In a few minutes voting starts for the governorship of the Tokyo Metropolitan District(1). Twenty-one names are on the ballot but only a few are worth mentioning. Even fewer have a chance at making a splash.
The prize is a heck of a job - essentially the presidency of the world's 16th largest economy -- the part of Japan that generates, rather than immolates, revenues.
At this writing it looks like Koike Yuriko's Big Decision -- to defy the Liberal Democratic Party's national and Tokyo establishments by offering herself as a candidate -- will pay off with a big electoral win. The Iron Butterfly - my name for her given her hardline realist security policy views and her penchant of flitting from party to party as political expediency dictates -- is leading in the polls. Her main rivals -- former newscaster Torigoe Shuntaro and former Iwate Governor Masuda Hiroya -- have been trying to keep up with on the one hand crippled and the other tepid campaigns.
One has to be appalled by the Torigoe situation. A last minute choice of the four party electoral alliance of the Democratic Party, the Japan Communist Party and micro-party twins the Socialists and Livelihood (made after an inexplicable second-to-last minute dalliance with Abe Shinzo critic and major fruitcake Koga Shigeaki) Torigoe's hopes for victory were immediately torpedoed by tabloid tales of his having seduced an innocent 20 year old a decade ago. Torigoe did what his lawyers told him to do -- say nothing, prepare to sue, threaten with a police complaint of obstruction of an election -- which made him look like he was trying to bury the story. He had an obligation to save himself from extortion and possible prosecutorial misconduct over an incident he thought resolved years ago. Trying to run for governor – and get others excited about his run for the governorship -- at the same time has proven a titanic struggle.
LDP and Komeito's candidate Masuda Hiroya is probably one of Japan’s top thinkers on local administration. He has competently run Iwate Prefecture, shaking off the influence of his mentor Ozawa Ichiro in the process. He has been Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications. His May 2014 report on immanent catastrophic population declines in rural areas shook off decades of complacency about the "genteel decline" of Japan exurban environment.
Which is why it is both terrible and wonderful that his candidacy has failed to catch fire even with The Establishment. Terrible in that of all the persons seeking the governorship Masuda is the only one with even an inkling of how local administration works, what it is good at, what it must abandon and what, if anything, Tokyo can do to help revive the rest of Japan. Wonderful in that failure will mean that the poisoned chalice of the Tokyo Governorship will not devastate the career and reputation of a third of Japan's reformers. The snakepit of Shinjuku Ward devoured and then spat out Inose Naoki and Masuzoe Yo'ichi for non-criminal financial indiscretions. Losing Masuda as well to local Tokyo's politics would be Brechtian farce.
Down the ticket, the Tokyo election has attracted this year more than its usual share of right wing nut jobs courting the Empire Should Strike Back vote (a not-to-be ignored and not insignificant constituency, given soon-to-be-felon General Tamogami Toshio's stunning capture 600,000 votes in 2014). Chief among these awful crackpots is Sakurai Makoto (not his real name) the former chairman of the anti-Korean, anti-Chinese hate group the Zaitokukai. One hopes (OK, I hope) the plethora of wacky alternatives and a cooling of Sino-Japanese tensions over the Senkakus (credit to both Abe Shinzo and Xi Jinping for this) keeps him below 100,000 votes.
Turnout is expected to be light. Normally, low turnout would favor the LDP/Komeito candidate, backed as he is by the political machines of both parties. Not even low turnout, however, looks to derail Koike Yuriko’s bid to become the first woman to lead Tokyo.
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1) a neologism - the actual English name of Tokyo-to is "the Tokyo Metropolitan Government." I will try to convince the new governor to change the name as calling a geographical area a "government" makes zero sense.
Showing posts with label future of the LDP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label future of the LDP. Show all posts
Sunday, July 31, 2016
Sunday, June 05, 2016
Explaining The House Of Councillors Election - On The Lack Of A Viable Centrist Opposition
In the most recent set of public opinion polls, conducted over the weekend following the Ise-Shima G7 summit, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its leader Abe Shinzo had much to smile about. Most polls showed a leap in Cabinet approval ratings of about 5%, adding on to what are at historic levels of public acceptance of a Cabinet, at least for a prime minister in his fourth in office (not that there have been, historically, many of these creatures). The ruling party's dispiriting four-to-one advantage in support over its centrist rival, the Democratic Party remained unchanged or improved.
Certainly the atmospherics of President Barack Obama's visit to Hiroshima, which pleased an astonishing 98% of respondents in the Kyodo poll (the first time I have ever seen such a polling number anywhere outside the DPRK) have added to the luster of Prime Minister Abe and his government.
Nevertheless, the public's attitude toward the policies of the Abe administration and the LDP remains at best grudging and at worst hostile. A majority of the population does not believe the government's economic policies are a success or likely to succeed. A majority of the voters do not want the government to consider a revision of the Constitution. A majority indeed do even not want the ruling coalition to win the necessary number of seats giving it the potential to alter the Constitution.
So what is going on? Why has the opposition been unable to translate the public dissatisfaction with the current policy directions or potential policy directions of the LDP and the Cabinet into support?
A considerable amount of the blame for the Democratic Party's inability to capitalize on a favorable policy environment has to be laid at the door of party leader Okada Katsuya. He is a bland and earnest individual with poor charisma and paltry appreciation of the value of political symbols. With his wooden speeches and leaden demeanor he practically begs the news media to belittle him. That journalists are recording his words and his image not because he has anything to say but because he is the leader of the opposition bothers him not enough. If not for the sheen of the leadership post, the news media and the public would ignore him.
However, it is facile to attribute the major part of anti-LDP opposition's unpopularity to the current leader of DP. Replacing Okada with someone else (a prospect the DP faces following the drubbing they will receive in July) cannot fix the fundamental problems of the opposition, even if the opposition were to recruit a magnetar like Koizumi Shinjiro, the only current rival to Prime Minister Abe.
For a viable opposition to be both viable and an opposition it has to 1) oppose and 2) have a place upon which to make its stand.
In the current political environment, both internal and external, neither is possible.
In terms of policy stance, the LDP is incorrectly classified as a center-right party. It is in fact a center-left party or even leftist party, with a nationalist/patriotic veneer of ersatz, sheepish rightism. The LDP's current economic policies are the interventionist dreams of European and North American liberals, with not a shred left of the small-government and market-driven drives of the Hashimoto and Koizumi (pere) eras. As for security policy, Japan's politico-military establishment under Abe is as cautious and rule-bound as it has ever been, at least as compared with counterparts in other OECD countries. As for its promises of constant expansion of social spending, only the Japan Communist Party holds a candle to the LDP.
So where is Japan's so-called "liberal" opposition to stand? Yes, it can oppose last year's security legislation on procedural grounds. However, if one looks for concrete difference, one finds that when the DPJ, the precursor to today's DP, was in power, its security plans were identical to those of the current government. On the economy and social welfare, to the immediate left of the LDP is the JCP, with only a micrometer of space between them.
Rob the electorate of the illusion that a change in political parties will in and of itself better Japan, as the DPJ's turn in power did, and you have an impossibly narrow base on which to build a challenge to the current ruling coalition and its leader.
Later - For a review of the latest polling numbers, check out the most recent Sasakawa Foundation post by Tobias Harris (Link)
Certainly the atmospherics of President Barack Obama's visit to Hiroshima, which pleased an astonishing 98% of respondents in the Kyodo poll (the first time I have ever seen such a polling number anywhere outside the DPRK) have added to the luster of Prime Minister Abe and his government.
Nevertheless, the public's attitude toward the policies of the Abe administration and the LDP remains at best grudging and at worst hostile. A majority of the population does not believe the government's economic policies are a success or likely to succeed. A majority of the voters do not want the government to consider a revision of the Constitution. A majority indeed do even not want the ruling coalition to win the necessary number of seats giving it the potential to alter the Constitution.
So what is going on? Why has the opposition been unable to translate the public dissatisfaction with the current policy directions or potential policy directions of the LDP and the Cabinet into support?
A considerable amount of the blame for the Democratic Party's inability to capitalize on a favorable policy environment has to be laid at the door of party leader Okada Katsuya. He is a bland and earnest individual with poor charisma and paltry appreciation of the value of political symbols. With his wooden speeches and leaden demeanor he practically begs the news media to belittle him. That journalists are recording his words and his image not because he has anything to say but because he is the leader of the opposition bothers him not enough. If not for the sheen of the leadership post, the news media and the public would ignore him.
However, it is facile to attribute the major part of anti-LDP opposition's unpopularity to the current leader of DP. Replacing Okada with someone else (a prospect the DP faces following the drubbing they will receive in July) cannot fix the fundamental problems of the opposition, even if the opposition were to recruit a magnetar like Koizumi Shinjiro, the only current rival to Prime Minister Abe.
For a viable opposition to be both viable and an opposition it has to 1) oppose and 2) have a place upon which to make its stand.
In the current political environment, both internal and external, neither is possible.
In terms of policy stance, the LDP is incorrectly classified as a center-right party. It is in fact a center-left party or even leftist party, with a nationalist/patriotic veneer of ersatz, sheepish rightism. The LDP's current economic policies are the interventionist dreams of European and North American liberals, with not a shred left of the small-government and market-driven drives of the Hashimoto and Koizumi (pere) eras. As for security policy, Japan's politico-military establishment under Abe is as cautious and rule-bound as it has ever been, at least as compared with counterparts in other OECD countries. As for its promises of constant expansion of social spending, only the Japan Communist Party holds a candle to the LDP.
So where is Japan's so-called "liberal" opposition to stand? Yes, it can oppose last year's security legislation on procedural grounds. However, if one looks for concrete difference, one finds that when the DPJ, the precursor to today's DP, was in power, its security plans were identical to those of the current government. On the economy and social welfare, to the immediate left of the LDP is the JCP, with only a micrometer of space between them.
Rob the electorate of the illusion that a change in political parties will in and of itself better Japan, as the DPJ's turn in power did, and you have an impossibly narrow base on which to build a challenge to the current ruling coalition and its leader.
Later - For a review of the latest polling numbers, check out the most recent Sasakawa Foundation post by Tobias Harris (Link)
Saturday, September 05, 2015
Ooops, I...
...have taken another major project that will keep me from posting regularly.
This time I will be hardly in evidence for just over a month. Inshallah.
Too bad, really. With the end of the longest Diet extended session ever; Abe's reelection as president of the Liberal Democratic Party; new parties emerging out of yet another Hashimoto Toru's ego-driven pile up; an emerging knot of schooled protest cadres taking on the security legislation and ultra-right wing harassment; and the likelihood of a Cabinet Reshuffle in October, the tightly-wound world of Japanese politics is about to a little looser.
Meanwhile, I do not think I ever acknowledged Dr. Jeffrey Lewis publishing an excerpt from an email I wrote (publishing it without checking with me first -- which is OK with me, but only because he is the one who did it) in one of his astonishingly intelligent contributions to Foreign Policy. (Link)
This time I will be hardly in evidence for just over a month. Inshallah.
Too bad, really. With the end of the longest Diet extended session ever; Abe's reelection as president of the Liberal Democratic Party; new parties emerging out of yet another Hashimoto Toru's ego-driven pile up; an emerging knot of schooled protest cadres taking on the security legislation and ultra-right wing harassment; and the likelihood of a Cabinet Reshuffle in October, the tightly-wound world of Japanese politics is about to a little looser.
Meanwhile, I do not think I ever acknowledged Dr. Jeffrey Lewis publishing an excerpt from an email I wrote (publishing it without checking with me first -- which is OK with me, but only because he is the one who did it) in one of his astonishingly intelligent contributions to Foreign Policy. (Link)
Friday, August 28, 2015
He's The One
Feelin' just peachy...
Why don't we stop foolin' ourselves
The game is over.
Over.
Over.
No Good Times.
No Bad Times.
There's no Times at all...'cept the New York Times.
- Paul Simon, "Overs" (1968)
It's official: the Kishida and Ishihara factions of the Liberal Democratic Party yesterday declared themselves in favor of the reelection of Abe Shinzo as president of the LDP. Barring an accident or illness, Abe Shinzo is both the present and future leader of the party and the country (Link - J).
The question now -- and since the outcome is preordained it is not much of a question -- is whether or not there will even be an election. A candidate would have to come out of the ranks of the party's non-aligned members. While there are some leading lights among the non-aligned, even a few former candidates like Ishiba Shigeru, the sheer cussed pointlessness of setting up a run for the presidency when all 7 factions are lined up behind Abe should deter even the most ornery from running. The legions of the most ornery in the LDP are paltry indeed: only two Diet members -- the larger-than-life Murakami Sei'ichiro and the anti-Abe media favorite Noda Seiko -- even attempt to adopt the stance of opposition to Abe government policies.
It is possible that the leadership of the LDP might ask one of the party mavericks to at least try to mount a campaign. Such an attempt would benefit the party: it would foster of the illusion that democracy survives in Japan. One cannot imagine, however, how a pantomime fantasy farce candidacy would even leave the starting block. There is the little technical matter of a candidates's needing to corral 20 other LDP Diet members into supporting the challenge to Abe's leadership...Who could muster five, much less 20 Diet members into tarring themselves with the brush of "Not An Abe True Believer"?
When the September 8 declaration date rolls around, no one will stand against Abe. He will be reelected at the moment his aides register his candidacy.
Huzzah! Abe, Abe, he's our man! If he can't do it no one can.
No one.
Statiscally, politically, whatever. No one can.
Abe Shinzo: he's The One.
Later - Right after posting, The Japan News (translated stories of the Yomiuri Shimbun) checked in with a long article explaining some more of the background to the automatic reelection of Abe as party president (Link). The Yomiuri story throws yet more cold water on the "Let's Draft Noda Seiko" narrative.
With Abe's reelection to go unopposed, the focus of LDP politics switches to the guessing game around the new Cabinet lineup expected to be announced just before an extremely brief (1 month?) extraordinary session in the autumn. Who among the many Cabinet eligible mid-career members of the LDP will be incepted? Who will be left out, forced to accept a lesser Vice Minister post, or a directorship of an LDP division?
What we do know is by all lining up behind Abe's reelection, the faction leaders will each have the right to nominate one Abe-cannot-refuse-me cherished princeling subordinate to the new Cabinet.
Beyond these seven, a Chief Cabinet Secretary from Abe's home faction (one expects that Suga Yoshihide will continue to labor on in what is arguably a better buddy-buddy act than the Koizumi-Takebe pairing) and a few "Friends of Shinzo," the selection process for the remaining spots will be a crap shoot.
Image courtesy: Prime Minister's Residence
Saturday, April 04, 2015
Womenomics Comes Up A Cropper
Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has to be given credit for talking a lot about the empowerment of women in government and the workforce. He has made very visible progress in appointing women not only to cabinet and top party posts but even pushing the bureacrats into accelerating the promotion of women among the ranks.
However, where it counts -- in the fostering of future women leaders -- Abe's "Womenomics" push has come up embarrassingly short of the rhetoric. In the 41 prefectural assembly races being held on April 12, the Liberal Democratic Party is supporting 1319 candidates. Only 48 of those 1319 candidates -- a miserable 3.6% -- are women.
Nationwide, 379 of 3273 (11.6%) of the candidates for prefectural assembly seats are women.
The percentages of women candidates for the other major parties:
Komeito 8.9% *
Japan Innovation Party 10.0%
Democratic Socialist Party 16.2%
Democratic Party of Japan 16.8%
Top ranking and applause goes to (no surprise here) the Japan Communist Party, with 46.5% of its candidate list being made up of women.
In terms of the prefectures, Hyogo is tops nationwide, with 26 women (20.2%) among the 129 candidates vying for seats in its assembly. On the other side of the ledger, Saga -- an LDP bastion -- has ONE woman among the 48 candidates vying for seats in its assembly.
Sources: Asahi Shimbun, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Kobe Shimbun
--------------------------------
*A low number of women candidates is one of the recurring peculiarities of Komeito, both a manifestation of and in seeming contradiction to the immense power of the Married Women's Division inside the Soka Gakkai.
However, where it counts -- in the fostering of future women leaders -- Abe's "Womenomics" push has come up embarrassingly short of the rhetoric. In the 41 prefectural assembly races being held on April 12, the Liberal Democratic Party is supporting 1319 candidates. Only 48 of those 1319 candidates -- a miserable 3.6% -- are women.
Nationwide, 379 of 3273 (11.6%) of the candidates for prefectural assembly seats are women.
The percentages of women candidates for the other major parties:
Komeito 8.9% *
Japan Innovation Party 10.0%
Democratic Socialist Party 16.2%
Democratic Party of Japan 16.8%
Top ranking and applause goes to (no surprise here) the Japan Communist Party, with 46.5% of its candidate list being made up of women.
In terms of the prefectures, Hyogo is tops nationwide, with 26 women (20.2%) among the 129 candidates vying for seats in its assembly. On the other side of the ledger, Saga -- an LDP bastion -- has ONE woman among the 48 candidates vying for seats in its assembly.
Sources: Asahi Shimbun, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Kobe Shimbun
--------------------------------
*A low number of women candidates is one of the recurring peculiarities of Komeito, both a manifestation of and in seeming contradiction to the immense power of the Married Women's Division inside the Soka Gakkai.
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
How Prime Minister Abe Shinzo Lost On Sunday
I brought this on myself...
Yesterday we all got a chance to see something we have not seen for a long time: a sober, somber and scared Abe Shinzo. He stumbled through his press conference, repeating himself, at one point launching his favorite overly poetic crutch phrase tsu-tsu-ura-ura ("in every harbor; in every inlet" -- the Japanese equivalent of "from sea to shining sea") twice in the space of 70 seconds. When a reporter from the Abe-hostile Tokyo Shimbun started out the Q&A with two simple questions about voter turnout and the schedule for the compilation of next year's budget (the latter being delayed due to the dissolution of the Diet and the election), Abe first feigned being flustered at being asked "so many questions" (Two is "so many"?) ignored them both, repeated the contents of his opening statement, and stared blankly, pretending he had answered either one.
Had Abe been facing a room of real reporters rather than the powder puff tossers of the Sankei Shinbun, Fuji Television and NHK, we might today be talking about Abe Shinzo's press conference meltdown. As it is, the video, available on the LDP's YouTube channel, features a far-from-impressive performance by the PM. (Link - YouTube video J)
This is the guy whose party won 291 out of 475 seats in Sunday's election, with his ruling coalition retained its supermajority in the House of Representatives at 326 seats? Whose main opposition, the Democratic Party of Japan only gained 11 seats during the middle of a terrible recession, and whose leader lost his district race so badly he could not return to the Diet via the proportional list zombie route?
Yes.
The LDP won on Sunday. The Komeito won on Sunday.
Abe Shinzo lost.
How is this possible?
Missed Expectations -
When a corporation fails to hit the consensus earnings-per-share, its stock price tumbles. The company might post really great numbers. Nevertheless, by not meeting expectations, its performance is deemed a failure.
Advance polling by both the major news organizations and the political parties projected the LDP would win over 300 seats. However, the party finished election night with 291, fewer seats even than the party held in the last Diet.
Early on Abe and the leaders of the coalition had tried to talk down the victory line in this election. However, by the beginning of last week 300 seats became the new normal (the initial high Kyodo projections so depressed the editors of the Tokyo Shimbun, one of Kyodo's owners, that the paper did not print the results on its front page).
As the party leader who called the election, then failed to lead his party to its projected victory, Abe Shinzo lost.
Beating Kaieda Banri -
Abe Shinzo and the rest of the Cabinet conducted themselves with utter gracelessness in the last days of the campaign, traveling to the home districts of the leaders of the opposition, as if they were seeking to not just beat the opposition but decapitate and humiliate it. Abe and Finance Minister Aso Taro indeed finished their campaigns in a boisterous rally in Akihabara for Tokyo District #1 candidate Yamada Miki.
District #1 is of course DPJ leader Kaieda Banri's district.
These "grind their faces into the dirt" tactics have boomeranged. Not only did Kaieda again lose in his district, Yamada beat him by such a large margin that he could not be resurrected on the proportional list. Out of the Diet, Kaieda is out as leader.
Unfortunately for Abe Shinzo, Kaieda Banri was the number one reason why voters would not vote and candidates would not run for the DPJ. In driving him out of the leadership position, which he would have clung to in loud desperation had he been revived as a PR zombie, Abe has kicked out of office his best ally in terms of keeping the DPJ down and the LDP in power.
So Abe lost.
Voter Turnout -
Abe Shinzo won the premiership a second time in what had been up that point the most dispiriting election in a generation, with voter turnout at its lowest ever.
After two years of Abe Shinzo's leadership, the public is even more demoralized, with turnout falling by 7% over 2012's historic low. The first victory was deemed shabby at 59% turnout. Victory at 52% is shabbier still.
Sure, the LDP finished with a million more votes nationwide in the proportional balloting than in 2012. However that gain of 1 million was out of nearly 5.8 million liberated by the breakups of the Japan Restoration Party and the Your Party.
When you pick up only 15% of what was available, you are not a winner.
So Abe lost.
Destruction of the Right Wing -
The hard right Party for the Next Generations, led by Abe Shinzo Best Friend Forever Hiranuma Takeo and Ishihara Shintaro, evaporated, going from 20 to 2 seats. The Your Party, a libertarian, pro-business, anti-bureaucracy party that won 5 million votes in 2012 (just TWO YEARS AGO) did not even survive to contest the election, its founder and Abe Shinzo Best Friend Forever Watanabe Yoshimi going down to defeat in a seat his family had held continuously for 50 years.
In this final agony of his friends to the right, Abe has lost the ability to threaten the Komeito with a new hawk-hawk (or hawk-hawk-hawk) coalition replacing the current hawk-dove, LDP-Komeito coalition. He has also lost useful militants who could ask revisionist history and war responsibility questions, with Abe and his government being able further their own revisionist agendas without taking any responsibility for events ("Look, it's not us. We were just answering questions coming from the opposition!")
So Abe lost.
Empowerment of the Pacifists -
Three parties could walk away from Sunday's elections with their heads held high. The first was the Japan Innovation Party, which clawed and scratched its way to a respectable loss of single seat when the party had been projected to lose over 10.
The two parties who gained seats, and in a big way, were the Komeito and the Communists.
The Komeito, by picking up seats when the LDP lost them, has increased its marginal leverage in negotiations with its coalition partner. The Komeito already made it presence felt in the confused, cramped and unpopular July 1 Cabinet Decision reversing the government's stance as to the unconstitutionality of the exercise of collective self-defense. It is certain that as the focus of the nation's attention shifts to the 15 or so Basic Laws that have to be revised to implement the July 1 Cabinet Decision, the Komeito will make use of this increased leverage so that the policy choices more closely reflect the concerns of the Komeito base.
As for the performance of the JCP, it was off the charts. The JCP not only managed to land a district seat -- an outcome supposedly rendered impossible by the 1993 adoption of single member districts -- but the JCP now has more than the 20 seat minimum necessary for a party's being able to introduce bills to the Diet.
The pacifist Left has been empowered, both in and out of government.
So Abe lost.
Anyone thinks that with the Komeito murmuring louder and the JCP screaming, figuratively, Mr. Abe is going to take his party's victory in Sunday's election to go on and do anything more than pay lip service to more patriotic education, greater Self Defense Forces activity abroad and revision of the Constitution's Article 9 -- as he does in the above linked video -- then that person is in need of a seriousness transplant.
Because, on Sunday, Abe lost.
And he knows it.
Later - Notice I did not say anything about the LDP's getting wiped out in Okinawa...
Later still- This post has been edited to remove typographical and style errors.
Even later still - Tobias Harris, looking at the same facts and coming to the same conclusions, checks in with a brilliant, comprehensive essay for Foreign Policy. (Link)
I heartily agree with his contention that Abe has taken his biggest blunderbuss and shot it, leaving him little with which to discipline his allies and cow his enemies.
Screenshot courtesy: LDP YouTube Channel
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.
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.
Thursday, December 04, 2014
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:
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.
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.
Thursday, November 27, 2014
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%).
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%).
Monday, November 24, 2014
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
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Read/watch list for 2014-10-23
Some items of interest:
- According to the Nikkei Shimbun, BOJ expansion of its balance sheet have made the market for national debt so barren the Ministry of Finance has offered its first short-term debt with a negative interest rate (Link - J). The appropriate comment at this point is, "Yikes!"
- Tobias Harris does a turn on television offering a sober view of the current turmoil in the Diet(Link - J). His view that Abe Shinzo faces a very different political environment in 2014 than he did in 2007. Abe is the quite happy accidental beneficiary of the collapse of a 30-year national program to oust the Liberal Democratic Party. Tossing the LDP bums out, and installing a Democratic Party of Japan-led government in 2009 did not deliver the paradise of responsive and responsible government the Japanese public had hoped for, however. Now the LDP is rivaled in public opinion polls only by the "I don't support anybody/I don't care/I don't like making decisions so please leave me alone" party -- meaning that even if the Second Abe Cabinet enters the traditional death slide of a year of steadily declining cabinet support ratings to 20%, followed by Abe's announcement of his resignation, the only person who can replace Abe will be a member of the LDP (the current likeliest candidates being Ishiba Shigeru, Ishiba Shigeru and possibly Ishiba Shigeru).
- Dr. Adam Posen delivers a very upbeat assessment of Abenomics starting at the 39:50 mark of this PIIE video of its Global Economic Prospects session of 2 October 2014 (Link - video)For the record, 710,000 more women were in the labor force as of August 2014 (the most recent month for which the government has data) than were in the labor force in January 2013, Abe's first full month in office. During that span 230,300 men also entered the labor force -- though that number only returns the number of men in the labor force to the point where it was in February 2013.
- Professor Eugene Gholz, whom I met in Tokyo earlier this year, has produced an easy-to-read paper for the Council on Foreign Relations explaining why Japanese policy makers should continue to remain alert to but should stop making paranoid noises about global rare earth/rare metals supplies. (Link)
- Kasai Yoshiyuki, a Shisaku favorite and the purported maestro of the Second Coming of Abe Shinzo last week saw his grand boondoggle receive the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (Link). Yesterday, he made his pitch to extend his levitating empire overseas (Link) -- not surprising since the CEO of JR Central has admitted that the Tokyo-Nagoya maglev line will never turn a profit. (Link
Later - Jonathan Soble, formerly the Tokyo bureau chief of the Financial Times, starts out with a bang in his new posting as business reporter for The New York Times with the long list of former American politicians Mr. Kasai has acquired for the new North American Wing of his collection. An absolutely precious photo accompanies the story. (Link)
Hope all you shareholders of JR Central are happy with the way the chairman emeritus Kasai is spending your money.
- According to the Nikkei Shimbun, BOJ expansion of its balance sheet have made the market for national debt so barren the Ministry of Finance has offered its first short-term debt with a negative interest rate (Link - J). The appropriate comment at this point is, "Yikes!"
- Tobias Harris does a turn on television offering a sober view of the current turmoil in the Diet(Link - J). His view that Abe Shinzo faces a very different political environment in 2014 than he did in 2007. Abe is the quite happy accidental beneficiary of the collapse of a 30-year national program to oust the Liberal Democratic Party. Tossing the LDP bums out, and installing a Democratic Party of Japan-led government in 2009 did not deliver the paradise of responsive and responsible government the Japanese public had hoped for, however. Now the LDP is rivaled in public opinion polls only by the "I don't support anybody/I don't care/I don't like making decisions so please leave me alone" party -- meaning that even if the Second Abe Cabinet enters the traditional death slide of a year of steadily declining cabinet support ratings to 20%, followed by Abe's announcement of his resignation, the only person who can replace Abe will be a member of the LDP (the current likeliest candidates being Ishiba Shigeru, Ishiba Shigeru and possibly Ishiba Shigeru).
- Dr. Adam Posen delivers a very upbeat assessment of Abenomics starting at the 39:50 mark of this PIIE video of its Global Economic Prospects session of 2 October 2014 (Link - video)For the record, 710,000 more women were in the labor force as of August 2014 (the most recent month for which the government has data) than were in the labor force in January 2013, Abe's first full month in office. During that span 230,300 men also entered the labor force -- though that number only returns the number of men in the labor force to the point where it was in February 2013.
- Professor Eugene Gholz, whom I met in Tokyo earlier this year, has produced an easy-to-read paper for the Council on Foreign Relations explaining why Japanese policy makers should continue to remain alert to but should stop making paranoid noises about global rare earth/rare metals supplies. (Link)
- Kasai Yoshiyuki, a Shisaku favorite and the purported maestro of the Second Coming of Abe Shinzo last week saw his grand boondoggle receive the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (Link). Yesterday, he made his pitch to extend his levitating empire overseas (Link) -- not surprising since the CEO of JR Central has admitted that the Tokyo-Nagoya maglev line will never turn a profit. (Link
Later - Jonathan Soble, formerly the Tokyo bureau chief of the Financial Times, starts out with a bang in his new posting as business reporter for The New York Times with the long list of former American politicians Mr. Kasai has acquired for the new North American Wing of his collection. An absolutely precious photo accompanies the story. (Link)
Hope all you shareholders of JR Central are happy with the way the chairman emeritus Kasai is spending your money.
Friday, September 05, 2014
Quantifying The Shift Within The Shift
On Twitter, Eric Slavin of Stars & Stripes has asked whether the Cabinet reshuffle, particularly the inception of five women into the Cabinet has changed the Cabinet's approval ratings among women. The answer from the Yomiuri Shimbun's polling (not yet on line; may never be) is, "Yes" -- and in a big way. According to the Yomiuri, support for the previous Cabinet, measured on August 1-3, was 51%, with with 58% of men and only 45% of women supporting the then Cabinet. Polling conducted over September 3-4 as regards the new cabinet found total support at 64%, with 66% of men supporting the Cabinet (+8 pts) but a nearly equal and whopping 63% of women now supporting the Cabinet (+18 pts).
Eighteen points overnight is movement, baby.
Even larger, according to the Yomiuri, was the shift in the number of middle-aged persons showing renewed or first time support for the Cabinet. In August, 48% of persons in the 40-50 years of age bracket supported the cabinet. Yesterday, 67% voters in that age bracket said they supported the Cabinet, a 19 point shift. Voters 60 years of age and above also found something to like, with the support ratio in that age bracket going from 52% to 64% (interesting less than middle-aged folk) -- a shift upward of 12 points.
Interesting but perhaps not surprising because it was insanely high already, support for the Cabinet among the very youngest voters, those in between the ages of 20 and 30, did not budge a millimeter: 59% in August, 59% now.
That last figure -- showing the Abe Cabinet with inordinately stable and high levels of support among the youngest class of voters (indeed in August younger voters were the ones who were the most faithful to Abe) -- spell disaster for the opposition parties, who by definition have to run on a message of change. The very young voters, the supposedly most volatile and impressionable of cohorts, have found their messenger of change -- and according to the Yomiuri's polling results, it is Abe Shinzo.
Later - Apologies for the plethora of typos in the first release.
Eighteen points overnight is movement, baby.
Even larger, according to the Yomiuri, was the shift in the number of middle-aged persons showing renewed or first time support for the Cabinet. In August, 48% of persons in the 40-50 years of age bracket supported the cabinet. Yesterday, 67% voters in that age bracket said they supported the Cabinet, a 19 point shift. Voters 60 years of age and above also found something to like, with the support ratio in that age bracket going from 52% to 64% (interesting less than middle-aged folk) -- a shift upward of 12 points.
Interesting but perhaps not surprising because it was insanely high already, support for the Cabinet among the very youngest voters, those in between the ages of 20 and 30, did not budge a millimeter: 59% in August, 59% now.
That last figure -- showing the Abe Cabinet with inordinately stable and high levels of support among the youngest class of voters (indeed in August younger voters were the ones who were the most faithful to Abe) -- spell disaster for the opposition parties, who by definition have to run on a message of change. The very young voters, the supposedly most volatile and impressionable of cohorts, have found their messenger of change -- and according to the Yomiuri's polling results, it is Abe Shinzo.
Later - Apologies for the plethora of typos in the first release.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun Sees The Signs Too
I do not read the Nihon Keizai Shimbun's editorials as often as I should. I am glad though, that I read the editorial the paper published on July 15 on the results of the gubernatorial election for Shiga Prefecture. I am clearly not alone in seeing an emerging recidivism in Abe's and the Liberal Democratic Party's rhetoric-- like the plan to revive the economies of declining prefectures by making it easier for for small- and medium-sized businesses to win government procurement orders (I am not making this up - Link).
Abe Shinzo's party seems to be veering from its professed course of revolutionary rectitude to instead head down LDP Memory Lane -- the bramble-covered track of scrounging for rural votes and wasting everyone's time on head-in-the-sand pet security projects. You know, the things that used to make everyone to hate the Liberal Democratic Party and Abe Shinzo, only probably more so this second time around:
衆参ねじれ国会が終わってちょうど１年。古い自民党に戻りつつあるとみられがちな時期に起きたわかりやすい失態だった。野党当時の必死さを思い出すべきだ。
It has been exactly one year since the end of the so-called "Twisted Diet" of two opposing parties, one controlling the House of Representatives and the other the House of Councillors. What has come about was an easy-to-understand failure coming at a time when the gradual trend seems to be the reappearance of the LDP of old. It would be good [for the party members] to remember their zeal during their time in opposition.
The paper goes on to warn that if the Abe Cabinet, after Abe names his new State Minister for Rural Revitalization in the presumed September cabinet reshuffle, goes on to promote shallow reforms with a target of capturing local votes, then it should not expect its weakened support ratings (Link) to start climbing any time soon.
A warning worth listening to, when it comes from the editors of Japan's top business news daily, the voice, they say, of the Establishment.
Image: "The Prime Minister Receives a Courtesy Call from Members of a PR Campaign for Yamanashi Fruits"
Image courtesy: The Prime Minister's Residence
Tuesday, July 08, 2014
Fuji Sankei Sort Of Joins The Crowd On Collective Security
After the Yomiuri Shimbun pollsters stopped asking a triple option question regarding Japan's participation in collective self defense (CSD), replacing the previous options of
- Yes, Japan should do so fully
- Yes, Japan should, but only to the minimum extent possible, and
- No, Japan should not
with a straightforward Yes-or-No, the Fuji Sankei Group (Fuji Terebi and the Sankei Shimbun) became the last media organization still giving those wishing to not appear virulently selfish a false option of an undefined, vanishing responsibility to come to the defense of others.
Over the weekend, the Fuji Sankei Group came in from the cold, sort of, having its pollsters ask the one CSD question in a binary way.
The Abe Cabinet has reinterpreted the Constitution, delivering a Cabinet Decision approving the exercise of the right of collective self defense in a limited way. What do you think of this?
Approve 34%
Oppose 59%
Don't Know/Don't Care 7%
This looks a lot like the results found by all the other news organizations, with greater than 50% of the voters disapproving of the Abe Cabinet's actions as regards CSD.
However, the Fuji Sankei poll fails to disambiguate whether the voters are expressing displeasure with
a) the decision to approve CSD or
b) the Abe Cabinet's approval through the constitutionally suspect method of reinterpretation.
Other polling organizations have been separating the the two issues. They have generally found greater than 60% of those polled angry with the method while a smaller majority are upset with Japan's taking up the exercise of the CSD right.
While Fuji's fluffing (or fudging) of the question keeps Abe government opponents from claiming that "every poll shows the majority of the voters opposed to CSD," the general conclusion is clear: the Abe Cabinet or the CSD debate troika (in Mikuriya Takashi's conception) of Abe Shinzo, Komura Masahiko and Ishiba Shigeru have failed to make the case for the government's most radical effort to alter Japan's security architecture. Not event the Yomiuri's and the Sankei's sympathies with Abe's program could engineer a massaging of the polling results into even weak support for the government's actions.
So yes, Abe and Friends won the fight over Japan's exercise of the right of collective self defense -- but alienating a majority of voters in the process.
When, if ever, an opposition party works out a political program incepting the better parts of Abenomics, adding some truly sincere and mathed-up structural reform proposals, together with a greater respect for the intelligence of the average voter, that party could give the LDP some serious competition at the ballot box.
- Yes, Japan should do so fully
- Yes, Japan should, but only to the minimum extent possible, and
- No, Japan should not
with a straightforward Yes-or-No, the Fuji Sankei Group (Fuji Terebi and the Sankei Shimbun) became the last media organization still giving those wishing to not appear virulently selfish a false option of an undefined, vanishing responsibility to come to the defense of others.
Over the weekend, the Fuji Sankei Group came in from the cold, sort of, having its pollsters ask the one CSD question in a binary way.
The Abe Cabinet has reinterpreted the Constitution, delivering a Cabinet Decision approving the exercise of the right of collective self defense in a limited way. What do you think of this?
Approve 34%
Oppose 59%
Don't Know/Don't Care 7%
This looks a lot like the results found by all the other news organizations, with greater than 50% of the voters disapproving of the Abe Cabinet's actions as regards CSD.
However, the Fuji Sankei poll fails to disambiguate whether the voters are expressing displeasure with
a) the decision to approve CSD or
b) the Abe Cabinet's approval through the constitutionally suspect method of reinterpretation.
Other polling organizations have been separating the the two issues. They have generally found greater than 60% of those polled angry with the method while a smaller majority are upset with Japan's taking up the exercise of the CSD right.
While Fuji's fluffing (or fudging) of the question keeps Abe government opponents from claiming that "every poll shows the majority of the voters opposed to CSD," the general conclusion is clear: the Abe Cabinet or the CSD debate troika (in Mikuriya Takashi's conception) of Abe Shinzo, Komura Masahiko and Ishiba Shigeru have failed to make the case for the government's most radical effort to alter Japan's security architecture. Not event the Yomiuri's and the Sankei's sympathies with Abe's program could engineer a massaging of the polling results into even weak support for the government's actions.
So yes, Abe and Friends won the fight over Japan's exercise of the right of collective self defense -- but alienating a majority of voters in the process.
When, if ever, an opposition party works out a political program incepting the better parts of Abenomics, adding some truly sincere and mathed-up structural reform proposals, together with a greater respect for the intelligence of the average voter, that party could give the LDP some serious competition at the ballot box.
Friday, June 13, 2014
Abe Shinzo's Virtual Referendum
Today is supposed to be crunch day: the day when the New Komeito decides whether to accept or reject the Liberal Democratic Party's sudden cram down of an expansion of Japan's definition of constitutional self-defense to include collective self-defense.
The choice is not a happy or an easy one.
The New Komeito's mothership, the Soka Gakkai lay religious (I know that that is an oxymoron. So does the SG. Hence its paranoia) organization has already expressed its opposition to the LDP's plan to reverse through a simple Cabinet Decision (kakugi kettei) the Japanese government's heretofore decades-old official position that the exercise of the right of collective self defense is unconstitutional. For the SG, the only proper path for such a reversal of a previous unconstitutional ruling is a revision or amendment of the Constitution (Link - J).
For the New Komeito, surrendering to LDP pressure on a Cabinet Decision would set the party formally at odds with the SG leadership. This would, of course, do wonders for the party's longtime claims to be independent of the SG. At the same time it would be extremely confusing for the SG flock -- who vote en masse for the New Komeito because is it the political face of the SG.
Why would the LDP be putting its ruling coalition partner through this ordeal? I have speculated that the Abe administration's appreciation of its inability to halt hemorrhaging of public support not only for "constitutional revision via Cabinet Decision" but collective self-defense itself has triggered a panic response. (Link)
What is making the rounds of Nagata-cho now (and for this insight I am indebted to Michael Penn of Shingetsu News) is the idea of a snap dissolution of the House of Representatives after the end of the current Diet ordinary session.
On the face of it, a House of Representatives election now poses unnecessary risks for the LDP and Abe Shinzo. The party already has huge majority in the House of Representatives reflecting the frustration and disgust the voters felt for the political process in December 2012. There is no guarantee that the voters, when given a chance at passing judgment on the Abe Administration, will not opt for independents in the district seat elections and opposition parties in the proportional seat elections. Yes, the polls numbers for the LDP and for the Abe Cabinet are fantastic and the opposition parties abysmal -- but as the House of Councillors election in 2007 showed, the public has the power to clip Abe Shinzo's pretensions of political mastery.
A snap election for the House of Representatives does, of course, nothing to change the seating arrangements in the House of Councillors. The break ups of the Your Party, the disgrace of Watanabe Yoshimi and the division of the Japan Restoration Party into two have only complicated, not eliminated, the possibility of a crafting of a Hawk-Hawk-Hawk (add as many Hawks here as you like) coalition in the House to replace the existing Hawk-Dove LDP-New Komeito coalition.
The argument for the prime minister dissolving the House of Representatives is compelling. Given the thuggishness of reversing a government constitutionality ruling by fiat, the Abe Cabinet will be searching for a means of justifying its actions. A snap election, with the certainty of a strong, possibly entirely extirpating, victory of the LDP over its scattered, fissioning and puny opponents, would demonstrate, according to Abe, the LDP and the Yomiuri media empire, that the public strongly supports the Abe Cabinet's behavior.
Of course, an LDP victory would not be a virtual referendum on the party's policies. It would be a reflection of the current pitiful state of the opposition parties. In a true referendum, such as the one that a revision of the Constitution would require, the voters would get the chance to choose between "Yes" and "No." In the whispered-about snap dissolution and general election, the choice would be between "Yes" and "Nothing."
The further arguments for a snap election are an increase in the LDP's freedom of action and a coverup of the Abe Cabinet's continued fecklessness as regards structural reform.
The LDP's rank-and-file, the young and militant mass of Abe Shinzo acolytes that Machimura Nobutaka finds distressing (Link) are not wrong in wondering why, in the face of polls showing support for the LDP in the 40% range, the LDP has not ditched its coalition with the cautious New Komeito. The relationship does seem an artifact of another time -- when the long term trend in voter behavior was away from the LDP, despite all the financial rewards being dangled, toward alternatives (the 1993 opposition coalition, the New Frontier Party, the Democratic Party of Japan, the Nippon Isshin no Kai, et cetera). for the wild things in the party the obvious choise is to force the New Komeito to chose one way or the other on a Cabinet Decision -- and if they balk, dump the coalition and go to the public for its response.
After the victory, the party could roll up its sleeves and set to work on really remaking Japan, free of the New Komeito's annoying obstructionism.
As for structural reform, on Monday the 16th the government is supposed to release a "third time's the charm" rerevised Third Arrow of Abenomics. All signs are that the government will, despite being given two chances to rethink and revamp its presentation, fail to include the details and synergies global investors and the world media crave. (Link)
What better time then, to turn around to the rest of the world with a defiant, "What? You don't like it? Well, we asked the Japanese voters and they love it!"
So what is the likelihood on this Friday morning of Abe and Friends going through with a virtual referendum after the end of the regular Diet session? Incredibly, I am thinking they are 50-50.
Later - Jiji is reporting that the New Komeito is looking for a duplicitous out smudging the line in between individual and collective self-defense (Link). Wish them luck -- given the time frame on coming to a decision on specific scenarios, New Komeito negotiators will have no opportutinity to coordinate their positions with the Soka Gakkai directorate.
Monday, June 02, 2014
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)
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)
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Now The Home Wrecker
The Yomiuri Shimbun, ever ignorant of a newspaper's role being that of a reporter of news, not a creator, is playing anti-matchmaker again in the long-running drama Jiko renritsu seiken with its recurring question, "How long can the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito keep pretending they are not really made for each other?"
In the latest episode, the New Komeito, according to the Yomiuri、is "on pins and needles" (piri piri) over Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's overtures toward the Your Party and elements of the opposition. Abe is offering a policy agreement linkup (seisaku kyogi) to the Your Party and elements of the Japan Restoration Party in four areas: reinterpretation of constitutional restrictions on collective defense, actual constitutional revision, East Asian diplomacy and elimination of the power of local school boards. The New Komeito, which has stuck with the LDP through good times and bad, has very definite views on these items which are not entirely in line with those of Abe and his coterie. The New Komeito also has a definite sense of the sequencing of policy agreements: first the members of the coalition agree amongst themselves on the policies, then they approach the opposition or non-aligned parties and MPs with an offer of cooperation. (Link - J)
The link up of the New Komeito and the LDP after years of mutual animosity was one of the miracles of the 1990s, second in its shock value only to the eviscerating (for the Socialist Party) LDP-Socialist Party coalition, which for all time exposed the LDP's raw and bottomless appetite for power. The coalition has been extremely good for both the New Komeito and the LDP, the former for the protection it gives to The Corporation, the latter for the 7~8 million sure votes for LDP candidates in the Diet district and local elections. The loyalty of the New Komeito voters saved the LDP from utter annihilation in the August 2009 House of Representatives election, with approximately one quarter of all votes for LDP district candidates coming from New Komeito voters. The NK really took on the chin in 2009 too: all of its members holding district seats, the party's top leaders, were turned out.
However, the temptation for the LDP to dump the New Komeito after nearly two decades of cohabitation seems too strong to resist. With just the remaining members of the Your Party as partners, the LDP would have majorities in the Houses of Representatives and House of Councillors. With all or part of the JRP in a three party cohabitation (what I call the "Hawks-Hawks-Hawks Coalition" as opposed to the current "Hawks and Doves Coalition") the new policy cooperation arrangement would have a gigantic supermajority in the House of Representatives and a solid majority in the House of Councillors. Not the 162 seats Abe needs in the House of Councillors to pass revisions of the Constitution -- but more than enough seats to pass just about anything else tickling the fancy of the PM and his many advisers and hangers-on.
Abe and his minister of education Shimamura Hakubun cannot and probably never for a moment forget the New Komeito's spiking of Abe's first attempt to impose a more patriotic regimen and regime upon the nation's schools back in 2007. The New Komeito's rejection and rewriting of the first ever revisions of the 1946 Education Act left a bleeding hole in the side of the first Abe Cabinet -- not the first wound the first Abe Cabinet had inflicted upon it, certainly, but one of the most painful.
Ever since that experience Abe has probably been convinced that the coalition with the New Komeito was a marriage of convenience only. Pretty much everyone with a sense of Abe's mindset probably agrees it is now a highly inconvenient marriage for him.
The Yomiuri should nevertheless just stand back and let nature take its course, rather than cheering for the LDP-New Komeito break up.
Let us keep this seemly, folks.
While were are on the subject of keeping things seemly, Temple University Japan's Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies has uploaded the video of my January 9 talk to its You Tube channel. Please check it out (Link) to see if I indeed follow my own advice.
Later - If the above image mystifies, please read Yuka Hayashi's interview.
Later still - The Economist has checked in with an extended look at the subject, with The Corporation mentioned by name. (Link)
Original image courtesy: Nikkan Gendai
Friday, December 13, 2013
The Mirror Has No Face Or Shame
Warning: the preposterous hypocrisy of the below can lead to the spouting of hot liquids from your mouth, damaging the device upon which you are viewing the text:
The guy who wrote this and more recently said this.
If a lack of self-reflection were a virtue, Ishiba Shigeru would be a living saint.
As it is, he is just a buffoon. A evil-looking, evil-sounding, patronizing buffoon who happens to run the day-to-day affairs of the only party that matters in this blessed land.
The full translated Ishiba comment, including further evidence of the LDP leadership's adolescent wide-eyed staring infatuation with decisiveness, can be accessed here.
Politicians need to trust peopleThe speaker here -- the person asking whether Liberal Democratic Party has "the narrative skill, sincerity and honesty" to persuade the public?
December 11, 2013 --
[snip]
The issues we are facing today are things that should have been resolved by the Liberal Democratic Party 10, 15 or 20 years ago. They are, for instance, energy policy, tax system [reform], restructuring the economic structure, agriculture, changing security policy, and so on. But weren't solutions to these issues put off because such measures would cause the party to lose votes, would bring down support rates, or cause defeat in elections if they were mentioned to voters?
I believe the current state of affairs in Japan is that almost nobody trusts politicians. But do politicians trust the people? If you don't speak the truth for fear of losing votes, that may be self-preservation. People who act in such a way should give up politics.
Does the LDP have the narrative skill, sincerity and honesty to persuade people?
The guy who wrote this and more recently said this.
If a lack of self-reflection were a virtue, Ishiba Shigeru would be a living saint.
As it is, he is just a buffoon. A evil-looking, evil-sounding, patronizing buffoon who happens to run the day-to-day affairs of the only party that matters in this blessed land.
The full translated Ishiba comment, including further evidence of the LDP leadership's adolescent wide-eyed staring infatuation with decisiveness, can be accessed here.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
OSIIOIIDI *
* Oh Sure, It Is OK If I Do It
What the Democratic Party of Japan-led coalition government did was ask the Imperial Household Agency to arrange a brief private chat at the Imperial Palace between His Majesty and then Vice-President of China Xi Jinping. The Agency initially rejected the government's request based upon an internal rule that all requests for Imperial audiences must be made at least 30 days in advance. The Hatoyama government had put in its application 19 days prior to the proposed meeting date. Backed by the DPJ's then Secretary-General and China Best Friend Ozawa Ichiro, the government persisted (or insisted, depending upon your politics). In the face of pressure, the Agency relented, agreeing to arrange an audience.
The government's pushing for a reversal of the Agency's decision unleashed a storm of protest from both the opposition LDP and right wing activists, an uproar abetted by Grand Steward Haketa Shingo's unprecedented public complaints about the government's actions. (Link)
Despite the acrimony, including the ultra-rightists protesting in front of the Palace (Link), the meeting went off without a hitch, with Japan emerging a big symbolic winner.
Fast forward four years. An LDP-led coalition government rules Japan. Ishiba is now Secretary-General of the LDP.
In an agreement signed in May, the Abe government confirmed its readiness to send Japan's now 79 year-old monarch and his equally frail spouse on a state visit to the healthful confines of India (Link) a visit that K. V. Kesavan alerts us, begins on November 30. (Link)
India...kind of far away...maybe kind of arduous...
Last month, Grand Steward Kazaoka Noriyuki questioned the propriety of the government's urging Princess Hisako to travel to Buenos Aires in order to shore up the Tokyo bid for the 2020 Olympics. Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide gave Kazaoka a public tongue lashing for having the gall to try to divine what their Imperial Majesties were thinking about the Princess' trip. (Link)
Princess Hisako's participation led to questions from all quarters regarding the use of the Imperial institution to political ends (Link). In a development that will likely leave some scratching their heads (aren't Japan's right wingers a cabal?) arch-nationalist cartoonist Kobayashi Yoshinori blew his top -- mocking the government's official explanation that the Princess was only attending in order to thank the international community for its contributions to disaster relief and recovery in the Tohoku region. In Kobayashi's view, to see the dispatch of the Princess as anything but use of the Imperial House for political gain would be inane. (Link)
Kobayashi's being a stickler about keeping the Imperial Family above politics comes as something of a surprise. Then again, Kobayashi has been of late marching to the beat of his own drummer.
As it turns out, the decision to have Princess Hisako address the IOC congress was a masterstroke. Unlike the terrifying sing-song and presumably English-language presentations by eye candy like fencer Ota Yuki and gymnast Tanaka Rie, Princess Hisako, a Cambridge graduate and translator before she married Prince Takamado (the Prince, in his charming, off-kilter way, proposed marriage to her in English) marched through the text of her opening speech both in more-than-acceptable French and then The Queen's English.
The political taint of Princess Hisako's dispatch to Buenos Aires pales, of course, besides the government decision to have their Imperial Majesties preside over the first official commemoration of the anniversary of the end of the Allied Occupation. That celebration, fraught from the outset by the slap to the face it delivers to Okinawa (Link) descended into farce when the hopped up hyper-patriot almost exclusively LDP and Japan Restoration Party attendees hooted out a triple “Long live the Emperor!” (Tenno heika banzai!) at the clearly uncomfortable Imperial Couple. (Link)
The hypocrisy of the LDP as regards use of the Imperial House for political ends, as demonstrated by Ishiba’s dudgeon over an afternoon courtesy call at the Palace (so uncool) versus nothing but smiles about a state visit to India (What problem? I do not see any problem) is emblematic of a greater trend. Having the budget under the DPJ government stay the same size but emphasize temporary support for citizens over the permanent laying of concrete ? That's baramaki ("pork barrel politics"). Passing huge supplementary spending bills and reconstituting the funding for the wasteful Construction State? That is setting up the basic conditions for economic expansion. The DPJ's prime minister not visiting Yasukuni? The mark of a squirming, China-coddling, disloyal mindset. Prime Minister Abe's not visiting Yasukuni? The mark of a mature, realistic ethos in the LDP and the Cabinet.
For issue after issue -- expansionist monetary and fiscal policy, ambitious plans for a greater acceptance of women in the workplace, delays in restarting nuclear power plants, tossing the interests of the agriculture sector to the wolves in Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations -- the progressive policies are being promoted and instituted by what is the regressive party, and indeed the most regressive members of that party. Give the DPJ power, and these same policy initiatives would be hacked down from behind by the very persons currently implementing and promoting them.
So the LDP's electoral slogan "Japan, Let's Take It Back" (Nippon o, torimodosu!)? Not really descriptive of the Abe government's and the LDP's current trajectory.
I have a suggestion:
私としては、このような政府の行為は日本国憲法の要請である天皇陛下の政治的利用の禁止に抵触するものであり、断じて容認できないと考え、次期通常国会をはじめとするあらゆる場において、憲法第三条に定められた内閣の責任を追及していく覚悟です。That was Liberal Democratic Party Policy Research Council Chairman Ishiba Shigeru, writing in his blog on December 15, 2009 about what was clearly in his mind a heinous abuse of the constitutional status and royal person of Japan's fragile 75 year-old monarch.
"For me, this kind of government action represents an infringement of the ban upon the political use of the Emperor, as set down in the Constitution. I simply cannot accept it, I am prepared, as a first order of business, to pursue, in the next regular Diet session, the Cabinet's responsibility for this infringement under Article 3 of the Constitution -- and pursue it everywhere else as well!"
What the Democratic Party of Japan-led coalition government did was ask the Imperial Household Agency to arrange a brief private chat at the Imperial Palace between His Majesty and then Vice-President of China Xi Jinping. The Agency initially rejected the government's request based upon an internal rule that all requests for Imperial audiences must be made at least 30 days in advance. The Hatoyama government had put in its application 19 days prior to the proposed meeting date. Backed by the DPJ's then Secretary-General and China Best Friend Ozawa Ichiro, the government persisted (or insisted, depending upon your politics). In the face of pressure, the Agency relented, agreeing to arrange an audience.
The government's pushing for a reversal of the Agency's decision unleashed a storm of protest from both the opposition LDP and right wing activists, an uproar abetted by Grand Steward Haketa Shingo's unprecedented public complaints about the government's actions. (Link)
Despite the acrimony, including the ultra-rightists protesting in front of the Palace (Link), the meeting went off without a hitch, with Japan emerging a big symbolic winner.
Fast forward four years. An LDP-led coalition government rules Japan. Ishiba is now Secretary-General of the LDP.
In an agreement signed in May, the Abe government confirmed its readiness to send Japan's now 79 year-old monarch and his equally frail spouse on a state visit to the healthful confines of India (Link) a visit that K. V. Kesavan alerts us, begins on November 30. (Link)
India...kind of far away...maybe kind of arduous...
Last month, Grand Steward Kazaoka Noriyuki questioned the propriety of the government's urging Princess Hisako to travel to Buenos Aires in order to shore up the Tokyo bid for the 2020 Olympics. Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide gave Kazaoka a public tongue lashing for having the gall to try to divine what their Imperial Majesties were thinking about the Princess' trip. (Link)
Princess Hisako's participation led to questions from all quarters regarding the use of the Imperial institution to political ends (Link). In a development that will likely leave some scratching their heads (aren't Japan's right wingers a cabal?) arch-nationalist cartoonist Kobayashi Yoshinori blew his top -- mocking the government's official explanation that the Princess was only attending in order to thank the international community for its contributions to disaster relief and recovery in the Tohoku region. In Kobayashi's view, to see the dispatch of the Princess as anything but use of the Imperial House for political gain would be inane. (Link)
Kobayashi's being a stickler about keeping the Imperial Family above politics comes as something of a surprise. Then again, Kobayashi has been of late marching to the beat of his own drummer.
As it turns out, the decision to have Princess Hisako address the IOC congress was a masterstroke. Unlike the terrifying sing-song and presumably English-language presentations by eye candy like fencer Ota Yuki and gymnast Tanaka Rie, Princess Hisako, a Cambridge graduate and translator before she married Prince Takamado (the Prince, in his charming, off-kilter way, proposed marriage to her in English) marched through the text of her opening speech both in more-than-acceptable French and then The Queen's English.
The political taint of Princess Hisako's dispatch to Buenos Aires pales, of course, besides the government decision to have their Imperial Majesties preside over the first official commemoration of the anniversary of the end of the Allied Occupation. That celebration, fraught from the outset by the slap to the face it delivers to Okinawa (Link) descended into farce when the hopped up hyper-patriot almost exclusively LDP and Japan Restoration Party attendees hooted out a triple “Long live the Emperor!” (Tenno heika banzai!) at the clearly uncomfortable Imperial Couple. (Link)
The hypocrisy of the LDP as regards use of the Imperial House for political ends, as demonstrated by Ishiba’s dudgeon over an afternoon courtesy call at the Palace (so uncool) versus nothing but smiles about a state visit to India (What problem? I do not see any problem) is emblematic of a greater trend. Having the budget under the DPJ government stay the same size but emphasize temporary support for citizens over the permanent laying of concrete ? That's baramaki ("pork barrel politics"). Passing huge supplementary spending bills and reconstituting the funding for the wasteful Construction State? That is setting up the basic conditions for economic expansion. The DPJ's prime minister not visiting Yasukuni? The mark of a squirming, China-coddling, disloyal mindset. Prime Minister Abe's not visiting Yasukuni? The mark of a mature, realistic ethos in the LDP and the Cabinet.
For issue after issue -- expansionist monetary and fiscal policy, ambitious plans for a greater acceptance of women in the workplace, delays in restarting nuclear power plants, tossing the interests of the agriculture sector to the wolves in Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations -- the progressive policies are being promoted and instituted by what is the regressive party, and indeed the most regressive members of that party. Give the DPJ power, and these same policy initiatives would be hacked down from behind by the very persons currently implementing and promoting them.
So the LDP's electoral slogan "Japan, Let's Take It Back" (Nippon o, torimodosu!)? Not really descriptive of the Abe government's and the LDP's current trajectory.
I have a suggestion:
"Hypocrisy? Just Let Us Get Away With It!"
Wednesday, October 02, 2013
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
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