The caudillo candidate

Mainichi has published an account of an interview with Alberto Fujimori, former president of Peru now under house arrest in Santiago, Chile and recently named to Kokumin Shinto's proportional representation list.

In it, Fujimori promises to return to Peru, and notes that running for office in Japan does not mean the end of his political career in Peru.

My favorite line from the article, though, is the following: "Highlighting rapprochements with neighbors Ecuador and Chile, and the restoration of public order as the achievements from his time as president, he stated, 'As a member of the House of Councillors, I want to tackle foreign policy and public order problems.'"

I'm sure Vladimiro Montesinos can give Mr. Fujimori some creative ideas on how to solve Japan's "public order problems."

Then again, Japan might be in need for some serious Fujishock.

In any case, it is probably a mistake to attribute too much significance to Fujimori's candidacy, which says more about the troglodytic tendencies of some members of Kokumin Shinto than any particular fault of the Japanese people. With luck, the Japanese people will ensure that this washed-up tin pot dictator continues to stroll the grounds of his St. Helena in Santiago, occasionally sending video messages to his supporters in Peru promising a return.

(Incidentally, for those interested in Fujimori's rise to power in Peru, he plays a significant role in Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa's A Fish in the Water, a memoir of Vargas Llosa's 1990 presidential run, the year in which Fujimori won as a dark horse candidate.)

(And those with a more academic interest in Nikkeijin would do well to read this post at Frog in a Well.)

Can anyone say straw man?

Komori Yoshihisa, defender of Japan's honor Sankei Shimbun's editor at large based in Washington, has "exposed" the alleged activities of Chinese-American groups in putting the screws on House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-CA-12) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-8) to get them both to support rapid passage of the comfort women resolution.

Komori argues that Lantos, who was supposedly content with Prime Minister Abe's remarks during his visit to Washington in late April, has changed his mind due to pressure from Asian-American groups, including the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia and Chinese Americans for Democracy in Taiwan. He seemingly bases his argument on an article from the Bay City News Service in early June, in which Ignatius Ding, executive vice president of the aforementioned Global Alliance, complained about being ignored by Lantos and Pelosi, and that if Lantos did not change his course, "it would be time for new representation" in California 12, which the article notes is 33% Asian-American.

That is a very thin basis for claiming that the passage of the bill in Lantos's committee and its likely passage by the whole House is the product of the activism of Asian-American groups.

First, what is the basis for thinking that Lantos, who was re-elected with 76% of the vote in 2006 and has never be re-elected with lower than 66% of the vote, is concerned that an interest group has threatened to challenge him next year? Even assuming that Asian-American voters united to unseat Lantos, would that be enough to remove him?

Second, and more insulting, why does Komori not even entertain the possibility that perhaps Lantos came to see the merit in passing the resolution after a bunch of Abe's cronies chose to remind Washington why the resolution needed to be considered in the first place?

It is simply too easy a dodge to point at Asian-American activist groups and blame them for what Congress does, and it is fallacious to argue that Congress and its members are simply cat's paws at the mercy of lobbyists. H.Res.121 passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee by a 39-2 margin, with Congressmen Paul and Tancredo, the lone dissenting votes, opposing on constitutional grounds, not out of sympathy with Japan. H.Res.121 now has 151 co-sponsors from both parties and from all parts of the country. Are there some members who have signed on to this resolution because it is a risk-free way of (potentially) gaining the support of Asian-American voters? Sure. Is it all a conspiracy by Asian-American groups, acting in cahoots with Seoul, Beijing, and Pyongyang, to turn the US against Japan (a Manchurian resolution, in other words)? I, for one, am skeptical of this argument, which has been advanced in one form or another all across the non-Japanese Japan blogosphere. (Try here and here to start.) As hard as it is to believe, maybe members of Congress actually think that "Japanese public and private officials have recently expressed a desire to dilute or rescind the 1993 statement by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono on the 'comfort women', which expressed the Government's sincere apologies and remorse for their ordeal."

Maybe, just maybe, Japan has yet to make proper amends from its crimes, and that saying so does not necessarily make one a Japan basher. While at one point in this process it was reasonable to ask whether Congress should be sitting in judgment of history, now that the H.Res.121 has been passed on to the full House and waits in the pipeline, that question is moot.

Like it or not, Congress will consider this resolution — and if it must, I would rather it act on the side of historical justice than not act and shield the revisionists, relativists, and outright deniers of Imperial Japan's systematic crimes against its neighbors.

A cure for Japan's fear of Democrats

While Asia has been largely absent from debates among Republican and Democratic candidates for their respective parties' presidential nominations — much to my chagrin — the Washington Post reports that John Hamre of CSIS organized a dinner for Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo to meet with the foreign policy advisers of a number of leading presidential candidates, in response to Chinese interest in such a discussion.

This is a remarkably sound idea. Rather than waiting for the next administration to roll into the White House — and with it the inevitable "new course" in Sino-US relations — China has insinuated itself into the discussion, ensuring that its concerns have been laid on the table before candidates are even nominated. Hopefully this will forestall the appearance of a straw-man China (or a scapegoat China) in campaign debates.

One wonders why Japan hasn't tried to do this, instead of sitting in Tokyo shaking in fear that — gasp! — a Democrat might win the election and immediately begin bashing and/or passing Japan. What an idea, actually talking to candidates...

Learning to be self-reliant?

If I could draw, I would have drawn something exactly like this cartoon in today's Yomiuri:


The caption on this cartoon reads, "Troubles at home, worries in America," Abe's dual American "worries" being the looming comfort women resolution and Christopher Hill's nuclear bargaining.

It didn't need to be this way, did it? As I wrote last week, the confluence of the North Korea nuclear question and the comfort women issue is largely a product of the blundering of the Japanese government, which has failed to appreciate how the mood in Washington has changed and act accordingly. Instead, at every juncture Shinzo has relied upon his buddy George's promises, without asking what those promises are worth when Foggy Bottom is running North Korea policy and the Congress — riled by Japanese revisionism on comfort women — does not share the president's sanguine views of Abe's empathy (and I'm sure it doesn't appreciate being called a tool of China).

The Abe government is right that the practical impact of this resolution will be limited; the foundation of the relationship is sound, and, as noted Tuesday, both the American public and American elites are content with the relationship. It's nothing short of amazing that even with a report emanating from the Bank of International Settlements noting that the yen's decline is "anomalous," Congress is more concerned about comfort women, and on monetary matters has directed its ire at China.

The importance of this episode is, rather, in the intangible impact on thinking in Japan. Relations between states, like relations between people, is a learning process. States learn what to expect from others, especially allies, and begin to build upon these expectations. Japan has come to expect a US that will refrain from criticizing its most important partner "bar none." It has relied upon a network of friends to ensure that this understanding remained in place, particularly after Japan was subject to all manner of American criticism in the early 1990s. (Robert Angel's 1996 introduction to the Japan lobby remains especially useful in illustrating how this works.) But now, with Congress's digging into Japan's past and the administration bereft of friends, the old understanding seems to be under threat.

How will Japan respond? Defensively, with alarm that it is being betrayed and abandoned by its supposed "ally"? That is how Amaki Naoto views recent events in US-Japan relations. He connects the comfort women resolution, Christopher Hill's recent statement about a peaceful framework among four countries, Japan excluded, and — citing a question asked by my boss in the Upper House foreign relations committee — Admiral Keating's remarks about aircraft carriers while in China in May to suggest that the US is not Japan's ally. He writes: "As the above-mentioned sequence of events makes clear, the US will never see Japan as an equal ally...Conservatives, nationalists, left-wing ideologues, and pacifists, as well as the people as a whole, are beginning to find further subordination to the US unfavorable. The problem is that after achieving autonomy and independence from the US, how will Japan ensure its security?"

The question is the extent to which this kind of thinking has taken hold among Japanese elites and the Japanese people — and the extent to which it could take hold in the midst of the aforementioned "betrayals." I cannot answer that, but I suspect it is more prevalent than perhaps Washington realizes.

So here we are: because Japan is incapable of dealing with criticism, and because the US does not particularly care that Japan is incapable of dealing with criticism, the future of the US-Japan relationship is murky, and will only get murkier as Japanese elites begin to assume that the US is not especially concerned about Japan's interests.

"No comment" — too little, too late?

The comfort women resolution has passed the House Committee on Foreign Affairs by a vote of 39 to 2. It now moves on to the full House, where Speaker Pelosi has suggested it will be considered in mid-July, conveniently before the Upper House elections.

The Abe government's response: no comment. Adhering to the sensible position that the government will not comment on resolutions in the legislatures of other countries, Chief Cabinet Secretary Shiozaki said, "Since this will not truly shake relations between the US and Japan, hereafter absolutely nothing changes."

Now why could the Japanese government not have said that six months ago, and stuck to it? This is a textbook case of shutting the barn door long after the horses have broken out and gone stampeding across the countryside.

Meanwhile, it seems that Ambassador Kato's gloomy pronouncements about the impact of the resolution were completely overblown, and scared no one into voting against the resolution. How much Japanese taxpayer money has already been sunk into the campaign to see this resolution destroyed? And — despite the official "no comment" — how much remains to be spent in the next two weeks?

Whatever the appropriateness of Congress deliberating on this issue, there are much bigger questions now. This episode has been important in revealing how thinking about the relationship differs between Washington and Tokyo. Congress has never been particularly concerned about hurting Japan's feelings, and of late the White House seems particularly disinclined to defend Japan. (But why should it? Is there another US ally that is incapable of handling criticism from the US government?) Meanwhile, the Abe government and its sympathizers, acting out of a mixture of pride, arrogance, and the absolute certainty that they have "The Facts" on their side have grossly overreacted to this issue, clearly leading some in Washington to wonder just who exactly the US is dealing with in Tokyo. As such, how can the alliance survive if one party expects love to be blind, and the other is beginning to take a closer look at its partner and noticing imperfections that were ignored in the first blush of romance?

Maybe it's time for George and Shinzo to have a little chat about where this relationship is headed. Taking a break from each other? Seeing other people? It seems that's what Abe is doing, anyway.

Speaking of campaign advertisements...

The LDP has produced its campaign CM (easier than trying to say commercial, I guess).

It is available here, at the LDP website.

Abe Shinzo. Pomp and Circumstance. Economic growth.

I really don't think further comment is necessary. At some point it just gets to be overkill.

For the DPJ, the worse the better

With the Upper House elections little over a month away and public outrage over the pensions scandal seemingly unassuaged, the DPJ has found another angle to emphasize the government's indifference to the plight of the average Japanese citizen.

A comic strip, available online here, is being distributed to voters in a flier, the cover of which features a Japanese couple in distress, moaning that rising taxes and social security contributions are a major headache for their lifestyle: "These six years, the burden on people's lifestyle has risen nine trillion yen. This is the source of growing inequality!"

The growing tax burden refers in particular to reports that from this month, many Japanese are set to see their tax contributions rise as a result of recent adjustments in the balance between central government and local government taxation. The shift meant that from January many saw their tax burden decline as the central government's tax take fell; now, in June, their taxes will rise again rapidly. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, for a family of four with annual income of 5 million yen, the tax burden that was 10,950 yen until 2006 will rise to 14,100 yen. For a family of four earning 10 million yen annually, the tax burden will rise this month to 66,190 yen from 61,580 yen. (These numbers from an article in the Hokkaido Shimbun.) An article in Asahi (not online) notes that taxpayers have been swamping city offices with questions about the tax hike.

The DPJ's hope, of course, is that tax worries and anger at the government's handling of the pension scandal will combine to form a perfect storm that smashes the LDP next month.

It is important to remember, however, that the DPJ is hardly better off than the LDP, as an Asahi tracking poll showed the DPJ dropping below the LDP again, 24% to 23% in Upper House proportional representation races. The DPJ may well ride this storm to victory — but not because it is beloved by the voters. As a certain wise man noted in conversation last night, in any other democracy the opposition would be cruising to victory with 90% support, given the issues that the Abe government has laid at the DPJ's doorstep.

Meanwhile, it is far too hasty to write off Prime Minister Abe, contra this FT article that relies almost entirely on Abe rival Tanigaki Sadikazu to suggest that Abe could be made to resign if next month is a DPJ landslide. Clearly Abe is surrounded by a number of retainers who will be made to lay down their lives for their master (take a Nakagawa or two) — and even former Prime Minister Koizumi has suggested that Abe should not resign even in the face of a rout, arguing that "if prime ministers change every year or two, there cannot be reform." (Has Koizumi looked at what his successor is doing, or not doing as the case may be?)

While few seem to dispute that the LDP is the underdog going into this election, there is still considerable uncertainty about what is to come. Expect to hear more — day in, day out — about how LDP governments pick the pockets of the average Japanese family.

The Pyongyang visit

Peter Howard at Duck of Minerva greets Chris Hill's visit to Pyongyang with fairly effusive praise, arguing that the "reverse course" in North Korea policy undertaken by Hill with Condoleeza Rice's support has begun to yield some positive results. He points to the imminent closing of Yongbyon and the admission of IAEA inspectors as signs that the new approach to North Korea is working.

Meanwhile, at One Free Korea, Joshua Stanton excoriates the administration for its embrace of bilateral negotiations with North Korea.

So which is it — fool's errand or successful shuttle diplomacy?

Dare I say neither? I cannot possibly summon the rage Stanton directs at the administration and supporters of negotiations outside of the administration. What choices does the US have? The use of force? More sanctions? Doing nothing? Given that it's not altogether clear what direct threat, if any, North Korea poses to the US — the possibility of nuclear handover to terrorists or other states cannot be ruled out, but I have yet to see any report that suggests that this is highly probable — the only sensible option for the US seems to be trying to devise a modus vivendi that is some combination of deterrence, pressure from China, and monetary rewards for good behavior, while planning with the region's other powers for the post-Kim era.

In that sense, the goalposts have indeed shifted, because it should be increasingly clear to all that fully verifiable disarmament is unlikely to result from these negotiations. And so US efforts should be directed to securing the best possible arrangement in the short term. This is a great illustration of the nature of power. For all America's attributional power — its military might, its economic strength, its population and territory — the US has very little power in this situation. More sanctions? Useless. A war for regime change? The consequences are unfathomable. So if negotiating directly with Pyongyang, and countenancing the use of concessions to induce North Korea to behave gives the US more leverage, so be it.

Meanwhile, Japan bears much of the burden for the irrelevance of the six-party talks, given the Abe government's refusal to participate in an agreement until "progress" is realized on the abductions issue. To abstain from shaping the modus vivendi is a serious abdication of responsibility on the part of Japan. Why should the US stand around and wait for Japan? No one should underestimate the hunger on the part of Assistant Secretary Hill and Secretary Rice for an agreement that they can sell as proof that their global diplomatic approach is working. This quote from a New York Times article over the weekend caught my eye: "'Condi knows she needs a big win here,' said a senior administration official who has dealt with her often on North Korea. 'They know they are getting nowhere on Iraq, and they probably won’t get far on Iran. She needs to show that she can reduce at least one big threat.'"

That said, the desire on the part of the US to reach some kind of acceptable arrangement should not be mistaken for the availability of an objectively sound agreement. The only party likely emerge from these talks completely or mostly happy is North Korea.

Is that a prediction or a threat?

For the second time in the past week, the Japanese media has noted concern that the comfort women resolution will worsen US-Japan relations.

Last week, Kato Ryozo, Japan's ambassador to the US, warned, "This resolution, which is not grounded in objectivity, is not good for US-Japan relations."

Now Mainichi reports that in New York on Monday, on the eve of the scheduled passage of the resolution in the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, a group of Japanese-American leaders expressed their concerns about the resolution. Irene Hirano, head of the Japanese American National Museum, is quoted as saying, "When relations between the two countries worsen, the first to feel its effects are Japanese-Americans."

Both reports strike me as drastically out of proportion to reality. How exactly will relations worsen? What will be the practical impact of this resolution? Will the US somehow be less reluctant to cooperate with Japan on security? Will the US somehow be less inclined to engage in trade negotiations with Japan? No, the problem does not seem to be on the American side, which seems to recognize that allies can disagree without undermining an otherwise close relationship. In fact, MOFA conducted a poll of the American public and American elites in February and March this year, measuring the extent to which each group thought US-Japan relations were good. The survey found that 67% of respondents from the population at large thought US-Japan relations were good, while 86% of elite respondents answered in the affirmative. This was, of course, around the time that the comfort women issue blew up. And yet an overwhelming majority of elites surveyed still felt confident in the health of the US-Japan relationship.

Hence my question in the title. When Ambassador Kato talks of the resolution worsening US-Japan relations — in the face of overwhelming US contentment with the state of the relationship — is he making a threat, hinting at a more combative turn in Japan's stance in the relationship? Or is he making a prophecy as to how his compatriots will react to their government's being criticized by the US Congress? It seems to me that instead of assuming that the resolution will worsen relations, it is appropriate to ask whether Congress's passage of the resolution will worsen US-Japan relations, and if so, how and why. And if relations are to worsen as a result of Japanese defensiveness, then it is appropriate to consider how Japan can become less susceptible to overreacting in the face of relatively insignificant turbulence like the comfort women resolution.

Constitutions east and west

In his Sunday interview on NHK, Prime Minister Abe reiterated the importance of constitution revision as a point of contention in next month's Upper House election.

Meanwhile, in Brussels this past weekend the European Union's member states concluded a treaty that wraps up the questions that were intended to be addressed by the nixed constitution. The treaty, however, arguably retains a number of the constitution's substantive changes while jettisoning troublesome symbolic changes.

What do Japan's and the EU's constitutional debates share in common?

Without even considering the content of the documents, both drafting processes are wrapped up for the democratic development of both polities. For Japan, the process by which constitutional amendments are debated and presented to the public for approval will be an important test of the strength of Japanese democracy. Will the process be elite-driven, as every other epochal change in the Japanese political system, or will the Japanese citizenry stake a claim in the process and demand that elites respect their wishes and introduce amendments that reflect public desires? In the EU, which is struggling to craft a democratic polity out of more than two dozen democratic polities (i.e., the democratic deficit), the changes envisioned by the constitution — and now the reform treaty — constitute a substantial change in how the member states, their peoples, and the EU interact, but it is unclear the extent to which the new EU will reflect the wishes of the governed. As George Washington University's Henry Farrell wrote at Crooked Timber in a post reviewing the treaty: "It's a shame and a disgrace that the EU member states have responded to the 2005 defeat by going back to their old practice of seeking to achieve integration by boring the general public into submission, and a very substantial backward step. If people aren’t willing to sign up to major changes in the EU system of governance, then too bad for the EU system of governance."

This comparison only goes so far, of course, given that the Japanese people recognize themselves as a polity — whereas it is as of yet unclear if Europeans really think of themselves as European citizens, as far as governance is concerned.

But what both share is a concern about the role of their state/supranational-confederal organization of states in a world of new rising powers (read China and India) that already dwarf both demographically and are prepared to surpass both in economic performance. Hence the debate about article nine, which is not simply about one-country pacifism but signifies a range of questions about how Japan will relate to the US and other powers in the region. And in Europe, the provisions in the treaty about a European president, a de facto foreign minister and foreign service, and mutual defense clause hint at an EU desirous of a proper place at the table alongside the great powers. Niall Ferguson makes this argument in the Daily Telegraph:

The world is a big, bad place and the relative importance of Europe's individual states is declining economically and demographically with every passing year. As Mr Mandelson has found, it is hard enough to sustain the momentum of trade liberalisation even when Europe speaks with one voice. In other spheres, the EU is simply a negligible quantity. What would have been more absurd than to leave foreign policy divided between yet another set of twins, the High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (Javier Solana) and the Commissioner for External Relations (Benita Ferrero-Waldner)? The choice is no longer between national foreign policies and a European foreign policy, but between national irrelevance and collective influence.

(Interesting that Henry Kissinger disparaged both Japan ["little Sony salesmen"] and the EU ["who do you call when you want to talk to Europe"] for their inadequacies as great powers; it seems that they have taken his criticism seriously.)

But those in Europe and Japan who would rush to answer fundamental governance questions to enable the pursuit of power internationally must not be allowed to run roughshod over the rights of their citizens. Power must not be an end in itself; it must be grounded in democratic legitimacy. And so the content of constitution revision (or formation) is less important than the process. Will the voices of peoples be heard?

(I suppose this is a good test for the relevance of realism: if responding to changes in the international distribution of power takes the highest priority, then expect both Japan and the EU to run roughshod over popular opposition and implement constitutional settlements that best enable them to cope with changes in the international environment.)

What a time to be alive, for political scientists anyway.

Elections as beauty contests

With two weeks left in the "non-campaign" season, before candidates officially file, which marks the official campaign season during which candidates can actually ask for votes, I thought it would be worthwhile to share a passage from Gerald Curtis's Election Campaigning Japanese Style. For those not familiar with the book, in 1966-1967 Curtis lived and worked under Sato Bunsei, an LDP candidate in Oita Prefecture's second district (back in the days of multi-member medium-sized electoral districts). With the date of the dissolution of the Diet and the subsequent election unknown, Curtis noted Sato's efforts to build a support base in the rural parts of the district, raise money to sustain political activities, and fight to muscle into the Diet in the face of competition from two senior LDP Diet members in the district.

Not being in a rural district, I cannot speak to changes in rural campaign methods, but I can attest to relative continuity in urban campaigning, in part due to the ongoing constraints imposed by Japan's public election law. While campaigning in other democracies has been transformed by new media, legal restrictions in Japan have limited the impact of television, the internet, and even radio on campaign strategy. And so this passage caught my eye:

The prohibition of pre-election campaigning, restrictions on the distribution of written materials and on the use of the mass media, and other seemingly minor things such as the prohibition of the use of convertibles or other open cars work their greatest hardship against the new and unknown candidate. The incumbent, who receives constant publicity in his constituency through his activities in the Diet, has all to gain by maintaining a law that effectively prevents new candidates from gaining public exposure. It is for this reason that efforts to substantially revise the Election Law have been doomed. Once a man becomes a member of the Diet he has all to gain by maintaining and extending the restrictions on campaign practices.

The Law has another important and deplorable effect. It makes the general voter a mere observer of the campaign. By effectively preventing popular participation in campaigns it inhibits if not actually works counter to the political socialization of the electorate that should be a major function of election campaigns. The Election Law's ideal campaign is much like a beauty contest. When the official begins the contestants, supposedly having had no pre-contest opportunity influencing the judges, walk out on the stage and go through a rigorously supervised series of performances that gives each an exactly equal opportunity to demonstrate his attributes to the judges. They then all leave the stage for the judges to make their decision. The voters are in the position of passive judges. They can read posters and listen to speeches but can take almost no direct part in the contest. Not only does this make an election campaign unbearably dull for the average voter. It makes a fundamental function of systems of representative government frightening to the politically concerned electorate because of the fear that efforts in support of a candidate may result in a violation of the Election Law.

In the time since Curtis wrote this, Japan has become the world's number two economy, inspiring fear in the US, and seen its bubble burst, the LDP briefly driven from power, the economy dip into crisis in the late 1990s, and the Koizumi revolution come and go — and still the restrictions on campaigning exist. Whatever tinkering with the details of the law, the pattern of Japanese campaigning remains largely unchanged, critically undermining the role elections ought to play in relations between government and governed.

A referendum?

Prime Minister Abe, speaking on NHK on Sunday, said that next month's elections will be a referendum on his government's record in office.

Let that sink in for a moment.

As I've argued before, what record exactly does the government have to run on? What does the government have to be proud of that will also attract the support of voters? Why isn't the government instead arguing that the first nine months were just a warm up, and that after the next four years Japan will be so beautiful that other countries will shield their eyes in the face of Japan's radiant beauty? (I mean, come on, why isn't Abe using newly crowned Miss Universe Mori Riyo to signify the coming of his beautiful Japan?)

Also on Sunday morning, LDP Secretary-General Nakagawa Hidenao denied suggestions that Abe would resign if the LDP were to lose its Upper House majority, while hinting that his head would roll instead.

Put the two statements together. The election is to be a referendum on the government's performance, but if the voters unseat the government in the Upper House, the head of the lead governing party will resign? How is that listening to the voters? What kind of a referendum is that?

I'm with MTC: this is all a bleak return to the dark pre-Koizumi days: contempt for voters and bread-and-circuses governance.

Constructing modern Japan

Every social scientist must struggle with the question of human agency. Are human societies the product of grand social forces or are they the product of the decisions of individuals — Carlyle's heroes?

The question is particularly important for Japan, which was pushed on to a drastically different path in the late nineteenth century when confronted with the encroachment of imperial powers into Asia. But was Japan's modernization the result of powerful impersonal forces — the international system, economics, Japanese culture — or was it driven by the decisions of the elites who forged the new system?

This is the swamp into which MIT's Richard Samuels waded in Machiavelli's Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan. Samuels, in essence, "brings the individual back in" to a discussion of the winding roads followed by late-developing Japan and Italy during the 150 years of their existence as modern states. And he succeeds admirably — in the process explaining in rich detail how Prime Ministers Yoshida and Kishi, building upon the prewar past, designed, for better or worse, the Japan we see today (the Japan that their heirs are struggling to bring into the twenty-first century).

As Samuels suggests in his introduction, the comparative analysis of Japan and Italy strikes many as counterintuitive, perhaps because Italy needed Fascists to make the trains run on time. But beyond the superficial dissimilarities — including the widespread stereotype that Italy has dynamic leaders and poor followers, while Japan has faceless leaders and obedient followers — he finds that despite facing similar conditions, constraints, and opportunities as Gerschenkronian late developers, each made drastically different decisions about governance of the economy and society, liberalism, foreign relations, and, in the postwar period, how to rebuild their states and reconstitute their political systems under the American aegis.

There is far too much in Machiavelli's Children to do it justice in this space, and, as such, this is my latest book recommendation. (NB: I will henceforth give book recommendations on a monthly basis, or else whenever I feel like it; recommending one every week was too grueling.)

Men are not angels

Working in the office of a Japanese Dietman and watching Japan's "sausage-making" process has been valuable in a number of ways — many of which I have documented here one way or another — but one lesson that I have left largely unmentioned is my renewed appreciation for the American political system.

No political system is perfect, because human beings are imperfect. The label of democracy does not automatically make people and the institutions by which they govern themselves somehow more perfect than otherwise.

But that is the genius of the American political system. It is grounded in human imperfection. It's all there in Federalist 51 by James Madison: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."

It is not just checks and balances, giving the branches of government the duty to check other branches (and making it in their interest to do so) — it is a culture of accountability: oversight committees, inspectors general, auditors, ombudsmen, and even investigative journalists, who lend a hand when others fail. The existence of these mechanisms presupposes human failure. They exist because they assume that individuals will try to skirt the law, will try to abuse their power — and that without vigilance by citizens, and by organizations and individuals whose purpose is to be vigilant, the system will be subverted.

One of the things I find most regrettable about the Japanese political system is the near-total absence of a culture of accountability. Public funds disappear into private pockets. Public interests are subverted by private interests. The watchers collude with the watched, and the voters — those who should be watching the watchmen — look away in indifference or disgust instead of demanding better.

It is with great alarm, then, that I look at the latest sinister twist in the saga of Dick Cheney, who has now asserted that his office is a kind of hybrid executive-legislative body, and free from the bounds of laws that govern both branches. That is a remarkably subversive idea: a powerful fiefdom within government that is free from "external [or] internal controls on government."

As the wreck that is the Bush administration finally comes to an end, the American people have a lot of serious thinking to do about the foundations of American constitutional order: not simply "liberty" or "democracy" or "equality," but accountability. It is government held accountable for its actions that makes the others possible. Unaccountable government is arbitrary government, and if American constitutionalism is to survive, citizens must recognize this as being the highest ideal.

What grades will Abe bring home at term's end?

So the Diet session that was due to end this week has been extended an extra twelve days.

In a press conference on Friday, Prime Minister Abe tried to dispel reports of dissent within the LDP on the question of extending the session — there has been a steady drumbeat of stories in the major dailies on vocal opposition to the plan — and insisted that the extension is for the good of the nation.

Meanwhile, he suggested that the people not think about the delay in the Upper House elections in "technical" terms. (I assume that's what he would call this, eh MTC?)

An article in this week's Economist actually spells out the mood fairly well. Some nine months into the Abe administration, it's hard to enumerate exactly what this government has achieved that it can present to voters. The national referendum bill? Just like the opinion polls consistently showed, constitution revision is unimportant to voters, especially when compared with, say, pensions and health care (shocking, I know, that such matters would be important to a rapidly aging society). Extending the JSDF mission in Iraq? As argued in this post at Glocom's blog, it is unclear that the Japanese people are especially aware of the facts surrounding the mission in Iraq. The loophole-ridden political funds control law revision? The looming amakudari bill?

For a government bolstered by an unprecedentedly large majority, that is a tremendously meager legislative record, and when you add in the return of the postal rebels to the LDP, the backtracking on the highway funds reform, inappropriate statements by cabinet ministers, coddling by the prime minister of cabinet ministers accused of corruption, and continuing diplomatic isolation in the six-party talks, it is hard to see upon what the Abe Cabinet can campaign. The good fortune of governing at the same time as a growing economy? I guess that's the plan.

Meanwhile, this Diet extension has the unmistakable air of an undergraduate's asking for an extension on a paper the night before the due date — even though the date was clearly marked on the syllabus months before. (I had the stomach flu! It was that burger George gave me at Camp David!) Now Abe is scrambling to cobble together some legislative achievements to fling at the voters.

Teacher — his governing majority — may be generous, but will mom and pop (aka the Japanese voters), worried about making ends meet, be quite so willing to continue supporting Junior's "education" with so little to show for it?

In Abe's Japan, everything's fine

At the LDP website, it's 大丈夫 time. (For non-Japanese readers, the word is daijyoubu, and it means essentially "everything's fine" or "all right" — try saying it like a surfer dude.)

On the main page, overlaid over a picture of cool-biz Abe with a gentle sky-blue background, are links to campaign materials that inform readers that "Your pension is daijyoubu!!" and "Japanese agriculture: if the LDP, daijyoubu." (Somehow without the sky blue it wouldn't have the same effect.)

And then there's the new campaign posters that will proliferate throughout Japan any day now. Using the same Abe-with-sky-blue-background picture, the posters feature a slogan designed to highlight the idea that the Koizumi era is long gone: "To realize growth!"

Cue the crickets.

Pretty much par for the course, as Japanese campaigning goes.

Seriously though, the mood conveyed by the LDP's aesthetic choices for the Upper House campaign season could not be better calculated to shed the harsh image exuded by former Prime Minister Koizumi. Koizumi's posters featured active, even violent verbs, and his whole administration had a disruptive, frenetic air: destroying the LDP, issuing reform idea after reform idea from the CEFP, expelling opponents from the party, and then dispatching assassins to deprive them of their seats.

But gone are the assassins. Now, says the LDP to voters, don't worry yourself with all that unpleasantness about structural reform and changing the LDP; just focus on economic growth.

Hear that voters? Everything is fine. Your pensions are safe. Stop calling the Social Insurance Agency. Go shopping instead.

Ladies and gentlemen, Abe Shinzo's LDP!

What would a liberal Japan actually look like?

Project Syndicate has posted an essay based on a speech by Joseph Nye in Tokyo last month, in which he foresees the rise of a "liberal" Japan.

Calling attention to Asahi's series of twenty-one editorials [series available at Japan Focus] outlining a vision for Japan, Nye argues on its behalf, observing that Asahi's vision provides a path for "Japan to become a world power as a provider and coordinator of global public goods from which all peoples can benefit and none can be excluded, such as freedom of the seas or a stable international monetary system. This would be a way for Japan to escape its reputation for insularity, avoid the mistakes of its military history, improve its relations with Asian neighbors who still remember the 1930’s, and increase Japan’s 'soft' or attractive power."

Nye foresees Japan carrying a greater burden in a variety of ways, but few that would require the use of force.

This is all well and good, but it is not entirely clear how to get there, because in the quotation above there is a chicken-and-the-egg problem: will a more international role lead to Japan escape its reputation for insularity, or can Japan only embrace a more international role after it lowers its psychological walls and becomes far more willing to interact with the world?

Then, of course, there is the larger question of whether this is the role the Japanese people want their country to play in the world. Arguably, Abe Shinzo and other nationalists of a more Gaullist streak are not alone in desiring a foreign policy rooted in the defense of Japan's pride and the assertion of Japanese interests, particularly in relations with North Korea and China. And while the Japanese people are hardly clamoring for Japan to become more belligerent, content to see the JSDF play little more than a supporting role in multilateral missions abroad, they also support the government's misplaced emphasis on the abductions issue (as opposed to focusing on a mix of issues, with abductions but one among several).

So how can Japan actually become the liberal power outlined by Nye?

Well, first, as eloquently argued in this post by MTC, it requires vision on the part of the Japanese government as to what role it can actually play as a leader in the region and the world. Arguably, a broader vision of Japan's role is inconsistent with the kind of "standing up for Japan's pride at all costs" thinking that has motivated Japan's response to the comfort women resolution in the US Congress, the whaling issue, and historical feuds with South Korea and China. It's time to grow up. The of a serious great power capable of taking the lead on an issue — the environment, African development, etc. — is the ability to not let petty issues undermine national focus. Is Tokyo serious about protecting the environment? Marshal its resources, line up allies, force others to make commitments, and avoid stupid, avoidable mistakes and comments that give other countries can excuse not to follow your lead.

The other change is what Japan looks like at home. What happens at home matters incredibly abroad. Just ask Washington, which has found it hard to make allies follow its lead on a host of issues due to perceived human rights failures at home. Japan, of course, is free to do what it wants at home: approve textbooks with questionable interpretations of the war, emphasize patriotism in education over other skills that might serve Japanese children better, railroad those accused of crimes straight to prison, and prevent women from rising to positions of prominence. But it cannot do so and then turn to the world and proclaim that Japan intends to be a liberal great power. For Japan to be a liberal great power means building an international position largely upon how other countries view Japanese society. If Japan is respected for its domestic governance, its counsel will be welcomed by others, and so its power will grow.

For all the rhetoric, does the Japanese government truly appreciate what it will take to become this kind of global power?

What's in a name?

Quite a bit, when the name is that of an important government policy document, and when that name is missing a phrase near and dear to the former prime minister's heart.

So suggests the Asahi Shimbun in its editorial on the Abe government's recently announced 2007 fiscal policy plan.

Unlike the title of the annual fiscal policy plans produced under Koizumi's watch — "Basic policies for economic and fiscal management and structural reform" — the Abe's Cabinet's program is called simply "Basic policies for economic and fiscal management." And so, concludes Asahi, "the flag of 'structural reform' has vanished."

To Asahi, this is yet another sign, perhaps the clearest yet, that the Abe Cabinet has discarded the Koizumi Cabinet's "no growth without reform" motto and the policy perspective behind it. The policies in this program timid — a hodgepodge of vague "pro-growth" policies including more funding for universities, "investigating" economic partnership agreements with the EU and the US, "drastic [but unspecified] tax reform," and a ludicrous promise to double Japan's OECD-worst productivity in five years (see Ken Worsley on this point in particular), packed into fifty-two pages, the longest such report since the government first began drafting them. Not only is there no overall vision beyond the Abe program, but the lack of detail leaves room for bureaucrats to muscle back in, as Asahi noted when a first draft was issued to the public.

Yomiuri, for its part, also noted the lack of details in the program — and a lack of priorities. At the same time, however, Yomiuri seems to give the prime minister the benefit of the doubt, gently chiding Abe for not giving enough details now, but assuming he'll get around to it eventually.

Considering the point I raised in this post earlier today, this damp squib of a document is not just another dull, useless policy report issued by the government — it is a sign of the utter failure of imagination that characterizes policy making throughout the developed world.

The hyper-nationalist spring offensive continues

Following pronouncements against Chinese war museums and the congressional comfort women resolution, Japan's hyper-nationalists have turned their attention once again to the Nanjing Massacre, arguing as before that "only" 20,000 people were killed in Nanjing, as opposed to the generally accepted range of 150,000-200,000 (IHT here; Japan Times here).

The quibbling over numbers is one of the more insidious tools used by Japan's revisionists to press their case. It seems that they have concluded that outright denial leads to arguments being dismissed entirely, so better to undermine the historical consensus by disputing smaller details — the number killed, what does coercion mean, etc. — and sow doubt about historians of good faith.

But let's step back for a moment. Let's say it was "only" 20,000. What does that change? Does that somehow make the Nanjing Massacre less of a crime? So what is their point? Is Japan somehow less responsible if the death toll turns out to be a tenth of what others argue it was?

Hardly.

There are, however, Japanese who acknowledge their country's need to get beyond the highly charged politics of Japan's history, embrace the unvarnished truth, and make amends for Japan's actions.

Tessa Morris-Suzuki brilliantly documents how Japan has and hasn't faced up to its wartime acts in a review of the English translation of part of Yomiuri's project on war responsibility. In her review, she notes a point that I've made before: Prime Minister Murayama's apology in 1995 marking the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war, rather than serving as an expression of the guilt of all the Japanese people and the beginning of a new era of relations with Asia based upon that feeling, has actually been used by those who feel no guilt whatsoever as an excuse to practice revisionism while being able to claim that Japan has already apologized. She writes: "...If the mid-1990s marked a turning point, it proved to be a turn in the opposite direction: away from efforts to acknowledge war responsibility and towards a nationalistic reassertion of pride in Japan’s past (including significant aspects of its wartime past). The years immediately following the fiftieth anniversary witnessed an upsurge of revisionist writings by scholars and journalists seeking to justify Japan’s prewar expansion and wartime policies."

There are Japanese interested in the historical truth, it's just the hyper-nationalists who grab the headlines. But why can't confronting the dark past be a matter of national pride too? Just as Germans should be proud of the extent to which their country has confronted its past, so too should Japanese make it a point of pride to face up to their country's failings.

In some way the Yomiuri project, an inspiration of Yomiuri Editor-in-Chief Watanabe Tsuneo, is a step in that direction, because, as Morris-Suzuki notes, Watanabe and Yomiuri are, of course, of the right. Watanabe's attitude is a far cry from that of Nakayama Nariaki and his ilk: "If things are left as they are, a skewed perception of history – without knowledge of the horrors of the war – will be handed down to future generations."

Now if only that attitude were to reverberate and drown out the noise produced by the revisionists.