Tanaka Makiko's Apology

So Tanaka Makiko has chosen the wise route of making a public apology for having had the temerity, as Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, to initiate and implement policy, when it is well known that policy making should be left in the hands of bureaucrats who in no way attempt to maximize their post-retirement value by approving projects of questionable value to the public. The Yomiuri Shimbun provides the story as it should be understood by any decent person. (Link)

That Yomiuri staff assigned to report on the ministries have an incentive to support the bureaucrats, who are a permanent feature, rather than the minister, who is a very temporary entity, has nothing to do with the way Tanaka's behavior has been portrayed either now or during her stint as Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Tanaka's apology was not sincere. Resignation would be sincere. Apologizing and staying on is to put a facade of contrition. As Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko probably explained to her in their private meeting this week, while letting the bureaucrats make decisions without political oversight is letting the inmates run the asylum -- as the compilation of the supplementary budget for recovery and reconstruction has shown (Link and Link)-- he and the Democratic Party of Japan cannot take the bureaucrats on right now, as the government and the party are engaged in a death struggle with the Liberal Democratic Party. "Just say the words, bow your head and forget about it," I can imagine him telling her.

It is unlikely that the bureaucrats will accept Tanaka's apology and end their attempts to undermine her authority. The LDP and its allies in the House of Councillors will not accept Tanaka's apology either. They have threatened to pass a motion of censure against her (Link - J). Since censure is a symbolic and thus cost-free way of scoring political points, having made the threat the opposition is sure to carry it out, probably on the last day of the extraordinary Diet session.

The apology will also not defang the news media complex. It has invested its reputation in a master narrative of a loud, mercurial, headstrong and insecure (and there is nothing in that depiction that makes a play on demeaning conventional attitudes regarding Minister Tanaka's sex) individual who has no business being in a position of authority -- and will certainly not back off now that she has said, "Sorry (though I don't really mean it) for everything."

Tanaka, however, is not going anywhere. Noda is not going to ask for the resignation of the Cabinet's only woman. Resignation would furthermore be pointless, as the current Cabinet is only (and this too Noda must have explained to Tanaka) playing a caretaker role. Its purpose is to simply exist, not lead, as the DPJ bides its time, engaged as it is in a murky and dismal struggle against the LDP over the bond issuance bill and electoral district reforms.

What role does apology play in public interaction? Where if anywhere, is its ultimate anchorage point? I confess ignorance. If apology is a performance, and the main political players have incentives to ignore it, or if everyone understands from his or her own experience that apology is ritualized and insincere, who then is the audience?

Very Kind Of Them #8 - The Neapolitan Edition

The nice folks at The Point have posted an essay of mine. It is about Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko's two scoops of triple-flavored ice cream.

(Link)

As Scandal Swirls About the DPJ, It Is The LDP That Is Drowning

Though I have linked to it once already, T. Harris has written a magisterial post on the current parlous state of the Liberal Democratic Party. He proposes some possible answers to the current conundrum of Japanese politics: how despite the many wounds inflicted these past few months to the Democratic Party's longtime "clean" image, the Liberal Democratic Party has failed to earn even a modicum of respect in opposition. Indeed, with the rapid decline in the chances of the LDP returning to even par with the DPJ, the party has lost the support of the dentists, one of the LDP's most loyal institutional voting blocs... and is facing the loss of the doctors as well.

It seems the Japanese political market can only support one variegated, everybody-gets-something, ethically compromised umbrella party at a time.

When you are reduced to throwing tantrums because three ministers (though admittedly a very interesting trio of individuals) failed to get the message that a committee meeting start time had been rescheduled from 9:00 a.m. to the unusual hour of 8:50 a.m., you have really lost all sense of proportion.*

The LDP's stature has indeed sunk so low, and the New Komeito with it, that the only real opposition the DPJ faces comes from its own coalition partners.** It is because of People's New Party vehement opposition that the controversial foreigner's local suffrage law seems a dead letter, at least for this Diet session. The Democratic Socialist Party has played a milder but still corrective role as well, reminding the DPJ again and again to deliver on its campaign promises.

So there is reason for ruling in coalition with tiny but obstreperous political allies, even when they are superfluous: they can prevent you from falling in love with your own cleverness.***

The self-styled paper-of-record The Asahi Shimbun is today predicting a potentially disastrous House of Councillors election for the DPJ, on the basis that the support levels for the Hatoyama Cabinet have sunk from "stratospheric" to merely "moderate." The argument does not hold much water. The voters need to see the emergence of a plausible alternative to the DPJ before they will be willing to instigate yet another round of change. There is not one now nor is there a likelihood of there being one by the time July rolls around.

Wishing something is true as a recompense for your illusions having been shattered is not analysis. Sometimes justice is not served; sometimes a sin will go unpunished.

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* That the media would report the ministers' having been late as the top political news story of course indicates how low the news media have sunk.

** A coalition ally's being the only effective opposition is not unprecedented. It was only because of intense New Komeito opposition to the LDP's authoritarian draft revision of the Basic Law on Education that the bill eventually passed in 2007 was not utterly egregious.

** Not unlike friendship in between individuals, no?

As Regards the DPJ's Policy Making Assignments

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

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

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

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

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

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