Let Me Tell You How It Will Be

On January 6 of this year, I published the first of my rants about Abenomics. The final imprecation in my screed went like this:

Abenomics is grand larceny. It takes, in the form of the taxes and the value inherent in the yen, money from the people and gives it to the supporters of the Liberal Democratic Party.

I wish I were wrong about this but I am not.

Indeed, Abenomics thinking has so infected governance that economic decisions taken before Abe Shinzo became prime minister are now subject to it:

Abe poised to OK tax hike
The Yomiuri Shimbun

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has nearly resolved to raise the consumption tax rate from 5 percent to 8 percent in April as initially planned, government sources said Wednesday.

The tax hike will be complemented by a set of pump-priming measures worth about ¥5 trillion—equivalent to about two-thirds of the revenue anticipated from the three percentage-point increase—to prevent the economy, which has been gradually improving, from taking a downturn due to the higher tax.

The economy-boosting measures will be made possible through such steps as drafting a supplementary budget for the current fiscal year and a regular annual budget for fiscal 2014 in a manner that will enable each to complement the other. This will also be combined with tax system revisions that will primarily feature tax reductions, according to the sources.

The prime minister will likely make a final decision about the envisaged tax increase after analyzing the Bank of Japan’s quarterly survey of short-term business outlook for September. The central bank will announce the results of the Tankan business confidence survey on Oct. 1. Immediately after arriving at a final conclusion on the matter, Abe is expected to hold a press conference to explain why the consumption tax rate must be raised and unveil the new economy-boosting package....

(Link)

Raise a regressive tax on everyone's purchases to supposedly shore up the finances of everyone's health and pension systems. Fine. Raid that store of funds before they have even been collected and spend 2/3rds of it on stimulus measures -- the apportionment of which I am sure will not be affected by politics. In the seemingly unlikely possibility one cannot find enough pork barrel projects to fund, replace increased spending with reduced revenues, i.e., tax cuts, which I am also sure will not be influenced by lobbying or votes-for-perks quid pro quos with industry favorites or major support organizations.

It is not impossible that a government can spend and invest the people's money in a fashion generating a higher rate of return than if the people were left to make random, desires-based decisions on their own. Singapore and its People's Action Party government can reasonably claim to such exalted and enlightened taxation and spending policies.

The ruling party of this blessed land, however, is the LDP -- a party that despite numerous attempts at internal reform and new corporate outreach is still enmeshed in ties with the dregs of the economy -- the tax avoiders, the deadbeat borrowers, the uncompetitive producers, the protected industries and entire sectors (new road construction) that have no economic reason for existence.

The LDP can be entrusted to spend the 2/3rds of the money that was supposed to be keeping the pension and health systems afloat, this in order to keep Mr. Abe's economic program, which is really a vote buying scheme, chugging along another year?

Ha, ha, ha, ha.

Really? That's the proposal?

No seriously, that's the proposal?

Later - The Tokyo Metropolitan District's hometown newspaper this morning presents pretty much the same take on the mooted Abe administration plan: "Obscuring the goal of protecting social welfare" (Kasumu shakai hosho mokuteki -- Link - J).

Later still - A potential need to clue in  means an opportunity afforded for a semi-gratuitous link to Georgia Harrison and Eric Clapton in Tokyo.

If Only I Were Alone

I do not want to be a naked East African Plains ape, waving his digits frantically, hooting in desperation that Abe Shinzo and his fellow travelers are a bunch of bad seeds kiting several hundred billion yen's worth of bad checks (Link) in order to buy July's House of Councillors election, at which point full-blown Abezania will be loosed upon this sadly scarred, dear little blue-green planet.

Seriously, who wants to be just like everybody else?

Top panel: [sound of an internal combustion engine - Abe Shinzo, in hard hat, driving an open cab vehicle, passing a construction worker operating a jackhammer]
Inscription inside a shining sun reads, "Making our way toward the revival of Japan."

Bottom panel: [wide view of Abe in road paving vehicle, flattening a path up a mountain topped with a flag reading, "House of Councillors election"]
"Or so they say..."

Sidebar: "Headed where?" (Doko ni mukete)

From the same printing of my local dead trees news service, a poem by a reader:

美しい
日本にお金
撒くと言う

Utsukushii
Nihon ni okane
Maku to iu

They say they'll sprinkle
money all over
beautiful Japan

"Toward a Beautiful Country" (Utsukushii kuni e) made not a jot of sense when Abe-san first foisted the idea upon us back in 2006-7 (Link) -- as what was on offer was not beautiful, save for those of an atavistic aesthetic.

From the looks of it, Abe's conceptualization of Beauty is still a source of sardonic amusement.

Of course, Beautiful Country Japan is not alone now. Abe 2.0 has found its disputable twin: "Japan's Beautiful Seas." (Link)

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

Image and senryu courtesy the Tokyo Shimbun, morning edition of 12 January 2013.

After the Storm

A monstrous typhoon has passed through the country. A few unfortunates lost their lives; many more people suffered injuries, several dozen lost their homes. The power went out in many places as wires ripped from their moorings. Most of the country's jets were grounded; most of the express train runs were cancelled. Yet much of the country's transportation and distribution network still functioned, despite the heavy rain and the wind. A staggering percentage of the labor force commuted work. Television crews, sent out to document the projected devastation, had little to capture in the way of storm dramatic storm damage. The slathering of the coastlines and riverways in concrete, the aesthetically asinine replacement of wood frame houses and public buildings with steel-framed, ceramic tile encased strongholds, lamented often enough here, seems to have preserved the populace from suffering catastrophic losses.

As, I suppose, they were designed to do.

Would it not be ironic that in the aftermath of the defeat of the Liberal Democratic Party, whose passionate intertwining with the construction sector led to the birthing of uncounted thousands of public works projects costing uncountable trillions of yen transforming Japan into a fortress against nature, leading to the party's being shackled to reputation of environmental and fiscal nihilism -- that the purportedly wasteful and pointless flood-control and wave-action defenses actually turned out to be crucial to beat back rising seas and supertyphoons?

That Japan, courtesy the LDP, would turn out to be the only country prepared for the consequences of climate change?

I Am the Voice of the Zaikai...Pay Heed To Me

"I find you unworthy."

I had though that yesterday morning's rushed Cabinet Decision (kakugi kettei) endorsing the Prime Minister's plan to have the proceeds from gasoline taxes shifted from road construction to the general fund in 2009 would supply sufficient political cover for the ruling coalition as it used its two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives to override the House of Councillors's rejection of the 10 year, 59 trillion yen road construction bill.

Evidently the editors of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the readers and leaders of conservative corporate opinion (and no friends of the Democratic Party of Japan, believe you me) were nevertheless unimpressed by the Cabinet's tail-covering exercise:

A spineless conversion to the general fund is impermissible
May 14, 2008

The Road Financing Special Measures bill, which retains for 10 years the special tax revenues for road construction, has been passed by the House of Representatives through use of the two-thirds majority. It has now become law. The law clearly contradicts the stated policy of Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo who promises to switch the full amount to general fund in fiscal year 2009. Having forcibly passed a bill as is without correcting it is deplorable...

The Prime Minister and the Cabinet were all smiles after the override vote...but with every victory, this impatient and innumerate ruling coalition loses more and more support.

What drives them to win the battles but lose the war?

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like

In the first panel of the cartoon Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo, clad in tennis wear, is preparing to serve. From outside the panel come catcalls and taunts. "Go ahead, show us what you've got! C'mon, you aren't scaring anybody."

Fukuda rears back, tosses the ball in the air, and unleashes a terrific serve.

The ball come zinging back at him as if on fire. He only just ducks down in time.

The catcalls continue, "Oh, that was brilliant! Why don't you try it again?"

Fukuda again rears back, launching an even more powerful serve.

The ball comes sizzling back, clocking Fukuda in the forehead and knocking his glasses askew.

"Whooopeee! Come on, serve it for real this time! Hit it with all you've got!"

Readjusting his somewhat bent glasses, and wiping the sweat from his forehead, Fukuda rears back even further and unleashes a monstrous serve--that comes back like a bullet, knocking him to the ground.

It is then that the frame pulls back, revealing the whole tennis court. Ozawa Ichirō, Hatoyama Yukio and Kan Naoto are all on the other side of the net, their rackets down by their sides, shouting encouragement to the PM. Ozawa leads the jeers, yelling, "Oh, please, please; one more time. That was awesome...of course, whenever you're ready to stop serving against the back wall and instead hit a ball in our direction, that would be great too!"

* * *

One would think that after all the self-inflicted wounds and humiliations over the last few months, the PM and the ruling coalition would have learned a simple lesson: get the ball out of your side of the court. For every issue, the PM and the ruling coalition have found themselves incapable of getting the ball to drop in the Democratic Party of Japan's side, forcing the DPJ and its leaders to actually do something other than just stand around shouting imprecations.

Unbelievably, it is about to happen again. On May 12, the sixty day limit on the road construction bill will expire. It will become possible for the ruling coalition to pass the bill using its two thirds majority in the House of Representatives.

Unfortunately the road construction bill coming up for override is not the road construction bill the Fukuda government wants. The bill that is up for reapproval is a public relations nightmare, an execrable promise of a decade-long matsuri of pork.

"But you know," the DPJ is saying with a huge grin on its face, "You guys passed it once already. Two months ago you thought this was an absolutely fabulous, absolutely essential bill. And you voted for it. Surely you could not have changed your minds about this bill in just two months! That would be irresponsible and unserious--and you are the serious, responsible party! Everyone knows that. So override. Pass this monstrous bill. We dare you. We double dare you."

And the PM and the ruling coalition leadership are simply stunned. They launched a laughingstock of a bill--an absurdity--over to the opposition-led House of Councillors, daring them to leave it alone--only to see their own howling creation land right at their feet, untouched and unchanged, for them to either reject (and won't that look smart--voting for a bill only to reject it only two months later) or pass using the override provision, inviting the public to go ballistic with righteous indignation.

Leaving the PM and the leadership to wonder, "How is it possible the ball is back in our court, AGAIN?"

Funny things happen when you don't play with others, choosing instead to play with yourself.


Later - We may be looking at game, set and match.

Tobias Harris notes that a snap poll by The Asahi Shimbun finds the Fukuda Cabinet's support level at a mere 20%.

Now the Tokyo Shimbun has come out with a rival poll finding support for the Cabinet at 19.8%--which, the paper, bless its leftist little heart, is calling "a support level of only 19%".

Guess folks might be upset that gasoline station owners raised prices a nice round 30 yen per liter yesterday?

(No, no, it is not price gouging to raise fuel prices 30 yen per liter during Golden Week when the tax being revived is only 25 yen per liter. Perish the thought.)

Alls Hell That Starts In Disarray

Once again without a single non-Communist member of the opposition in the chamber, the LDP-New Komeitō ruling coalition has used its supermajority in the House of Representatives to vote for a revival of the temporary gasoline levy.

One cannot imagine that the scenes of gasoline distributorships shutting down mid-afternoon in response to the vote in the House of Representatives will play too well on the late night, non-NHK networks--nor that the new, higher prices tomorrow will be greeted with cheers from the public.

So where do we go from here?

Not to censure, at least not immediately.

Ozawa Ichirō has moved his marker regarding the possibility of the House of Councillors censuring the Prime Minister. Rather than censure the PM for using an Article 59 override to force a reapplication of the temporary gasoline levy, Ozawa will be "keeping an eye on the road construction bill" -- i.e., the 10 year, 59 trillion yen, truly grotesque testing of the public's patience that is the next bill up for the override treatment.

The PM has promised to put the revenues from the gasoline tax go into the general fund as of next year. Unfortunately, the PM's wish is not included in the current language of the road construction bill.

This would seem to create an interesting procedural mess.

Opening up the road construction bill and rewriting it in joint committee would be one solution. Unfortunately, convening an interparliamentary committee it is not possible without at least a sister bill having been passed by the House of Councillors.

That has not happened. It will not happen.

Alteration of the legislation already passed by the House of Representatives will be, in terms of the rules, the submission of a brand new bill.

However, unless the House of Representatives votes down its own 10 year, 59 trillion bill first, the House of Representatives will be on record--as far as I can tell--as having sent to the House of Councillors two mutually contradictory bills on a single subject.

Not exactly a place where anyone wants to be.

Submitting a bill reflecting the Prime Minister's plan to move revenues to the general fund--i.e., a brand new bill--will also start the 60 day override clock all over again.

Now a clock starting in the first week of May would set the Diet up for an override in early July...which is something the PM's people and the ruling coalition would probably want to avoid given that would put a loud battle about an incredibly important bill right smack dab in the middle of the Toyako Summit--the most historic, important and environmentally correct summit ever™!

As for what the DPJ's response to today's events will be, it looks like going forward with the threatened censure motion will be a tough call. It is not necessarily significant that the PM can ignore the censure motion--the point all the newspapers harp on. The core issue is that a censure motion could be perceived as a waste of time.

Not showing up for votes--boycotting the Diet--is perfectly acceptable political theater with a long and illustrious history. Not showing up challenges the ruling party to push forward legislation using the rules of the Diet and its majority.

A censure motion, however, will be under the operational control of the opposition. The Democratic Party House of Councillors Diet Measures Chairman will have to go to Speaker Eda Satsuki and the other opposition parties to instigate the assembling of a quorum of the House of Councillors for an act that has 1) no effect as law and 2) no basis in law.

The calendar of the House of Councillors is the DPJ's ball of string--to play with or not depending on the party's reading of the mood of a public pissed off at new taxes and automatic deductions.

The public may not be in the mood for meaningless gestures--expecially ones engaged in by those living off the public purse.

Tricky thing, the public mood, what?

The Only Game in Town

You must play with the hand that has been dealt you.

On April 29, a national holiday (the miserably named Shōwa Day--as if the reign of the Shōwa Emperor in and of itself was a cause for celebration) the sixty day time limit passes for the House of Councillors to take action on the bill renewing the gasoline tax. Okumura Jun has argued convincingly that the Prime Minister and the rest of the LDP grand pooh-bahs have enough carrots and sticks at their disposal to strong arm enough Representatives into reimposing the 24 yen per liter levy.

But to what end?

If the legislation reimposing the tax were facilitating the realization of the plan the Prime Minister outlined on March 27, then all the LDP members in the House of Representatives, even ones from the five prefectures whose governors refused to put themselves on the record as demanding a reinstatement of the gasoline tax, would fall into line.

Unfortunately, the Prime Minister's plan is not the plan that is on the table.

What is on the table, set up for passage using the override provision in May, is the obscene 10 year, 59 trillion yen plan, with all the tax revenues getting sucked into road construction.

Would a Representative from let us say Kanagawa Prefecture, represented in the Diet by both Koizumi Jun'ichirō and Kōno Tarō and with a governor who does not support the gas tax renewal, vote for the reimposition of a tax without knowing whether he or she is voting for fiscal support of the Prime Minister's "one year and out" plan or for the road tribe's multi-year road construction-hogfest?

Would you, in light of the possibility of a snap election sooner rather than later, choose to trust Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo's assurances that "no, no, the Road Tribe's plan is not the operative plan, even though it is currently the only game in town. It is my plan that you are voting to support" -- given how well he has pushed forward reform in general since he became Prime Minister and how well he has kept his other vows so far?

Well would you?

The Fukuda Future - Into The Unknowable

Over at Global Talk 21, Okumura Jun posts a brilliant counterargument to my forecasts of doom for the gasoline levy and the road construction plan.

I think both our assessments are correct.

Okumura-san assumes that factions still behave like factions; that people learn from their mistakes; and that even the holders of LDP party posts can count to three.

I believe that the factions are fictions; that the present LDP leadership has learned nothing in eight months of living with an opposition in charge of the House of Councillors; and no one in the LDP can count to three, or six or any multiple of three thereof.

Both are a reasonable set of assumptions, fully supported by historical precedent and simple logic.

Holding one set or the other as true, however, predetermines one's predictions.
------------------------------------------------

When Fukuda Yasuo became Prime Minister in September 2007, most observers assumed that that the leaders of the ruling coalition could perform a pair of simple tasks:

1) They could count to 60

and

2) They understood the concept "three to six years"

The performance of the first task would give ruling coalition leaders the ability to look at a calendar, find a red letter date by which a certain bill would have to be passed, then count backward to the date by which the House of Representatives would absolutely, positively have to pass the bill. The sixty day span is the amount of time the House of Representatives must wait for action by the House of Councillors on a bill before the House of Representatives can pass the bill using the two-thirds majority override power outlined in Article 59 of the Constitution.

The performance of the second task would give ruling coalition leaders the ability to look a multi-year calendar and understand the immense span of days stretching out before them before they could hope to win enough seats in a House of Councillors election to return the Diet to its familiar rhythms -- a state of legislative tyranny so ingrained into the body politic that the press, without reflection or irony, refers to its restitution as seijōka (正常化) - "normalization". Given that the next opportunity to overthrow opposition control of the House of Councillors is not until either 2010 (a marginal opportunity due to the large number of seats the LDP will be defending) or 2013 (far more likely scenario, given that the DPJ will be defending its 2007 gains) even the most obtuse and/or militant member of the LDP hierarchy would understand that the coalition would have to find a way to share power with Ozawa Ichirō and the DPJ.

These two basic assumptions were indeed the cruxes of the argument for Fukuda Yasuo's election as the president of the LDP. Only the managerial, mild-mannered and colorless Fukuda could play the game of seemingly abnegating himself and the LDP before the DPJ, flattering Ozawa's mighty ego, and, at the same time, keep legislation moving on track toward passage using the override provision.

Everyone believed the above formed the backdrop of political theater as it was to be played out until September 2009, the final possible date of the next House of Representatives election.

Even Ozawa Ichirō believed it. He would have never entered into negotiations exploring the formation of a coalition government--or a legislative entente or whatever it was--if he knew aforehand that the LDP would

a) care so little about the country's political paralysis that they would never engage in good faith nemawashi (prior discussions toward consensus) on the content of bills, and

b) not use the override provision with efficiency and ruthlessness, when it had to.

Ozawa expected the ruling coalition to both care about appearances and still be able to execute most of its legislative program--whether the opposition-led House of Councillors objected or not.

It turns out that Ozawa--and just about everybody else--was wrong.

The ruling coalition, in what has been an almost gleeful hanging out of Fukuda to dry, has delivered ultimatum after ultimatum to the DPJ, trying to force the DPJ at every instance to go down on bended knee and offer its submission--which the DPJ and the rest of the opposition has pointedly refused to do. Compounding the error, the ruling coalition, after delivering these ultimatums, has been unable to deliver on its threats, either losing track of the time it needs to get legislative packages through the House of Representatives using the sixty day override or worse forgetting that in the case of appointments requiring Diet approval, there is no override provision.

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

Which brings me back to the original propositions in this post.

Okumura Jun believes that the ruling coalition has learned its lesson, that it will be supportive of the PM's strengths in conciliation with the DPJ while retaining a monomaniacal focus on management of the legislative calendar--that it will be able from here on out to use both carrots and sticks to govern the country in an acceptable fashion.

I believe that the ruling coalition has not adapted because it cannot adapt--that the last eight months are not a series of fluke occurrences but symptoms of the ruling coalition's hopeless, structurally determined ineptitude.

Take your pick.

We Will Cut Off Our Heads to Cure Our Dandruff

A bit overwrought, but this Yomiuri Shimbun article gets the point across: improving transportation links between the urban core and the rural districts will put the more isolated rural business centers at a disadvantage.

A bridge too far for Shikoku / 3 links provide more advantages to Honshu side
The Yomiuri Shimbun

The three routes linking Honshu and Shikoku across the Seto Inland Sea have had a significant impact on the tourism and distribution industries in the Kansai, Chugoku and Shikoku regions, but while Honshu has benefited, Shikoku has received the short end of the stick.

According to the Shikoku District Transport Bureau, 3.96 million people shuttled between the Shikoku and Kansai regions by bus in fiscal 2006, taking one of the three routes. The figure nearly equals the population of the Shikoku area, which stands at 4.04 million.

But despite the increased flow of people and goods, the bridges have contributed to declining sales in the Shikoku region. A Tokushima Economic Research Institute estimate shows Tokushima Prefecture lost about 23.4 billion yen in consumer spending to other prefectures in 2007.

(...)

One-third of the stores are shuttered on shopping streets in Sakaide, Kagawa Prefecture, located near the southern end of Seto Ohashi bridge.

Twenty years ago, Goro Ono, a former official of what was then the Shikoku Industry and Technology Promotion Center, warned of such dangers. The center has since been renamed the Economy, Trade and Industry Shikoku Bureau.

Attending a meeting with employees of financial institutions just before the opening of the Seto Ohashi bridge in 1988, Ono said he thought the bridge would cause the economically weaker Shikoku region to be further overwhelmed by the mainland.

To make his point, he drained an iced coffee with a straw, showed the others the glass with only the ice cubes remaining and said, "All that will be left in Shikoku will be the ice cubes."

(...)

Trucks are constantly going in and out of the Okayama Synthesis Distribution Center in the hills of suburban Okayama. The 200-hectare center, located three kilometers north of the Hayashima interchange connecting to the Sanyo Expressway, was developed by the Okayama prefectural government to take advantage of its proximity to the Seto Ohashi bridge and is now used by 113 firms, including warehouse, wholesale and transport companies.

Okayama Prefecture has the largest amount of warehouse space in the Chugoku and Shikoku regions, and the distribution center, which plays a key role in the prefecture, owes its success to the bridge.

The Hiroshima prefectural distribution center in Onomichi is located at a crossing point of the Shimanami Kaido route and the Sanyo Expressway. Most of its plots have been purchased by 36 firms. The area around the center is expected to develop along with the Onomichi Matsue route through a mountainous region in Chugoku when it opens in a few years.

Shikoku presents the other side of the coin, however. Whereas most of the Honshu plots have been purchased, a third of the plots at the Nishinagamine industrial park in Awa, Tokushima Prefecture, remain unsold.

Prefectural governments in Shikoku say the reason for the gap between Honshu and Shikoku is the high tolls on the bridges, which increase distribution costs for firms based in the Shikoku region and Awajishima island.

(...)

As each bridge opened, visitors to Shikoku's four prefectures increased. The number is currently more than 20 million per year, far greater than the number before the Seto Ohashi bridge opened.

However, the bridges have led to fewer overnight guests. In Tokushima Prefecture, only 12 percent of visitors to the prefecture stayed overnight in 2006, a record low. Only 17 percent of Kagawa Prefecture visitors stayed overnight with the number decreasing by nearly 500,000 over five years.

At Dogo spa resort in Matsuyama, 1.38 million tourists stayed overnight after the Seto Ohashi bridge opened. But in 2007, the number fell to 810,000.

Now I am not sure the bridges are to blame for the fall in overnight visitors in Tokushima and Ehime Prefectures. Likely as not, the easier transit across the Seto Inland Sea means more visitors are staying overnight in Kōchi Prefecture than before. I also sense a bit of statistical flim-flammery in the Tokushima and Kagawa figures since the "record low" percentages could be result of a huge increase of the total number of visitors, many of whom might have never visited at all had it not been possible to make the trip in a day.

Nevertheless, the "straw effect" on local business centers--where customers get sucked down the tubes--was predictable. Humans will take advantage of increased choices, if accessibility is improved.

The bridge promoters on the Shikoku side believed Japanese would never abandon their neighbors in search of better service elsewhere. Or perhaps because the construction firms got their contracts and then swung around to provide donations and votes to the politicians, the promoters just did not care about the knock-off effects of the mega-projects...

...all of which does not explain how the Yomiuri Shimbun can print both this article and editorials demanding that the Democratic Party of Japan grit its teeth, annoint itself with ashes and accept the Liberal Democratic Party leadership's capitulations to the Road Tribe.

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

For ever-changing views of the Honshū-Shikoku bridges, visit the Honshu-Shikoku Bridge Expressway Company, Ltd.'s website.

On the Plus Side, the Shinginko Disaster Becomes A Lot Easier to Understand

Words of wisdom from Ishihara Shintarō, governor of the Tokyo Metropolitan District, regarding the loss of road construction financing should the temporary gasoline levy be repealed:

「財源がなくなっちゃうんだから、他の事業が止まる。ガソリンが安くなったから大いに走ろう車がどこを走るのか。行き止まりみたいな道ばかりでしょうがない。」

"Because the fiscal resources are going to disappear, other activities are going to grind to halt. As gasoline becomes cheap and people drive more, what are the cars going to drive on? The roads will all come to dead ends. It cannot be helped."

I do not even know where to begin.

Quote courtesy the Asahi Shimbun of March 31, 2008, morning edition, p. 2.

Later - "Anonymous" in comments has a suggestion...

Waving or Drowning

Well, now we know why Fukuda Yasuo was so nervous...he does not have the party behind him.

A nonchalant LDP Secretary-General Ibuki ("Gumby") Bunmei, flanked by New Komeitō Secretary-General Kitagawa ("Magilla Gorilla") Kazuo, practically shrugged his way through the press availability after the Prime Minister's announcement. Ibuki's stunning revelation that...

"This is the Prime Minister's idea. Not the party's. We must support the Prime Minister."

...and Kitagawa's vaguely disgusted look as he echoed Ibuki's sentiment indicated they were testing out a new meaning of the word "must"-- and they did not like it. It was a "must" somewhere near "have to" only minus enthusiasm, interest or any commitment to any outcome.

Has an LDP prime minister ever gone out on a limb without making sure his party secretary-general was out on that limb with him? Has an LDP PM ever just done his own thing, without seeking the assent or the understanding of the General Council (sōmukai) or at least some ad hoc council of party elders?

If this bold, last minute maneuver does not work out--and the DPJ leadership has already prepared the groundwork for rejecting the new proposal--Fukuda really cannot go on.

At least not in any way that my poor brain can understand.

Emergency Rules

Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo was just on television giving a hastily organized press conference, outlining a new last-minute proposal regarding the road tax and other expiring legislation.

He outlined a seven point program, the main change being a shift of revenues to the general fund after one year, down from the three years previously discussed.

The PM looked shaky, stumbling over the words of his text and seemingly unsure of what to do with his face. He tried to look grim but succeeded only in looking frightened.

What is he thinking? It is way too late for this kind of political theater to change the Democratic Party's stance. It is a repeat of the Tanami nomination - a sudden, unexpected, hurried announcement of not terribly much, topped off with a plea to the opposition to cooperate.

He cannot go on like this.

One More For The Road

While the global financial system is going to hell*, I am still obsessing about the governments's gasoline levy bill in support of road construction, a piece of legislation which, according to today's Sankei Shimbun, the ruling coalition finally admits is unsalvageable.

Still, I cannot let a day go by without a dip into the bottomless cesspit of the offspring of the old Construction and National Land ministries.

The front page of Sunday's Mainichi Shimbun featured the results of an investigation into 50 corporations affiliated with the Ministry of National Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. The 50 corporations had 7288 employees and 1063 members of the board of directors, a pretty rich 7:1 employees-to-directors ratio.

However, looking more closely, the median was a lot richer. Indeed in 16 of the 50 corporations, the number of members of the board of directors outnumbered the number of employees. The most absurd skewing was found in the National Land Policy Research Council (Kokudo Seisaku Kenkyūkai), an organization boasting 16 directors and 1 employee. Other magnificent organizations included the Tour De Hokkaidō Association (Tsūru do Hokkaido Kyōkai) with 17 directors and 6 employees; the Road Development Promotion Center (Dōro Kaihatsu Shinkō Sentā) with 21 directors and 8 employees; and the Hokkaidō Auto Resort Network Association (oh, I give up) with 24 directors and 6 employees.

Did anyone say anything about amakudari positions? A check of the 16 directors of the National Land Policy Research Council found that 9 were retired bureaucrats. Ouch.

Here is the original article.

Of course we also have today's report that the DPJ is asking questions about the 2.3 billion yen paid out over the last five years though the MLITT's "special road equipment account book" (道路整備特別会計) for taxi tickets for ministry employees traveling to and from the Ministry's eight regional equipment centers.

As much as the revision of the Constitution, as much as a reinterpretation of the ban on participation in collective self-defense, the attempt to wrestle down the road construction beast is a struggle over the identity of Japan. If the road lobby can be killed or restrained, much of what has been "Japan" and the "Japanese way of doing things" will cease to exist. Certainties will crumble...and many things considered "difficult" will suddenly become "possible."

Every little of light shone upon the monster weakens it. Every pinprick is making it bleed a little more, slowing it down.

-------------------------------
* The void is filled by a depressed and angry Nihon Cassandra posting up a philippic from London.

Cracking up

In the illustrious history of Diet interpellation train wrecks, the performance of Senior Vice Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Matsushima Midori (Liberal Democratic Party, House of Representatives, Tokyo #14 District) on Friday managed to transcend the once hilarious, now sadly Brechtian performances of the late MAFF Matsuoka Toshikatsu.

Matsushima is the representative for Arakawa and Sumida wards. She expresses a fervent belief that the 10 year, 59 trillion yen (I just love those numbers; I cannot stop writing them) road construction plan and the taxes to pay for it are the best thing since handmade soba noodles. According to her explanation, while she once decried the "waste" of road construction spending, she came to see the light at a special meeting of the mayors of the wards of inner Tokyo. In what can only be a coincidence, she managed to get herself appointed Vice Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism following her conversion to the road construction creed.

Unfortunately, Matsushima is a rather recent convert and has not, until now, publicly renounced her earlier skepticism. Indeed, on her website, uncontested or altered, is her 2002 diatribe against the funding of useless road construction.

In interpellations in the House of Councillors Budget Committee Tsuda Yatarō, a mean, mean man of the Democratic Party, read her diatribe to her, then asked her about the contradictions between what she said then and what she is saying now.

Matsushima explained...and explained...and explained...and explained...and was about to explain some more when Budget Committee Chairman Kokoike Yoshitada -- a fellow LDP member -- told her to give cut the four part harmony and variations and give a succinct reply (簡潔な答弁) to the question.

Matsushima ignored the chairman's warning. She kept going and did not stop her verbal dance until, after full 5 minutes of pirouetting around, Kokoide erupted, shouting at her, "Cut it short! Cut it off!" (打ち切りなさい！).

Konoike became so enraged at her indiscipline that he threw the book at her (actually, paragraph 48 of the Diet Law). On his own authority, he banished her from the committee room for "contempt of the Diet."

Reporters and scribes went scrambling to find a like instance when a committee chairman, unprompted by an opposition protest, unilaterally banned a fellow party member from further participation in a Diet committee--or an instance when a political appointee to a ministry had ever been sanctioned in this way.

Morals of the Matsushima banishment:

1) prior to betraying your constituents, your supporters and yourself, practice your alibi in the elevator--otherwise maybe, just maybe, you will receive the public humiliation you richly deserve.

2) the lure of road construction funds makes fools of us all.

Drawing The Short Straw

"Yes, I'm tired. No, I don't give a damn anymore. Well, maybe I do. Why do you ask?"

Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo struggles to stay awake
while waiting for a House of Representatives
Budget Committee session to resume
February 28, 2008

Image courtesy: Tokyo Shimbun

Later - The House of Representatives will be passing the budget and ancillary legislation today, one day later than House of Representatives Parliamentary Affairs Chairman Ōshima Tadamori's goal of February 28.

Since there is no agreement about any adjustment of the temporary gasoline levy or the 10 year, 59 trillion yen mid-term road construction plan, the bills now go the House of Councillors as crafted by the anachronistic bits of the ruling coalition.

The opposition coalition will tear the legislation to pieces, then leave it to die of exposure.

The budget will automatically go into effect in 30 days (Constitution of Japan, Article 60) just slipping under the wire for the April 1 start of the new fiscal year.

* * *

The Fukuda Cabinet and the four top LDP leadership posts are chock-a-block with faction leaders. These were the guys (and yes they are all guys) who were purported to have the juice within the party. They would twist arms and wring necks to get things done. As moderates, at least more moderate than the Abe Shinzō-Nakagawa Shōichi-Aso Tarō crowd, the current crop of ministers and party executives were supposed to be able to work with members of the Democratic Party of Japan to move legislation throught the Diet.

None of the above has happened. The ruling coalition is reduced to carrying out the country's business via the autopilot mechanisms built into the Constitution.

The LDP and Kōmeitō have run out of gas.

Do they know it?

No good times

Afer watching the first few minutes of News 23, I'll have to agree with Okumura Jun--Defense Ministry Ishiba Shigeru looks like a goner.

One can be deceptive in one's Diet testimony most of the time, hewing right to the line of truth or even over it. But when you have grieving, grizzled fishermen on the nation's screens umpteen times a day, you really do not have the capacity to define "there was no attempt to meddle in the investigation of the accident in any way" according to the meaning that suits you.

Having a commander fly out the to the ship and question those aboard without notifying the Coast Guard--the government agency in charge of investigating shipboard accidents--and having the navigator of the MSDF vessel airlifted to your office on the day of the accident to brief you on what happened...may not strictly be meddling...but wow does it look unnecessarily suspicious when the movements of various personnel are not revealed on Day One but in a series of leaks over the course of a work week.

With the Prime Minister's support level at 30% and the budget about to undergo a month of excrutiating scrutiny in the House of Councillors, the LDP Diet membership is rightly starting to panic.

If they had seen how the Ministry of Infrastructure, Land, Transport and Tourism got ripped to shreds in the evening's second report, about a planned elevated road in Toyama Prefecture, the LDP members would have been asking for air sickness bags.

Making it up as we go along

In a recent post, the Japan Observer noted a shift in tactics in the LDP leadership's approach toward moving the road/gasoline levy legislation through the Diet. Rather than pushing hard for the ruling coalition's 10 year, 59 trillion yen plan, LDP Secretary General Ibuki Bunmei and LDP Election Measures Chairman Koga Makoto have "begun to indicate they would be willing to compromise"--provided that the DPJ provide its own bill first.

When the Japan Observer speaks of a shift in tactics, however, he is referring only to a change in the tactics of public relations.

The parliamentary tactics have always been 1) submit ridiculously gargantuan plan, 2) wait for the Democratic Party to offer a counterplan and 3) cut a deal between the two plans.

This has not changed.

What has changed is the LDP leadership, which had heretofore been emphasizing its readiness to confront the resistance and irresponsibility of the DPJ (Manly men are we, the spawn of menly men!) now is showing more feminine side--that it is open to compromise, but only if the DPJ makes its move ("Why don't they call? Don't they know we're ready to meet them halfway?").

The currently tripping Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo echoed the softer line from Seoul.

However, the memo to "be nice" has not been able to alter the behavior of the one person for whom the repositioning could make a difference: House of Representatives Parliamentary Affairs Chairman Ōshima Tadamori.

[An asided - Ōshima is the only politician in the upper ranks of the party who manages to speak in paragraphs. Rather than spooling out the usual jumbled, emotive gurglings of his colleagues, Ōshima bangs out big architectural, intellectual structures, with almost visible beams, struts and joists. It is a real delight to hear him talk. ]

Over the weekend, he set a deadline of this Thursday (February 28) for the passage of both the budget and ancillary, enabling legislation, including the gasoline levy legislation.

Ōshima had little choice: he was starring into the abyss. Unless I am mistaken (Do you really want me to go through the list? - Editor) the House of Representatives must pass the budget by Thursday. Otherwise the budget will not go into effect (the budget automatic override period is only 30 days) in time for the April 1 beginning of the new fiscal year.

So come Friday, unless a miracle (a breakout of humility and self-awareness in the ruling coalition leadership) occurs, the whole aggressive, stinking pile of legislation will land slam on the desks of the members of the House of Councillors--leaving the parties to negotiating a compromise while the legislation is being raked over the coals in televised House of Councillors Budget Committee deliberations.

Fun, fun, fun...and not a T-bird in sight.

Not ready for the Major Leagues

As the government tries to figure out why it took two hours to notify the prime minister of a collision between a fishing boat and the country's most advanced Self Defense Forces vessel--a delay making a mockery of any claims of an improvement in the country's crisis management since the inadequate response to the 17 January 1995 earthquake...or 31 August 1998 launch of the Taepodong missile over Japan...or Prime Minister Abe Shinzō's suddden incapacitation on 13 September 2007...(I think they get the picture, MTC - Editor) the Liberal Democratic Party finds itself scrambling in the Diet on the gasoline tax, stunned that the opposition refuses to abdicate its tactical advantages.

[Reversing gears for just a moment - that the MSDF Destroyer Atago's captain did not have clearance to blast an approaching fishing boat into oblivion before it could strike the very expensive bow of his very expensive ship must be disturbing to members of the coalition against terror. LDP faction leader Yamasaki Taku, always good for stating the incredibly obvious, worries that the accident may cast doubt the preparedness of Maritime Self Defense Forces deployed the Arabian Sea as regards possible small vessels suicide attacks. ]

Yesterday in the Diet, Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo demanded that the Democratic Party of Japan take a first step toward meeting the government halfway on the renewal of the temporary gasoline levy. Only if the DPJ showed its hand--by proposing its own plan on what to do about the tax--could the two sides begin the process of coming to some sort of compromise position, the agreed-to solution to the parliamentary impasse over the bill worked out by Speaker of the House of Representative Kōno Yōhei and Speaker of the House of Councillors Eda Satsuki in a special end-of-January intervention (assen).

The DPJ response so far to the government's entreaties: go leap into a large body of freshwater.

The DPJ's position recalcitrance is not without merit. The government proposal, a 10 year, 59 trillion yen commitment, is absurd. The DPJ has not dignified it with a response--and is right to refuse to do so.

The government's absurd overreach on its bill reveals an even more fundamental and chronic problem. The demand for an opposition bill on the gas tax indicates that some 7 months since suffering a shattering reversal at the polls in the July 2007 House of Councillors election, the ruling coalition still does not understand what an opposition does. The ruling coalition, with help from the country's constipated editorialists, keeps asking the opposition to be responsible, to stop trying to score political points, to stop trying to weaken the ruling party. For some reason, the opposition is supposed to act responsibly and soberly, resign itself to its secondary status and give up on its advantages--all this for the common good, in order to further the national interest.

"Sure," the DPJ keeps telling them, "We will be incredibly responsible and work to further the national interest...just as soon as we are in control of the government."

In terms of the gasoline levy, the ruling coalition still has not grasped that the DPJ, not the ruling coalition, owns the default position. If the government cannot entice the opposition to come to a compromise, the tax will die--just as the DPJ said that it should. The government has no means of forcing the issue -- unless it offers up its own throat, the DPJ will not come out and play. Calling the DPJ "unserious" and "immature" will gain applause from some sections of the commentariat--but will only encourage Ozawa Ichirō and the rest of the DPJ to continue to play truant on the gasoline levy.

Only yesterday, I was berating the Democratic Party leadership for ceding any ground to the ruling coalition in the debate over the gasoline levy. Given the LDP's pathetic, brain dead whining over the issue, I may have been overharsh in my criticisms.

Ali Baba enters cave...

...finds it full of thieves.

I find myself failing to grasp the strategic logic of the recent round of Democratic Party Acting President Kan Naoto's speeches on the temporary gasoline levy. First he goes before a crowd of made men paid up members of the Road Tribe from the provinces and is booed heartily. Today he takes on a gibbering baboon the comedian-turned-governor Higashikokubaru Hideo and Aso Wataru, the governor of Fukuoka Prefecture and Chairman of the National Governors Association in a gentlemanly discussion of local finances and the road tax.

Excuse me, but we are not in college here. This is not the Oxford Debating Society. This is real life...and in real life the last thing you give to desperate, conniving fraudsters is your microphone.

Kan has sufficient star power to dominate the debate by himself. His goal in his appearances (and I can only think his innate decency prevents him from knowing it) should be to starve his opponents of every molecule of available oxygen and every iota of the attention of every journalist he can stuff into his schedule.

Why he is letting the provincials stand or sit alongside him as equals? If the point of the DPJ's argument is that these guys in the ugly suits are flim-flam artists, why is Kan giving them the least chance to muddle the discourse, weave their dark spells and purloin the public purse all over again?

The DPJ's sense of fairness, often purported to be the linchpin of its appeal, is really its greatest weakness.

-------------------------------
Chōja no Ana - Kofun Era lateral burial site
Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture
March 3, 2006

Tanakaism: The Final Days

On March 31, 2008 the Liberal Democratic Party will die.

Well, perhaps not the Liberal Democractic Party. But definitely a Liberal Democratic Party...the great, voracious beak of the octopus--the clownish, spiritually debilitating hogfest that has been the party's heart since a mawkish small-time construction company owner named Tanaka Kakuei bobbed, weaved, pocketed and disbursed his way around all the pre-war elites and grand poobahs to a place at the head of the table--the wealth-destroying bachannalia of concrete and cash so crass and transparent in its corruption that it made Abe Shinzō and the fantabulists look good by comparison.

To not appreciate the primacy of road building in the country is to not understand the country at all. The archipelago is draped in dense network of roads... a network not just of the roads themselves (and the bridges, the tunnels, the landslide-prevention measures) but of contractors, sub-contractors, subcontractors' subcontractors, former bureaucrats, part-time farmers, the postal savings system, the Ministry of Land and Infrastructure and thousands of politicians who have nothing else to do but live off the system -- that are The System.

When Inose Naoki wrote his Nihonkoku no Kenkyū (日本国の研究 - The Study of the Country Japan) he did not start with a description of the Iron Triangle of bureaucrats, industrialists and politicians. He did not talk about the lifelong employment system, about kaizen or about the prevalence of rote memorization in the schools. He did not talk about the kami, self-sacrifice, dependent behavior or the ideology of the Meiji.

He wrote about infuriating excellence of Japan's logging roads--roads without traffic, going nowhere, scarring the countryside--by design.

Over the last thirty-five years, nothing has been more important to a rural politician than the ability to dole out road construction contracts--indeed, for many politicians, securing of road construction contracts and getting reelected are the yin and the yang of government. One exists for the other--and for nothing else.

[Attending local social functions, the other mandatory activity of the rural politician, exists to prove to constituents that said politician is indeed still alive...which is not a joke, as we learned last year.]

The gasoline tax is the blood of the Tanakaist polity. So sure have politicians been of its power to motivate the base that they never even bothered to remove the zantei (interim, temporary) label from the levy. They knew, simply knew it would always be there--they indeed could not imagine political life without it.

When Koizumi Jun'ichirō set about saving the LDP by destroying it, he did so by siccing his two disrespectful, presumptuous attack dogs upon the road construction gang. His left hand loosed Inose upon the Dōro Kōdan (Japan Public Highway Corporation), forcing its breakup and the cleaning up of its finances. His right loosed Takenaka Heizō upon the Post Office, the piggy bank of the road construction state, forcing its breakup and privatization.

Since Koizumi's stepping down from the prime ministership, the road construction gang has been trying reassemble itself and get its hands back on the steering wheel. It got a huge boost of adrenaline in July of 2007 when Abe Shinzō's revisionist vision failed to entice the public into voting for the LDP. The stunning loss to Democratic Party leader Ozawa Ichirō's hoary and utterly insincere promises of transfers of wealth from the city to the countryside revived the hopes of the road construction partisans.

[Just an aside--does anyone else think that Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintarō's promise to send 300 billion yen of Tokyo tax money to the hinterlands might have more to do with buying rural LDP member support for his son Nobuteru's run at the LDP party presidency than buying central government support for Ishihara Senior's quixotic bid to have Tokyo host the 2016 Olympics?]

Humpty Dumpty, however, is finding it hard to get back together again. Despite the full-court press of the traditional sanyaku (Koga Makoto is strangely absent from the debate) the LDP's road tribe could not get its act together in time to push the gasoline tax extension bill through the Diet. The party executive and local assemblymen staged a high-profile emergency meeting on January 23 to scare the Diet into voting for the extension...then, when that failed to have the expected effect, staged another emergency meeting on February 8, this time dragging in the prefectural governors, including the always-good-for-a-made-for-television-event Higashikokubaru Hideo of Miyazaki Prefecture.

To no avail.

The Tanaka Democracy has had an incredible run, staying a viable pantomime of electoral democracy well past the point where it descended into farce (when the both the population and the number of full-sized cars on the road are shrinking, how is it possible to argue that the country needs more and better roads?) The recent explosion in the number of talk shops, the new transparty alliances, the nervous runs for membership in the factions (I do not share all of Okumura Jun's faith in the resurgent significance of the factions. Frankly, I believe LDP politicians are joining factions for the same reason some people surf the Internet: it sure beats working), the hopped-up patriotism of the revisionists--all point to a deteriorating certainty in the ability of politicians to simply buy off the party's base.

It turns out the money is not there--Tanakaism has done to the peace-loving, low-tax Japanese state's finances what the military-media-industrial complex, outrageous defense expenditures and unending warfare have done to the finances of the United States. The gasoline tax, if it is saved, will be shoveled into the general fund, where it will be used to fill other holes than those found in road top surfaces. In the nebulous vastness of the general fund's flows--or, horror, of horrors, in a carbon-abatement levy--the link between one's local LDP politician and one's bank account will no longer be not crystal clear.

At which point, the LDP--Tanaka Kakuei's LDP--will be dead.