi Shinjiro, the Liberal Democratic Party's most popular and saleable legislator. The latest Koizumi in the Diet received the most votes of any LDP winner despite spending almost no time in his own district campaigning. Instead Koizumi played the good soldier, campaigning all over the country for other LDP candidates.

Abe tried burying Koizumi in Fukushima-related issues in the previous Diet. With Koizumi coming off a huge win, this may be more difficult.

Corey Wallace - "Not too early to start thinking about the 2016 election?"

As you can guess from the title, the soon-to-be Dr. Wallace (fingers crossed) does not think so. The Democratic Party of Japan has survived as an institution thanks to the large number of seats it has quarantined off in the House of Councillors. That block of seats comes up for reelection in 2016 - meaning that the new party leader, who is to be elected on January 18 (Why do they tarry? Amaterasu only knows) will have to quickly bring all the disparate groupings within the party into line and workout a modus vivendi with Japan Innovation Party.

Wallace also sees the election as enhancing the powers of the DPJ's rokuninshu, the six center-right legislators seen as potential leaders (The Yomiuri Shimbun less charitably calls them "the Gang of Six") of the party. I hope he is wrong, as all with the possible exception of current party secretary-general and next party leader favorite Edano Yukio are infected with the leaden seriousness that hobbles the party at election time. Politics should be about joy and these guys (and they are all guys) are not the Joy Division.

Okumura Jun - "Election 2014: The DPJ and JIP Need to Get Their Acts Together—Literally"

I cannot agree with Okumura Jun's conclusion that the DPJ and the Japan Innovation Party have to merge. Any attempt to link up the DPJ's remnants of the Japan Socialist Party with Hashimoto Toru's populists would lead to an explosion. Better to leave the two parties seperate, each running their candidates in designated DPJ-only or JIP-only districts, to challenging the LDP's conservative corporatism on the national scale with two radically different critiques.


Later - Many thanks to the commenters pointing out the broken link.

The Breakdown Of The Party Proportional Vote

Here is the breakdown of the party proportional vote in Sunday's House of Representatives election, national totals.


Click on image to open in a new window.

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and the LDP have been proudly noting that the party received over 1 million more votes than it did in the victory of 2012, when it received 16,624,457 votes.

As for the oppostion parties, the DPJ raised its total by 140,000 votes, having received 9,628,653 in the 2012 election. The Japan Restoration Party and the Your Party together received a total of 17,507,814 votes in 2012. In 2014, the remnants of these two parties, the JIP and NexGen, received a total of 9,797,618 votes.

Who really get to crow, though? The Japan Communist Party. It received nearly 2.4 million more votes than it did in December 2012, a two year increase of 64%.


Later - An earlier version of this post stated that the increase of the JCP proportional vote was 62%. Sorry.

For The LDP And Mr. Abe, A Worst Case Scenario

Sometime early next week, or perhaps sooner, the major news organizations will be presenting their most likely outcomes of the 14 December 2014 House of Representatives elections. These outlooks will be based on reporting and polling from the prefectural and regional bureaus, combined with sophisticated analysis of past voting records and a jaundiced view toward voter turnout, which, if one goes by the traditional indicator questions of "How much interest do you have in the upcoming election?" and "How definite is your wish to go to the polls on election day?" is on course for a historical and possibly delegitimizing low.

However, let us assume, for argument's sake, turnout is closer to historical norms, i.e., greater than 59%. And let us assume, and this would not be for argument's sake but simply because it can be inferred, that every additional voter showing up will be voting against the Liberal Democratic Party, both in the district and the proportional vote, save in the districts where the choice is between an LDP candidate and a Japan Communist Party (JCP) candidate.

What happens?

I took a look on Monday at the projected list of candidates in all 295 districts. Based upon that list and small set of rules-of-thumb, I tried to arrive at an estimate of the worst possible reasonably plausible result for the ruling LDP/Komeito coalition.

My rules-of-thumb for the districts were:

- When an LDP candidate and a Democratic Party of Japan candidate with an equal number of elections to the Diet face off in a district, the LDP candidate wins.

- When an LDP candidate faces off against a DPJ or a Japan Innovation Party candidate with a higher number of elections to the Diet, the opposition candidate wins.

- When and LDP candidate faces off against a DPJ candidate and a candidate from the JIP, and neither the DPJ nor the JIP candidate has two or more elections to the Diet than the LDP member, the LDP candidate wins. If either the DPJ or the JIP candidate has two more elections to the Diet than the LDP candidate, an opposition candidate wins.

- If an LDP candidate faces off against a DPJ candidate or a JIP candidate of any status, and a Party of the Future Generations candidate is also in the running, the LDP candidate loses.

- The Komeito wins all 9 of its district electoral contests.

- Veteran candidates with more than 7 elections to the Diet win their districts, irrespective of party allegiance.

In the proportional seats I took the median values of the "likely to vote for in the proportional half of the ballot" question answers found in the Mainichi Shimbun and Kyoto News polls, and apportioned the 180 proportional seats accordingly. This left a huge clot of seats with no party assignation, as the voters in the surveys were undecided or had no opinion. Based upon the Theory of Wild Guesses, I apportioned the proportional votes of these undecided/uncaring voters according to the following pattern:

3 for the LDP
2 for the DPJ
1 for the JIP
1 for the Communists
1 for the Komeito
0.2 for the Democratic Socialist Party (Socialists)
0.2 for the People's Life Party (Life)
0.2 for the Party for Future Generations (PFG)

After applying the above rules, and a fudge factor consisting of just being mean to a handful of candidates whom I find unattractive ("There is no way you are going to win again, you rodent!") I ended up with the following "if everything goes right for the DPJ and everything goes wrong for the LDP" election outcome:



Pretty wild results, admittedly.

- The LDP loses only 48 seats -- remember this is a worst case scenario -- and with their Komeito allies finish 9 seats above the crucial 266 seat "absolute safety" line where the coalition possess both all the chairs of Diet committees and a greater than 50% majority in all the committees -- meaning that any and all coalition-sponsored legislation passes out of committee without incident.

- The DPJ hits its goal of three figures with plenty to spare.

- The Communists nearly triple their representation. Yikes.

- The JIP, despite having two dynamic leaders in Eda Kenji and Hashimoto Toru, gets mauled.

This is just a first approximation. Probably a lot more independents with local followings will get through (the drop in the independents number looks suspect). Remember also this is assuming that a lot more folks vote than the major news organizations currently think are likely to show up at the polls.

More later.

Later - The major news organizations have checked in with their projections, based upon their internal numbers...and they are saying the coalition ends up with greater than 300 seats.

The Yomiuri Shimbun (Link -J)

The Asahi Shimbun (Link -J)

Interestingly, or perhaps not, they find the same surge for the Communists I noted in my above "worst case for the LDP" scenario.

Looking At The Election With The Glass Half Full

True to its Watanabe Tsuneo-set mandate of being the Liberal Democratic Party's house organ, The Yomiuri Shimbun paints a picture of opposition parties in a hopeless, riven position requiring desperate actions on the eve of Tuesday's official start of the campaign:

Poll prompts opposition to eye merger
TheYomiuri Shimbun

Movements to restructure and consolidate opposition parties will likely intensify after the upcoming House of Representatives elections, as the Democratic Party of Japan, the main opposition party, has decided not to seek a change of government in the elections for the first time since its inauguration, observers said.

DPJ Secretary General Yukio Edano told the press in Osaka on Saturday that his party will not seek a change of government at the upcoming lower house election.

"We would like to win sufficient seats this time so that voters will consider our party a possibility for government at the next election," Edano said.

DPJ leader Banri Kaieda also told the press on the same day, "We will try to increase the number [of our seats] to bring a feeling of tension to the Diet." Kaieda apparently meant that the DPJ would virtually concede the continuation of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's administration and seek a chance to return to power at another lower house election in the future.

It is the first time since the DPJ's inauguration — in 1998, with the merger of the former DPJ, the Good Governance Party and others — that it has not sought a "change of government" as its goal in lower house elections.

As of Saturday, the DPJ had fielded only 178 candidates for the upcoming elections, far fewer than the 238 required to claim a majority in the 475-seat lower house. Its final number of candidates is expected to be about 200, including those in the proportional representation section. Even if all of them were elected, the DPJ would not be able to form a single-party administration.

In the 1993 lower house elections, the Japanese Socialist Party, which was the main opposition party at that time, the Japan Renewal Party — a breakaway group from the LDP — and the others fought, calling for formation of a government with other parties opposed to the LDP and the Japanese Communist Party. Consequently, the government of Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa was formed after the elections under eight non-LDP political parties and groups.

However, the upcoming elections are unconventional compared to those of the past. They lack the option of a government based on cooperation among non-LDP parties since the DPJ this time has not revealed a plan to form a coalition government with the Japan Innovation Party or other opposition parties.

Meanwhile, the Japan Innovation Party had fielded only 81 candidates as of Saturday.

Phantom new party

Alarmed by Abe's lower house dissolution for a snap election, members of the opposition parties have come up with the idea of unifying non-LDP forces to create a new party.

Former DPJ leader Seiji Maehara secretly met Japan Innovation Party coleader Toru Hashimoto in Osaka on Nov. 15 to propose a plan to form a new party.

"Let's form a new party with the DPJ, the Japan Innovation Party and Your Party," Maehara was quoted as telling Hashimoto. "That will enable the opposition to win more seats than the ruling coalition parties at the next House of Councillors election to create a divided Diet."

Both Maehara and Hashimoto are considered advocates for reorganization of the opposition parties, and are sufficiently close as to hold frequent meetings with one another...

(Link)

OK, first of all, the silly stuff. "The opposition" is not eyeing a merger, Maehara Seiji is. Maehara, Amaterasu bless him, cannot get through breakfast without thinking of establishing a new, streamlined, conservative breakaway opposition government party with like-minded elements of other parties. He just never gives up on this kind of transparent, pathetic machination. He is the dog who will not stop bringing you a stick for you to throw even after you close the front door on him.

As for not having a "change in government" as the Democratic Part of Japan's goal -- what is wrong with having realistic goals? If you do not have enough candidates running to form a government and have had no negotiations with other parties on forming a coalition , would not setting a goal of a change in government be an invitation for anti-opposition figures like, oh let's say, the editors of The Yomiuri Shimbun, to accuse the DPJ of attempting to defraud the voters, enticing them with a promise the party cannot, in fact, deliver upon?

Talk about damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Furthermore, the analysis at the beginning is backward. Restructuring and consolidation will not take place after the election is over. The period of restructuring and consolidation is now, in the run up to tomorrow's opening of the campaign. An impending election has forced parties and individuals to decide whether to stay put, move in another direction or get out of the game entirely. Once the election is over, the pressure for change will be off, and off for a long time.

As for the tone and structure of the article, which posits simultaneous states of panic and resignation in the opposition, well, the nicest way to dismiss this depiction is say, "Amaterasu, this was sooooo two weeks ago! It's December 1 baby! Think of how much more the opposition will get its act together over the next two weeks!"

For the opposition has gotten it's act together after the inevitability of a Diet dissolution sank in over the second week of November. The DPJ has 177 candidates for the districts, up from 149 two weeks ago. The Japan Innovation Party has 81 candidates, up from 49 two weeks ago. There is some overlap in the candidacies -- the two parties will both be fielding candidates in 22 districts. However, that number is down from over 40 overlaps only two weeks ago.

Furthermore, fielding candidates in 236 out of a total 295 single-member districts is hardly running up a white flag of surrender. About 20% of the districts, mostly in Kyushu and the Chugoku regions of western Japan and the prefectures along the Japan Sea in eastern Japan, are so hopelessly dominated by Liberal Democratic Party machines that putting up candidates in them would be a waste of human and financial resources. Better to marshall the resources one has to contest the truly competitive districts, leaving the LDP strongholds alone.

The Yomiuri's account surreptitiously argues that the Abe administration and the LDP are invincible in this election. If one is talking about coming out on top numerically on December 14, this take is probably not wrong. However, to assume that Abe and Co. can come out this hastily arranged election with a strengthened capacity to govern and dominant position in Japan's political firmament is probably not right at all.

Very Kind Of Them #33

The day after Abe Shinzo made his announcements of

1) delaying the imposition of a 10% consumption tax until April 2017, and

2) his intention to dissolve the House of Representative and call an election

Mr. Steve Miller of Asia Now and I had a conversation on the roll up to the election and the possible aftermath. Mr. Miller recorded and edited our conversation and has posted it to the Web, illustrated with a great image of what must be the Tobu World Square model of the Diet Building:



I make one slip. I say at one point that the coalition controlled 66% of the seats in the House of Representatives. What I wanted to say was that the coalition had a greater than two-thirds majority (326 out of 480, just under 68%).

Where Things Could Go Right For The DPJ

Today's Nihon Keizai Shimbun makes a big deal about the Democratic Party of Japan's running 90 fewer district candidates in this year's election than in 2012 and about 100 fewer than the LDP is running. (Link - J)

Pretty stark numbers, underlining the seeming the failure of Japan's single member districts to do as foretold and give rise to a two major party system.

Well, maybe.

In 2012, in a record low turnout election, a demoralized DPJ had candidates running in 264 districts. In 227 of those districts, the DPJ candidate was running against both an LDP candidate and at least one other non-Communist major party candidate.

Fast forward to today.

The Your Party, 69 candidates in 2012, is no more. Two of its members just joined the DPJ last week. In 2012 the Your Party received 5.2 million proportional seat votes.

The Mirai Party, 121 candidaters in 2012 and 3.4 million proportional votes, is no more. Mirai's remnant, the Life Party, is down to five legislators after two defected to the DPJ last week. Life will be running 17 candidates in this election.

The Japan Restoration Party ran 172 candidates in 2012 and received 12.2 million proportional seat votes. Its two fission products, the Japan Innovation Party and the Party of the Next Generations, are running 73 and 34 candidates, respectively. In the most recent polls, support for the JIP stood at about half the support for the DPJ. NexGen polls at 0%.

In 2012, the DPJ basically fought the election with both hands tied behind its back, having to defend a legislative program that was not even its own. There were non-LDP, non-DPJ viable national alternatives.

Not this time.

This year is much more a two party race, with the JIP having to choose whether to play the role of regional champion or national nuisance. It is the LDP and Abe who are running on their records.

The road of course is bumpy. DPJ and JIP candidates are running against each other in 24 districts. The DPJ is running against another non-Communist party in 22 more districts. In total the DPJ is running against non-Communist opposition in 53 districts.

Last time I looked, 53 out of 173 is a better ratio than 227 out of 264.

Hence the crippling importance of believable, inspiring leadership. The numbers are there for the DPJ to mess up Abe Shinzo's December 14 plans. A flag carrier the voters could believe in would have a huge impact, driving turnout and moving the marginal voter to wish to punish the LDP and Abe for their broken wheel of good fortune.

Whatever happens, the 2014 election will result in a great winnowing of the parties. NexGen and Life will collapse into nothingness; the Socialists may join the pair in final, pathetic oblivion. JIP will lose many of its proportional seats.

What will remain is the ruling coalition's two parties, a revived DPJ, a pugnacious but rump JIP and the Communists.

Not quite a two party system, but lookin' more and more like one.


Later - Check out the intelligent points from A. Sutter in the comments.

Later still - The Mainichi Shimbun has checked in with its English-language version of the story. (Link)

Catching Up, The Main Opposition

With one week to go before the fixing of the lists of candidates for the December 14 election, the Democratic Party of Japan has 173 district candidates, up from 149 a week ago. As of Friday the Japan Innovation Party had 72 district candidates, up from fewer than 50 a week ago.

It might be useful when looking at the relatively small number of candidates being fielded by the moderate and conservative opposition partie to remember these parties have no illusions about their seizing power. Since they cannot fight a broad, comprehensive battle, they are free to pursue a lily pad strategy. They can choose to fight only for strategic districts or districts where they have institutional advantages, leaving the hopeless, primarily rural LDP baronies of the west and southwest for the LDP incumbents who, for the most part, will be far greater irritants for Abe Shinzo in his reform efforts than any opposition representative could be.

In other words, the DPJ/JIP can do serious damage to the pretensions of the current leaders of the Liberal Democratic Party/Komeito by

1) not seeking a win but only the prevention of the ruling coalition from achieving its victory numbers, or

2) just relieving the reformist elements of the LDP of their seats.

As for the DPJ, believers should be taking heart that candidates are coming out of the woodwork to run under the party's flag. In addition to the inception of two members of the defunct Your Party and two members from the Life Party, including that party's secretary-general, word has come that Suzuki Takako, the sole candidate of Hokkaido regional party New Party Daichi and daughter of the party's notorious leader, former LDP pork king Suzuki Muneo, will be running as a DPJ-supported candidate in Hokkaido District #7. (Link)

The grand purpose of this coming election may be just one soft, fuzzy mass of guff. The ground war, however, is coming into focus.


Later - The ever sharp Okumura Jun sees very little standing between the ruling coalition at a >300 seat finish. (Link)




Photo image credit: MTC

Looking At The Opinion Polls And The DPJ's Short To-Do List

It pains me to say it. It pains you to hear it.

Results from the first post-dissolution announcement public opinion polls are out. They are from Kyodo News, the newswire jointly owned by the nation's local newspapers -- which trends hard anti-Abe -- and The Asahi Shimbun, which despite the reputation of its editors being congenitally and irrationally anti-Abe, trends in the middle of the pack, at least in terms of its public polling results.

In the crucial "Which party will you vote for in the proportional part of the ballot?" the numbers are:

Kyodo News poll (11/19~20)

LDP 25.3%
DPJ 9.4%
Komeito 4.9%
Communist 4.2%
JIP 3.1%
Socialist 0.9%
Life 0.3%
Next Generations 0.1%
Other 0.2%

Undecided 44.4%

(Link - J)

The Asahi Shimbun (11/19~20)

LDP 37%
DPJ 13%
JIP 9%
Communist 6%
Komeito 4%
Socialist 1%
Life 0%
Next Generations 0%
Other parties 2%

Undecided 30%

(Link - J)

The results are pretty supportive of a comfortable LDP/Komeito victory in the election. Winning even only a third of the 180 proportional seats puts the coalition on course for well over the 266 they need for "total control" of the Diet, the number of seats where ruling coalitions members chair all committees and the ruling coalition enjoys 50%+1 member voting majorities in all committees.

For the Democratic Party of Japan, the numbers are unimpressive. In pre-2009 days, the DPJ typically received twice the percentage of the final vote as was indicated in pre-vote polling. Assuming that this trend reemerges, the DPJ still polls well behind the LDP -- which means while it may claw back some seats from its disastrous 2012 showing, they will not be taken from the ruling coalition. Instead they will be taken from the JIP, Life and Next Generation.　The latter two parties, the remnant vanity projects of the two tired anachronisms Ishihara Shintaro and Ozawa Ichiro, will mercifully wink out of existence.

The large number of undecided voters and The Asahi Shimbun poll's head snapping first finding of a drop of Cabinet support below the non support number (Supporting the Abe Cabinet 39%; Not supporting the Abe Cabinet 40%) means the DPJ's chances of making Abe Shinzo and the LDP look like the losers of the election are not beyond reach. Indeed to claim the mantle of the credible opposition to the LDP, the DPJ would need to do only two things:

1) Stop party leader Kaieda Banri from speaking

Kaieda (pictured above) seems a nice, educated guy. However, and there is no kind way of putting this, he has a black tongue. Anything he talks about turns to dirt. Just hearing two sentences from him on matters of policy sends one scrambling for the mute button.

Demoralized DPJ members and conniving conservatives within the party lofted Kaieda into the leadership position for one purpose only: to resign in remorse after the party's pre-determined poor showing in the 2013 House of Councillors. In a testament to his political deafness Kaieda failed at failing, refusing to fall upon his sword at the appointed moment, insisting peculiarly that his having been elected leader means he is a leader.

If Kaieda remains the face and voice of the DPJ in this election, the party will fail to capitalize on the Abe administration's troubles.

2) Talk about the transfer of the nation's spending power

The DPJ cannot talk about the crushing of the economy from consumption tax rise because a DPJ government proposed and passed the legislation mandating the rise. The DPJ cannot dismiss Abenomics outright because it has no alternative plan other than managed, precipitous decline.

What the DPJ can and should do is ask Mr. Abe and the ruling coalition how, after having realized a huge transfer of wealth from the common citizens to the corporate sector* through the devaluation of the yen, the ruling coalition intends to get that money back.


[Many thanks to Corey Wallace (@CoreyJWallace) and Michael Penn (@ShingetsuNews) for the first reports on Twitter linking to the above opinion polls.]


------------------------
* And not the whole corporate sector either. The Tokyo Shimbun reported yesterday in a front page story that in the mid-term reporting season of the 1381 companies listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange First Section 50.5% of the profits declared came from the reporting of just 30 companies. Making matters worse, with all the help that Abenomics is supposed giving the corporates, 122 companies of the 1381 in the First Section booked losses.

Original image courtesy: Kobe Shimbun

Two Really Can Play At This Game

Seeking that majority in the House of Councillors...

In the background of the debate over the dissolution of the House of Representatives there has been the little matter of what happens to the Your Party. The basic operating assumption is that the Your Party, with its 0.0% support rate (according to the latest NHK public opinion poll) goes to annihilation in the snap election. Party leader Asao Ken'ichiro, even if he manages to retain his seat, is forced to resign as leader. Disgraced party founder Watanabe Yoshimi, who relinquished control of his pet project to Asao after being caught with his hand in the cookie jar to the tune of 800 million yen in loans from just one political benefactor, retakes control of the party and its precious 13 House of Councillors seats. Watanabe then goes to his very good friend Abe Shinzo and offers either to have Your Party join the ruling coalition or allow itself to join the LDP as the Watanabe Faction. Abe Shinzo graciously accepts whichever because the new political arrangement gives the LDP a majority in both Houses of the Diet -- WITHOUT THE KOMEITO.

Oooooohhh...

Of course, all this skulduggery would come to naught if Asao could find a way to keep the Your Party from being captured by Watanabe and offered up as booty to Abe... like say, arranging for the Your Party to allow itself to be absorbed into the opposition Democratic Party of Japan prior to the House of Representative snap election. (Link - J video)

Oooooohhh...

What fun...two really can play at this absorption game.

Opposition Update - I'm A Fixin' To Die

OK, so now we know: the Democratic Party of Japan has a death wish.

When Prime Minister Abe Shinzo is invoking, on seemingly an hourly basis, the need for greater opportunities for women not just in Japan (Link) but everywhere (Link and Link), and he is slotting women into a record number of cabinet and Liberal Democratic Party posts (Link), when the international discussion on Japan is focusing on the country's ridiculous underutilization of women's talents and energy (Link), the DPJ responds with a new leadership council compose of dudes, dudes and nothing but dudes.

And not just just dudes, but dudes we have all seen before. (Link to classic Jiji Press sarcasm)

There is such a thing as optics. Truly, the new DPJ leadership group (above photo) is excruciating to behold.

Matching the DPJ in its wish for its own demise is the Your Party, whose founder and former leader Watanabe "Sticky Fingers" Yoshimi is demanding that his beleaguered former deputy, party leader Asao Ken'ichiro link Your Party up with the LDP or die. Asao, exhausted by the toxic Watanabe's interference, has finally snapped, saying that if Watanable wants to consummate his love for the LDP, he should leave the party.　Watanabe, as mature as he can be (Can you believe he was once considered a shoo-in for future prime minister?) has said that a founder cannot leave a party, so it is Asao who must go. (Link - J)

Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah -- same as you!

To be fair, Watanabe did have a viable plan to link up with the LDP, even after the departure of Eda Kenji and the defectors of Unity (oxymoron alert) -- who are having their own problems in trying to merge with the Osaka rump of Hashimoto Toru's Restoration Party. (Link)

However, getting caught with arms up to his elbows in the cookie jar sank Watanabe's plans for a glorious hawk-hawk-hawk superalliance supplanting the LDP/New Komeito ruling coalition -- because it became apparent once he resigned as party leader that the only real link between the LDP and the Your Party was the personal one between Watanabe and Abe Shinzo (Watanabe being one of the four-member "Abe Road" group of Abe and his most trusted political allies).

The Party For Future Generations (no, that is its real name - don't laugh) launched itself Tuesday night in what was a thoroughly joyless affair. Spry stroke survivor, party leader and adopted son of a convicted Class A war criminal Hiranuma "Shall We Dance" Takeo (75) and his somewhat more mature senior adviser, the frustrated stand up comedian Ishihara Shintaro (81) wore themselves out thundering about a future they, if actuarial tables are to be trusted, will not see -- Ishihara talking about the goals over the party over a decade, where he will be in his early 90s. Fellow party members, who might be around when the future generations arrive, sat quietly and uncomfortably, looking like a group of random strangers in a urologist's waiting room. (Link - J -video)

I know what you are thinking: Japan's opposition parties cannot, cannot be as pathetic as they seem here . There must be some glimmer of hope somewhere -- like the appointment of Edano Yukio as the DPJ's secretary-general giving a clear sense that Edano will succeed the hapless Kaieda Banri as party leader.

Yes, it is true, the Edano appointment provides a glimmer of hope. But only a glimmer. When lumped together with the amazing sublimating Socialists and the cash-burning Communists, Japan's opposition parties are a mind-boggling flaming heap of wasted time and talent.

Which has got to represent a huge temptation for Abe Shinzo to shuck his newly minted Cabinet and call a snap election of the House of Representatives -- after, that is, he signs off on the second raising of the consumption tax from 8% to 10%.


Image courtesy: Democratic Party of Japan official website.

Very Kind Of Them #21

Patrick Zoll of the Neue Zurcher Zeitung provides a written introduction to a new roundtable series at the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan, the first iteration of which saw organizers possibly unwisely giving me a microphone. (Link)

Both Kiuchi Takatane and I would probably like to have a word with the session's photographer.

The FCCJ has posted a full video record of the event on YouTube (Link). I would suggest that the session is a bit easier to consume as a purely auditory experience - i.e., click on the link, then open another a window on your browser to something more pleasing to the eyes, like let's say, this.

As for the Political Roundtable, it has its next session tomorrow night (Tuesday, June 3), featuring the seasoned and experience Yonenaga Harunobu and the incredibly well-informed Chris Winkler . (Link)

The DPJ's Failures Defeat Simple Description

In describing the downward arc of history, Karl Marx said that it repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.

Dear Karl, what comes after farce?

If you know, please write me, as I am at a loss to describe the level of ineptitude of the officers of the Democratic Party of Japan. Beyond pathetic they are, which is, what? What is beyond pathetic?

The latest episode in the DPJ's plunge into trans-Marxist levels of the ineffectual? The surprise announcement yesterday of the signing of a policy agreement in between candidate for Tokyo governor Masuzoe Yo'ichi and Tokyo Rengo, the Tokyo branch of the Japanese Trade Union Confederation. (Link - J)

So what?

Rengo (Link) is according to all common reckoning, the indispensible pillar of DPJ support. Without Rengo, the DPJ is nothing, electorally and otherwise.

Despite the seeming automatic coordination that should take place in between the two organizations, no one at DPJ Central seems to have made the call to Rengo's Tokyo offices to find out whether or not the folks there could support Hosokawa Morihiro, the DPJ's preferred candidate in the wild four-way* of those seeking to fill Inose Naoki's empty seat (Link). As it turns out, the union organization finds Hosokawa's anti-nuclear stance not to its liking, seeing it as a threat to the job security of the power and manufacturing sectors' unionized workforces. (Link - J)

So Tokyo Rengo is supporting Masuzoe.

That the DPJ officer who failed to block this incredible end around deep into DPJ territory is none other than the mouth from the south, the oleaginous Matsubara Jin (Link - J) does nothing to ease the sting of this most recent grostesque stumble. If Matsubara were in some way under threat of being held accountable for allowing Tokyo Rengo cut a private deal with the Liberal Democratic Party's favorite in the race for leader of the richest municipality of the known inhabited universe, then his humiliation would at least have a savor of Schadenfreude.

However, in Kaieda Banri's DPJ (Link) no one is ever held accountable for anything

That the present DPJ is moribund is not surprising, given its seeming inability to do anything right (lack of accountability having something to do with this situation). Do not the voters of this blessed land nevertheless at least deserve the semblance of a non-Communist opposition to the policies and practices of the Abe Administration?

As for Hosokawa, a DPJ endorsement minus support from Rengo is worth less than nothing. Thank goodness for him he has fellow former prime minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro in his corner.

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

* Yes, I know that the field of candidates has five individuals in it. I am trying, desperately, to forget the candidature of Dr. Nakamats.

Live Shinzo, Defending

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has just finished a national televised address and press conference. He offered a long explanation and spirited defense of the Special Secrets Protection Act, the law that has threatened to swallow his broader agenda*. The reasons he provided for the new law were superficially convincing, which may be sufficient to halt the skid in his Cabinet's popularity ratings (the public poll TBS was flogging prior to the broadcast showed only a minor 5 point month-on-month fall in the Cabinet support numbers but an enormous 14.5 point rise over the same span in the negative "Do Not Support" rating, devouring the "Don't know" ambivalent voters. Polarizing indeed has this Cabinet become). Anyone who spending any time examining his explanations would find the holes, such as when he used the Algeria massacre of January this year as a reason for a need for smoothed paths of communications in between intelligence services. That such communications would have had zero effect on the outcome at the natural gas plant is, of course, not something the PM is willing to concede.

In response to a question regarding the Cabinet's having lost the plot as regards economic policy, the PM gave a hearty response, listing the various spending and industrial policy initiatives passed during the brief extraordinary session. The PM indicated he appreciates that it is hard to call the just concluded session "The Diet Session For The Realization Of The Economic Growth Stategy" -- which is what he predicted in October would become the shorthand used to characterize this particularly Diet term.

All in all it was a pretty good performance. However, the PM's focusing on the votes taken, rather than on how the legislation enacted will result in the satisfaction of particular policy goals, is reminiscent of the paralytic execution disease that gripped him in 2006-07. Execution is important but it is not an end in and of itself. It should not ever be construed as a substitute for achievement.

It is hard for the PM resist the cult of execution, perhaps even harder now than in 2006-07. During this stint in office he has been spending a lot of private time with go-getter corporate executives, many of whom have only a weak grasp of politics and little appreciation of the softer arts of persuasion.


Later - NHK News has a new public opinion poll out. Support for the Cabinet fell 10 points, from 60% to 50%, over the last month, with the "Do Not Support" number rising 10 points to 35%. In terms of the parties, support for the Liberal Democratic Party fell 5.2 points from month to month, with the Democratic Party of Japan siphoning off the largest portion (+2.6% since last month) of the lost support.

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

* Bad as the fight for as the passage of the Special Secrets Protection Act has been for the LDP, it has been much worse for the parties -- the New Komeito, the Japan Restoration Party and the Your Party -- that submitted the bill alongside the LDP. The stresses from having supported the Act precipitated today's fission of the Your Party, with former secretary-general Eda Kenji leading 14 fed up Diet members out in search of more strongly anti-LDP pastures. (Link)

Very Kind Of Them #16 (Special Edition)

Entrepreneur Yoshito Hori and his Globis University were the most terrific of hosts last month, allowing me to attend their Globis 1 Summit. They also allowed me to participate in a panel discussion (bravery defined) on the outlook for policy and politics in the aftermath of the July 2013 House of Councillors election.

My fellow discussants were Your Party Secretary-General Asao Ken'ichiro and Liberal Democratic Party maverick Kono Taro. Jonathan Soble of the Financial Times was our talented and forgiving moderator. In the debate Asao-sensei defended the honor of the opposition while Kono-sensei worried about the momentum of his party being frittered away by special interests.

I displayed my usual gallery of mannerisms and tics.

The pace was leisurely, allowing each of the panelists time to make his points. The discussion was in English.

(Video)

For those wishing to hear the views of incredibly smart folks like Robert Feldman, MAFF Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa, Shawn Baldwin and Matsumoto Oki and, yes, the always entertaining Jesper Koll, the videos of their sessions are on the Globis television website.

Image courtesy: Globis TV

Across The Board

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, whose economics is beloved of liberal economists Joseph Stiglitz (Link) and Paul Krugman (Link), is about become the first non-American to receive the hardline conservative Hudson Institute's Herman Kahn Award. (Link).

Dig it.


Responses to the question "Which party do you support?"
NHK News poll of September 8-9, 2013

In just a year since Abe's election as president of the LDP, he and his Liberal Democratic Party have become the unexpected colossus, spanning the ideological spectrum. Only the thin ultra-liberal, anti-business left end of the political stick is left open for the Communists to hang onto. Otherwise, the LDP and its coalition partner the New Komeito are everywhere.

Public opinion polls find a majority of voters supporting the idea a vigorous alternative to the LDP. However refreshing such a faith in politics-as-renewed-by-the-possibility-of-electoral-defeat, after Abe and his party move into the room, there is precious little oxygen left to breathe.

And the struggle for breath has become oh, so ironic in the case of the party whose campaign slogan for the July election was "We will be the power to protect livelihoods" (Kurashi o mamoru chikara ni naru) -- a.k.a., the Democratic Party of Japan. The DPJ now finds itself in dire straits if it cannot somehow find a way to lay off a big chunk of its own workforce. (Link)

Oops-a-daisy! (Hey former prime minister Noda, how's that manly sudden dissolution offer working out for ya?)

As for the Japan Restoration Party, with all the crud that Ishihara Shintaro has been saying the past few months about his co-leader Hashimoto Toru and Hashimoto's core program of converting Osaka from a prefecture to a metropolitan district, is it correct to even label that mad vessel a party?

The members of LDP certainly could still blow this sweet deal they have right now. They could get greedy and start pocketing some of the money they have tossed into economy through fiscal irresponsibility and monetary slaternliness. They could start fighting ordinary citizens to push through mega-projects making little economic or environmental sense (completing the capital ring roads, digging the Linear Motor Car Line from Shinagawa to Nagoya, restarting nuclear power plants in of questionable geomorphology). They could mess up the march of economy policy out of an inability to sacrifice some of their supporters.

Right now, however, they are on a roll -- right over every other party except the JCP.

One Simple Answer To A Complex Question / A Momentary Lapse Of Reason

A Nagging Question: How is it that Japan's opposition parties, particularly the Democratic Party of Japan, are now so moribund? Did not the DPJ win a landslide victory in 2009? How can these once high fliers now be so irrelevant?

Something Like An Answer: Holding aside the New Komeito, which is an entirely different genus of political beast from anything else out there, there are only two parties in Japan with deep bases -- the Liberal Democratic Party and the Communist Party. Commitments to these parties are reliable, in the first case thanks to personal ties, self interest and a recognition of the durability of power elites, in the second in a faith in an ideology and notions of the family.

For the other parties, loyalty is largely a matter of the head, not the heart. In the specific case of the DPJ, its support, save among members of the Rengo league of labor unions, was at its height a kilometer wide and a centimeter deep. When the going got tough, public support evaporated.

As Pink Floyd asked:

Was it love?
Or was it the idea of being in love?

(Link)

During the DPJ's rise in popularity to where its leaders cobbled together a surrogate, but supposedly honest and trustworthy, big tent center-right party, public support arose from out of the latter: the idea of an opposition rather than the actual opposition party in question. The same seemingly holds true for the backing for the other non-Communist opposition parties -- their supporters are not in love with them, they are in love with the idea of being in love with them.

Reviving the DPJ (Link) is thus unlikely on a technical level -- for the most part, its supporters had a crush on it, not a relationship with it.