Realignment scenarios

After months of talking about forming a new party, Hiranuma Takeo, a leading LDP postal rebel who spurned LDP efforts to bring him back into the party during the Abe era, may finally be taking steps to create a new conservative party that may yet be a fly in the LDP's ointment.

Mr. Hiranuma has reportedly been in talks with other former LDP members — "independent conservatives" — to form a new study group. Partners in this endeavor include Watanuki Tamisuke, leader of the PNP; Kamei Shizuka, the PNP's secretary-general; Suzuki Muneo, the disgraced (and indicted) former LDP member, partner-in-corruption of the late Matsuoka Toshikatsu, and representative of his own Hokkaido-based New Party Big Earth; and Nakamura Kishiro, construction minister in the Miyazawa cabinet who was subsequently left the LDP, was arrested and charged with influence peddling in 1994, continued to win elections and serve as an independent HR member until 2003, when the Supreme Court rejected his final appeal and promptly stripped him of his seat and sent him to prison until 2004 when he was paroled (he won his seat back in the 2005 election).

These LDP castaways agreed to take a confrontational stance towards the "Fukuda cabinet's policy line," suggesting that this PNP+ grouping could be the beginning of Mr. Hiranuma's new party, throwing a wrinkle into a political realignment.

Or will it? While Mr. Hiranuma clearly has links to Nakagawa Shoichi and other conservative ideologues in the LDP, it is not at all clear that Mr. Hiranuma will be able to entice them to join his party, considering the ragtag group he has assembled around him. That won't stop the DPJ from looking to bolster Mr. Hiranuma's party in the hope that it will break the LDP. On Monday, Hatoyama Yukio, the DPJ's secretary-general, greeted the news of Mr. Hiranuma's group by calling for cooperation. I hope cooperation goes no further. For all Mr. Hiranuma's anti-LDP posturing, I suspect that his tune would change were Aso Taro elected as leader, suggesting that this gambit may be less an effort to create a third pole in the political system than to improve the terms for Mr. Hiranuma's eventual reunion with the LDP. Ibuki Bunmei, LDP secretary-general, has already come calling.

Mr. Hiranuma cannot possibly think that his party could become a significant third force in Japanese politics. Considering that it would be little different from the PNP, which has elected a grand total of eight representatives (four HR, four HC), why should anyone expect the Hiranuma new party to be anything but a guppy? Obviously that would change if the LDP's conservative wing were to leave the party en masse and join with Mr. Hiranuma, but at that point it would no longer be the Hiranuma new party but the Hiranuma-Abe-Nakagawa-Aso true conservative party, with the "H" increasingly pushed to the side.

The Japanese political system might have room for a third, swing party between two big parties, but I doubt that the swing party will have the ideological coloration of the Hiranuma new party.

The prospect of a Koizumi new party remains, to me, the more intriguing possibility. An article in the June issue of Bungei Shunjyu suggests (in part one) that Mr. Koizumi views the present crisis — a natural outgrowth of his ransacking of the LDP — as an opportunity to build a new political system, with Koike Yuriko acting as his stalking horse.

Another scenario discussed in the latter portion of the article is a bid by Ozawa Ichiro to pry the LDP's liberals away, similar to his failed attempt in 1994 to pry Watanabe Michio and his followers away from the LDP by promising Mr. Watanabe the premiership. The target for Mr. Ozawa's efforts supposedly is Kato Koichi, the once-promising liberal, although it is unlikely that the has-been Mr. Kato could bring significant numbers of LDP members with him.

Nevertheless, if the conservatives retake control of the LDP under Mr. Aso and reunite with Mr. Hiranuma, that alliance could prove fatal for the LDP, as the readmission of Mr. Hiranuma and the other postal rebels could lead Mr. Koizumi and his followers out of the party, perhaps prompting liberals unconnected to Mr. Koizumi to leave too and drift towards the DPJ.

But I still suspect that nothing will happen until after the next general election. Until an election is held, no group knows just how valuable its hand is. The size of the LDP's majority — if it retains a majority — will make all the difference when it comes to potential separatists considering whether to split (the same logic applies to Komeito's partnership with the LDP). The larger the majority, the stronger the LDP will be respective to potential splinter groups. Should the DPJ have a strong showing that puts it within striking distance of a majority, however, there will be a brutal war for the loyalty of possible defectors and Komeito (the latter especially in the event that the governing coalition retains a majority, but not the LDP independently).

The second override

The House of Councillors voted yesterday to reject the ten-year road construction plan passed by the House of Representatives in March. The bill was defeated 108 to 126, with DPJ (proportional representation) members Oe Yasuhiro and Watanabe Hideo rebelling against the party leadership to support the bill, and Kimata Yoshitake (Aichi) and Hironaka Wakako (Chiba) abstaining from the vote. The PNP's four members, who caucus with the DPJ, also abstained from the vote.

The Fukuda government plans to bring the bill to a second vote in the HR Tuesday afternoon.

Tuesday morning the government plans to secure a cabinet decision on Mr. Fukuda's plan to phase out the special road construction fund, a precondition for forestalling a rebellion by Kono Taro and his band of reformists. The path to a cabinet decision has been tortuous, as reported by Mainichi. Until the LDP's defeat in the Yamaguchi-2 by-election, the government's policy was to wait until after passing the road construction plan a second time before securing a cabinet decision on the Fukuda plan. Taking the threat of rebellion seriously, the government has changed tacked, and, consistent with the Fukuda government's poor sense of timing, has put off securing a cabinet decision until Tuesday.

Presumably that will ensure that Mr. Kono and his comrades will vote with the government in the afternoon. Yamamoto Ichita anticipates that not even one will defect. He argues, however, that the real battle is yet to come. A cabinet decision is not enough; the reformists will have to fight within the LDP to ensure that the party embraces the prime minister's plan.

Assuming that the road construction plan passes Tuesday afternoon, an extra ten years of road construction funded by the special road construction fund will be law — and Mr. Fukuda's plan still just words.

Erratum?

A reader informs me that the pictures mentioned in this post are most likely not pictures of the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, but are instead pictures of the aftermath of the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923.

No less moving, in light of today's news.

Fear and loathing in the wake of Hu's visit

As Jun Okumura notes, a poll by Fuji TV's Hodo 2001 program found that Fukuda Yasuo gained nothing from Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Japan last week.

The poll recorded that nearly sixty percent of respondents disapprove of Mr. Fukuda's China policy.

Beyond public doubts, Mr. Fukuda's action (or inaction) during Mr. Hu's visit have driven conservative commentators into paroxysms of rage over Mr. Fukuda's supposed pusillanimity in the face of Chinese outrages, especially poisoned gyoza and human rights violations in Tibet.

In Shukan Shincho, Sakurai Yoshiko vented her spleen about the visit, arguing that Mr. Fukuda failed to defend Japan's national interests in his meetings with Mr. Hu.

She claims that Fukuda pere et fils have worked on behalf of China to the detriment of Japan, Takeo for consenting to a friendship treaty that "ignored national interests" and contributing to the expansion of the Chinese military by providing ODA, Yasuo for his failure to address the East China Sea dispute and for offering technological assistance on environmental grounds. To Ms. Sakurai, the Fukudas are traitors, "injuring Japan's national interests and betraying the people."

She also criticized Prime Minister Fukuda for calling the Tibet problem an internal problem, even as other world leaders have criticized China and threatened to stay away from the Beijing Olympics. (Of course, when foreign governments criticize Japan for one reason or another — take the comfort women issue, for example — that is a grave offense against Japan for commentators like Ms. Sakurai.) She also attacks Mr. Fukuda for opposing independence for Taiwan.

Komori Yoshihisa, Ms. Sakurai's ideological compatriot, also condemned Mr. Fukuda in the strongest possible terms at his blog. Examining the joint statement, he observes that the statement fails to include the words "democracy," "human rights," and "liberty," while using words like "cooperation," "peace," "mutual," and "friendship" numerous times. Mr. Komori attacks the Fukuda-Hu meetings on the basis of Mr. Fukuda's failure to defend the aforementioned universal values.

I have a particular problem with Ms. Sakurai's casual invocation of the phrase "national interest." She uses the phrase as if its meaning is commonly understood, self-evident to one and all. In no country is that the case. Ms. Sakurai has one vision of the national interest, one that views cordial relations with Japan's rapidly growing neighbor and largest trading partner as not in Japan's interest, and Mr. Fukuda has another, one that recognizes that Japan cannot afford to neglect China, even if pursuing a constructive relationship entails muting criticism of China's human rights record, among other things, and prioritizing process over substance. If there is a problem with Mr. Fukuda's approach is that he has failed to make the case for why Japan needs a constructive relationship and why it cannot adopt the conservative approach to China that entails little more than criticizing China for its failings. As I've noted before, the conservative vision of China policy is not a strategy. They offer no constructive, long-term ideas of how Japan can co-exist with a growing China. Their China policy is nothing but rage, rage that has become especially potent since their ideas get little reception at the center of power.

But because there are so few voices in the Japanese media capable of countering the arguments made by conservatives, their rage resonates, stoking public fears about a menacing China.

What choice does Japan have? Antagonizing China is a dead end for a depopulating, stagnant Japan whose regional and global influence is dwindling. The opposite of antagonism isn't surrender. It is prudent policy for Japan to construct a framework for Sino-Japanese relations within which the two countries can make steady progress on solving bilateral issues and ratchet down the hatreds and fears of the Japanese and Chinese peoples. Japan (and other developed countries) shouldn't totally ignore human rights issues, but, as William Schultz argues, they should be realistic about what pressuring China on human rights can actually achieve. In focusing on cooperative mechanisms and not mentioning the history issue — which, as Mainichi notes, did not go unnoticed by the Chinese people — Mr. Hu indicated that he acknowledges the value in a stable relationship. Mr. Fukuda clearly shares his vision. But can he convince the Japanese public of the wisdom in his approach?

Boldly going where Japan has never gone before

Thanks to an agreement between the LDP, the DPJ, and Komeito, on Friday the HR's Cabinet committee passed a bill that revises Japanese space policy, lifting the 1969 ban on the military use of space. The bill, expected to pass the HR on Tuesday, will create a NASA-style agency attached to the cabinet as a modification of JAXA. As Asahi reports, the bill will also permit Japan to deploy higher resolution spy satellites (Japan is currently limited to commercial-grade satellites).

After passing the HR this coming week, the bill will pass to the HC, where it is expected to pass, although it is worth noting that on this issue, as on other defense issues, there are dissenting opinions within the DPJ, including (I would suspect) members from the party's left-wing-heavy HC caucus.

There are a few relevant questions about this bill.

First, why is the DPJ signing on to this initiative? I suspect that the DPJ is inclined to support this because it gives Japan military capability independent of the US. With higher resolution satellites, Japan would be that much less reliant on the US for information in the event of a crisis (say, a missile launch from North Korea). With the DPJ interested in more autonomy, it is little surprise that the party supports the development of more advanced Japanese space assets.

Second, why now? Is this just another step in Japan's "Sputnik moment," the prolonged reaction to North Korea's 1998 Taepodong launch?

May contribution to FEER Forum

You can find my latest contribution to FEER Forum here, discussing the impending demise of the Fukuda government.

Mr. Hu's relentlessly upbeat visit

Chinese President Hu Jintao will leave Japan Saturday after a five-day visit, a visit that the Chinese Communist Party's external relations bureau has described as a "great success."

(Photo from the Office of the Prime Minister)

It is hard to dispute that, as far as symbolism goes, the visit was indeed a success. Mr. Hu and Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo showed that the relationship is on an even keel, and Mr. Hu, by staying longer in Japan than in any other country (a meaningful statement considering his relentless globe trotting), showed Japan that China still finds value in a close relationship with its wealthier (for now) neighbor. The two leaders reaffirmed the "strategic, reciprocal relationship" approach to Sino-Japanese relations developed during Abe Shinzo's premiership.

In a joint statement, the two leaders agreed to a five-point program to enhance peaceful cooperation between Japan and China: (1) political confidence-building measures, including annual summits between heads of state and government, exchanges between parties and legislatures, and high-level visits and talks in the security realm; (2) cultural and personal exchanges; (3) reciprocal cooperation in the areas of energy and the environment, trade, finance, investment, and other economic sectors, continuation of the high-level economic dialog, and making the East China Sea a sea of "peace, cooperation, and friendship;" (4) cooperation in East Asia, including a commitment to the six-party process, with China welcoming normalization of Japanese-North Korea relations following resolution of "various problems," and the realization of an East Asian region grounded in openness, transparency, and inclusiveness; and (5) cooperation to resolve global problems and combat global warming, energy shortages, and infectious diseases (for China this latter effort starts at home).

As one might expect, there is little of substance in the joint agreement. MOFA has provided a list of concrete steps that will be taken in the coming months, but for the most part these are limited to scheduled summit meetings, visits, and exchanges. I'm certainly not complaining about that — the more interaction between the two governments and peoples, the better — but this week's summitry was more about "agreeing to pursue agreement" and establishing a new framework for Sino-Japanese relations than reaching substantive agreement on the real issues that haunt the bilateral agenda.

Reading the transcript of the joint press conference with Mr. Hu and Mr. Fukuda held on Wednesday, it is clear that both governments worked hard to keep the tone positive. The only reference to bilateral history was Mr. Hu's noting that "there are more than 2,000 years of history of friendly interaction between the peoples of Japan and China." The prevailing, tacit agreement in Sino-Japanese — and now, under President Lee Myung-bak, Japanese-South Korean — relations seems to be that all governments concerned will follow the Basil Fawlty line: "Don't mention the war." Unpleasantness over Tibet and poisoned gyoza was dispatched with ease in questioning; indeed, Mr. Hu, questioned about discussions with the Dalai Lama's representatives before the summit, drew a hard line, stating that it is now the responsibility of the Dalai Lama's "side" to forswear violence, separatist activities, and efforts to wreck the Olympics. The two leaders remained focused largely on enhanced political and economic times.

It is worth noting the difference in Japanese and Chinese visions. Mr. Fukuda spoke largely of the bilateral relationship; Mr. Hu spoke of the bilateral relationship, but embedded it in a regional and global context. In his remarks at the press conference, Mr. Hu spoke frequently of mechanisms for bilateral and regional cooperations. Wannabe dragon slayers may think that talk by Chinese officials about multilateral cooperation is a ploy to disarm potential enemies, but I think that may be overly cynical. China clearly recognizes the value of regional institutions, even with Japanese involvement (that might dilute China's power within said institutions). Judging by this summit, there is an appreciation in Beijing that it is better to placate Japan and have it play a constructive role in the region than to have an embittered Japan drawn to fantasies of containing China. The China on display at the joint press conference was a confident regional leader dedicated to creating a new East Asian order — hence there was no mention of the US (or Taiwan) by either leader.

There is nothing the US can or should do about this: Japan needs stable, cordial relations with both the US and China. Indeed, perhaps the more Japan undertakes initiatives outside the US-Japan alliance, the healthier the alliance will become, as Japan will feel less obligated to do Washington's bidding for lack of other options.

The question now is whether this approach is sustainable within Japan. For months now, the LDP's ideological conservatives and their allies in the media have been hammering Mr. Fukuda for being soft on China, especially in regard to Tibet and the poisoned gyoza issue. The "True Conservative Policy Research Group," the seat of the conservative ideologues within the LDP, has been particularly relentless in its criticism of Mr. Fukuda.

In a Mainichi article reviewing the group's opposition to Mr. Fukuda's China policy, one member is quoted as saying, "China policy will be one important theme in the next party president election. If Mr. Aso enters the presidential election, most of the members will shift their support to him." This last line is not particularly surprising — I've assumed from the beginning that Nakagawa Shoichi's study group is at least in part a committee to elect Aso Taro — but this article as a whole shows that the conservative approach to China remains bankrupt. The conservatives still have nothing constructive to offer. They would still rather harangue China for its failings than outline a way forward.

While Mr. Abe's overtures to China suggest that a conservative prime minister can still pursue a positive relationship with China, I fear that an Aso government — particularly an Aso government accompanied by a McCain administration calling for a League of Nations Democracies — would be considerably less forward-looking in its China policy. Mr. Aso might not necessarily return Sino-Japanese relations to the Koizumi-era deep freeze, although a glance at this speech he gave in 2006 on Yasukuni, in which he fails to mention the enshrined Class-A war criminals, suggests that Mr. Aso might have a devastating impact on the latest Sino-Japanese rapprochement; Mr. Aso and his comrades will most likely not embrace the Fawlty line. With Mr. Fukuda enfeebled and Mr. Aso positioning himself to take the premiership, there may yet be bumps ahead, sooner rather than later.

That said, I suspect that over the long term, the ability of China hawks in both Japan and the US to freeze or rollback cooperative ventures with China will be limited, provided that Beijing continues to talk about cooperative mechanisms and regional order. The challenge is making it to the long term with the least amount of backsliding due to agitation by conservatives.

UPDATE: Perhaps as part of the ongoing process of reinventing himself, Mr. Aso praised the talks as being effective on the tainted gyoza problem.

The US in Asia and the world

Princeton's G. John Ikenberry has a long guest post at the Washington Note addressing Kishore Mahbubani's arguments in The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East. Not having read Mr. Mahbubani's book yet, I can't speak directly to his argument, but I do want to address the points raised by Professor Ikenberry.

The crux of Professor Ikenberry's argument is that the rise of Asia does not necessarily mean the decline of the West, or, more specifically, the decline of the US. He does not deny Asia's growing influence, but he suggests that while power is flowing Asia's way, the Asian powers have not proposed new organizing principles for world order. He suggests that what might happen — and what will probably be the best possible outcome — is a modified version of the American-led postwar system, a postwar system with an Asian flavor in which China and the other Asian powers recognize that maintaining the system is in their interests. As Professor Ikenberry writes:

China may well be tomorrow's greatest supporter of the American-led postwar system. That system provides rules and institutions for openness and nondiscrimination. These are features of order that China will want going forward as its growing economic weight will be greeted by efforts by others (including some governments in the West) to close and discriminate. Rule-based international order is not a Western fixation. It is a system of governance that all states - East and West - have some interest in maintaining, China not least.

There is considerable value in this argument. Given that China most likely will not have the opportunity to remake the international order anew in the manner that the US and its allies did in the aftermath of the World War II, China, India, and the other rising powers will have little choice but to jury-rig preexisting institutions to reflect their power and their interests.

It's also possible to overstate US decline, both in Asia and globally. As an "Asian" power — the US unmistakably is a great power in Asia — the US will have a stake in shaping the "Asian" world order. Washington will have to reconsider how it exercises its power regionally and globally, of course, becoming less reliant on its military power and more willing to listen to others, but the US has not begun its Recessional yet.

The emphasis needs to change, however. Since the US expanded its role in Asia at the end of the war, its Asia policy has been schizophrenic, divided between a crusading, transformational tendency and a stabilizing tendency. This schizophrenia persists up to today, with the crusaders keen to paint China as the next great threat to the US. But the time for US crusades in Asia is past. For the first time in nearly two centuries, Asian powers are in a position to manage the region's affairs themselves. That doesn't mean there is no role for the US; in fact, it means the US role as stabilizer and pacifier is more important than ever. I think, for example, that the presence of the US military, especially the US Navy, has ensured that political tensions have risen inexorably despite the ongoing Asian arms race. In short, US power should be used less for dictating terms and more for underwriting the efforts of others to create international order. The US should participate in the latter process, but only as one country among many. Its alliances in the region should shift accordingly, measured more in terms of how the support this US role. Transformational ideas, like Abe Shinzo's and Aso Taro's "arc of freedom and democracy" have little place in this order. Asian countries are in no hurry to see the US evacuate Asia; if anything, they want the US to be more involved, to be less obsessed with terrorism and more willing to listen to their concerns. It is imperative that the US start thinking seriously about how it will play this stabilizing role in Asia over the long term.

The US role globally will be more central than in Asia, but the question will be the same: as Professor Ikenberry writes, "...the United States should be asking itself: what sort of international order do we want to have in place in 2040 or 2050 when we are relatively less powerful?" Extending US influence, if not predominance, will depend on developing foreign policy tools other than military power (and with it, a shift in attitude that acknowledges that the US is less able to dictate terms to other countries).

Meanwhile, it is a mistake to refer casually to "Asia" in this discussion. Whose Asia? Is Asia a codeword for China? For India? For ASEAN? Each of these players has a different vision for the region, which redounds to the advantage of the US. Just as the Asian regional future is unknown, so to is the future of an Asia-centered world order unknown. The US is still in a position to shape the Asian and global orders.

The LDP's dilemmas

Yamamoto Ichita, taking a break from rocking out, writes of the divide between LDP veterans and youngsters in the debate over Prime Minister Fukuda's plan to shift the special road construction fund into the general fund from 2009.

The question is how the prime minister should proceed. At present, the HR will be voting next week to override the HC and pass the road construction plan in its current form, even as the prime minister has promised a new plan. Mr. Yamamoto himself sees no inconsistency in passing the existing plan and then revising after the fact; he recognizes, however, that the public doesn't see it this way. Mr. Yamamoto and other potential rebels want official decisions by the cabinet and the LDP executive in support of Mr. Fukuda's plan. Party veterans, according to Mr. Yamamoto, fear that giving Mr. Fukuda's plan official imprimatur also means giving opponents the opportunity to sabotage the plan. Mr. Yamamoto chalks up the dispute to differing perceptions of election timing.

Is it really as simple as that? This seems to be another example of the cautious/risk-taking divide within the LDP in the face of conservative reaction (in this case in the form of the road tribe resistance to reform). For the "veterans" — Mr. Yamamoto's word — a direct, open schism in the LDP as a result of fights in the party council and the cabinet is a greater concern than the possible electoral consequences of going forward solely on the basis of the prime minister's promise. The young reformists want official decisions, even if it means open confrontation with the opponents of road construction reform and a greater risk of failure. As before — see the case from 2005 when the LDP council forced revisions to the postal reform bills on Mr. Koizumi by virtue of an unprecedented majority (as opposed to unanimous) vote — the veterans are willing to violate procedures and customs if doing so minimizes the risks to the party (as they see it).

Without official decisions, Mr. Fukuda's strategy on his compromise plan amounts to telling the people, "Trust me." It entails back-loading LDP resistance to the plan, in the hope that somehow the resistance will be placated over time. The reformists' approach entails front-loading resistance, tackling it head on, at the beginning. Even if Mr. Fukuda's plan gets derailed while in deliberation, at least the "opposition forces" will be out in the open, enabling the prime minister to draw a firm line on reform, à la Koizumi, and possibly revive his crumbling cabinet.

And even that probably won't be enough to save Mr. Fukuda, given that the DPJ's obvious retort is if it can be done from 2009, why not from 2008?

Regardless, the party's dilemma remains. Tahara Soichiro points out in Liberal Time that although there is probably a majority within the LDP in favor of ousting Mr. Fukuda, but is deterred from pushing for his replacement for fear that the formation of a new government will prompt irresistible calls for a general election. No one in the LDP is ready to risk that, given that it could be a massacre for LDP and Komeito candidates.

But how long will Mr. Fukuda be protected by fears of a general election?

I still suspect that he has until July, after which the party will take its chances on a new leader — and perhaps even resign itself to a general election that I expect will trigger the realignment once the general election produces a nearly split HR. In short, Mr. Fukuda will most likely not have the opportunity to see his road construction plan through to fruition.

Public discontent, in numbers

Sankei has published the fourth part of its analysis of recent public opinion polls (parts one through three discussed here).

The questions dissected here are related to the government's use of its two-thirds majority to pass the gasoline tax and MSDF refueling mission authorization bills a second time in the HR, and cooperation between the LDP and DPJ in response to the "twisted" Diet.

Sankei observes that while a majority of respondents in April poll stated that they opposed the reinstatement of the gasoline tax in a second HR vote, a majority of the public approved the use of the supermajority to pass the extension of the refueling mission in a November poll. Another poll conducted in January following the HR's second passage of the refueling mission bill, however, found that the public had turned against the use of the supermajority.

I don't see what the mystery is. In the gasoline tax debate, the public undoubtedly opposed the use of the supermajority to reinstate the temporary tax because...the public overwhelmingly opposed the measure. In the refueling mission debate, the public likely turned against the government's insistence on using the supermajority to send MSDF ships back to the Indian Ocean because it rejected the government's focus on it even while the pensions debacle continued (for example).

The point is, as noted previously, that the public is unhappy with the current political situation. To drive the point home, Sankei concluded by citing two more polls that showed sizable majorities in favor of LDP-DPJ policy coordination and the meetings between Messrs. Ozawa and Fukuda last autumn. Another poll, however, showed that the public has no more idea than the politicians about how to break the deadlock: in a poll conducted last November 41.3% wanted a quick general election, while another 41.3% wanted more cooperation between government and opposition.

No word if the public is still divided after watching the rapid decay of the Fukuda government.

Yamamoto Ichita at work

I challenge you not to laugh — or at least chuckle — at this video posted at the LDP YouTube Channel featuring Yamamoto Ichita, upper house representative from Gunma prefecture, prolific blogger, rocker, and TV personality.

Sankei analyzes its polls

Sankei Shimbun, whose website is probably the best among the websites of the major dailies, is posting a four-part series of articles online that breakdown the newspaper's public opinion polls. (Three of four have already been posted.) Regardless of the analysis provided in these pieces, they are worth looking at because they provide fine-grained analysis of polls based on prefectural distribution, age, and gender.

Part one analyzes Prime Minister Fukuda's declining popularity. Sankei posits that an April poll that asked respondents to evaluate Mr. Fukuda's "personality" showed the prime minister remains well-liked, regardless of what polls that ask respondents to evaluate Fukuda the politician show. This poll found that Mr. Fukuda is especially well-liked in the North Kanto HR block (which includes his home prefecture of Gunma) and the Tokyo block — and by women over 60 (and relatively less popular among twenty-something men and thirty-something women). Sankei never gets around to explaining what this means, and in the penultimate paragraph suggests that this may simply reflect an unwillingness on the part of the Japanese to speak badly of someone. But rather than embrace or reject this explanation, the article merely concludes by asking, "Is this cynical explanation acceptable?"

It is to me. Sankei makes no effort to explain why this alternative phrasing is superior. I recognize, of course, that in polls the slightest difference in wording can produce considerably different results, but the difference in wording is significant enough that the two questions are not interchangeable. Respondents seem to appreciate that when they are asked whether they approve of the Fukuda government, they are not evaluating the prime minister's personality.

Part two looks at polls asking who the public holds responsible for the gasoline tax "confusion" and the BOJ leadership vacancy. The tendency in nearly all of those polls is for the respondents to blame both parties, while attributing slightly more blame to the government than to the opposition. This tendency is evident across nearly every age group, both sexes, and throughout the country. On the gasoline tax dispute, men were more inclined to blame the government, as were both men and women in their thirties.

Once again, I'm not entirely clear on the point Sankei is trying to make. The public is discontent with party politics? Nothing new there.

Part three looks at polls that have asked about who would make the best prime minister. Sankei compares numbers for Koizumi Junichiro, Aso Taro, Ozawa Ichiro, and Mr. Fukuda. Mr. Aso tops Mr. Koizumi, the overall leader, is the Kinki, Chugoku, and Shikoku blocks, although surprisingly he trails both Mr. Koizumi and Mr. Ozawa in the Kyushu block, his home block (a case of familiarity breeding contempt?). Mr. Fukuda trails the other LDP politicians among every category. Mr. Ozawa is nearly even with Mr. Aso among male respondents but trails by a sizable margin among female respondents. (And, of course, "nobody" runs strongly in all categories.)

In short, looking at the poll numbers more closely shows that regardless of how you slice it, the Japanese public is discontent with the contemporary state of affairs.

Fukuda loses another crutch

Following polls that showed the DPJ edging ahead of the LDP in party approval ratings and Mr. Fukuda's approval ratings falling to record lows — the lowest being Mainichi's 18% — Mr. Fukuda has suffered another blow in the latest Mainichi poll.

If the claim that the "LDP is still more popular than the DPJ" was one line regularly trotted out by LDP officials discussing the party's electoral prospects, another was that "no matter how unpopular Mr. Fukuda gets, he's still more popular than Ozawa Ichiro." Even DPJ members have bought into this, as they fear that Mr. Ozawa will be a major electoral liability in urban and suburban districts. The LDP has assumed that as long as Mr. Ozawa is the head of the DPJ, it enjoys some cushion.

But no longer. Mainichi found that in a poll taken May 1 and 2, 18% of respondents said Mr. Ozawa would make a suitable prime minister, compared with 14% for Mr. Fukuda. That said, 63% replied that they find neither suitable. More strikingly, the same poll confirmed the previous Mainichi poll's finding that the DPJ's support is now greater than the LDP's: the DPJ's support rose eleven points to 51%, the LDP's dropped twelve points to 24%.

As with previous polls showing a shift away from the LDP, this poll is significant because it deprives the prime minister of yet another argument justifying his continuing in office. It provides Mr. Fukuda's would-be successors with more evidence demonstrating why his premiership should end sooner rather than later.

In the midst of these latest blows, Yamasaki Taku, head of his eponymous faction, is arguing that the prime minister should reshuffle his cabinet following the G8 summit. Do Mr. Yamasaki and Mr. Fukuda really believe that the prime minister's problems lie in the members of his cabinet, as opposed to his broken party, a recalcitrant bureaucracy, and the prime minister's leadership deficiencies, which prevent him from surmounting these obstacles? I wonder whether the LDP would go along with a cabinet reshuffle, or whether LDP members — and not just Aso Taro and other leadership candidates — would call for a reshuffle that starts at the very top.

Bobby Valentine interviewed in the New York Times

I had the opportunity to interview Bobby Valentine, manager of the Chiba Lotte Marines, on one occasion several years ago. I found him to be an astute student of baseball, both Japanese- and American-style, and an eager promoter of the Japanese game.


Now the New York Times has featured Mr. Valentine in the "Questions for" feature in the Sunday Magazine.

The most interesting answer for me is that he confirms my suspicion for why Japanese professional baseball limits games to four hours or twelve innings: "Japan is a public-transportation society, and the trains stop running at midnight." I always suspected that this was the case — or else there could be twenty-inning marathons that leave fans stranded at the ballpark, or alternatively, are played before crowds smaller than the number of players on the field.

The human cost of Hiroshima

The Hoover Institution has published a set of photographs discovered in 1945 by Robert Capp, an American serving in the US occupation force. The photos, taken by an unknown Japanese photographer, show the remains of victims of the bombing of Hiroshima. As Wenran Jiang, professor of political science at the University of Alberta noted at NBR's Japan Forum, "Unlike most photos of the Hiroshima bombing, these dramatically convey the human as well as material destruction unleashed by the atomic bomb."

These photos do not in and of themselves settle the argument on the justness of the bombing of Hiroshima, but they serve as a reminder that no matter how just we think our ends are, we must never allow the pursuit of justice to blind us to the consequences of the means. The death of human beings — of individuals — is an end too, which must not be written off as "collateral damage," an unfortunate byproduct of our pursuit of justice.

The photos can be viewed here.

Japan just as invisible as always

MOFA has released its latest Gallup-conducted poll of American public and elite attitudes concerning Japan. (English summary here; more detailed Japanese documents available for download here.)

Gallup conducted a telephone poll of 1500 Americans over age 18 in February and March of 2008, and telephone interviews with 250 "opinion leaders" in "the fields of government, business, academia, mass media, religion and labor unions."

The results are more or less unchanged. Both the public and elites view Japan as the most important US partner in Asia, with China trailing by roughly ten points among the public and twenty points among elites. Japan is still seen as a dependable ally, although the number among the public dropped seven points from 74% to 67%, even as the elite figure remained strong, improving one point to a record-high of 92%. Both public and elite see Japan as more of an economic power, and believe that the US-Japan relationship is sound, and will either improve in the future or remain just as sound as they think it is today. Elites are well disposed to Japan playing a more assertive role internationally, and have a stronger sense of shared values between the US and Japan than the public at large has.

Of interest to me, however, is that in every question that gave general public respondents the option of "don't understand/no opinion," that response gained. In the "dependable ally" question, the percentage of the general public answering "no opinion" rose from 5% to 15%. Asked whether Japan is playing an appropriate international role given its economic power, the percentage of the general public answering "don't understand" rose from 6% to 14%. Asked about the importance of US bases in Japan, the number of general public respondents with no opinion rose from 3% to 11%. The number who responded "don't understand" when asked whether the US should support the current US-Japan mutual security treaty more than doubled, from 7% to 15%. And I suspect that these numbers probably only measure those who are willing to admit that they either don't understand or have no opinion. How many American citizens have opinions about these questions before being asked by a pollster?

In short, Japan became that much less familiar to the American public from February-March 2007 to February-March 2008. Interestingly, when general public respondents were asked where they get information about Japan, every category but education (improved one point from 51% to 52%), friends and neighbors (improved one point from 29% to 30%), Japanese friends (held steady at 29%), and experience of visiting Japan (held steady at 12%) fell. The big four — TV, magazines, newspapers, and Internet — all fall. TV fell from 80% to 74%, magazines from 72% to 64%, newspapers from 71% to 63%, and Internet 43% to 39%. The impact of these drops are magnified by the paucity of Japan coverage (i.e., not only are the news media providing less Japan coverage, but fewer people are seeing what little they cover). The drops were less significant or non-existent in terms of the elite, but elite awareness of Japan still suffers from the spareness of Japan coverage.

The survey ought to include a question along the lines of "did you have any opinions about the US-Japan relationship before being asked these questions." It might also have been helpful to ask about public awareness of events that transpired in the relationship over the past year (political changes in Japan, the abductee problem, the comfort women resolution, etc.). Without asking these questions, there is no context for these responses. This doesn't say much about what the American people think about the US-Japan relationship in comparison to a host of other foreign policy issues and bilateral relationships.

Guam makes The Colbert Report

Stephen Colbert interviewed Madeleine Bordallo, Guam's congresswoman, Wednesday evening. Unfortunately Congresswoman Bordallo didn't get a chance to answer the question about Japanese tourists.

So much for the LDP's popularity

In recent weeks, some LDP leaders, hinting that the party might be willing to consider calling a general election sometime before September 2009, pointed to the party's ratings in public opinion polls. Polls have consistently shown the LDP polling higher than the DPJ, even as Prime Minister Fukuda's popularity has tanked. On this point, I asked last month, "Are the LDP and Komeito really willing to bet their two-thirds majority — which Mr. Ibuki admitted will likely not be retained — on the basis of there being some significance to the polls? I have a hunch that the polls fail to capture the extent of the public's discontent. I'm not convinced that the public is any less discontent than it was last summer when the LDP was trounced in the HC election. Will the public really be inclined to punish the DPJ more than the LDP?"

After Sunday's DPJ victory in Yamaguchi, I am more convinced that polls have failed to capture the widespread and growing malaise among Japanese voters — and their willingness to hold the LDP responsible for policy failures that have made their lives more insecure.

Now Asahi has produced a poll showing that the DPJ has topped the LDP in popularity, at the same time that it found that Mr. Fukuda's favorable rating has fallen to 20%. The DPJ's support rose six points to 28%, the LDP's fell two points to 24%. A slim margin, yes, but a margin that deprives the LDP of its claim to be more popular than DPJ. The shift is undoubtedly influenced by the gasoline tax fight, but even so, it is hard for the LDP to argue that it is has the public solidly behind it. In short, it's hard to tell what exactly the party support figure represents. Does it actually measure the level of public support for the parties?

Regardless of the accuracy of these figures, both make it less likely that the LDP will accept an early election — and less likely that it will be Mr. Fukuda who leads the LDP into the next election.

The government's administrative reform bill is dying on the vine

Nearly a month has passed since the government submitted its administrative reform bill to the Diet, and Mainichi reports that the bill's prospects are no better now than they were when the bill was submitted. Indeed, they are considerably worse.

With six weeks until the end of the Diet session — unless Mr. Fukuda does like Mr. Abe and gives himself an extension — the bill still has not come up for discussion in the HR. It was scheduled to be debated on 22 April, but was delayed because "there are many other bills that should be prioritized." The bill is now scheduled to be discussed on 8 May, after Golden Week. There is no enthusiasm within the bureaucracy and little within the LDP for administrative reform, and the government, aside from Watanabe Yoshimi, minister for administrative reform, is unprepared to exert significant effort to see the bill passed.

This sounds like the perfect combination to ensure that the administrative reform plan dies an unlamented death next month.

At the same time that the LDP is distancing itself from what was an important part of the Koizumi formula, the DPJ has announced its own "Kasumigaseki reform plan." Rather than imposing restrictions on interaction between politicians and bureaucrats, the DPJ's plan will ensure that bureaucrats see a lot more of politicians — in their own ministries. There is already little love lost between the DPJ and the bureaucracy, and the DPJ's new plan will do nothing to endear it to Kasumigaseki.

The party's administrative reform investigatory committee, chaired by Matsumoto Takeaki (49), an HR member representing the Kinki PR bloc, has announced that when the DPJ takes power, it will greatly expand the number of political appointees in the government. There are currently around seventy appointees to ministerial, vice-ministerial, secretarial, and advisory posts in cabinet ministries and the cabinet secretariat. The DPJ wants to expand that number to around 130, tapping Diet members (and experts from outside the Diet) to serve as advisers to cabinet ministers. And it doesn't just want to create new figurehead positions: the DPJ intends to give the political appointees control over bureaus and policy formulation. The plan also calls for the creation of a centralized bureau of cabinet personnel in the cabinet secretariat, and forbids ministries and agencies from finding new employment for retiring bureaucrats.

The further down into the ministries that the reach of the politicians extends, the more power the government will have to impose its will on the bureaucrats. But the politicians need operational control. Does the DPJ have enough policy experts in its ranks to dispatch them into ministries to battle day-to-day with bureaucrats? A massive influx of advisers long on titles and short on power will not change the situation. So I'm skeptical about whether the DPJ will be able to implement this broad-ranging plan. This shows, however, that a DPJ government would be free to consider radical reforms that the LDP cannot, thanks to its cozy relationship with the bureaucracy.

Administrative reform is not just something that concerns insiders in Tokyo. The people are paying attention. Note that in the Mainichi poll conducted before the Yamaguchi-2 by-election, administrative reform ranked third in order of priority, after health and welfare, and pensions. The public knows who is responsible for misgoverning Japan, and the DPJ is wise to discuss how a DPJ government will deal with the bureaucracy.

The DPJ botches the endgame again

After holding the line against the government — forcing it to use its supermajority to override the HC — in both the special session of the Diet (the MSDF refueling mission) and the current regular session (the temporary tax), the DPJ has been unable to find the right way to respond to the government's use of the supermajority.

In January, the endgame was marred by Ozawa Ichiro's storming out of the Diet before the refueling bill came to a vote again.

Wednesday, the endgame was marred by the DPJ's boycotting the vote en masse and, more seriously, DPJ members barricading Kono Yohei, speaker of the House of Representatives, in his office for an hour before guards escorted him to the Diet chambers for the vote on the tax. The former is less troubling than the latter; not showing up is a great way to ensure that no one breaks ranks on the vote, and, as MTC notes in a comment to Jun Okumura's post on the boycott, "Boycotting sessions en masse is also a recognized form of Diet protest. That opposition members chose to boycott the session was a reasonable response to an unreasonable approach to lawmaking."

Barricading the speaker of the house in his office, however, is inexcusable. Reminiscent of the Socialist Party's futile raging against the LDP during the cold war, the use of physical pressure to restrain a legislative officer has no place in a democracy. Whatever the DPJ thinks of the government's use of the supermajority to reinstate the temporary tax despite public opposition, the government, contra Hatoyama Yukio (who according to Okumura-san likened the government's acting without formal disapproval by the HC to an act of violence), is acting in accordance with the constitution. Article 59 gives the HR the right to override the HC with a two-thirds vote if the latter does not act on legislation within 60 days.

The LDP may come to regret governing by Article 59, but that is for the people to decide. It is for the DPJ to act with dignity, register its complaints through the proper channels, and then campaign like hell against this manner of rule when the next general election comes.

The campaign comes to Guam

This weekend, the US presidential campaign comes to Guam, the island territory closer to Japan than the continental US that will soon be home to a vastly expanded US military presence, if all goes according to plan.

Guam will be holding a Democratic caucus, and with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton struggling for every delegate, the two have given some attention to the island, thanks to its four delegates. (NPR provides a handy guide for the perplexed