A New Union Of Forces Of The Left

The slapdash creation yesterday of the Japan Party of the Future (Nippon Mirai no To) in part answers the heretofore burning question, "Where is the umbrella party of the left, the correlate of the Liberal Democratic Party as the umbrella party of the center-right, now that the ruling Democratic Party of Japan has effectively expelled all of its anti-consumption tax, anti-nuclear power and anti-Trans Pacific Partnership members?" (Link)

Funny how political realignment, which was assumed was going to result in urban, free-market, multilateralist, liberals facing off against rural, crony-capitalist, bilateral relations and traditional social policy conservatives has become a four-way fight between parties and close allies with market socialism, social conservatism, activist foreign policy, regressive social policy, patriotism, fiscal rectitude, loose monetary policy, subsidies and education reform all in a jumble.

Considering how many parties have formed and disappeared over the last two weeks, it is not out of place to wonder whether the voters will be given enough time to discern what the various electoral alliances stand for.

The whole mad process of creating viable electoral groupings should end on December 4, when the final party lists are announced. Politicians have become so addicted to rebranding, however, that they may still be redefining themselves during their last speeches in the final hours of December 15.

Betrayal By The Smart Puppies?

Today will be a very interesting day.

Today the first termers, the old lefties and the rural representatives in the Democratic Party of Japan will be asking Prime Minister if the news reports of this morning, with their claims that the PM has decided to dissolve the Diet this month and lead the DPJ into a campaign waving the banners of participation in the Trans Pacific Partnership and a cut in the number of proportional seats in the House of Representatives -- are just something the media dreamed up, led astray by anonymous sources, or an accurate description of reality. (Link - J)

They are likely as not to be listening to his response with their heads tilted to one side, trying to see if the picture looks any better when seen askew.

As a rule of thumb, leaders of political parties care about the parties that selected them as leader. Koizumi Jun'ichiro, in his campaign for the presidency of the Liberal Democratic Party and his snap election call in 2005 did declare an intent to destroy his party from within. However, Koizumi's intra-party warfare was more on the LDP's decayed traditions than on the party per se. His intent was not to kill the LDP but drag it, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century.

The fate of the LDP after Koizumi's retirement, with Abe Shinzo signaling a return to business as usual through his welcoming back into the party the Koizumi postal reform rebels, presaged an era of rapid decline in the party's popularity, culminating in its ouster from power in August 2009.

If this morning's news reports are correct, then Prime Minister and Democratic Party of Japan leader Noda Yoshihiko has seized upon Koizumi fetishism (Link) of the highest order. If the prime minister intends to drive the non-reformist elements out of the DPJ in order to save the DPJ, he is as nuts as his Minister of National Strategy and fellow Matsushita Institute of Management and Government alumnus Maehara Seiji. Maehara has a book coming out on Friday entitled "I Want To Bring To Realization A Conservative Realignment" (Hoshu no saihen o jitsugen shitai - Link - J). He has also been making statements deviating from the policies of the DPJ mainline leadership, including a call for an early election. (Link)

It has been easy to dismiss Maehara as a deviant. Despite or perhaps because of his conservative bona fides, he has again and again shown a remarkable lack of common sense (Clicking on the tag below or putting "Maehara" in the search window directs one to some of Maehara's most embarrassing moments). However, if today's headlines hold up, Maehara may be less the village idiot and more the town crier.

If the conservatives in the party are calling an election to force realignment -- i.e., the destruction of both the DPJ and the LDP -- they better have their ducks lined up. Maehara has been a fixture in non-partisan study groups bringing together free market liberals and defense wonks, so he at least has strong ties to like-minded legislators inside the LDP and elsewhere (primarily in the Your Party and People's Life First). If they blow up the DPJ in order to run in the next election as a rump centrist party ready to join a conservative coalition, the rump may be just the part of the body where they will find themselves post-election.

Everything I have written about the DPJ, including the crazy stuff (Link) has been based upon the premise that the party leadership is unified in wishing the party to survive -- which, I hope the reader agrees, is not an unreasonable assumption. However, if the DPJ conservatives dream, as Maehara is dreaming, of a realignment along ideological lines, then the DPJ is already gone.

Noda, Maehara, Diet Affairs Chairman Yamanoi Kazunori, Minister of Foreign Affairs Gemba Koichiro and Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications Tarutoko Shinji are all Matsushita grads (click here for the full J-list of all 37 members of Diet who are alumni of the Institute). If they have talked themselves into rebelling against themselves, then I hope the Matsushita Institute had a little Hogwarts in it -- for it will take magic to survive the aftermath. The voters of Chiba District #4, the House of Representatives district with the highest population and thus the least enfranchised electorate, may not take kindly to their representative, a certain Mr. Noda Yoshihiko, selling them out in order to run on a neo-liberal platform and a prayer that his neo-liberal counterparts in the LDP jump ship to join him in a new conservative alliance.

One can be too smart by half.

DPJ Secretary-General Koshi'ishi Azuma is likely in a state of shock. If all that is purported to be true is true, then he fought for Noda's reelection as party leader only to be rewarded with a knee-capping.

Getting to "No"

Oh for a screen capture of that map!

Bugger NHK for putting up online only the intro and the signoff of their flagship 7 o'clock news program, rather than the whole program -- even if it would be only for one day!

As it is I only could watch the ominous intro of the flag of the People's Republic of China blending into images of China's most threatening new military hardware, including the reconstructed Varyag aircraft carrier...



...in a report on President Barack Obama's visit to Australia and the announcement of a rotating deployment of up to 2,500 Marines to Darwin.

After the report from Australia on the summit meeting, the speech before the parliament and the visit to Darwin, announcer Takeda Shin'ichi walked over to the big wall of screens for the analysis portion of the segment. "So why Darwin, Australia?" he began.

On the big screen was an image of East Asia, with ripples spreading out from the contours of China. "Here is a map," he continued, "of the ranges of Chinese missiles. As you can see inside the limits is most of Japan, including Okinawa. Guam is also inside the range of the missiles."

"But here," he interjected, pointing at northern Australia, "is still outside the range of China's missiles. And here is Darwin," he said, pointing to the city.

Now there is nothing particularly new in the information NHK provided. However, it was the first time in memory that the 7 o'clock evening newscast, Japan's most watched news program, explicitly sought to undermine the 2006 Japan-U.S. Roadmap for Realignment of U.S. Marines forces. Though the thought was unstated, the clear inference from the presentation was that the fraught move of some of the Marines currently based on Okinawa to Guam and the construction of a replacement facility for Futenma in the town of Henoko were vain endeavors, since the redeployed forces would still be in Chinese missile range. While U.S. military planners may deny that the Darwin deployment is specifically tied to Chinese missile capabilities, that mattered little to the NHK producers.

Now, the Japanese public is about as far from stupid as one can get. If NHK puts up a map with Okinawa and Guam inside the range of Chinese missiles, and hears about the U.S. semi-basing Marines outside the range of the missiles, the public will ask, "Then what the heck are we doing knocking heads with the Okinawans over the construction of the Henoko base and what-is-more paying through the nose for a partial move of Marines to Guam, when the strategic vulnerability of these forces remains the same?"

One could be cautioned that one should not read too much into a single news broadcast. Still, when NHK's News 7 uses a sledgehammer to present a particular viewpoint on the deployment of U.S. Marines to Australia, it indicates a change is in the offing over the seemingly neverending merry-go-round over Futenma-to-Henoko -- that it is not just that the redeployment of forces is damned unfair to the Okinawans but that the redeployment might also be pointless.

A pivotal first step in the public sphere in the direction of "let us put an end to this farce."

Further Cracks in the Levee

In a decision taking one more chip out of the edifice of power that thwarted the popular will, inflated the importance of rural votes and helped perpetuate rule by the Liberal Democratic Party, Hiroshima High Court judge Hirota Satoshi has found that differences in the size of voting age populations inside House of Representives districts leading to dilutions of voting strengths greater than two-to-one are unconstitutional. While Hirota ruled against the plaintiff, a Hiroshima Prefecture man whose own voting district in the August 2009 elections has a voting age population 1.47 times larger than the least populated district the nation (Kochi District #3) he did state a seemingly obvious but heretofore ignored principle:

"It is difficult to think that without any (specific) constitutional sanction, a single voter living in a least populated district gets two votes or, conversely, that two voters in a high population district get only one vote."

Slowly, slowly the courts have been chipping away at the vast disparities that exist in voting strengths, starting with the first decision in December 1972 that found unconstitutional a difference of greater than 4.99 in voting strengths. The informal standard since 1990 has been anything greater than 2.99 is unconstitutional, challenges of a 2.0 standard having failed in 1996, 2000 and 2005.

For those who believe in the wisdom of the people, particularly a highly educated people with a general neutrality towards religious or other ideologies, the court's timidity heretofore in giving the people their constitutionally guaranteed equal voice in how they are governed has been an infuriating and demoralizing spectacle. With this ruling, there is hope, albeit a late one that Japan's stumbling responses to the decay of the last 20 years will come to an end.

The Bust Up

TH - Hashimoto. I always thought it would be Hiranuma.
MC - It's the smart move. Hashimoto was always smarter.

So it begins.

Hashimoto issues call to create new party
The Japan Times

By Setsuko Kamiya, Staff Writer - Wednesday, July 2, 2008 - Former Kochi Gov. Daijiro Hashimoto said Tuesday he will form a political group with an eye to creating a new political party that will work to decentralize governmental power.

Hashimoto, a half brother of the late Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto said he hopes to launch the new party in time for the next Lower House election.

"People's lives do not exist in the Nagata-cho or Kasumigaseki districts," said Hashimoto, referring to the neighborhoods where the Diet and the government bureaucracy are situated. "They exist in the local communities. This system where the central government controls everything needs to be exterminated."

Hashimoto said his policy plan works to transfer more tax revenue and administrative power to local governments while leaving responsibility for international affairs and national security in the hands of the central government. He also said the central government should shape the policies for ensuring people's livelihoods and boosting economic growth...

Now the let's-make-a-deal, so-it's policy-you-wants free-for-all starts.

Hiranuma Takeo, the Sith Lord of Japanese politics, should be kicking himself with a booted foot. His announcement of the formation of a new party, long threatened, was supposed to trigger the avalanche of realignment.

Instead, he gets pipped by Hashimoto Daijirō, one of the most consistently popular politicians around, pushing for deregulation--a subject which he, a former governor, actually cares about--unlike some commissions we could mention.

What a Hashimoto-led party lacks in strength right now it can more than make up in sense later. From all indications, Hashimoto understands decentralization, both why it is necessary and how it should be done.

Whether sensible policies sensibly carried out can be an electoral winner is a question. The national injury sob story of the revisionist right tugs at the heartstrings of persons on either side of the urban vs. rural divide, the most obvious social division in the archipelago. It has a proven track record as a vote-getter on the national scale.

For at least today, however, the "Hiranuma Conservative Party" spectre has to cede the camera to a less maudlin political project. If the announcement of the formation of Hiranuma's party comes too soon after this announcement, it could even be portrayed as a "rushed response to the Hashimoto challenge."

Hiranuma, who has been noodling about in round after round of ryotei politics, discussing realignment with Japan New Party leader Watanuki Tamisuke and New Daichi Party leader Suzuki Muneo over very expensive meals in exclusive traditional eateries, has blown his chance to be the first out of the blocks.

Then again, a person with an obvious contempt for so many would hardly understand the concept of product rollout and the importance of being first-to-market, now would he?

Later - Oh darn. Tobias Harris of Observing Japan has been bitten by the classic American film bug too.

A Rude Question About A Dirty Business

Anyone heard anything from Sentaku recently, the non-partisan political movement that was to reform Japanese politics from the ground up, giving people a real choice?

Me neither.

Later - Yes, I can see that Kitagawa Masayasu had a twenty-nine minute long meeting with the Prime Minister last Tuesday. However, that meeting was about cleaning up the environment (Environment Minister Kamoshita Ichirō sat in on the meeting) -- nothing about cleaning up politics

Politics At the Summer Break – A Ceux Qui Nous Ont Offensés

Japanese politics is like politics in other advanced, media-drenched societies: a daily dose of nonsense and puffery, effrontery and speculation, tempests-in-teacups posturing and sputtering flaring-ups.

However, beneath the mounds of foamy political effluent, one can perhaps discern some solid ground:

Division Rules –

Both the Liberal Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Japan have internal divisions as deep and raw as the divisions between the two parties. In economics each party has its cabal of liberal internationalists, its conservative pro-big business autarkists and its maudlin semi- or full socialists. In international relations, there are big nation internationalists, small nation internationalists, big power enthusiasts and semi-isolationists. In social policy there are Europhile social democrats, American-style neo-libertarians and Meiji State nativists.

The problem is not the breadth of the ideological spectrum in each party, however: a national, broad-based party must necessarily have a multiplicity of political drivers inside it. Nagata-chō's problem is that for every issue the membership of the Diet is divided into multiple ideological camps, each of which has fewer than 50% of the Diet as its members. Most commentators speak of realignment (saihen) as being inevitable, yet no one group holds a majority or even a dominant position.

Former Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichirō managed to cobble together a dominant position within the LDP by convincing both economic liberals and nationalist-chauvinist elements that he was their champion. Abe Shinzō and Fukuda Yasuo have not been able to perform a similar trick—to the detriment of their party's unity, electoral chances and ability to stare down the DPJ.

Wait-and-See –

Since no ideological group can dominate, the basic instinct of the political classes is to postpone the inevitable. "The Study Group Rush" as the Nihon Keizai Shimbun calls it, the sudden explosion in the number of single issue groups with memberships that cross factional and party boundaries, is symptomatic of a constipated political system. Ideology has become a hobby one pursues as a private diversion with like-minded other members of the Diet outside of chambers. Inside the Diet chambers, with rare, inevitably unprincipled exceptions, Diet members are biding their time, voting the party line.

Everyone knows that if the Democratic Party of Japan manages to seize power in the next election -- a long shot possibility -- the Liberal Democratic Party will blow apart. Every LDP member also knows that if he or she jumps the gun, leaving the party now to run as an independent, he or she would be committing electoral suicide. Against a Democratic Party challenger, the escapee from the LDP will go unto his or her personal Waterloo.

So everyone in the ruling coalition is sitting, head bowed, looking at the back of his or her hands, waiting for the next election.

Structural Advantage to Dishonesty -

In a representative democracy, dishonesty and gross bigotry can prevail in the short run. In the long run, however, the parties and individual politicians will tend to fall into a default position of honesty and liberal rule - as hypocrisies are exposed and unsound policies blow up in faces of their authors, dishonesty become a high maintenance, energy-sapping stance.

However, in an unrepresentative democracy, lies and unsound policies take on lives of their own, their existences prolonged beyond all standard measures of usefulness by the support of privileged interest groups.

Japan is one such unrepresentative democracy, where the parceling out of representation in the Diet reflects the population distributions of 40 years ago--or even earlier. Diet members and their districts live in anachronistic symbiotic relationships, the Diet member delivering largesse to clients in the diminished bailiwick and these clients delivering in return their supercharged votes.

Any individual or party wishing to interrupt the cycle of elections and budget allocations must either restructure the system or supersede it. Since sitting Diet members control the rules under which their own districts are drawn and oversee the redistricting procedure, remedies to electoral inequality have, rather unsurprisingly, not been forthcoming. If this is the case, then the only path to electoral success is to tailor one's every utterance and action to surpassing your opponent in flattering the over-represented voter.

Tobias Harris has written eloquently and in admirable detail about the Democratic Party's ongoing struggle over how far it should go in pandering to the voters in rural areas. I would differ with Mr. Harris's depiction of the situation only in his assessment of Maehara Seiji's rebellion. Mr. Harris sees Maehara's denunciation of his party's making impossible-to-keep promises as a misguided attachment to principles. I would condemn it more forcefully as plain vanilla stupidity: Maehara is attacking DPJ Party Leader Ozawa Ichirō for the crime of trying to make the system work to the advantage of Democratic Party of Japan.

Maehara is taking aim at the wrong target and in the wrong sequence. The problem is the system, not Ozawa. That Ozawa is lying through his teeth, cozying up to the most irresponsible of fiscal inanities, is a function of the game board on which he must play. In order to win enough seats to topple the ruling coalition the DPJ has to beat the LDP at its own game in the rural districts. Actually keeping any of the promises made to the LDP's clients is a problem for the future, not now. The DPJ must outbid the LDP, seize power, then blow off the rural districts -- in that order.

So for the foreseeable future it may be hard to see the difference between the white hats and the black hats. All members of the political order will be lying, lying, lying and then lying some more. No surprise here -- the system rewards those able to pull off the most dishonest, two-faced, logically inconsistent performance possible.

Just who is who -- and who won -- will only be clear after the election, as the victors take to the acts of governing and crafting legislation.

So it might be good to forget what is in the manifestos for a while.

Not Content Within the Confines of a Little Pond, Evidently

Damn, is she in a hurry.

Former Environment and briefly Defense Minister Koike Yuriko (literally "Little Pond Lily Girl") --whose possible candidacy for the prime ministership has been labeled a media fantasy by former Prime Minister Mori Yoshirō -- seems nevertheless to be preparing for a possible sloughing off the LDP in yet another immaculate political ecdysis*.

Koike, whose career has given "rapid shifts of party allegiance in Japanese politics" a whole new meaning, is doing an astoundingly rapid build out of the interesting meeting of April 9 where she dined with former Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichirō, Motegi Toshimitsu and others--the precursor of the projected monthly meetings being organized by former Toyota Chairman Okuda Hiroshi .

Last night, following a speech on the environment, Koike had a very interesting comment about her "buddies" (nakama) that bears translation:

私は日本新党出身なので自民党にも民主党にも仲間がおり、分かれていても日本を変えなければならないという方向性は同じ。大人の対応ができるような舞台回しの役割を果たせれば...

"Me, I'm originally from the Japan New Party. I have buddies in the LDP and the DPJ. Though we are apart, we are pointed in the same direction: we must change Japan. If we fulfill our role turning of events around (butai mawashi) in the manner of adults, like we know how to do..."

She also purportedly complimented her former colleagues as individuals who could put aside political gamesmanship (seikyoku) in favor what is good for the nation.

The Japan New Party...hmmmm...oh, the memories...an LDP-busting center-left party that snatched 35 seats in the historic July 1993 House of Representatives election, propelling its leader Hosokawa Morihiro into the prime ministership and pulling Koike out of the sleepy political parking lot that was the House of Councillors.

Anybody of that party still around, now that Hosokawa has switched his energies over to the production of ceramics?

Well, let uss ssssseeeee here.

There is Koike and

Motegi (LDP) who is the chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Health, Labour and Welfare

and, oh

Minister of the Environment Kamoshita Ichirō (LDP)
Special Advisor the Prime Minister Itō Tatsuya (LDP)
former Democratic Party Leader Maehara Seiji
Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Audit and Oversight of the Administration Edano Yukio (DPJ)
Speaker of the House of Councillors Eda Satsuki (DPJ - currently in suspension)...

Looks like a decent bunch of well-respected centrists whose loyalty to their respective party leaders is...uncertain?

Couple this with former Prime Minister Koizumi having purportedly "ants in his pants" (oshiri ga muzu muzu shite iru)--at least according to Koike (no tittering from the peanut gallery, please) about the way his successors have mishandled reform--I would not be too sure that Koizumi will be willing to help out the LDP candidate in the Yamaguchi #2 election.

[That the kind of help several in the LDP want Koizumi to extend is to become the lightning rod for anger at the start of the automatic pension deductions for elder care--at a time when the government is underpaying many seniors through having lost track of their pension accounts--is another reason I think it unlikely he will trek on down to the Iwakuni area this week.]

I would also, if I were in a position of power in the LDP right now, be very suspicious of Koizumi's advice. I would also not be taking at face value the nodding agreement of Koizumi fellow travelers Nakagawa Hidenao and Takebe Tsutomu that passing the gasoline tax bill using the override provision is a simply smashing idea.

----------------------------------------------------
* The use of the word "ecdysis" in this post is dedicated to Coco Masters's use of the word "micturition" in a TIME general interest article on Japan last week.

Telegraphing Realignment Or Just Hanging Out?

If you are infatuated with, and some people are, the idea that the Liberal Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Japan are destined to sort themselves out into ideologically coherent parties, with reformers banding together into a new political force--then you are going to love the new meeting of minds being set up by Special Advisor to the Cabinet Okuda Hiroshi, the former chairman of Toyota Motors.

According to today's Nihon Keizai Shimbun, sometime after the Golden Week holidays a gang of folks will start getting together on a regular (teikiteki) basis to talk about...well, gosh, what could they be talking about?

From the LDP
Former Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichirō
Former Minister of Defense/the Environment Koike Yuriko
Former McKinsey consultant and Harvard M.A. holder Motegi Toshimitsu
Tōdai Law graduate and former aide to U.S. Senator Willian Roth Hayashi Yoshimasa
Tōdai Law graduate and holder of an M.A. from the Maryland School of Public Policy Nishimura Yasutoshi

(Nota Bene - are we talking considerable experience in either work or study abroad here, or what?)

From the DPJ
Former Party Leader Maehara Seiji
Tōdai Law graduate and the Socialist Party's go-to guy on legal issues Sengoku Yoshito
Deputy Policy Research Council Chairman Fukuyama Tetsurō
Former Deputy Secretary-General Genba Kōichirō

(Maehara, Fukuyama and Genba are all products of the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management political finishing school)

From the corporate sector
Rakuten founder Mikitani Hiroshi

and others.

I ask again, what would these folks have to talk about, meeting on a regular basis?

For some odd reason I think that neither "above all loyalty to party or one's organization" or "in order to make Japan great again we must lead a revival of traditional values" will be major themes.

Earth Angel Watch

Hmmmm...

Though the Lionheart, the honorary chairman, did not show up for the inaugural meeting of the "Parliamentary League to Achieve the Goals of the Kyoto Protocol" (Kyōto Giteisho Mokuhyō Tassei Giin Renmei) former LDP Secretary-General Nakagawa Hidenao ("Big Nakagawa") and a bevvy of assassins (former Minister of the Environment Koike Yuriko; former State Minister for Gender Equality and Social Affairs Inoguchi Kuniko) did.

A bevvy of assassins and former Komeitō leader Hamayotsu Toshiko.

And Arai "The Grocer Parliamentarian" Jun'ichirō - a Koizumi Kid and the chairman of the Waseda Shōtengai Association. Hard as it may be to believe, Arai has a shelf-full of urban environmental improvement awards at home.

An interesting collection of folks.

I wonder what Koizumi Jun'ichirō, Big Nakagawa (Nakagawa the Sane) and Koike (the new league's secretary-general) think they will be able to do to encourage the realization of the protocol's difficult-to-achieve goals for Japan.

Or whom they think their opponents are.

And I ask because, in my recollection, the Lionheart is not a big joiner of groups...

The Choice

Over at GlobalTalk 21, Okumura Jun explores the Sentaku movement in detail.

I would only wish to underline two points touched upon in Okumura-san's impressive review of the goals and attributes of this two-headed (local government and central government) political reform organization.

The first is the existential point: if local government officials and the younger generation of Liberal Democratic Party and Democratic Party of Japan members in the Diet feel it necessary to form an organization that has a goal of pressuring the party leadership to produce meaningful policy manifestos--then local government officials and the younger generation of LDP and DPJ members have no confidence in the standard operating procedures of the parties as regards the production of meaningful manifestos.

Manifestos, yes...meaningful ones, no.

As for what "meaningful" might mean in a concrete sense, it probably means (gosh I hope it does) manifestos that recognize the necessity for tradeoffs and sacrifice--that do not, as the famous joke about the idiot manager's recommendation says, "focus our attention and energy across the board."

The second point is regarding the relative youth of the participants. While the principle of "the lower the number of elections to the Diet, the more untainted the politician" may be a good rule of thumb (depressing as it may be) such a rule may not hold up under scrutiny. Unless the Sentaku membership declares in advance from what pedestal it intends to address the excluded elder statesmen of both the major parties, I do not predict respect from the press.

Jump clear of plane, pull ripcord

Aside from being members of the Diet, what do Shimamuro Hakubun, Obuchi Yūko, Kosaka Kenji, Okada Katsuya, Kawaguchi Yoriko, Matsubara Jin, Hashimoto Taku, Ōsaka Seiji, Seko Hiroshige, Katayama Satsuki, Itokawa Masaaki, Noda Seiko and Ishihara Nobuteru have in commmon?

Nothing that I can tell...except that they all were in attendance today when the non-partisan political group Sentaku held its first meeting for interested Diet members.

Here is the list of the 107 attendees.

In attendance were:

51 Diet members from the LDP
47 from the DPJ
8 from the Komeito
1 from the Japan New Party

The attendees each knew why he or she was at the meeting. Unfortunately, as they looked around the room, they were probably wondering what the heck all these other Diet members were doing at the meeting.

If a word describes the membership of this club, "exclusive" is not it.

To be fair, a glance at the list reveals some patterns. The attendees listed tend toward the younger end of the political scale, with most of those in attendance in their fifties and forties. Very few attendees seem to be from the party bloc seats--which make sense as the Diet members from the blocs owe their seats to their party affiliation...and folks who owe their seats to their parties would be pushing the envelope if they were to be seen actively participating in a non-partisan group whose purpose is to "cleanse" (sentaku - 洗濯) politics and offer real "choice" (sentaku - 選択）。

The number of inherited seatholders--members who can hold on to their seats whether the leadership likes them or not--seems also fairly heavy.

Now I must confess...I have had the hardest time taking seriously a political movement whose name is a pun...or at least a tortured homophone. I must admit this first meeting was rather well attended.

Let us see how they do with the next one.

On the 9 p.m. NHK News, after the report on the meeting, the anchor asked her co-anchor, "All these cross-party study groups and associations forming, what could it mean?"

Normally, this is the co-anchor's cue to explain the world for us stupid people...but unbelievably, he did not answer the question.

He just let it hang there in the void.

A rhetorical question? On NHK? Could it be possible?