The Supreme Court Says, "FIAT"

Back in the bad old days, back before the company owned a major U.S. car maker, Fabbrica Italiana Automobili di Torino had what could be charitably called "quality control issues." The sardonic joke about the automobili manufactured by the company was the acronym "FIAT" actually stood for what one had to say to one's mechanic Anthony when one brought the automobili in:

"Fix It Again, Tony!"

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Japan did largely the same thing. The automobile in this instance was the nation's electoral map. Anthony's Garage is the Diet and Anthony (Tony) is the Liberal Democratic Party.

In a split decision the Supreme Court ruled that the 2014 electoral district map, where the greatest vote disparity was 2.13 (meaning that 2.13 times as many voters lived in the largest district as lived in the smallest, reducing the value of each individual's vote in the largest district to only 47% of a vote in the smallest one) violated the principle of the legal equality of citizens under Article 14 of the Constitution. Three of the justices ruled the electoral map unconstitutional, one declaring the election invalid. Two dissenting justices ruled the electoral map constitutional. An outright majority (9 of the 14 offering opinions) ruled the electoral maps and the election results "in a state of unconstitutionality" (iken jotai - 違憲状態 - Link).

Ruling a distorting electoral map "in a state of unconstitutionality" is a sophistic fiddle. Some might see it a pusillanimous fiddle, with the justices running away from a confrontation with the Diet despite an Article 81 "power to determine the constitutionality of any law, order, regulation or official act." The Diet and the Government, for their parts, could choose reject a Supreme Court unconstitutionality decision, arguing that under Article 41 the Diet is "the highest organ of state power" which cannot be unseated by a lesser power. (Link)

Labeling the electoral map "in a state of unconstitutionality" does sidestep a clash of the branches of the government over who is supreme based upon the two conflicting Constitution articles. However, rather than a flight from responsibility this twisted non-ruling ruling (similar to the option in Scottish jurisprudence of a verdict of "Not Proven" where guilt cannot be established but everybody still thinks the defendant guilty as hell) should perhaps be more properly seen as a necessary and paradoxical step toward preserving the constitutional order.

Suppose the justices were to ever to lose their collective minds and rule a House of Representatives election unconstitutional and invalid. From such a ruling the sitting Diet would instantaneously become illegitimate and without constitutional standing. The Diet, however, is under Article 41 "the sole, law-making organ of the State" and under Article 47 the sole organ vested with power to determine electoral districts. The justices would thus be ordering a repair of the electoral map whilst simultaneously wiping out the only body able to fix it.

What Masunaga Hidetoshi, one of the leaders of the lawyers who filed the complaint, thinks the Supremes did yesterday. (Link - J)

By ruling the electoral map in a "state of unconstitutionality" for the third time, the Supremes are scolding the LDP for its shenanigans without tearing the entire edifice down in the process. With the closest the Supremes can come to fury they are pushing the electoral map back into the Diet building and telling the LDP that the ruling coalition's sneaky +0/-5 solution of 2013 did not fix the disproportionality problem in the House of Representatives.

"So FIAT!" is what the Supremes are saying.

The government has promised to take the Court ruling seriously - coded language for "we will fiddle with the map again until we find a way to limit the difference between the largest and the smallest districts to 1.994" -- the level of proximity to the Supreme Court-determined no-go level of 2.0 the LDP's crafty map makers achieved in their last version of the electoral map -- in a whatever the ruling coalition thinks a reasonable amount of time may be. (Link)

Yesterdays decision and the ruling coalition's promise to be serious is all that anyone could have and can hope for in terms of the Supreme Court's making Japanese elections more fair and thus better, in theory, at delivering good governance.

Meanwhile, in another challenge to a widely disliked Abe Era law, the Tokyo District Court passed on ruling on the constitutionality of the new and extremely controversial Designated Secrets Act (Link - J). The refusal to accept the case was to be expected, the Tokyo Court following the precedent set down by the Supreme Court's Suzuki Decision of 8 October 1952, which found that unless a plaintiff can demonstrate an actual injury from a statute, the judicial branch will abstain from all involvement in a case. Groups representing the news media argued that the Act injures journalists by preventing them from doing their jobs. The judges of the Tokyo District Court asked, "Who is the specific plaintiff and what specific hurt was caused by the Act?" -- questions to which there were, of course, no answers.

Yet.

So Case Dismissed.

Très Bien, Chevalier Chen

Knight of Order of Merit and former press attaché to the Beijing Embassy Chen Yo-jun has a lucid essay up at The Diplomat on the peculiar mixture of deft and clumsy that is China's Asian diplomacy. (Link)

The only mistake or misinterpretation I see is in the passage:

The fact that the new zone covers the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands has only added to the sense of crisis and Sinophobia already bubbling in Japan. Some observers suggest that China has in fact done Abe a favor. For months, the Japanese leader has been trying to convince a reluctant nation to give him almost a blank check (such as a controversial state secrecy bill) to drastically beef up both internal security control (a nightmare for democracy advocates) and Japan's military capabilities. Thanks to Beijing, Abe now has a much more acquiescent parliament. [my emphasis]

That last line is misleading. The acquiescence of the Diet to Abe's wishes has little to do with Beijing and much to do with the huge number of Liberal Democratic Party butts sitting in the seats.

Furthermore, the implication that the Diet has posed a problem for Abe's security program is not accurate. Diet members were Johnny-come-latelies to the fight against the secrecy law. Protest against that egregious bit of legislation came from civil society: lawyers, performing artists, journalists, NGOs, educators and concerned common citizens. Opposition members of the Diet got up on the bandwagon only after the citizens got it rolling. It was the people, not their representatives, who baulked at the sweeping purview and unJapanese severity of the law.

That Chevalier Chen's essay would be unsteady upon the political situation inside Japan is surprising. The former career French diplomat, who in addition to Beijing had stints in the consulate in San Francisco and as director of ministry's photograph department (!), is living in retirement in Tateshina.

Hors de ces deux interprétations erronées, très bien fait, Chevalier Chen!

The Chinese View Of The Senkakus

Over at East Asia Forum, Ren Xiao, the Director of Center for the Study of Chinese Foreign Policy, has published an essay describing in broad strokes background to the Chinese government's stance on the Diaoyus/Senkakus debate. It is a worthwhile read, and I say that as one who has gone on television to defend the Abe government's statements and actions as regards the Senkakus. (Link)

The key points for one on an insignificant perch in Tokyo are:

1) the Chinese government wants it both ways -- hysterically denouncing last year's nationalization of three islands as an inexcusable deviance from the status quo (bad!) and sending its ships into the territorial waters described by the islands to establish a constant physical presence (good!).

2) the Chinese government feels, with some degree of justification, that it has been played by the government of Japan, or at least by its prime ministers. It thought that when money-machine-political phenomenon, medium-bore construction magnate Tanaka Kakuei agreed in off-the-record talks to shelve the issue of the sovereignty of the islands, that it had just cut a verbal deal with Japan. They do not want to acknowledge that the only person they cut a deal with was with a multiply-disgraced and now seriously dead former prime minister. They also do not want to admit that a verbal deal is as good as the paper it is (not) written on.

3) "The history question" comes up, in such a manner as to obfuscate responsibility:

This difficult situation is exacerbated by history. China was invaded by Japan and suffered atrocities at the hands of Japanese imperial forces. These acts live on in China's collective memory, especially because Japanese politicians insist on touching this wound again and again. Relations with Japan have always been a complex and sensitive issue in China's foreign policy. Every time Japan and the Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute comes up in the news, people in China become emotional and angry. Chinese leaders and officials cannot afford to be seen as soft towards Japan.

The explanation "people in China become emotional and angry" may be possibly the worst rationalization ever for national policy. It is also an indication of how frayed is the legitimacy of the current Chinese government. China's leaders, for all their pretensions to dictatorial power, have to forswear national self-interest in favor of behavior capable of keeping calm the mob at their doors.

As for the explanation that memories of Japanese misdeeds in the 1930s and 40s remain fresh and painful "because Japanese politicians insist on touching this wound again and again" -- commenter "Arthur" points out the author's glaring dereliction:

And not even in part because the Chinese government insists on pointing out the wound, digging its fingers in and saying "See? See how painful that is?" again and again.

4) Xi Jinping's and the Chinese government's refusal to hold high-level meetings (to my knowledge there has been only the trilateral meeting of the education ministers) much less a bilateral summit, with Abe Shinzo and his government, is petulance not worthy of second grade elementary school recess. However, and this is an indication of how much of a rules-bound giant China has become, not meeting Abe Shinzo or his top ministers is the only card the Chinese government has. Everything and anything else -- rioting, trade curbs, landings on the islands in question -- and China finds itself in the international doghouse, be it with the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the majority of members of ASEAN, et cetera. The only action the Chinese leadership can undertake which does not instigate institutionalized punitive proceedings -- and here is where the similarity between the stance of a nation of 1.3 billion and the miffed seven year-old hits home -- is the refusal to hold someone's hand.

All in favor of a web of international commitments as a way of keeping the peace, raise your hands.

The problem for the Chinese government: if it did, indeed, "grow up" and start behaving like a collection of adults, it would have nothing left with which it could placate its emotional and angry non-electorate.

5) I am not sure if the author, if writing in Chinese, would use the verb "force" one finds at the end of this passage:

One of the steps China has taken is to send in Chinese ships to the disputed waters for regular patrol and 'law enforcement'. The objective is to bring about de facto joint jurisdiction and joint patrolling in the relevant waters as a way to deny Japan's unilateral 'control' of the islands. Beijing wants to force Japan to change its 'no territorial dispute' position. {Emphasis added}

Prime Minister Abe has made it very clear, and has the backing of his electorate behind him on this point, that under no circumstances will any change in the Japanese government's position come as the result of force (Link). Any attempt to "force Japan to change" will be met by unshakable and fierce resistance.

In a larger sense, what we are seeing in Sino-Japanese and Japanese-South Korea government relations (and here I am veering away from Ren Xiao's essay) are the consequences of the triumph of democracy in East Asia -- and the failures of the habits of the governments and parties in the region to keep pace with the internal changes undergone by their respective societies. The main elements of the framework of relations between the states of the region were thrown up by authoritarian or semi-authoritarian governments, by leaders who could make private deals amongst themselves. These leaders shrugged at issues that did not interest them　and faced muted possibilities of public backlash for the deals they negotiated.

Today's leaders do not have the liberty of action their ancestors -- and in the case of the main trio of Xi, Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye, "ancestors" is the correct term (not just a figure of speech but an actual description of the persons involved). For these children and grandchildren of giants the publics of China and South Korea are emotional and angry. Perhaps they always were. The change is that these publics are now also empowered, capable of forcing their political leaders to act according to the dictates of the mob, be it smoldering or flash.

The conundrum for Japan's policy makers is what to do over the long-term with neighbors who seem to have lost the capacity to, as Gordon Sumner memorably urged, "learn to throw the past away." Certainly a surrender of one's positions is one option -- one that has its advocates in the "China and Korea are returning to their original places in the Asian order" school. Surrender is in fact the only option for Japan's policy makers as regards the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute.

For the Senkakus, though, no such option exists. Whatever ornate vision of a nation's glory/destiny one may espouse, a democratically elected government's surrendering to a dictatorial government is an abomination. This is what the Chinese people, for all its trumpeted greatness and its extraordinary size, has to come to understand: that in any conceivable, livable world order, the tiniest democracy, the merest gathering of a few tens of thousands of souls on a mountain massif or a lonely atoll, outranks China.

Who Do You, Tell Me, Who Do Love?

When one is talking about the candidates on the proportional list for the 2013 edition of the reconstituted umbrella Liberal Democratic Party, the one you love will be the candidate representing your industry or profession or an archetypal super-patriot.

Rank of the LDP proportional seat winners in the election of 21 July 2013, with their former job descriptions and annotations:

1) Tsuge Yoshifumi
Chairman of the national association of private postmasters

2) Yamada Toshio
Executive director of the national association of agricultural cooperatives

3) Sato Masahisa
Colonel in the Ground Self Defense Forces
(Sato was one of the three Diet members turned away from Gimpo Airport by South Korean authorities in August 2011)

4) Ishii Midori
Board director of the Japan Dental Association

5) Hashimoto Seiko
Olympic speed skater and bicycle racer

6) Hanyuda Takashi
Vice chairman of the Japan Medical Association

7) Sato Nobuaki
Former director for roads in the Ministry of Construction

8) Akaike Masaaki
Former dean of the Japan Aviation Professional Training College
(Akaike was a speaker at The Other Sovereignty Day Commemoration of 28 April 2013)

9) Santo Akiko
Actress
(Santo served as the go-between for Ishihara Shintaro and the private owner of the three Senkaku islands during the period Ishihara was trying to purchase the islands)

10) Eto Sei'ichiro
Member of the Oita City Assembly

11) Ishida Masahiro
Secretary-general of the Japan Nursing Federation

12) Arimura Haruko
McDonalds Japan headquarters employee and part-time Ph.D. student of Aoyama Gakuin

13) Miyamoto Shuji
Chairman of the Youth Division of the Central Federation of Societies of Commerce and Industry and sake brewery CEO

14) Maruyama Kazuya
Lawyer, television personality and author

15) Kitamura Tsuneo
Reporter for the Sankei Shimbun

16) Watanabe Miki
Founder and CEO of the restaurant management corporation Watami

17) Kimura Yoshio
Senior executive of Sumitomo Bank

18) Ota Fusae
Governor of Osaka Prefecture

Those who argue that Japan is insufficiently democratic are clearly mistaken. All the industries and professions get a Senator to call their own.


Based upon an original observation that Dr. Ehud Harari posted to the SSJ-Forum.

Roll Over, Doggy

When looking for mendacious fawning upon the Liberal Democratic Party, the Yomiuri Shimbun rarely disappoints:

Electoral reform: Making it count / Should electoral zones be absolutely proportional to populations?

This is the second installment of a series.

There is growing mistrust between judicial and legislative circles over the value of a single vote based on the population represented by each lawmaker.

On March 26, the Okayama branch of the Hiroshima High Court ruled that the House of Representatives election last year, in which there was a vote-value disparity of up to 2.43 times, was "unconstitutional," and that election results for Okayama Constituency No. 2, where the vote-value disparity stood at 1.41 times, were "invalid."

Two weeks later on April 11, Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Gen Nakatani made the following remarks at the lower house Commission on the Constitution:

"The Constitution leaves matters concerning electoral systems to laws. I think judgments regarding whether electoral systems are unconstitutional or constitutional should primarily be left to the Diet."

Article 47 of the Constitution stipulates, "Electoral districts, voting method and other matters pertaining to the method of election of members of both houses shall be fixed by law."

Nakatani's reference to the article indicated his hostility toward the judicial bodies over their infringement of the Diet's discretionary power.

Takashi Yamashita, an LDP lawmaker elected from Okayama Constituency No. 2, also cast doubt on the ruling, which if abided by would cause him to lose his seat.

"The idea of 'one vote for each person' is important. But if the principle were strictly applied, lawmakers would be concentrated in urban areas," Yamashita said...

(Link)

First, nice use of the demeaning question marks around the judgments of the high courts. Very respectful.

Second, I guess Representative Yamashita understands the constitutional requirement that the members of the Diet be representatives of all the people (Ryogiin wa, zenkokumin no daihyo to suru) to mean "people as they have been or might be, but not as they are."

For having lawmakers representing the urban areas, where the people are, is unfair to the rural areas, where the people are not, right?

Third, Article 47 of the Constitution? That your winning hand, Yomiuri? Really?

Pull up a chair. Let us play a little round of jurisdiction poker.

Ok, let us lay down your card one more time.

Article 47. Electoral districts, method of voting and other matters pertaining to the method of election of members of both Houses shall be fixed by law.

I am feeling generous today. I will give you a wild card.

Article 41. The Diet shall be the highest organ of state power, and shall be the sole law-making organ of the State.

The highest organ of state power? Whew. That is good.

Now, what do I have in my hand?

Article 81. The Supreme Court is the court of last resort with power to determine the constitutionality of any law, order, regulation or official act.

Oh, too bad. When the Supreme Court delivers its judgment, as it will later this year on the constitutionality of the December 2012 House of Representatives election, that judgment will be final. Whether the Supreme Court has the means of enforcing an unconstitutionality ruling, in the face of resistance from a House of Representatives determined to cling to power -- that I grant you is a question.

Does not the above article make you long to read the rest of the series? Well you can, at the Yomiuri's spiffy new English language site. (Link)

Question Of The Day - On Unconstitutional Diets

If, as the Tokyo High Court found yesterday (Link) and as the Sapporo High Court found today (Link - J) the December 16, 2012 House of Representatives election was unconstitutional, can the representatives seated by said unconstitutional election vote on an amendment to the Constitution?　

The two court rulings so far have kept the House of Representatives in place, foreswearing a nullification of the election results. The argument is that that even though the current House of Representatives was elected in an unconstitutional election, the previous legitimate House of Representatives had, before its dissolution, voted on a plan (the so-called +0/-5 plan submitted by the Liberal Democratic Party) that will after the election commission submits a new electoral map and that map is ratified by the present unconsitutinally elected Diet, make the next House of Representatives election constitutional.

So, in theory, Japan may have a four year interregnum, featuring a fully empowered government without a constitutional basis for its existence. Or, depending on one's views of what constitutes unconstitutionality, may never have a constitutional government again.

Making the struggle over whether or not to amend the Constitution moot, it would seem.

For those who may be despairing of Japanese court decisions ever making any sense, both the Tokyo High Court and the Sapporo High Court have ruled that now that the December 2012 elections have been held, the said elections have moved from "the state of being unconstitutional" (iken jotai) that they were in in March 2011 to being unconstitutional (iken) today.

Whew! At least that is settled.

At least 16 more lower courts decisions to be handed down by March 27. After that, the Supremes will get their shot at making sense of this mess.

Catching Up

Even though it is now November, it was only yesterday that I took the time to listen to the 8 March 2012 Temple University talk by Kenneth Cukier, the former Japan economics and business correspondent for The Economist. In the YouTube video of the talk, Cukier denies he is anything of an expert on Japan, even after five years on the job. He remains baffled by the contradictions he has seen. Nevertheless Cukier leads the viewer/listener (Cukier speaks without slides, so there is nothing to watch) on a worthwhile tour of the various lenses through which one can view the Japanese economy and Japanese corporations. (Link)

At the end of his presentation, Cukier praises the work of the author Spike of the blog Spike Japan. Spike has produced some of the best writing ever on the down-at-the-heels side of Japan, in long essays laced with humor, affection and a heavy dose of statistics. The magazine is dead, which is sad, for Spike's travelogues, such as his latest on what he saw whilst on a trek through "the wettest, boggiest, squelchiest bits of Hokkaido" would certainly be gracing the pages of a thick and glossy publication. (Link)

Finally, I do not know whether the reporters of the Tokyo Shimbun read The Japan Times blog YenForLiving or whether blog authors Philip Brasor and Tsukuba Masako merely captured the zeitgeist (Link) but today's top story in the print edition of the Tokyo Metropolitan District's hometown newspaper is on the hurdle created by the kyotakukin, this blessed land's world-beatingly high and often non-refundable deposit required for a run for a Diet seat -- though, as frequent Shisaku commenter Troy has pointed out, the amount required for a run at a Diet district seat represents a one thousand yen contribution from three thousand supporters.

One Stupid Move

Be aggressive, but play soundly. Don't take unnecessary chances.

- Bruce Pandolfini, "The 64 Commandments of Chess"

Yesterday, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko unveiled his reshuffled Cabinet (E). This follows on the heels of Friday's announcement of an extremely youthful but nevertheless competent line up of Democratic Party of Japan executives (E). Smirking critics could indeed call the newly appointed party secretariat the Attack of the Kiddie Korps, or perhaps for the more SF inclined "DPJ: The Next Generation." Aside from the reappointed secretary-general Koshi'ishi Azuma, the party secretariat is composed of what are in historical terms striplings, with Diet Affairs Chairman Yamanoi Kazunori the graybeard at 50 years of age.

Continuing on the SF theme, opposition party leaders and spokesmen are deriding the reshuffled cabinet as being nothing so much as the "So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish" Cabinet. (J)

There is a grain of truth in the disparagement. Noda rotated in en masse the former party secretariat -- minus, it should be noted, the egregious Sengoku Yoshito.

The granting of all of the Second Generation of DPJ leaders a cabinet post hints that it is Dandy Don Meredith Time for the DPJ. The former American football player and announcer would croon, "Turn out the lights/The party's over" when the score and the time remaining in a game left no doubt as to which side was going to win.

That not a single one of the candidates who ran against Noda in the party leadership election received a post indicates that Noda does not give a fig about either Kano Michihiko's or Haraguchi Kazuhiro's supporters bolting from the party, triggering a political crisis as the DPJ falls into minority status in the House of Representatives.

That Noda would seeminly abandon his pledge to be a "no sides" leader of the party, meaning that all voices would be respected, only two weeks after winning reelection, indicates a certain fatalistic reckelessness has crept into his calculations.

Public opinion poll results after the Liberal Democratic Party presidential elections would certainly be grounds for Noda taking chances. Rather than sink upon the LDP Diet members' selection of an unstable and controversial Abe Shinzo as party president, support for the LDP soared, from 25% to 37% in a flash Nihon Keizai Shimbun poll (J); from 19% to 25% in a Mainichi Shimbun poll (J) and from 23% to 33% in a Yomiuri Shimbun poll (J).

The rise in the LDP's popularity over the last week is especially galling because

1) All three polls showed rises in the support levels for the Noda Cabinet

2) Abe Shinzo hardly lights the public's fire.

Q: Do you have positive expectations of Abe Shinzo?

Nikkei
Yes 38
No 49

Mainichi
Yes 40%
No 55%

3) Despite majorities polled feeling that the reelection of Noda as leader of the DPJ was a good thing, support for the DPJ declined:

Nikkei
August 21%
Sept 26-27 19%

Mainichi
Sept 15-16 13%
Sept 29-30 11%

Yomiuri
Aug 17-19 20%
Sept 28-30 18%

Worse news still in the most recent round of polls was the decline in interest in Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru's Japan Restoration Association. The official start of the national party on Friday was a low-key or no-key affair. There was no grand party at a major hotel, no shots of an office overflowing with a snow bank of congratulatory white orchids. The biggest news regarding JRA was Takenaka Heizo, the academic economist and former Koizumi banking and postal reform point man, accepting the invitation to be chairman of the committee selecting the JRA's candidates. (J)

With its support jumping, and the support of the DPJ sliding and support for the JRA plummeting, the incentive for the LDP in the upcoming Diet session is to be non-cooperative to the point of bringing Diet proceedings to a standstill, endangering the passage of a bond issuance bill funding the government's activities through the rest of the fiscal year. Abe and New Komeito leader Yamaguchi Natsuo are indeed making loud noises about holding Noda to the promise he made to former LDP president Tanigaki Sakakazu to call a House of Representatives election "soon" (chikai uchi ni).

Noda's and the DPJ's ace in the hole, however, remains the reform of electoral district boundaries. Unless some bill is passed bringing down the level of disparity in the voting strengths of the nation's largest and smallest House of Representative districts to less than 2 to 1, an election would be unconstitutional. If worse comes to worst, the game plan for the DPJ has been to lay out a draft electoral reform bill unacceptable to either the LDP or the New Komeito, and let them rail away until they are forced to vote in favor of the bond issuance bill.

Which is why one of the choices Noda has made for his new Cabinet looks like a huge mistake. As Eurasia Group Advisor Okumura Jun has noted, the new minister of Health, Welfare and Labour Minister Mitsui Wakio is the founder and owner of a pharmaceutical company and chairman of a private corporation running 3 hospitals and 2 retirement homes in Hokkaido (Link) -- a concantenation of conflicts of interest so naked that an unforgiving, persistent, frustrated and irresponsible opposition could tie up hours and hours of Diet Budget Committee time discussing them.

Now where could anyone find such an opposition?

When the obvious strategy for the new Noda Cabinet was to sit tight and let the opposition vent, why oh why give them a set of reasonable topics to vent about?

OK, Morons. Now What?

Yamaguchi Kunio Natsuo (L) and Tanigaki Sadakazu (R) are Leader and President of the New Komeito and the LDP, respectively.

As can be expected in these lamest of times, the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito, having failed to halt the passage of the bond isuance and electoral reform bills in the House of Representatives, submitted at a velocity somewhat faster than the speed of thought a censure motion to the President of the House of Councillors.

So what happens now?

All business in the House of Councillors comes to a halt, the motion taking precedence. The membership gathers in the plenary chamber. The parties submitting the motion explain their reasons for submitting the motion. The chamber votes.

Should the measure pass, nothing of consequence happens, as a censure motion has no legal effect. The prime minister, however, will be persona non grata in the House, stripped of the dignity of his office.

The presumed result is that the House of Councillors will cease to conduct any of its business, despite the Diet's still being in session -- the continued acceptance of high salaries for no work being extremely popular with the taxpayers. (J)

I am looking forward to the LDP's and the New Komeito's speeches. New levels of casuistry will be necessary to prevent folks from laughing.

The prime minister's faults:

- "He convinced us to vote for a rise in the consumption tax, which was our own policy."

- "He has increased Japan's international prestige by keeping his cool at a time when Japan is beset with challenges to its territories and territorial claims."

- "He disposed of non-Japanese activists landing on the Senkakus in exactly the same way Koizumi Jun'ichiro did."

- "He has led his party into passing a bill that provides the legal basis for the government to pay its bills."

- "He has led his party into passing an electoral reform bill that a) resolves the issue of the unconstitutionality of the districts due to over- and under-representation, b) cuts the cost of government by eliminating 40 seats of the House of Representatives and 3) increases the chances of the smaller parties to win seats."

A damning list, to be sure.

The live broadcast from the House of Councillors chamber is scheduled to begin at 10:00 a.m., accessible at http://www.webtv.sangiin.go.jp/webtv/index.php.

Photo image credit: Kyodo News

"Wenn Ich Kultur Höre..."

This report from Malcolm Foster of the Associated Press was going so well...

Doctors: Japan nuclear plant workers face stigma
Associated Press

TOKYO – A growing number of Japanese workers who are risking their health to shut down the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant are suffering from depression, anxiety about the future and a loss of motivation, say two doctors who visit them regularly.

But their psychological problems are driven less by fears about developing cancer from radiation exposure and more by something immediate and personal: Discrimination from the very community they tried to protect, says Jun Shigemura, who heads a volunteer team of about ten psychiatrists and psychologists from the National Defense Medical College who meet with Tokyo Electric Power Co. nuclear plant employees.

They tell therapists they have been harangued by residents displaced in Japan's nuclear disaster and threatened with signs on their doors telling them to leave. Some of their children have been taunted at school, and prospective landlords have turned them away.

"They have become targets of people's anger," Shigemura told The Associated Press.

TEPCO workers — in their readily identifiable blue uniforms — were once considered to be among the elite in this rural area 230 kilometers (140 kilometers) north of Tokyo. But after the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami set off meltdowns at the Fukushima plant, residents came to view them as "perpetrators," Shigemura said.

Many TEPCO families in the area now hide their link to the company for fear of criticism, local doctors and psychiatrists say.

Shigemura likens the workers' experience to that of U.S. Vietnam veterans returning home to hostility in the 1960s and early '70s.

"They both worked for (the good of) their countries, but they got a backlash," he said.

(Link)

Wonderful. Sensible. Relevant across national boundaries, showing a commonality of human experience! Excellent contrast with prejudice shown the Hiroshima survivors (today is the anniversary, for those who forget these things).

That members of the public should lash out in frustration against TEPCO workers is understandable. As was the case in the Vietnam protestors' channeling of their frustrations on the blameless Vietnam veterans, the leaders of the organizations responsible for a national, preventable disaster accepted no blame for what had gone seriously wrong on their watches, and the system of representative government, which should have protected to the people and failing that, quickly rectified the problems, instead responded with platitudes and shoddy, dishonest, desultory diddling.

Then, after so much good has been done, someone has to go and shoot the report in the foot:

Culture helps explain some of these dynamics, including the strong Japanese sense of duty and group responsibility.

"People believe the workers share in the responsibility" for the disaster even though they didn't cause it, Tanigawa said.

Ach, ach, ach!

How did one of the co-authors come up with this analysis? Public opinion polling? Interviews with citizens not linked to TEPCO? Post-disaster ethnographies?

Oh, one of the subjects felt as though society was against him (Link). But that is not quite the same thing as society actually being against him, is it?

Can we have some sort of rule here? That when an interviewee from this blessed land cites culture as a reason for a certain outcome, that the questioner ask, immediately, before one more word leaves the interview subject's mouth, "On what data do you base that statement?"

When the interviewee turns out to not have any hard evidence to back up his or her claim, the interviewer should say, "Thanks. I know what you were trying to do. However, it is not helping. Let's stick to what the data says, OK?"

Japan's Depleted Politics

This Sunday's morning talk show lineup provided a stark demonstration of the depleted state of this blessed land's politics. Following a week of significant action -- the defection of four more members of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan and the consequent formation of two new parliamentary caucuses in the Diet and even more more in the local assemblies (J - Yamanashi and J - Tochigi); the public humiliation of Ambassador to China Niwa Uichiro, the first non-bureaucrat to hold the post, over his matter-of fact assessment that a purchase of three of the Senkaku Islands by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government would likely lead to great frictions in between Japan and China (E - When will the Government of Japan get around to issuing the "It's OK talk to anyone -- ANYONE -- just not the Financial Times" directive?); the first serious hiccup in the seemingly unstoppable march of Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru (for those keeping score: July 21 = 0 tweets) -- the best that Nichiyo Toron, the national broadcaster NHK's flagship political debate program could come up with was a debate in between Jojima Koriki and Kishida Fumio, the Diet Affairs chairmen of the DPJ and the Liberal Democratic Party, respectively. For 22 minutes, rather than the customary hour. And with Kishida not even in the Tokyo studio but piped in from outside.

This is nearly unprecedented. Nichiyo Toron almost always has at least the policy chiefs of all the major and mini-parties of the Diet on display, if not the party secretary-generals. True, the result looks ludicrous, with the representative of the ruling DPJ and the representative of its coalition appendage the People New Party on one side facing off against six (now, with Ozawa Ichiro's new Livelihood Party, it would be seven) representatives of the main opposition parties on the other, requiring the moderator to carry out a delicate dance of traffic control in between the criticisms of the opposition and the assertions of the ruling coalition and in between the positions of the significant parties and the sad bleatings of the insignificant.

The abbreviated face-off covered only a tiny range of issues. Both men offered their party's positions on:

1) the progress of the main reform social welfare and pension bills (ittai kaikaku hoan), including the bill raising consumption tax to 10%, through the House of Councillors

2) the schedule for the holding of House of Representative elections, once the ittai kaikaku bills pass the House of Councillors, as the written agreement in between the DPJ, LDP and the New Komeito requires

3) the likelihood of the LDP cooperating with the DPJ in passing the all-important bond issuance bill necessary to implement the DPJ-drafted budget, before the money runs out of money in October (E)

4) the competing bills of the DPJ and LDP on reforming the districts and size of House of Representatives, in order that an election might be constitutional

5) the stability and legitimacy of the DPJ-led government, in light of the recent waves of defections from the DPJ

These five subjects are all linked together as in a chain: the solving of one leads to and depends upon the solving of others. As the sparse attendance at Nichiyo Toron debate indicates, these are issues the DPJ and the LDP have to work out between themselves, as no combination of either party with any of the other parties in the Diet can approve any of the necessary legislation.

The greatest hurdle is an agreement on the reform of the House of Representatives. At present, 97 districts have populations greater than 2 times the population of the smallest district, meaning that over half the votes in those 97 districts are essentially thrown away. Despite a history of deference to the executive and legislative branches, the Supreme Court has thrown down a challenge, declaring any disparity greater than 1.99 to 1 unconstitutional, putting some meat on Article 14 of the Constitution, which guarantees citizens equality under the law.

The LDP bill, known as the +0/-5 Solution, is a clever response to the Supreme Court's challenge. Rather than giving the voters in the 97 grossly underrepresented districts a greater say in the running of their government, the bill would simply abolish the five smallest districts. The disparity of between the 97 largest districts and the smallest district would then fall below the 1.99 limit.

The attraction of this bill for the LDP is obvious. It preserves almost intact the inequalities that perpetuated LDP rule for 50 years. The urban and suburban, revenue-producing districts are denigrated, while the largely rural districts, with their government contract- and regulation-protected economies, are elevated.

The competing DPJ bill has as its core the +0/-5 Solution, which is contrary to the interests of the DPJ's natural constituency, the abused urban and suburban electorate. Tacked on to the +0/-5 core, however, are a pair of amendments that at once entice and repel the New Komeito, the LDP's alliance partner.

The DPJ bill is thus not a bill at all. It is a red herring, a lie told in order to keep the LDP and the New Komeito engaged, under the illusion that a weakened DPJ is ready to cut a deal on redistricting. In return the LDP and the New Komeito, out of their present eagerness to hold an election, are expected to offer concessions on pending bills, such as the all-important bond issuance bill.

However, all the gamesmanship cannot disguise a basic reality: the DPJ and the LDP no longer have the luxury of playing ruling party versus opposition. With the recent defections of 16 House of Councillors members, the DPJ no longer has the option of teaming up with the New Komeito to pass bills through both Houses of the Diet. Only a DPJ-LDP consensus can guarantee a bill's passage.

Furthermore, as Okumura Jun has noted, barring the intrusion of a Hashimoto Toru-led national political party -- which, due to this week's revelations and Hashimoto's sudden loss of his voice, suddenly has become far less of a threat to the status quo -- there is no plausible set of election results altering the necessity of DPJ-LDP cohabitation. An election, if held today, would not prove or solve anything.

Furthermore, the LDP membership does not really want to have an election, not now. Party president Tanigaki Sadakazu has proven a disappointment, unable, since his election in 2009, to improve his party's standing with the electorate, despite the DPJ's many stumbles and bumbles. Tanigaki's term ends in September; several of his more aggressive and thoughtful colleagues are poised to replace him. Eager to force an election before his term runs out, Tanigaki advocates implacable confrontation with the DPJ. His intra-party rivals, unwilling to undermine the authority of the party presidency that they themselves covet, echo his intransigence, though with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

Hence the current poverty of Japanese politics. While a multitude of decisions await, the direction of the country is hostage to the passage of a handful of bills. Furthermore, a faith that party identity is honed through conflict with the other side, a legacy of the LDP's long reign in power, holds the two major parties back from inescapable collaboration.

We Can Have Elections!

Well of one kind. And only with regrets. And they are not the elections everyone is talking about.

Quietly, and without very much fuss, it seems that Ishikawa Yasuo, the disgraced former minister of defense (Mister "I am an amateur in defense issues and that is the epitome of civilian control" to you and me), now secretary-general of the Democratic Party of Japan's House of Councillors delegation, has crafted a simple plan to rectify the disparities in that House that the courts have ruled unconstitutional. The plan has the agreement of the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito and the disappointed acquiescence of the rest of the opposition parties. In contrast with the reform of the House of Representatives districts, which has the various parties talking past one another, the Ishikawa Plan has an excellent chance of being converted into law by the end of this extended regular session of the Diet.

The plan is a minimal, hair-splitting solution to the Supreme Court-mandated reform of the disparities in the House of Councillors. Kanagawa Prefecture, which currently suffers from the fewest Senators per capita, will be bounced from six senators to eight. Osaka Prefecture, which is the next in line in terms of underrepresentation, will be similarly bounced from six to eight.

To supply these four new Senate seats, someone will have to give up seats. Those someones will be Fukushima Prefecture (great timing!) and Gifu Prefecture, both of which will drop from four senators to just two.

This is a quick and dirty solution. The highest level of disparity in the country, currently 5.11 to 1 in between the voters in Kanagawa Prefecture and those in Tottori Prefecture, will drop to 4.75 to 1 in between those in Hyogo Prefecture and those in Tottori. This slips below the court-mandated maximum of 4.99 to 1, allowing for a legal election to take place on schedule in July next year. (J)

While the Ishikawa Plan seems unremarkable for what it contains, what it does not contain makes it interesting. Gone, for example, is any hint of the DPJ's manifesto promise to cut 40 seats from the House of Councillors. This is a huge concession on the part of Ishikawa, a reputed Ozawa Ichiro toady. Also absent from the plan is any hint of an attempt to accommodate the New Komeito Party's and the Democratic Socialist Party's desires to replace the d'Hondt proportional seat distribution system with the Additional Member System. The minor parties have been asked to wait to have their desires answered prior to the 2016 electoral cycle, ostensibly in order give everyone time to think about the proposal.

In the absence honoring the promises of massive seat cuts made in the DPJ's 2009 manifesto, reform of the House of Councillors was always relatively simple. This is due in part to the greater level of disparity allowed -- 4.99 to 1 as opposed to 1.99 to 1, the standard set by the Supreme Court for the House of Representatives districts.

Another contributing factor is, perversely, the knowledge that the House of Councillors had all the constitutional sense wrung out of it decades ago. Designed to be friendly to independents, and thus a brake on party mob rule, it became partisan battleground through the 1982 introduction of the awarding of proportional seats from party lists. The takeover of the House by parties failed to upend the relationship between the two Houses thanks to the persistence of the 1955 System, whereby the LDP retained dominance in the House of Representatives and the country and the Socialist Party played the part of an opposition while being the dominant party's tacit accommodators. However, in the 1990s the concorde collapsed, half after the breakup of the LDP in 1993 and half in the Socialists' committing ideological suicide from 1994 onward.

The person who really cracked the nut, however, was, unsurprisingly, Ozawa Ichiro. First through the New Frontier Party and then later through the DPJ, Ozawa capitalized on the perversion of the the House of Councillors' original purpose and status to make it, and not the House of Representatives, the fulcrum point in politics.

That the minority parliament in the Diet can now, through control of the House of Councillors, hold the rest of the apparatus of government hostage, was never the intent of the writers of the Constitution. The Ishikawa Plan's meagre reforms will make no dent in this anomalous situation.

The resolution of the unconstitutionality of the districts in the House of Councillors sets up a huge battle over the reform of the districts of the House of Representatives. It will not be resolved, as the LDP desires, with a simple abolition of the five smallest electoral districts. The DPJ rank-and-file will demand an Armageddon over House of Representatives redistricting.

Expect them to get one.

What Knowledgeable Friends Are For

It seems I have won my bet with Okumura Jun on the size of the July 6 protest in front of the Prime Minister's Residence. According to Tokyo Metropolitan Police estimates 17,000 demonstrators showed up on June 29, the day after the restart of the #3 reactor of the Oi nuclear power plant. According to the same source, 21,000 demonstrators showed up on Friday night (Protest organizers have of course said that far more protesters showed up on both nights than the police claim. Given the incentives, I am sure the correct number is somewhere in between).

Now Okumura-san can claim that the 24% increase in estimated crowd size, rather than the greater than 25% decrease he predicted, was due to the free-for-all that happened at the Foreign Correspondent's Club earlier in the day, when the non-Japanese press bludgeoned Kurokawa Kiyoshi, chairman of the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Commission for the discrepancies between the English language précis and the Japanese text, including the foul attribution of the failure to "Japanese culture" found only in the English version ((F and E). Perhaps it was the obvious the desire of the folks on Friday to be out protesting in the rain, rather than under clear skies as was the case the week before.

Whatever.

All joking aside, what was stunning and important was that the mainstream news media on Friday stopped pretending the protests were not happening. TV news broadcasts had helicopters circling the Prime Minister's Residence (try that one in Washington DC, Beijing or Moscow) broadcasting live images of the crowd. The newspapers stepped up their coverage, including even the Yomiuri Shimbun, which refused to report on the June 29 protest. (J)

So over lunch at Aux Bacchanales (Okumura-san spent part of his formative years in a majority French-speaking city and I went to a bilingual school where one of the languages was French -- so our having lunch in a Tokyo bistro appropriate, thank you very much), I will have the chance to discuss why he and I have such different views of the timing of the next House of Representatives election.

As far as I can see, there is only one human being of consequence who wants a snap election after the passage of the consumption tax bill through the House of Councillors: Liberal Democratic Party President Tanigaki Sadakazu. Tanigaki knows that if the Diet is not dissolved before the end of its session on September 8, he will have to face an LDP presidential election. Due to his lackluster performance as LDP leader -- the party failing under his leadership to capitalize on numerous bumbles and fumbles of the Democratic Party of Japan -- he will go down as only the second LDP president, after Kono Yohei, to never become prime minister.

Sadly, and all too typically, Tanigaki is alone in believing that the stage is set for elections. The news media complex, after reporting at length in February that the current electoral map is unconstitutional, then repeating the process in May following the Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko's on-air admission that the districts are unconstitutional, are humming that elections will be held in the next two months -- proving once again that for the domestic media, facts will never be allowed to get in the way of a good story*.

For his party and party-to-be, Ozawa Ichiro has been declaiming that elections are imminent (J - check out the invaluable pyramid of the number of elections of the House of Representatives members of Ozawa's proto-party). However, Ozawa is merely using the threat of elections in order to 1) keep his fellow rebels close to him, 2) encourage to other members of the DPJ to defect (this in order that they might avoid going into elections tarred with the brush of raising taxes) and 3) perpetuate the illusion that he knows more than he actually knows**.

As for Tanigaki's fellow LDP's members, they are worried that entering a campaign with Tanigaki at the head of the party will lead to disaster. Better to wait until September, replace Tanigaki with someone more dynamic like Ishiba Shigeru, Ishihara Nobuteru or Hayashi Yoshimasa***, then push the Noda government to the wall in the fall extraordinary Diet session.

As always, there is the unresolved matter of rendering the holding of elections constitutional. The current situation would make a great trivia game "gotcha" question: "Name the countries in Northeast Asia where the holding of national elections is illegal." In a recent GlobalTalk 21 post, Okumura-san argues that a snap election is possible, either via the legislative fiddle devised by the LDP -- eliminate the five smallest electoral districts and their 5 seats in the Diet, lowering the discrepancy between the smallest remaining district and the largest to 1.78, well below the Supreme Court's threshold of 1.99 -- or simply bullrush the Emperor and the Supreme Court, in succession, over the unconstitutionality of the districts.

As for the latter solution, forget it. There is no way under the sun (intentional allusion) that Prime Minister Noda will convince the present emperor to send this blessed land spinning into an extra-constitutional void. He is a people's emperor, willing to junk tradition when tradition is contrary to fact or contemporary practice. Moreover, he is the son of Hirohito: he will never, ever, ever allow an extra-constitutional assertion of power by any branch of the government.

As for the first solution, not even the LDP, which dreamed it up, believes the DPJ will ever accept it. Redistricting is the key to the kingdom of heaven: he or she who holds in his or her hand determines who shall rule this nation for the next decade. It is the prize that the DPJ fought for -- to reward the DPJ's core urban/suburban constituencies with the representation they had so long been denied under LDP rule...and lest it be forgotten, the sad-sack district, the one whose voters are the least represented in the House of Representatives, whose votes are worth only 40% of the votes in the least populous Kochi #3 district -- that is Chiba District #4 -- Prime Minister Noda's district.

As if the DPJ needed any more reason to delay the next election, the popularity numbers for Hashimoto Toru's Ishin no kai have not yet plateaued. Until such time as it is clear just how far Hashimoto's political movement can roll, the incentive is to sit tight.

So a snap election? In the evening newspapers' dreams perhaps.

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* The "Ozawa Ichiro is corrupt" presumption is another example.

** This is a classic smart prophet's double game. If the prophesied comes about, then the prophet was right. If the prophesied does not come about, the prophet claims it was precisely because of his/her prophecy that those in control altered conditions so as to render the prophesied impossible.

*** Hayashi has already founded his own study group, a precursor to a major candidate's run for the office of the presidency. He is the default Washington candidate (E). He is, however, a member of the House of Councillors, a huge demerit in LDP internal politics. Party members want to a leader from the House of Representatives, where he/she will share in the fates of those thrown into an election by a Diet dissolution.

The Illusion of Choice

"What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies, when he can't have babies?

- Reg, Life of Brian (1979)

NHK (J - Time Sensitive) and Fuji TV (J - Time Sensitive) released the results of their latest random dial public opinion polls last night.

The pollsters found that:

- The popularity of the Cabinet remains mired in the zone of mediocrity, indicating the Prime Minister received no bounce for ridding his Cabinet of its most troublesome members.

Do your support or not support the Noda Cabinet?

NHK
Support 27%
Do not support 51%

Fuji TV
Support 28%
Do not support 61%

- That anti-nuclear power feelings in the country are not visceral, at least not on the national level, and do not extend to a continued moratorium on the restart of Kansai Electric Power's Oi reactors.

NHK
Do you agree with the prime minister's statement on Friday that the restart of the Oi nuclear reactors is necessary to protect the livelihood and security of Japan?

Agree 31%
Disagree 27%
Neither 37%

Fuji TV
Are you in favor of a restart of the Oi reactors?

In favor 49%
Opposed 43%

- That the country is once again favoring an early election, after backing off earlier this year.

When should the next House of Representatives election be held?

NHK

As soon as possible 20%
Before the September leadership elections of the DPJ and the LDP 15%
Before the year's end 21%
At the end of the current Diet's tenure 36%

Fuji TV

Summer this year 27%
Before the year's end 26%
At the end of the current Diet's tenure 34%


As to who would prevail in an early elections, one has to consult other survey results. The Kyodo poll of June 4-5, which found support for the Noda Cabinet at 32%, makes for grim reading for the ruling Democratic Party of Japan.

Which party would you vote for in the proportional seat selection of the next House of Representatives election?

DPJ 16%
LDP 30%
Your Party 7%
New Komeito 4%
Communist 4%
Socialist 2%
Other 5%
Do not know/no response 33%

Given party support numbers like these, the probability that Prime Minister Noda will call a snap election is zero. He will not lead his party into oblivion.

Nevertheless, the news media dutifully reports that in his Diet testimony yesterday Noda signaled that should the bills raising the consumption not pass during this Diet session, he might ask the Emperor to dissolve the Diet, triggering elections. The prime minister was purportedly cracking the whip at the anti-tax forces in his own party, most of whom are allied with former party leader Ozawa Ichiro and many of whom would lose their seats should an election be called tomorrow. (J)

Except of course, that the Diet cannot be dissolved tomorrow. Technically the emperor could dissolve the present House of Representatives but the result would be the implosion of the 1946 Constitution.

My bet is that the Heisei emperor will not honor a request to dissolve the Diet -- a refusal that itself would trigger a constitutional crisis.

Indeed blessed land's continuing constitutional constipation and the ruling party's abysmal poll numbers combine to form a blockage rendering public opinion largely moot. The public may dislike or hate certain decisions the government is making. However, that displeasure has no outlet. Unless an alliance is forged in between Ozawa's followers and the LDP -- a pact that the LDP, having once concluded with Ozawa, is determined to never conclude again -- nothing can budge the Noda government from its perch.

So while the poll takers continue to take the pulse of the people, the opinions expressed have no impact on the government's actions.

It is the illusion of choice.

Catching Up On The News - Unconstitutional Elections

Something huge happened yesterday.

In a footnote to my post of yesterday, I noted that NHK announcer Okoshi Kensuke last Thursday confronted Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko with the bald fact that the current map of the House of Representatives districts is unconstitutional, rendering an election impossible on technical grounds. While the Prime Minister had no alternative but to concede that the current map is unconstitutional, he dodged the thrust of Okoshi's question, saying that the Diet had too many important and difficult issues before it for anyone to be discussing a dissolution and an election at this time.

Noda had been, until the live NHK interview, careful to not get cornered on the question of the constitutionality of holding an election. He had left it up to Koshi'ishi Azuma, the Democratic Party of Japan's secretary-general, to tell the seemingly bone-headed members of the political press over and over again that since the issue of the disproportionality of a single vote (ippyo no kakusa) had not been resolved in accordance with the standards set down by the Supreme Court judgment of March 2011, no House of Representatives elections could take place.

While any position aside from the one Koshi'ishi has taken is ludicrous -- unconstitutional meaning “contrary to the basic law of the land, the law upon which all other laws are based” -- Noda has been careful to preserve the notion that the holding of an election is a matter of opinion -- his opinion -- rather than a matter of law.

The reason Noda has needed to maintain this fallacy is simple: his power to call an election is the whip he needs to keep the followers of former DPJ party leader Ozawa Ichiro in line. Nothing terrifies the Ozawa-vetted first termers like the possibility being plunged into an election. With the disdain the public has at present for the DPJ and perhaps permanently for Ozawa, each and every one of these Ozawa acolytes would be wiped out.

Perversely, the opposition Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito have aided Noda in the maintenance of this illusion. The leaders of both the LDP and the New Komeito know just as well as anyone else that elections are impossible if the districts are unconstitutional. Nevertheless they have been calling for elections for two years straight. And why not? It is the biggest free lunch in history. The public opininon polls on the level of public support for the LDP and the New Komeito could find that both have 0% support and it would not matter: the two parties would still call for elections.

Noda, for his part, tacitly used opposition demands for elections as a means of bolstering the illusion he has wished to preserve. If the opposition is demanding elections, it stands to reason that the opposition at least believes elections can be held.

Hence the sound of breaking glass yesterday when LDP Secretary-General Ishihara Nobuteru asked Prime Minister Noda, in special Diet Committee session, whether in fact the failure to correct the disproportionality of votes in the electoral districts put a shackle on the right to dissolve the Diet. Noda replied that no, failure to act did not shackle the right and that elections would be held when they he thought they were needed. (J)

Technically, both men are correct. Following through on Ishihara's thought, a dissolution of the Diet would trigger the implementation of Article 54 of the Constitution, which states that following a dissolution of the Diet, an election must be held within 40 days. Since the current electoral districts have been ruled unconstitutional, and the Diet would no longer be in existence to fix them, the election would a priori be void.

As for Noda's insistence that the right to dissolve the Diet is not compromised, his position is true only via the most painstaking of hairsplitting. The right to dissolve the Diet, held by the Emperor but exercised upon the advice of the Prime Minister, is not compromised until the moment the right is exercised, at which point the country would be blasted out into extraconstitutional space.

While the constitutional implications of this conundrum are fascinating*, what was of immense political importance in Ishihara's question was that unless the LDP tries to pull off the same trick that the DPJ has been pulling -- i.e., having the party secretary-general insisting that holding a House of Representatives election is impossible while the party president maintains that it is not -- the delicate minuet Noda and the opposition have been dancing together has come to a sudden stop. If a gaggle of reporters corner LDP president Tanigaki Sadakazu and press him on whether or not Ishihara's question means the LDP now believes holding elections is unconstitutional, chances are the not terribly swift-thinking Tanigaki will not have an intelligible response.

If and when Tanigaki flubs his moment in the spotlight, the political game board will become completely scrambled, just when Ozawa Ichiro, the master of Go (Part 1 and Part 2) is set to meet with the prime minister. (J)

-----------------------------
* The current emperor, being the conscientious, cautious but independent-thinking man that he is, would likely, on the most perfect of legal grounds, toss post-1945 precedent into the dustbin by refusing the prime minister's request for a dissolution.

OK, So Maybe We Are Wrong

Let us assume that Ozawa Ichiro is right, that the public wants the Democratic Party of Japan to fulfill its campaign promises of 2009 -- and that unless the DPJ returns to the true path (that, we shall not forget, Ozawa authored) by the time the next elections come around, the party.

Or, let us assume that Tanigaki Sadakazu, Ishihara Nobuteru and Oshima Tadamori are right, that the nation is sick to death of the bumbling and stumbling of the DPJ, particularly its inability to come to internal agreement on the government's major policy plank, the revitalization of the social welfare compact through a rise in the consumption tax.

Or, let us assume that the league of anonymous analysts are right, that the government is incapable of making the significant changes Japan needs to invigorate itself, meaning that Noda Yoshihiko is heading downhill and out the door the same way his last five predecessors have.

Then why in the dickens are the support levels of this Cabinet rising at this time? The Kyodo News poll of this morning finds support for the Cabinet rising to 32% from 29% the month before. This finding echoes the Jiji Press finding of cabinet support at 27%, a rise of 3 points from a month earlier (J) and NHK's finding of cabinet support at 33%, up 2 points from a month earlier (link expired). A week ago, the Yomiuri Shimbun found cabinet support at 35%, 5 points up from a month earlier (J). A week before that Nippon Television found a similar 5 point rise in public support for the cabinet (link expired).

Now these moves, while in sync with one another, may not represent an updraft for the Noda government. For all we know, they may represent a firming of confidence in government in general in response to the upwelling of feelings of national unity over the 3/11 anniversary. The politics-news-entertainment complex may have been pulling its punches pre-anniversary, giving the government a breather from the usual battering it faces, allowing the electorate to have a brighter view of the present.

Still, if the Noda government were really messing up, or the country on the way to a political train wreck, one would expect at least some polls to show declines in cabinet support.

Obviously, that is not happening.

Indeed, even more reassuring the PM and his government should be the fall in the percentage those holding negative views of the Cabinet: down 5 points in the Kyodo poll, down 3 points in the Jiji Press poll, down 5 points in the Yomiuri poll.

On the all-important question of which party the electorate will vote for in the bloc proportional vote (noting, of course, that a national survey does not reflect the strength of a particular party's appeal in specific blocs) the prime minister's party still trails the Liberal Democratic Party. The Kyodo poll finds the split to be 20% for the DPJ versus 23% for the LDP: the Yomiuri poll finds find the split to be 17% versus 21% (J).

For both parties, the real pain will be in the Kinki bloc, where the Yomiuri poll found that the top vote getter would be Hashimoto Toru's Ishin no kai receving 24% of the committed vote, with the LDP second at 18% and the DPJ third at 10%. (J)

The Ishin no kai's participation in the next House of Representatives election, even while not generating direct support of greater than a quarter of the voters in its home region, is still popular overall. In the Yomiuri poll, 58% of the electorate has positive expectations over the Ishin no kai's participation in national politics. In a poll the Mainichi Shimbun conducted in the first week of March, 61% of the electorate had favorable views of Ishin no kai participation in national politics (J).

Today's Kyodo polls frames the question of the Ishin no kai's rise and the possible formation of a "true conservative" party under the command of some combination of Ishihara Shintaro, Hiranuma Takeo and Kamei Shizuka in a different way: if the government could be rearranged according to your wishes, what would be its constituent parts?

A government with the DPJ at its heart 8%
A government with the LDP at its heart 13%
A grand coalition government of the DPJ and the LDP 23%
A new structure based on a realignment of the political world 38%
Other 4%
No opinion 12%

(due to rounding, the above does not add up to 100%)

A grand coalition, which the press has been talking up ad nauseum over the weekend after Deputy Prime Minister and designated go-between with the opposition parties Okada Katsuya purportedly talked about a grand DPJ-LDP coalition over several bills --- an offer Okada denies making, not that he might not be making it at some future time, mind you (J) does not set the public's heart a-flutter. The large number of persons wishing for a whole new political world, together with the miserably low numbers for a future DPJ-centered government may light a fire under the tails of some in the DPJ to accept the Noda government's already significant openness to the opinions of the opposition, particularly the New Komeito but the LDP as well (the other opposition parties might just as well not exist).

As to when the electorate next wants a shot at choosing its representatives, those desiring to have an election next year outnumber those wanting an election this year 66% to 27%, with the plurality (44%) wanting the current House of Representatives to serve out their full terms, again according to Kyodo News.

So we are on course for a double (House of Representatives - House of Councillors) election next year in mid-summer -- which is good because the Diet has yet to tackle the black hole in the nation's voting systems, the methods of electing the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors both being unconstitutional.

Just What The Heck Did They Think They Were Doing?

Yesterday, a leak of huge proportions sailed through the halls of Nagata-cho, the home of Japan's national legislature and the various offices attached to the prime minister: PM Noda Yoshihiko and head of the opposition, Liberal Democratic Party President Tanigaki Sadakazu, had had a secret one-on-one meeting in a Tokyo hotel on February 25. (E)

Both men inexplicably denied that the meeting had taken place. While certainly both of them face very difficult reelection campaigns in the fall -- ones where they will be challenged by forces within their parties extremely unhappy with the way each has been handling party and Diet affairs -- and the news of a secret meeting would only inflame the passions of those opposed to their respective party leaderships --denying what everyone knew to be true seems, at this point, the height of folly.

Just what the two could have been discussing in secret is the subject of wild speculation. The most common supposition is that the two were discussing a quid pro quo: passage of the bill raising the consumption tax in return for an early dissolution of the Diet. This "discussion dissolution" (hanashiai kaisan) has been a favorite proposal of LDP party elders and conservative members of the commentariat in recent weeks. That the LDP had been chattering about it so much was unsurprising, given that the period of time during which the prime minister could dissolve the Diet and call and election without provoking a constitutional crisis was rapidly closing.

Unfortunately for this theory, the timing of the meeting does not neatly match up with the schedule of the constitutional problem with a House of Representatives election. The meeting was held in the evening on February 25. This was also the last day that the House of Representatives could be dissolved without an unchallengeable unconstitutionality of the current electoral map. Basically, the two would have to agree with a three-step process: the passage of a bill fixing the unconstitutionality of the electoral map, then bring together elements of each of their two parties together to vote for the tax increase, followed by a Noda's exercising his right to unilaterally dissolve the Diet. Seeing as neither Noda nor Tanigaki has enough support within his party to drag their colleagues into this scheme -- the DPJ's proposed reform of the House of Representatives cutting far too many of the House of Representatives' proportional seats for the LDP's ally the New Komeito to swallow -- made the entire subject moot.

If the two were not talking about a hanashiai kaisan over the consumption tax, what could they have been talking about? Another line of speculation is that Noda was testing Tanigaki's willingness to fashion a broad, even if only a loose, coalition government of fiscal conservatives to oppose the internal challenge Noda faces from Ozawa Ichiro. With the tossing out of the most damning piece of evidence in Ozawa's accounting irregularities trial on February 17, Ozawa has been on a tear to reestablish himself as the most important power broker within the DPJ. In his most stunning step outside the boundaries of his comfort zone, he agreed to a long interview with The Asahi Shimbun, outlining his opposition to nearly everything the Noda government is trying to achieve. Since Ozawa agrees to mainstream media interviews less frequently than Japan changes prime ministers, this was a sign that he feels himself now nearly bulletproof in intra-party infighting, even as his membership in the DPJ remains formally under suspension. Given his propensity to take his followers out of a party when he feels slighted, and that so many of the DPJ's first-termers and even middle-ranking members are terrified that a rise in the consumption tax condemns them to electoral annihilation, the number of folks Ozawa could take with him has swelled from the estimates of 50 or so prevalent a few months ago. He could conceivably take half the DPJ with him, given the results of the September 2010 leadership election between Ozawa and Kan Naoto. (J)

Whatever the two may have been discussing, that they should meet should not be such a big deal. Leaders meet in secret all the time, feeling out where the other really wants go out, away from the extremism that the camera lights bring out in every politician. This is particularly the case for Tanigaki, who has been forced to cling to a hopeless strategy of saying "No" to everything the DPJ has proposed, a stance which has exasperated certain of the clearer thinking members of the LDP. True, meeting in secret just four days before the two were heading into a clash of the titans Question Time session looks like match-fixing. However, given the way that Prime Minister Noda pummeled Tanigaki in the February 29 session, it seems hardly likely the pair had agreed to treat each other with kid gloves.

So why the denials regarding the meeting? Credibility is a far more precious currency than consistency. So you went behind your colleagues' back to find out what the other side is willing to give up -- so what? Lying in public -- that is fatal.

There was in a time when if the Chief Cabinet Secretary, the government's main spokesman, would say something is true or not true, that was the end of the discussion. Secret agreements on the return of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty? They do not exist. But there are copies in the U.S. National Archives! That is irrelevant, they do not exist.

We do not live in such a time anymore. Indeed, under the DPJ-led coalition government, the heretofore non-existent Okinawa agreements were shown to have existed. That something was secret cannot be denied when the secret gets out.

So for the increasingly pathetic and irrelevant Fujimura Osamu to insist that the meeting never took place is the pretty much same as a confimation that it did.

On Sunday, We Enter A State Of Transcendance and Transgression

On Saturday, February 25, the clock runs out on the Diet's efforts to come up with an electoral map for the next House of Representatives election. In March of last year, the Supreme Court declared the 2009 electoral map unconstitutional due to excessive disproportionality in between the populations of the smallest electoral districts and the largest. It suggested that the maps be redrawn so that the disproportionality of population between the smallest and largest districts does not exceed 1.99. Otherwise, the Supreme Court might for the first time in its history invalidate an election.

It is only on Sunday, however, that this blessed land enters of state of transcending the Constitution and transgressing against the Supreme Court's orders.

The Diet was given a reprieve by the judicial branch. It had up to one year after the announcement of the results of the 2010 population census to make the necessary adjustments to the electoral map to bring the disproportionality in districts below the 1.99 threshold.

It was one year ago on Saturday that the results of the 2010 decennial census were announced.

Due to the split control of the Houses of the Diet, both the ruling parties and the opposition parties had to come together to devise an electoral map that fell within the guidelines set by the Supreme Court's ruling.

This the parties have failed to do.

The parochial interests of the parties are in opposition. The ruling Democratic Party of Japan, in particular, has wanted to make good on its 2009 Manifesto promise to cut the number of proportional seats in the House of Representatives to 100 from its current 180. This guaranteed a showdown with the mini- and micro-parties, which remain viable solely because of the large number of proportional seats available. Since the major opposition party, the Liberal Democratic Party, desperately needs the votes of the mini-party New Komeito to elect its candidates in the district elections, it (the LDP) could not support the DPJ's proposed cuts.

The winners and losers are easy to distinguish. The ruling DPJ, which is languishing in the popularity polls, has no wish for an election at this time. For the DPJ, it is no elections, no problems. The New Komeito and the micro-parties are also winners, as the logjam has prevented the DPJ and the LDP from colluding in chopping down the number of proportional seats, which is in both DPJ's and the LDP's interests as the only two parties currently capable of running credible campaigns for the district seats.

One sure loser is the LDP. According to recent poll results, a head-to-head contest against the DPJ would lead to a reversal of the losses the LDP suffered in 2009. The LDP has a strong desire to force an election while this iron is still hot. The LDP is also desperate to contest andelection before the regionalist parties, the most important of which is Hashimoto Toru Ishin no kai, get themselves organized for running candidates for House of Representatives seats. Once the regionalist parties nominate candidates, the voters will have two large anti-DPJ parties on the ballot. Given the still strong public aversion to the LDP brand and a natural wish to not admit a mistake (for having dumped the LDP from power in 2009) the default anti-DPJ vote will like fall into the hands of the regionalists.

The major news outlets are enraged at the political parties for allowing the country to fall into a state of constitutional disgrace (Here is The Asahi Shimbun's editorial. Here is the Nihon Keizai Shimbun's -- better hurry up and copy this latter one).

News dudes and dudettes, the time to get enraged was last year, not days before the deadline.

Does the end of the grace period mean that the prime minister cannot dissolve the Diet, since a valid election cannot be held? Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osamu would want everyone to believe that the prime minister could still call an election (J) -- this in order to scare the living daylights out of the first-termers and Ozawa Ichiro supporters in the House of Representatives, as they would likely be utterly wiped out were an election to be called today.

Unfortunately, that the Chief Cabinet Secretary says something is so does not make it so. In this case, Fujimura is clearly wrong/being economical with the truth (take your pick).

Rest assured that Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko and current DPJ leadership will use this suspension of normal constitutional processes to drive the LDP leadership nuts -- and to hold out electoral reform carrots to the New Komeito in repeated efforts to entice the mini-party into betraying the LDP, its longtime ally.

On Electoral Reform and the Possibility of Constitutional Crisis

Members of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan and the opposition alliance of the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito met inside the Diet building yesterday to discuss the New Komeito's proposal for a brand new way to distribute the proportional seats in the House of Representatives. The New Komeito, with the backing of the mini- and micro-parties, has proposed the adoption of the hirei daihyo renyosei, which Wikipedia translates as the "Additional Member System."

The new system would strongly favor medium-sized parties while penalizing large parties. In a bid to drive a wedge between the members of the alliance, the DPJ has been inviting the New Komeito to make its case on the application of the new system. With a comfortable majority in the House of Representatives and a mandate running out in August of next year, the DPJ has the luxury of sitting back and watching the two erstwhile allies slug it out over the new system. (J)

The onus on passing electoral reform quickly is upon the LDP. Both parties are in the dumps in terms of public popularity, with party support numbers in the teens. Both would rather not hold an election at this time, given the uncertainty over which direction the non-aligned voters will break. The LDP, however, feels far more threatened by the rise of regional parties such as Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru's Ishin no Kai and the nascent force Aichi governor Omura Takeaki hopes to raise through the establishment of his political training school (J). The new forces, should they be able to field candidates in a sufficient number of constituencies, will represent the non-LDP alternative to the DPJ -- i.e., the party to vote for when you want to vote against the DPJ but just cannot stomach a return to power by the LDP.

The longer the time it takes to reform the electoral system, the longer the amount of time the new regionalist politicians have to build their political machines, the worse look the odds for the LDP.

Hence, when you hear about the Noda government cutting a deal with the LDP and the New Komeito over passage of the consumption tax bill in return for early elections, reach for the salt shaker. The party that has the incentive to sacrifice is the LDP, not the DPJ.

Now as to the other strange thought -- that Prime Minister Noda can call a House of Representatives election -- a warning. Last March, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional any apportionment system where there are electoral districts with populations 1.99 times greater than the population in the smallest district. According to the official population census of 2010, 97 of the current 300 House of Representatives districts have populations 2 times those of Kochi District #3, the current smallest district by population. The 97 districts are thus unconstitutional.

"So what?" some say, "The courts have declared House of Representatives elections unconstitutional before but have never nulified an electoral outcome. The March ruling invalidated the 2009 results and the Supreme Court did nothing." True, but all previous rulings have been ex post facto. The Supreme Court had no incentive to try to reverse what had already taken place.

In this instance, however, the constitutional standard is already in place. The current system has already been declared invalid. Holding an election may be physically possible but the Supreme Court would trigger a constitutional crisis if it were to not invalidate the results.

As to those who speculate on a constitutional fiddle, such as the one devised to allow the existence of the Self Defense Forces in seeming defiance of Article 9 of the Constitution, based largely on the playing around with the names ("It's not an army; it's a Ground Self Defense Force. They are not soldiers and sailors; they are Self Defense Forces personnel!), another warning -- there is really no constitutional fiddle possible.

Article 81 of the Constitution reads:

The Supreme Court is the court of last resort with power to determine the constitutionality of any law, order, regulation or official act.

and Article 47 reads:

Electoral districts, method of voting and other matters pertaining to the method of election of members of both Houses shall be fixed by law.

(Source: Prime Minister's Residence website)

These two Articles put up a solid wall. There is no crack to squeeze a snap election through. If there were, the parties would not be meeting right now and fighting so fiercely over the eventual bill.

The DPJ has set a date of February 25 for the final draft of a compromise bill. Frankly, given the incentives on all sides to hang on for dear life to their own plans, it will take a miracle for the parties to meet this deadline. (J)

But under duress, miracles sometimes occur. Necessity is, as they say, the mother of invention.

Into The Countryside Let Us Go

I recently got involved in a tiff with a person over what would seem to be a rather simple question, "To what extent to rural votes still dominate over urban ones in Japan’s Diet?" Having some idea of the answer to the question would give one insight into some rather pressing current problems in Japan, in particular the Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko’s non-decision on participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a problem he seemed to have licked until the White House uploaded to its website a readout of the Noda-Obama meeting that had the prime minister putting all goods and services on the table. Period. A formulation that guaranteed the prime minister would face a buzz saw when he returned from Hawaii.

Anyway, I tried to answer the way the newspapers do, or at least did on October 27: by publicizing the degree of inequality in voting strengths between the smallest electoral districts and the largest ones – the results of which I blogged about last week. Of particular significance was the fact that based on the 2010 census data, 97 of the nation's 300 electoral districts had populations greater than 1.99 times the size of the nation’s least populous district – meaning that the voters in close to a third of the nation’s districts were disenfranchised to a level in excess of the constitutionally acceptable limits as described in a Supreme Court ruling of March of this year.

No, no, my interlocutor persisted, how much more representation do rural voters have in the Diet than urban voters?

Now that is a very interesting question…and one that is very difficult to pry out of the data without colliding with bias. Is a rural voter a farmer, fisherman or lumberman? Someone who works in the processing of the materials provided by the primary producers? Someone who lives in a prefecture where half the workforce is in primary industries? A third of the workforce? A fourth? Is it someone who lives in a city surrounded on all sides by a vast area of dark, foreboding mountains? Is it someone living in a district stretching like a ribbon, with one tail in city and the other in pure farmland, with an increasing/decreasing level of urbanization along its length? Is it someone working as a clerk in a branch of JA Bank?

Furthermore, in most countries, there are boundaries, city limits where one can say, "OK, now I am in X City." However, in the great Heisei Consolidation (J) so many cities swallowed up previously independent rural communities that the statement "I am in the city now" became almost meaningless in terms of the density of population on the ground in a particular locale.

One can make certain gross guesses, of course. One can guess that the 97 districts with populations in excess of double the population of the smallest district are probably "urban" under a general understanding of the term. One can also guess that the 100 smallest districts by population are probably "rural" by the self-same general understanding. However, for the 103 districts in between, where does one draw the line between rural and suburban, rural and mostly rural or mostly urban but with a large rural backyard?

The meaning of “urban” and “rural” is further muddied by land use laws which seek to protect farmland within what are ostensibly urban areas. This author lives in one of the 23 central wards of Tokyo, the hard urban core of the greatest urban conglomeration on earth. However, in front of the building where I live there is farmland, whose produce I can buy from a small streetside stand open three days a week. A three minute bicycle ride away is an apple orchard, where one can pick one’s own apples in the fall. A two minute bicycle ride away is a grape arbor, where, if one can remember the day, one can harvest grapes on the vine for one's table.

The urban harvest

August

October

As one heads out on one of the great arterial train lines or freeways, the size and number of these plots multiplies – all while one is ostensibly still in the city, as is manifested by the intense knots of urbanization around train stations, themselves surrounded by kilometers of low-level housing.

An aside, but this jumble of urban development, suburban sprawl and farmland is one of the main reasons the prime minister’s pledge to protect Japan’s "beautiful agriculture" (utsukushiki nogyo) from destruction by the TPP is so fatuous. Japanese agriculture is messy, indeed unsightly most of the time. One is hard-pressed to find a pretty valley or vista, as fields are cheek-and-jowl with so much suburban and semi-urban clutter. "Utsukushiki" for the most part it ain’t. We all know that the PM is a smoker…but has anyone checked to see what it is he is smoking?

This blending of urban and rural, or bleeding into of the rural into the urban, even in the capital, makes the definition of urban vs. rural voters so difficult to disentangle. Sure, this author lives in an urban area and thus an urban voting district. However, just down the street aways, in a sizable building, are the offices of JA Zenchu, the Central Union of Agriculture Cooperatives, for the ward. There are farmers in my neighborhood – mostly old, retired folks but nevertheless farmers, with produce for sale (though the corn crop this year failed, for some reason).

So how much pull do rural voters have over urban voters? Gosh, that would be an interesting question. However, one would have to make all kinds of arbitrary decisions, with significant consequences as to one's final result.

Suffice it to say that voters from districts where inefficient primary industries and inefficient secondary industries dominate have an inordinate amount of influence on the nation's decisions, due to their overrepresentation in the Diet, as compared to consumers and producers of the nation's surplus, who are crowded into districts with relatively poor levels of representation.

Trying to pin a number on the level of this misrepresentation, however, is a matter of individual judgment.