Oh King Of Awful Majesty!

Rex tremendae majestatis
qui salvandos salvas gratis,
salva me, fons pietatis!

"King of Awful Majesty
You who save the worthy without charge,
save me, oh font of mercy!"

[Link - video]

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo is in Paris today, a participant in the mass gathering of world leaders for the COP 21. The good and the mighty will come together, maybe, to map out the next step in our saving of ourselves from the consequences of our lifestyles and organizations, at least as far as climate change goes.

While Mr. Abe is likely to be still asleep at this hour, a brilliant morning awaits him politically. The latest Kyodo News poll is out and it is a stunner for the PM and his allies.

First is the baseline Cabinet support number. It has risen a solid 3.5 points, continuing the Abe Cabinet's popularity's steady climb out its August nadir. Support for the Abe Cabinet now stands at 48.3% of all respondents, with 40.2% of respondents not supporting (down 0.8% from last month). Only 11% of the voters remain on the sidelines (down 2.7% since last month).

Q: Do you support the Abe Cabinet?

Support 48.3%
Do not support 40.4%
Don't know/can't say 11.3%

Asked the reason why they support the Cabinet, a staggering 36.5% of the respondents now say it is because "There is no other appropriate person but Abe Shinzo." This represents a rise in this figure of 8.4 points over a single month. At no time in recent memory has such a large fraction of the electorate enthusiastically/resignedly seen no alternative to the current leader.

Emphasizing the "One Abe to Rule Them All" theme was the movement in favor of the Liberal Democratic Party over this last month -- which is there was no such movement.

Here are the support figures for the parties, both from the survey over this weekend and the one conducted October 7-8 (in parenthesis).

Q: Which party do you support?

LDP 36.7% (36.8%)
Komeito 4.2% (3.6%)
DPJ 10.2% (10.4%)
Communist 4.2% (4.2%)
Innovation 1.1% (4.4%)
Osaka Ishin 4.4%
DSP 0.8% (1.2%)
Other parties 1.4% (1.3%)
Undecided 36.5%% (36.1%)

Osaka Ishin, fresh off its triple victory in the prefectural, mayoral and assembly elections on November 22, has siphoned off the support from the rump Innovation Party (no surprise here) and some further votes from...somewhere else (time will tell). While it has been tempting to write off Osaka Ishin as a minor regional force, with no hope of a national reach anytime soon, attracting 4.4% support in a national poll should shake up some quarters as it surpasses the support for the indubitably national Communist and Komeito parties.

The DPJ secretariat should also be breathing a sigh of relief today, as the poll shows that the bitter and pointless attempt by DPJ conservatives to unseat the moderate party leadership, revealing the ideological divisions within the main opposition party, has not cost the party much of its support. Yet.

In addition to basking in the glow of a near 50% approval rating that is his alone, Abe Shinzo will likely be beaming from the results of the last question of the survey. The responses seemingly refute the concept that Japanese voters are risk-averse when it comes to deploying the Self Defense Forces.

Q: Do you agree with or oppose the dispatch of the Self Defense Forces to the South China Sea to engage in 'cautionary surveillance' (keikai kanshi) of China's building of artificial islands?"

Agree with 52.7%
Oppose 39.9%
No opinion/not sure 7.4%

If you had told me yesterday 52% of Japanese voters are ready and willing to send the SDF into a confrontation with China, I would have thought you daft. Today I obviously would not think you daft...but I am not convinced the Japan normalization partisans should be toasting each other in victory. A telephone poll by definition does not have the respondents looking at a map. For those on the main islands of Japan, the difference between the East China Sea and the South China Sea could be kind of fuzzy. The Senkakus and the Spratlys are both in "the south" at least as seen from everywhere in Japan except Okinawa, and there both in a "China Sea" of a sorts. Asking the voters would they be willing "to have the SDF sailing in between increasingly militarized artificial islands lying in between the Philippines and China" might have generated a different percentage of approving respondents.

Whatever the reality of the level of support for provocative peacemaking, Mr. Abe has reason to look at the mirror today, turn his head to the right, and sigh:

"Perfect."

Image: Sunrise from atop Mitake-san, looking toward Yokohama and the Chiba Peninsula. Ome City, Tokyo Metropolitan District, 28 November 2015.
Image courtesy: MTC

Very Kind Of Him #61

"Yui-san, I see you are flanked by two U.S. astronauts. This would be a perfect time for you to express your indignation at Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's recent visit to Etorofu!"

I'm not the man they think I am at all
Oh, no, no, no.
I'm a Rocket Man!

- Elton John & Bernie Taupin, "Rocket Man" (1972)

Andy Sharp of Bloomberg News has a bulletin out on the seeming contradiction between weekend's protests against the collective security legislation, the recent spate of truly crappy economic news and the rise in support for the Cabinet in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun's latest poll. He quotes me in the piece thusly:

"Abe has weathered a hot summer, both inside and outside the Diet building," said Michael Cucek, an adjunct professor at Sophia University in Tokyo. "It seemed for Abe the news could not get any worse, and then it happened: the news did not get any worse,” he said, adding that Abe seems to be "levitating in contempt of the normal downward pull of political gravity."

(Link)

The crucial relationship is between the words "seems" and "to be levitating." Abe is not actually levitating. He does not have to: he is standing atop a lit multi-stage rocket.

The stages are:

First: a disengaged, disenchanted and lethargic electorate

Second: no major economic proposals promising better results than Abenomics

Third: no major rivals within the LDP

Fourth: no House of Representatives elections necessary for 3 1/2 years;

Fifth: almost suicidally fissionable opposition parties / no appreciable support for an opposition capable of seizing the reins of government (Tie)

There are likely more stages below these, hidden in the clouds.

Original image courtesy: Abe Shinzo Facebook page.

What Has Been The Abe Cabinet's *Real* Popularity?

A week ago my good friend Dr. Paul Scalise made an effort to provide some perspective on the danger Prime Minister Abe Shinzo may be in following a recent significant loss of public support. The many hours of Diet debate preceding the votes for the collective security bills saw the PM and his allies making a bonfire of his political capital, with his poll numbers heading south as an immediate consequence.

Dr. Scalise argues that despite the conflagration, Abe himself is in no danger. As compared to his predecessors, he is still enjoying significant levels of popularity, at least as measured by voter support for his Cabinet.

The graphs below, which Dr. Scalise first posted to Facebook, have been since been shared by Professor Daniel Aldrich on Twitter. I hope that reposting Dr. Aldrich's tweets causes Dr. Scalise no heartburn.

The first set of graphs, posted to Facebook on July 21, show the Cabinet popularity rating of the second coming of Abe Shinzo and the popularity ratings of other recent premierships, the data set being the Nihon Keizai Shimbun monthly pol, with a smattering of Asahi data thrown in:

MT @Paul_J_Scalise #Abe support in #context @SheilaSmithCFR @facklernyt @profLind @MichaelTCucek @smaslow_japan pic.twitter.com/DXWBwO57RA

— Daniel P. Aldrich (@DanielPAldrich) July 21, 2015

Partly in response in my opining in comments that the real comparative for Abe 2.0 is not the crash-and-burn-in-one-year prime ministers but The Great Koizumi, Dr. Scalise followed up with a comparison between The Celebrated Mr. K and the present intermittent occupant of the Prime Minister's Residence:

MT @Paul_J_Scalise #Koizumi and #Abe comparison @facklernyt @SheilaSmithCFR @observingjapan @MichaelTCucek @Remmid pic.twitter.com/it7Jbddddx

— Daniel P. Aldrich (@DanielPAldrich) July 23, 2015

Dr. Scalise argues that despite all the supposed public rage at the collective security legislation, other repressive legislation like the Designated Secrets Act, public unease at the restart of nuclear power plants and the typhoon of contempt in response to the abandonment of the National Stadium's design, Abe is nevertheless sitting pretty as compared to even the illustrious Koizumi.

One can quibble on the details, noting that Dr. Scalise's graphs do not contain the latest information from Nikkei. Not surprising, really: the latest Nikkei poll was not published until the 27th. In its latest polling Nikkei found that the percentage of voters saying they support the Abe Cabinet fell in July to 38%, while the Do Not Support percentage rose to 50%. This lacerates the Abe Cabinet with its first net negative rating of -12%. (Link - J).

So the black line in the graph immediately above should be diving below the 40% line, into sub-Koizumi territory.

Even after the resolution of that quibble though, I would still have a problem with Dr. Scalise's argument. Not with the graphs mind you, nor the argument that the Cabinet of Abe 2.0 has been enjoying comparatively more popularity than its predecessors. Heck, here is my own graph from the talk I gave at Temple University Japan on 9 January 2015, the most recent of my annual policy outlooks:



The big knobbly red line is Abe 2.0's support ratings as measured by NHK's national poll. As indicated, Abe's record as of 25 months in office compares very favorably with the records of other prime ministers, including that of The Great One (green line with triangles).

The part of the argument I do not buy is that Abe need not worry much about his recent losses of popularity. That is probably NOT true -- Abe is in significant trouble, significantly more than the raw numbers indicate.

The reason for this is simple: Abe has not had any competition.

Since his victory in the September 2012 race for the presidency of Liberal Democratic Party, Abe has enjoyed the ahistorical evaporation of the political capital of every single intra-party challenger to his position. Most of the time this was a result of exquisitely poisonous personnel management, such as appointing Ishihara Nobuteru to the Environment portfolio, giving Ishihara direct responsibility over the cleanup at Fukushima Daichi nuclear power station. In a few instances chance intervened, such as in the case of the stroke and recent decease of Abe's former faction boss Machimura Nobutaka.

In any case, Abe has none of the rival claimants to the LDP throne of a normal LDP leader.

Abe has been further blessed by the absence of a credible opposition to the LDP. The opposition vote has been until recently split between the Democratic Party of Japan, the Renovation-Restoration-Innovation complex of Hashimoto Toru and the Your Party vanity project of Watanabe Yoshimi. Even after the crack ups of these two latter political movements and the realignment of their remnants with the DPJ, voter support for opposition parties adds up to less than half the voters support for Abe's LDP.

The percentage of voters saying they are supporters of the LDP has, indeed, been at record highs.

Those highlighted words should set red lights to flashing. If the debased LDP of today is more popular than the LDP of the party's golden years of pork and economic advancement, then one has to wonder the depth and stability of this support. Indeed in the most recent Kyodo poll of July 16-17, support for the LDP fell 5 percentage points from a month before, from 37% to 31.9%. Most of the loss of support flowed into the floating voters pool (39.3%) rather than into the columns of any of the opposition parties. Nevertheless 5% is a huge chunk of support to lose in a month -- and the Kyodo poll was taken before Abe's dramatic and wounding decision to dump the Zaha Hadid-design for the National Stadium.

Abe Cabinet and LDP support numbers are displaying significant volatility; Abe lacks intra-party rivals or a muscular opposition. Comparing Abe's popularity versus the popularity of other prime ministers, given the vast differences in the political environment in which they operated versus the one in which Abe operates, may be a comparison of apples and oranges.

So perhaps we should be playing around with the concepts of "real" versus "nominal" support for the Abe Cabinet. A lack of alternatives may make Abe seem more attractive or be more attractive than he would be had the voters had credible options. Abe's numbers in this second term in office may be, in other words, inflated as compared to those of his predecessors.

How serious is this inflation? One way to find out might be by asking voters who say they support the Abe Cabinet the reasons why they support the Abe Cabinet:

I trust the prime minister 12.7%
I have faith in his economic policies 14.7%
I have hopes for his foreign policies 5.6%
I have hopes for political reform 2.6%
I have hopes for tax reform 3.6%
I have hopes for administrative reform 2.1%
There is no other appropriate person 31.4%
Other reasons/Don't Know/Can't Say 1.6%

Source: Kyodo News poll of July 17-18.

Stunning, would you not agree?

You would probably not be surprised to learn that until the Abe 2.0 Cabinet the response "There is no other appropriate person" has never been the #1 reason for supporting a PM, much less #1 by a more than two-to-one margin.

The implication must be that Abe's nominal support numbers are not just out of whack, they are seriously out of whack.

So what is to be done, if we are to assess to the level of danger Abe may be in?

One possibility is to raise the "line of death" for the premiership. Under previous regimes, the line has been around 20% support. Only one prime minister of recent vintage, Obuchi Keizo, managed to pull up and stay in power after approaching the 20% line (see my graph above).

A death line reading of 20% is overly generous to Abe. A "political death" line of 30% might be more appropriate, given the volatility of support from what would be otherwise floating voters or voters for a credible opposition. If so, then popularity readings of around 38% should be setting off sirens inside the LDP.

An alternative approach would be to deflate Abe's numbers overall, shifting his nominal curve downward for the length of his tenure. By how much? Based upon the difference between the 31.4% saying "there is no other appropriate person" and the percentages of voters choosing that option for previous prime ministers (a number that can be double-checked across time, since the answer to the "why do you support the PM?" question are compiled the same way in every iteration of a single media source's polling) a knockdown of 10 percentage points does not seem outlandish.

Whatever the method used, we need to get "real" about voter support for Abe.

Positing "real" versus "nominal" rates of support for Abe solves a particular vexing problem, the one I have been calling The Abe Paradox. In poll after poll, the Abe Cabinet's support ratings have been higher than voter support for the Cabinet's major policy thrusts. This is clearly impossible -- a Cabinet cannot be more popular than any and all of its policies -- unless that Cabinet support number itself is unreal.

By reassessing the Cabinet support ratings for Abe as being nominal support as opposed to real, the Abe Paradox disappears. Cabinet support numbers are inflated by a lack of competition. They can consequently float up above support for Cabinet policies. Questions on policy, however, are bounded by reality -- i.e., the poll gives respondents at least the choice of the negative "I do not support the Cabinet's policy."

--------------
Image source: Abe Shinzo's Official Facebook Page.

Very Kind Of Him #57 - The Flip Side Of My Remarks

Jeffrey Kingston of Temple University Japan has quoted me copiously in an opinion article published in The Japan Times (Link: Abe gets negative reviews ahead of U.S. visit). The quotations are certain to make me persona non grata in the Kantei.

I am grateful for Professor Kingston's quoting me. The quotes are verbatim.

However, I disagree with characterization that my overall assessment of Abe is negative.

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo is not really the majority of the population's idea of a dream date. The PM lacks most of the commonly recognized personality traits and qualities of a successful politician. Nevertheless, his Cabinet is the most reliably popular one for three decades. Abe is also fully back from the political Siberia his illness banished him to in September 2007. For four years he wandered the halls or slumped in his seat in the upper reaches of the House of Representatives, a weird ghostly figure. His resurrection and return should be the stuff of legends.

Abe has also fulfilled the proposition I set forth in February 2013: that he and his team will provide Japan with stable government (Video and Slides). The political opposition remains, three years out from the Noda Yoshihiko Self-Destruct Dissolution, an afterthought, a mosquito buzzing around the ruling coalition -- annoying but easily crushed. Heck, the opposition could not even snatch the Hokkaido governorship in today's first round of the Unified Local elections. (Link - J)

Abe, of course, has not just kept the opposition down and irrelevant: he has outmaneuvered and marginalized almost every potential political rival inside the LDP. The last possible holdout against "Abe's Way Or The Highway," LDP General Council Chair Nikai Toshihiro, a frequent critic of several key Abe administration policies, declared in an article published this week that "all of the holders of the top leadership posts of the LDP" is in support of Abe's reelection as party president this fall" -- meaning himself included. (Link - J)

As for "Abe Magic" and the "Abe Paradox" in the article -- again, correctly recorded -- these simple phenomena observable in the public polling data. They are also two manifestations of a single astonishing achievement: the conjuring up of a sense of inevitability to Abe's continued rule despite his inability to convince the majority of the voters to support whatever it is he is planning to do. Are the voters so starved for stability in the prime minister's spot that they are willing to say they support a Cabinet whose policies they do not like?

Seemingly.

Not at lot has gone really right in Abe's second stint. The economy is still weak; the monetary carpet bombing of the land with yen has not resulted in zero inflation; the collective self defense proposals are a spaghetti bowl of promises (and way behind schedule); Okinawa is in open revolt.

However, it is year three, Abe is still here and he is sticking to his much delayed agenda. He is letting all the hardships, bad news (the Algerian gasworks attack; the Hiroshima landslides; the murder of Goto Kenji) and missed targets roll off his back. Of course, a PM with a majority in the House of Councillors and a supermajority in the House of Representatives should be invincible. Abe's successors, from both LDP and Democratic Party of Japan, have shown how it is possible to fail in this blessed land's top office despite controlling more than the requisite number of seats in both Houses.

Abe succeeds despite himself. That is not negative. It is amazing.

Abe, Abe Uber Alles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damn.

Snap Back - This Month's NHK Poll Numbers

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo presiding over the special economic zones advisory commission on 3 March 2015. Image courtesy the Prime Minister's Residence.


If Abe Shinzo is looking for reassurance on the public's continued confidence in his leadership (I would suspect that after December's romp in the House of Representatives election he might not) then yesterday's release of the results of NHK's weekend polling results would leave him feeling bereft.

Support for the Cabinet March 6-8 (February 6-8)

Support 46% (54%)

Do Not Support 37% (29%)

Down and up 8% represent major movements in both numbers. These big moves in public sentiment may be one offs, reflecting public disgust with "money and politics" scandals seared into recent memory by the resignation last month of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Nishikawa. Sadly most of the attention of Nagata-cho residents seems to have already moved from campaign finance scandal to Shukan Shincho's photos of Nakagawa Shoi'ichi's widow Yuko (Hokkaido #11 and currently Parliamentary Vice Minister for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries) on-the-street snogging with the younger and married Kado Hirofumi (Kinki proportional - no jokes here please).

It's the scandal du jour.  Well, it was actually du soir -- indeed the very night that Nishikawa turned in his resignation...but I digress.

More likely, however, the numbers reflect a return to reality for the Abe administration. Looking back, they are not very different from the support/do not support numbers of the Abe government in July of last year, before the Cabinet reshuffle and November, before the calling of a snap election. In between, the Cabinet's numbers have been goosed upward by positive feelings about the large number of women appointed to the Cabinet in the reshuffle and by what was likely a mild "rally round the flag" effect as a result of the hostage crisis.

Just what Prime Minister can do now to bump up his Cabinet's numbers is anyone's guess.

The survey (Link - J video) also shows a rare switch in the ranking of issues the public wants the government to tackle. The usual top answer is keiki taisaku "countermeasures against the deterioration in the economy." Tops this month, however, is the perennial #2 answer, "Fixing the social welfare system." These findings, however, came before Monday's release of revised figures for the Q4 2014 GDP growth to 1.5% annualized from 2.2%, with the resulting calendar year 2014 GDP growth figures negative. (Link)

Later - NHK's surprisingly low numbers put Abe back in a race again, between himself and bad news. The outlook is largely positive for him in the short run, if negative for the country. Beyond the June end of the Diet session (a question mark there - committee work is so behind schedule most folks in the know say the session will be extended well into July) the outlook for the PM is not so sanguine.

Abe and his appointees have pulled every economic lever: extreme quantitative easing, fiscal profligacy and shifting the nation's pension assets from Japan government bonds to Japanese equities. The Bank of Japan under Abe-selected Kuroda Haruhiko has gummed up the JGB market so thoroughly that the prices of bonds no longer contain any information. The GPIF and the Post Office are doing their dangest to achieve a similar result in equities markets. Soon, if not already, the price of a share in a listed Japanese company will say nothing about the capital stock, labor force, management, technology or special advantages of that company. Instead the price will only reflect only what government and government-linked investment behemoths are willing to pay for the shares, right now.

Despite the Abe government's every effort to game the system, the public has not responded. Neither the puffed up indicators of a coming prosperity nor the government's promises are reassuring. The voters currently does not have much of a choice as to alternate visions keeping Japan a player on the world stage. However, unless the economy turns, the stagnation-despite-steroids will set the eyes of the electorate to searching for another leader.

Reading Kingston On Abe And Samuels

Professor Jeff Kingston has produced a highly readable essay on the Prime Minister's moves last week to promote his security agenda. The effort has been multi-pronged, with thrusts on constitutional revision, expansion of the geographic area covered by self-defense, expansion of the definition of self-defense to include damage to the Japanese economy and establishment of a special forces rescue unit. Coming on the heels of what was a diplomatic and humanitarian failure -- everybody died and a vengeful bombing campaign erupted -- Abe-san's full out run for military solutions to international political problems, seems a bit...unseemly. (Link)

Kingston refers to this behavior as swinging for the fences. To be sure, Abe and Company do have incentives to propose way too much in the knowledge that in the back-and-forth of domestic politics ambitious proposals are whittled down to something the country's editorialists can disagree upon.

However, Abe and Co. have a another important reason to overreach now: Abe is the Anti-Koizumi.

Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro could rely upon what mystified commentators called the Koizumi Magic. On seemingly any issue, Koizumi could transform, through reasoned argument, adamantine will, and an ineffable something, what was a Majority Against into a Majority For. (Archive)

Abe The Second Coming has been demonstrating a consistent and astonishing capacity to do the opposite. On any and every marquee policy proposal Abe and his colleagues drive voter support into the ground -- while leaving the Cabinet's popularity unchanged. The more Abe and Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide talk about a policy change, the lower the level of voter support, at least as measured by public opinion polls. One would think that out of pure luck Abe and Co. would chance upon some issue where the stance taken by the Abe government would increase in popularity over time.

No such luck.

So Abe must seek the maximum at the outset, at the risk of appearing to be far ahead of the public mood, out of the practical realization that as he tries to explain what he wants to he will erode whatever confidence the public may have in the wisdom of what he is proposing.

A corollary to the above is that Abe and his team members have a strong incentive to cut off debate at what seems ta midpoint and before the discussion has moved to a deeper level. If Abe is to get anything done, he has to cut his losses and move on -- at the outset.

Which will one day make for a rather confusing and unsatisfying historical record.

As for Kingston's conversation with Richard Samuels, Dr. Samuels (full disclosure: Dr. Samuels is a friend) gives his own paradigms short shrift. In addition to the advocates of rapid expansion of Japan's security program and the advocates of a retreat to first principles of Japanese post-1945 security policy mentioned in the Kingston essay, a full Samuels treatment would fine a third group arguing that even though the attempts to negotiate a hostage release ended up in failure, such negotiations have ended up in failure for every national government other than that of Turkey -- and one shudders to think what the Turks gave up to secure their hostages.

Japan, according to this view, did no worse or better than anyone else. Japan is therefor not on the wrong path in terms of its security policy development. The government and the people should not panic.

Samuels explores this tripartite division of responses to threat and catastrophe in his most recent book 3.11 Disaster and Change in Japan. Amaterasu willing, 3.11 could see the light of day in a Japanese language edition sometime soon.

The key takeaway -- and Samuels hammers away at this in 3.11 and in his public appearances -- is that almost no one comes away from these experiences with his/her assumptions shaken. Those who wanted to accelerate policy change and/or switch Japan's policy direction will find the government's inability to save Yukawa and Goto demonstrates the rightness of their views. Those who advocated steady-as-we-go, progressive, "normalizing" policies will downplay the failure and declare the maintenance of a cool, cerebral demeanor paramount. Those who have disliked the expansion and transformation of Japan's security behavior, advocating either a slowdown or more often a reversal of the processes of the last three decades, will see Yukawa's and Goto's deaths as justifying their caution and skepticism.

Some readers may find Kingston's tone and vocabulary overblown. Consider them responses to the extraordinary gall displayed by certain members of the Japanese foreign policy commentariat who seen it appropriate to condemn/decry the sharp criticism of the Abe government. The calls for national unity and support of the Abe government made by these person who shall remain nameless would fall on more receptive ears if residents of this blessed land could forget the vicious, opportunistic and avaricious attacks showered upon the Kan government in the days immediately following the triple disaster of 3.11, even as the country was reeling from the disruption caused by the earthquake, tsunami and an unfolding massive nuclear accident.

No solidarity then, friends, means no solidarity now -- and no rhetorical restraint now either.

Très Gentil De Son Sa Part #44

Daniel Eskenazi asked me what the Japanese public's response to the death of Yukawa Haruna and now Goto Keniji will be. I told him that all I know is what the public opinion polls have been saying. (Link - en Français)

[Nota Bene - link may require registration. If you do not want permanent access to Le Temps, there is the temporary workaround via Google News.]

Where Is The Normality?

There are something funny things going on in terms of these mega polls supporting projections of a massive LDP victory on December 14*

1) The Yomiuri and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun both are basing their reporting on a survey with 120,000 voters called, 80,000 responses, and a 64% response rate.

Oddly identical numbers.

Hmmm...

2) The survey the Yomiuri used found 42% of respondents Support the Abe Cabinet and 39% Do Not Support the Cabinet. In the Yomiuri survey done three weeks ago, 55% of voters contact said they Support the Cabinet, and 36% said they Do Not Support.

Should we be talking about momentum (勢い) in our headlines so much, ladies and gentlemen of the press?

Hmmmm...

3) The Kyodo News is saying it polled 150,000 households and received 120,000 responses, a response rate of 80% (polling organizations normally report a 55%~65% rate of response).

Double hmmmm...

I do not doubt that if all these different polls are showing a distribution of voting patterns ending up at the 300+ seat figure for the Liberal Democratic Party that there is a significant likelihood of the party winning that many seat.

I would like to wait until next week, when The Asahi Shimbun at least promises to have snapshots of every one of the 295 district races by December 11.


Later - A few links related to the above:

Projections of an LDP landslide

- http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0001764869

- http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201412040020

- http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20141204p2g00m0dm022000c.html

- http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Abe-s-party-could-expand-its-hold-on-parliament

- http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/12/04/national/politics-diplomacy/ldp-course-win-300-seats-election-kyodo-poll/


Lack of enthusiasm for election (J)

- http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/election/shugiin/2014/news2/20141203-OYT1T50110.html


Support for the Cabinet (J)

- http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/election/poll/20141126-OYT8T50025.html

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

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

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

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

Kyodo News poll (11/19~20)

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

Undecided 44.4%

(Link - J)

The Asahi Shimbun (11/19~20)

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

Undecided 30%

(Link - J)

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

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

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

1) Stop party leader Kaieda Banri from speaking

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

Original image courtesy: Kobe Shimbun

The Abe Cabinet Paradox

Two wild and crazy guys.

It's impossssible...
To put a Cadillac in your nose!
It's just imposssssible!

- Steve Martin, Let's Get Small (1977)

One of the classic gag lines, in both sense of the word "gag," in the world of politics and statistics for the last two decades has been the annual reporting of growth rates of the GDPs of China's provinces. For reasons of political expediency and personal promotion within the bureaucracy and the Chinese Communist Party, the officials of all China's provinces have been reporting GDP growth rates greater than the national average, despite the teeny tiny problem of such a result's being utterly impossible. The response of the world's China's watchers to this ridiculous transformation of the world's largest country into a hypertrophied Lake Wobegon, Minnesota ("where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average" - Link) has always been chorus of knowing giggles.

Lately, and sadly, this perennial source of wonderment and merriment has undergone a downsizing, leaving this small, blue-green planet a rather less amusing place. (Link)

Have no fear, bewildering statistics lovers, I present to you...the second Abe Cabinet!

You may have missed Monday's Nihon Keizai Shimbun article on the results of that paper's most recent public opinion poll. In it, quietly and without any fuss, lay a paradox. Not a particularly impossible one (on the order of Steve Martin's above) but still a rather eyebrow-raising one.

Nihon Keizai Shimbun
Telephone survey of 26-28 September 2014 (previous month's results)

Q: Do you support or not support the Abe Cabinet?

Support 53% (60%)

Do not support 31% (26%)

Admittedly, it is unusual to see a drop of 7% over a month when the Diet is out of session and not much has happened -- at least not much the government of Abe Shinzo had any control over, aside from the predictable failure of the DPRK government to produce the report it promised on the fates of Japanese abductees, a possibility (inevitability?) that the Abe government should have gone out of its way to semaphore well before the end of last month. The most reasonable explanation for the drop is a return to the norm, as the 60% support reading was recorded immediately after the announcement of the new cabinet lineup with its attractive record number of women ministers.

The mind-twisting results in the Nikkei poll are the responses to the questions on the policies of the Abe Cabinet:

Do you support the raising of the consumption tax to 10% in October next year?

Support 28%

Do not support 66%


Do you have high expectations for the government's efforts to revitalize the rural areas?

Have high expectations 35%

Do not have high expectations 47%


Do you have high expectations for the Abe government's policies raising the stature of women?

Have high expectations 43%

Do not have high expectations 40%


Do you believe that the restart of the nation's nuclear power plants must be pushed through?

Must be pushed through 34%

Not necessary to be pushed through 53%

Look at the first of each pair of numbers. These are the support numbers for the Abe government's policies or else the percentage of the population having faith in the Abe government's ability to carry out its policies. In every instance, the expression of support or faith is 10 percentage points below the percentage of voters expressing support for the Cabinet.

Basically, the second Abe Cabinet is more popular than ANY of its policies. A lot more.

Take just a moment to figure that one out.

Then perhaps throw your hands up in the air and admit:

"I don't get it. OK, maybe the old saw about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts is true...or the average of the parts...or whatever. Really?"

The paradox of the Abe Cabinet's "being" being more popular than anything the Abe Cabinet is "doing" or "wants to do" does fit into a long-term pattern of public reactions to Abe Shinzo. In his first term a prime minister his Cabinet's popularity and his international standing rose and fell in inverse relation to his acting according to his own personal record, his professed values and his promises.

In other words, the less Abe acted like himself, the more his popularity and international stature rose.

Not much has changed in that department. What is strange is that not liking what the Cabinet is doing is not translating this time around into not liking the Cabinet. The support numbers for the Cabinet stay fantastically high, a-historical in their stability.

Most peculiar, this Abe fellow. He provokes the cognitive dissonance in folks.

There is, of course, one big difference in between now and seven years ago, one that a follower posted immediately after I tweeted this conundrum on Twitter:

@MichaelTCucek - Imagine if there were an Opposition to criticize the policies and propose alternatives for them. Yes, just imagine.
— Colin Doyle (@nagaijin) September 29, 2014

Yes just imagine it...because with the current cast of clowns in charge of the opposition (Link) one's imagination is all one can rely upon.

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.

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.

And The Horse You Came In On

If the government of Abe Shinzo thought that the protracted and painful argument with the New Komeito over the phrasing of the July 1 announcement of a reinterpretation of the Constitution allowing for the exercise of the right of collective self-defense was going to impress the voters, then the government probably received a nasty shock from pages 1, 4 and 10 of today's Yomiuri Shimbun. The Yomiuri, whose coverage of all things Abe has been sycophantic, could not sugarcoat the startling results of its most recent (July 2-3) public opinion poll.

First were the raw Cabinet support numbers showing a sharp shift since the last (May30-June 1) poll:

Do you support the Abe Cabinet? (1 June 2014 figure)

Support 48% (57%)

Do not support 40$ (31%)

The 48% is a new low in approval for the Abe Cabinet (in April 2013 support was at 74%!) and 40% is a new high in disapproval.

A majority of the voters still have confidence in Abe's economic program: 49% say they appreciate (hyoka) it, only a slight downward shift from the 52% reading of last month. However, the level of doubt in Abe's economic plans has risen a bit more, from 33% to 38%, despite or perhaps because of the June announcement of the revised Third Arrow structural reforms.

It is in explaining its actions as regards national security matters, however, that the Abe government has really failed in its efforts, such as they were, at public outreach. Even with the pliant Yomiuri bending over backward to phrase the questions in the most government-friendly way possible, the voters showed little or no mercy.

Q: The Government, revising the interpretation of the Constitution in the case of a clear and present danger linked to the rights of the citizens in a fundamental way, has decided to to make it possible to make use of collective self defense to the minimum extent necessary. Do you appreciate the ability to the limited use of the right of collective self defense?

Appreciate 36%

Do not appreciate 51%

Kaboooooom! Not even the loading up the question with positive messages could shift the needle: the majority of the population is against CSD, even in a limited way.

Until this most recent survey, the Yomiuri and its revisionist counterpart on the right the Sankei Shimbun have been obfuscating this finding, burying the results by offering a weasel triply divided set of of options: "Yes, we must completely exercise the right of collective self defense " "Yes, but we must do so to the minimum extent possible" and "No, it is not necessary." In that case, the respondents, in order to appear non-doctrinal, chose the wishful thinking "Yes, but to the minimal extent possible option (61% chose this option in the last May 30-June 1 poll).

Posing the question of supporting the Abe Government's CSD as the center-left and left news organizations have done, as a simple yes-or-no, up-or-down question, generates a greater than 50% opposition to CSD, just as the center-left and left polls have been finding for some time now.

It gets worse for the government. Even with the pollsters stacking the deck by saying that the Cabinet Decision approving the exercise of the right of collective self defense strengthens (not "may strengthen" or "is likely to strengthen" -- no, "strengthens") the Japan-U.S. alliance, the decision to exercise the right of CSD will not, in the eyes of the voters, improve deterrence of aggression:

Q: Japan by making it possible to exercise the right of collective self-defense has strengthened the Japan-U.S. alliance. From doing this do you believe Japan has improved its power to prevent the receiving of an attack from a foreign country, that is to say has improved its deterrence, or not?

Deterrence has been improved 39%

Deterrence has not been improved 49%

Kowabunga!

Q: Do you believe that the Government has sufficiently explained the issues surrounding the exercise of collective self-defense?

Have explained sufficiently 13%

Have not yet sufficiently explained 81%

Red Alert! Red Alert! Public not on board!

And for a result that will give the United States Departments of State and Defense nightmares...

Q: If the Self Defense Forces could shoot down a ballistic missile headed for the American territory of Guam or the State of Hawaii, would you agree with or oppose a shoot-down?

Agree with 37%

Oppose 51%

Whaaaaaaaat?

Mr. Abe, you, someone you trust or just someone who seems to have some semblance of giving a damn about this blessed and needs to go on national television right now and first ask Japanese voters if they have any sense of how many thousands of Japanese, both tourists and residents, are on Guam and Hawaii on any given day...and then maybe, rather than explaining to the voters the mechanics of the contrived scenarios the Abe government used in its attempt to drum up public support for CSD, simply sit down and tell the citizenry about the moral imperatives we all must accept regarding the need to protect innocent civilians, be they friends or strangers, from impending harm, unless we are willing to be thought monsters?

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.

No Mr. Abe, You And China Together Are Still Not Enough

Interesting figures in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun this morning:

Q: Shall the Constitution be reinterpreted in order to make it possible to exercise the right of collective self-defense?

Agree 28%
Disagree 51%

Q: Should their be preparations be brought forward on the legal basis for [ having the Self Defense Forces involvement] so-called gray-zone incidents?

Should be 68%
Should not be 13%

Q: Should SDF units participating in peacekeeping activities be allowed to rush to the armed defense (kaketsuke keigo) of other peacekeeper and/or civilians?

Allowed 47%
Not allowed 34%

Q: Is it necessary to invoke the right collective self-defense?

Necessary 37%
Not necessary 47%

A remarkably level-headed set of numbers, no? The voters in this poll clearly want the government to have a capacity to deploy the SDF in situations where opponents are in plain clothes but way too much for constabulary forces like the Japan Coast Guard to handle, such as trawler-fulls of Chinese special forces disguised as fishermen landing on the Senkakus. They are also generally in favor of a partial normalization of the behavior of Japanese forces in peacekeeping operations, making the SDF contingent valuable as a military, rather than just a logistics force.

At the same time, the voters are at best ambivalent about invoking the right of collective self defense per se. They are also deeply skeptical about reinterpretation, the Constitutional bugbear that Prime Minister Abe's advisors and councils failed to think through until this year.

The error as regards reinterpretation was one of language and group think -- too few people involved in a discussion of a subject using the same limited vocabulary. For the reformers in Japan's defense establishment, all the Cabinet had to do was interpret (kaishaku) the Constitution in a new way. It did not dawn upon them that to undo a previous determination of unconstitutionality required reinterpretation (kaishaku o henko) -- which only the Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment can do.

Meanwhile, on the subject of meeting and beating the threats to the nation, the Chinese air force and Chinese official news organs this weekend sought to regale us with their well-known talents for physical comedy Link) and satire. (Link).

Such kidders.

Despite these shenanigans on the part of the powers that be in China which could lead to a sudden to dump the 1946 Constitution, the Japanese public keeps its eyes on the edifice of their democratic form of government and the foundations of the rule of law and popular sovereignty.

Pretty impressive, no?

Abe Shinzo's Big Bets Pay Off

Abe Shinzo and those closest to him must be grinning broad grins at this morning's public opinion polling results:

TBS Network News (JNN News)
Poll conducted: 11-12 January 2014
Figures for previous month's reading in [ ]

Do you support or not support the Abe Cabinet?

Support 62.5% [54.6%]
Do not support 36.4% [44.4%]

Yomiuri Shimbun
Poll conducted: 10-12 January 2014
Figures for previous month's reading in [ ]

Do you support or not support the Abe Cabinet?

Support 62% [55%]
Do not support 30% [38%]

By rebounding in the 7-8% range, the Abe Cabinet has recouped in a single month almost all the losses in popularity incurred by the precipitous and contentious passage of the Special Secrets Protection Act. That two news organizations at opposite ends of the spectrum as regards criticism of the Abe administration have polls exhibiting exactly the same degree and direction of momentum makes the apparent rebound all the more dependable.

The Prime Minister's visit to Yasukuni on December 26 does not seem to have in any way hurt his Cabinet's image. Indeed, the internationally condemned visit likely boosted the Cabinet's numbers among disillusioned hardliners, lifting the Cabinet's overall support numbers.

TBS Network News (JNN News)

Do you think it was a good thing or not a good thing that Abe paid a visit to Yasukuni?

A good thing 42%
Not a good thing 46%

Yomiuri Shimbun

Do you appreciate or not appreciate the Abe visit to Yasukuni?

Appreciate 45%
Not appreciate 47%

The results of the two polls deviate as regards the proposal to construct a secular national memorial for the war dead, with the numbers in favor and opposed to such construction shading in the direction of the political orientations of the two news organizations, even as the Cabinet support/do not support numbers do not:

TBS Network News (JNN News)

Should the country construct a secular war memorial?

Should 42%
It is not necessary 46%

Yomiuri Shimbun

Should the country construct a secular war memorial?

Should 36%
It is not necessary 50%

The party support numbers offer further sobering/depressing news for those who might have hoped that public anger at Abe and the LDP over the secrets act could be sustained, boosting the appeal of the opposition parties:

TBS Network News (JNN News)
Figures for previous month's reading in [ ]

Which political party do you support?

LDP 35.5% [30.3%]
New Komeito 2.3% [3.6%]
DPJ 4.1% [6.8%]
JRP 2.3% [2.8%]
Your Party 1.0% [1.6%]
JCP 2.6% [3.7%]
DSP 0.4% [0.9%]
Yui 0.3% [NA]
Life 0.2% [0.3%]
Other/Do not support any 50.8% [48.6%]

Yomiuri Shimbun

Which political party do you support?

LDP 40%
New Komeito 4%
DPJ 4%
JRP 1%
Your Party 1%
JCP 3%
DSP 1%
Yui 0%
Life 0%
Other/Do not support any 44%

The image accompanying this post was the final slide of my January 9 presentation at Temple University Japan (TUJ will be posting the full slide show and the video of the session soon). My message to my fellow travelers of the left at the presentation is the same one seemingly being sent out by today's poll results: stop your wishful thinking, reconsider your loathing. There is only one game in town...and it is Abe Shinzo and his LDP.

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Online sources:

JNN News poll: Link - J Video

Yomiuri Shimbun poll: Link - J

Okumura Jun On The Yasukuni Visit

With his customary verve and expeditiousness, Okumura Jun has produced a series of points as regards Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's visit to Yasukuni Shrine. (Link)

I agree with points #1, #4 and #6. I vehemently disagree with points #2 and #5 -- Okumura-san is underestimating how many folks are going to have a problem with Japan. As for #3, I think those who think that provoking China is dumb and those who like the spectacle of a good joust will cancel each other out, in statistical terms, leaving the Abe government right where it is now in terms of public support.

Live Shinzo, Defending

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

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

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

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


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

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

Across The Board

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

Dig it.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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