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.

On Factions - a revision

Updating of a previous observation:

LDP Diet members join factions and study groups for the same reason other people surf the Internet -- it sure beats working.

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.

Sign of the Apocalypse - Parallel Developments

In what can only be described as an act demonstrating that all LDP internal discipline has collapsed, 50 zōhangumi (opponents of reform) legislators, including those returned from expulsion like Noda Seiko, gathered yesterday for the first meeting of the Postal Business Study Society (Yūsei Jigyō Kenkyūkai).

Attending the meeting as a guest was the chairman of the National Association of Private Postmasters - the Zenkoku Tokutei Yūbinkyoku Chōkai -- or Zentoku, for short.

T'is the sign of an LDP upon the brink.

Can it be less than a year and a half ago that Noda and her fellow exiles were readmitted to the party after lengthy and bitter discussions between the then Secretary-General Nakagawa Hidenao (Nakagawa the Sane) and unbending dead ender Hiranuma Takeo? Each of the eleven returnees signed a letter confessing a personal error in having opposed post office privatization and swearing allegiance to the new party line on postal reform.

Now they are meeting with the chairman of Zentoku, discussing legislation to modify the postal reform plan.

If this does not drive Koizumi Jun'ichirō, Nakagawa Hidenao and other reformers into paroxysms over the LDP's abandonment of the banner of reform--I do not know what will.

Which makes yesterday's other announcement all the more salient.