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.

The futility of Japan's global popularity

The BBC has released its annual survey of global attitudes, revealing once again that Japan is one of the most positively rated countries among those surveyed.

Jun Okumura provides a good wrap-up of the report's findings on Japan here.

As in years past, the survey found that Japan is viewed favorably in just about every country surveyed except for China and South Korea.

While nationalism and historical issues may partly explain the negative findings, I suspect that the negativity in Japan's relationships with China and South Korea — negativity that goes both directions — correlates with the density of those relationships. Thanks to proximity, the bilateral agendas are crowded with thorny, intractable problems that are regularly exacerbated by the behavior of one or both governments. This dynamic also contributes to Russia's low rating in Japanese eyes (15% mostly positive, 34% mostly negative). (And Russia's favorable view of Japan shows that most Russians aren't particularly attuned to their country's Far East.)

Of course, it is not particularly surprising that the dense, messy relationships in Northeast Asia have given rise to negative feelings towards the others. (40% of South Korean respondents viewed China favorably, compared with 50% who viewed it negatively.) What I'm interested in is what this says about the prospects for Japan's ambitions to play a greater global role, whether in political, economic, or security terms.

Some might argue that Japan's high favorable ratings are a source of soft power, the basis for Japan's extending its influence abroad. But I would argue that it's likely that the more Japan reached abroad, the less favorable it would seem and the less soft power it would possess. Not coincidentally, the one region in which Japan is especially active — Northeast Asia — is home to negative feelings about Japan. Not surprisingly, Japan is viewed favorably in regions where it is known mostly for its money and its culture. Thanks to Japan's economic problems and China's economic rise, Japan's money isn't nearly the negative it was at the height of the bubble. (Indeed, as during the Meiji period, Japan is shielded from negative attention from abroad by China, a much more attractive target for empire then and foreign criticism now.)

Japan simply lacks the dense, complicated relations, relations that entangle publics, that have contributed to antagonism with South Korea and China. Japan remained popular even in countries like Australia (where its popularity increased) and Britain, where media coverage of Japan over the past year focused on whaling, and the US and Canada, where history issues were on the agenda over the past year in the form of comfort women relations. (Although Japan's popularity in Canada did fall thirteen percentage points.) It turns out that these issues are a concern for an exceedingly narrow segment of educated public opinion.

So chalk this up as a success for Japan's low-posture foreign policy, which has become even lower thanks to Japan's shrinking ODA budget. (LDP HR member Yamauchi Koichi frets about Japan's declining ODA here, at his blog.) Japan is well-liked because it is mostly invisible and entirely harmless to most of the countries surveyed. A more active Japan, a Japan that took sides in important international disputes, would likely be less popular.

What does all this international goodwill actually do for Japan? Does it make Japan any more likely to succeed in trade negotiations? Does it make Japanese permanent membership in the UN Security Council any more likely? Does global goodwill yield any soft power for Japan?

Unease in Japan, yawns in America?

The Yomiuri Shimbun has published the results of a poll (conducted with Gallup in the US) that surveyed American and Japanese attitudes towards their respective national institutions and the US-Japanese relationship.

As the article summarizing the poll reports, Yomiuri recorded a 14% (to 39%) and 15% (to 46%) drops respectively in the number of Japanese and American respondents answering affirmatively to the question, "Do you think the current US-Japan relationship is good."

But when one looks that the detailed list of questions asked and the responses, it seems that American responses tend towards the noncommittal. In response to the aforementioned question, for example, 43.6% of American respondents either could not say or did not answer the question. A mere 10.4% said that relations were bad or very bad. Some 60% of American respondents, in answering the question whether they trust Japan, answered that they have great or some trust in Japan, compared to 30% who said that they have little or no trust in Japan. A quarter of American respondents did not answer the question about what impact Prime Minister Fukuda will have on US-Japan relations. (A better question might have been, can you name the prime minister of Japan.)

The survey also asked a number of questions about foreign policy, among which a few bits caught my eye. In a question about threat perception, there was a vast difference in the percentage of American and Japanese respondents who view the "Middle East" as a threat. (Let's leave aside the question of what this painfully imprecise response actually tells us.) 76% of American respondents said that they view the Middle East as a threat, while only 34.3% of Japanese respondents said the same. I think this illustrates one of the US-Japan alliance's underlying structural problems, namely that there is little public support in Japan for the transformation of the US-Japan alliance into a global actor active in the Middle East. Japanese threat perceptions are largely focused on (not surprisingly) two countries in its neighborhood, dropping off sharply the further one gets from Japanese shores. American threat perceptions are higher than Japanese perceptions in every instance except for North Korea and China. The US is a global security power, Japan is not. There is no way around this fact.

Also interesting was the question about US bases in Japan, which asked whether the US should reinforce its presence, hold it steady, reduce it, or completely withdraw. A sizable majority (58.2%) of Americans said the US should hold it steady, while in Japan, 52% said the US should cut or withdraw its troops (42.2% favored a cut, 9.8% full withdrawal), while 40% said the US should hold its troop presence steady. Only 1.3% said the US should increase its forces. It is unclear whether this question takes into account the cuts to which both governments agreed in 2006, but these responses do suggest that conflict over this issue remains considerable in Japan. (Another problem with this question is that responses would no doubt vary depending upon whether it was asked in a prefecture hosting US forces.)

In short, I don't think this survey tells us all that much about the US-Japan relationship, other than that the Japanese people pay a great detail more attention to the relationship than the American people do. Japanese responses tend to be more varied, suggesting the existence of real, studied opinions on the questions asked, whereas the American responses tend towards the status quo and benign responses, which appear to me to be the default responses when lacking information. ("I haven't heard anything about problems with Japan, so things must be ok.")

This is an unavoidable fact of life in the alliance. No Japanese politician could become prime minister without a considered opinion of the US-Japan relationship, at the very least. Given the frequency with which cabinet ministers are lauded for their "pipelines" to the US, much more is expected. Thanks in part to the enduring US presence, the relationship with the US is at the forefront of political discussions.

And in the US? Japan barely merits mention in debates among presidential candidates, and has even less visibility among the American people.

None of this is surprising, of course. There's nothing new about Japan's being less visible in the US than the US in Japan. But it's worth recalling when looking at numbers like this. I find it hard to believe that there's an American public opinion on the US-Japan relationship that exists independent of polls taken to measure supposed opinions.

Mr. Fukuda may desire greater intellectual exchanges between the US and Japan, but the impact of any expansion of bilateral intellectual and cultural contacts will be marginal at best — and while Mr. Aso touts the glories of Japan's cultural exports, it is unclear to me whether Tokyo can use this soft power to its advantage and raise its political profile in the US and the world at large. If anything, the cultural exports have contributed to the further trivialization of Japan in the eyes of the world. (Japan: manga and Hello Kitty superpower, political midget.)

More bad news for the LDP?

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has issued statistics regarding early voting for Sunday's Upper House elections.

The ministry's report found that early voting is up more than 50% from 2004, rising from approximately 260,000 votes to nearly 400,00 votes, with higher tallies recorded in every prefecture except Miyazaki and Kochi.

Mainichi concludes that the increase reflects heightened public interest in the Upper House elections.

It is tempting to conclude that this is a sign that turnout will be high this Sunday, signaling a desire among voters to show up and vote against the government. But there is a question mark in the title of this post because this could be a product of the decision to schedule the election in the midst of summer holidays — voters who would vote anyway on election day casting an early ballot before going on a vacation rather than an omen of a high participation rate on election day. It's entirely plausible that the big rise in early voting could mean relatively depressed figures on Sunday.

Nevertheless, with less than a week before the election, the DPJ is in good shape, with some polls showing that the LDP might finish at the lower end of the range of my own predictions. The LDP's stump speeches seem to be getting more desperate by the day, too.

Here's LDP Secretary-General Nakagawa Hidenao in Tokushima: "Since we have had only ten months up to now, the speed of reform has proceeded faster than in Koizumi-san's time." From actively trying to distance the Abe government from its predecessor to arguing that Abe-san is even more keen on reform than Koizumi — just look at how fast he's going!

Nakagawa followed up that whopper with this brilliant pitch, delivered at the site of the first performance of Beethoven's Ode to Joy: "For Japan to become a country of joy, we by all means want to win!"

Goodbye utsukushii Nihon, hello kanki no Nihon.

What kind of debate does Yomiuri want exactly?

The Yomiuri has published its editorial on the official start of the Upper House election campaign, and, as has been its ken for much of the past nine months, it argues on the need for a debate on the nation's strategy in the face of new challenges.

Sounds good, right?

Except Yomiuri's idea of good governance in the face of national challenges is that of Prime Minister Abe.

"The Abe Cabinet has revised the Fundamental Law of Education, the 'Constitution of Education,' and raised the Japan Defense Agency to a ministry. This year, the sixtieth anniversary of the promulgation of the constitution, it also passed a 'national referendum law' determining procedures for revising the constitution.

"For more than half a century, successive cabinets have been unable to achieve these victories. They are part of the prime minister's 'freeing [Japan] from the postwar regime' program. At the prime minister's first speech in the Tokyo metropolitan area, he enumerated this and emphasized the 'acceleration of reform'; the greatest results have probably come from this."

The editorial goes on to list how the government's bills have drawn support from one opposition party or another.

No mention, of course, of the unprecedented size of the government's majority, which has enabled the Abe cabinet to pass all of these "historic bills." No mention either of the changing balance of power within the LDP, with those who had opposed these measures in the past marginalized within the party. And Yomiuri's citation of opposition support for government measures serves only to show how the role of the opposition in the Lower House has become of that of mere window dressing on the government's untrammeled power.

For all the talk about the Abe cabinet's legislative achievements, however, Yomiuri actually says rather little about how this government is formulating a national strategy to cope with twenty-first century challenges.

See, I actually agree with Yomiuri on that; Japan faces a number of challenges that demand from the government wisdom, prudence, and steady, far-seeing governance, combined with concern for the people in a time of substantial change. But I look at the government that has been in power since last September and I see a government that possesses none of those qualities, and what's more is beholden to interests and steeped in corruption.

I am not arguing that a DPJ-led coalition government, if and when it comes, will be necessarily better than the current government — that remains to be seen. But political competition is necessary (well, necessary but insufficient) to make better parties. What impetus is there for a party to change unless there is a real chance of losing an election?

That decision, of course, rests in the hands of the Japanese voters. While I don't want to generalize, especially since the people quoted are in Tokyo, two articles in English-language sources have me less than convinced that the Japanese people are ready to punish the Abe cabinet.

First, the Japan Times ran an article about the first day of campaigning in Tokyo, quoting voters as to their preferences for the 29 July elections. It included this quote from a sixty-eight-year-old retiree: "I've always voted for the LDP and plan on sticking with them again, despite the problems with the pension premium payments. The DPJ has relied too much on blaming the LDP, when there isn't much the DPJ has actually achieved as a party." How many of this retiree's compatriots share his forgiveness for the LDP? (This is more or less the Yomiuri editorial line.) And will enough of them turn out to vote in sixteen days to give the election to the government?

Second, the BBC, in an article on Japan's restrictive campaign laws that focuses especially on restrictions on internet usage (the picture of Suzuki Kan's shuttered Second Life campaign office is priceless), quotes some younger Japanese talking about campaigning. Once again, I caution against generalizing from these quotes, but I cannot help but wonder if the sentiment expressed is not altogether uncommon:

In Japan, 95% of people in their 20s surf the web, but only a third of them bother to vote.

Some, though, do not seem keen on politicians using the web to try to win their support.

"I believe that internet resources are not very official," says Kentaro Shimano, a student at Temple University in Tokyo.

"YouTube is more casual; you watch music videos or funny videos on it, but if the government or any politicians are on the web it doesn't feel right."

Haruka Konishi agrees.

"Japanese politics is something really serious," she says. "Young people shouldn't be involved, I guess because they're not serious enough or they don't have the education."

There cannot be many places in the world where students feel their views should not count. Perhaps it is really a reflection of the reality - that they do not.

Here in Japan, it is seen as important to treat politicians with respect.

But such is the deference paid to them, it is hard for anyone to challenge them to try new ways to make the political system better.

I think the BBC is way off to conclude that the Japanese political system is unique for the deference and respect with which voters treat politicians. While Japanese politics may be politer than other democratic countries, it is a mistake to conclude politeness for respect. I have talked to a number of people about politics — including, no joke, people who work in politics — and what I have found is widespread discontent, disgust, and loathing for how politicians have misgoverned Japan. (Perhaps the reality is respect for individual politicians as individuals, disgust for politicians collectively — if so, that's not altogether different than the US, where voters consistently give their own representatives higher ratings than Congress as a whole.)

Nevertheless, the quotations from students suggest something important, that I've mentioned before: for voters, Japanese politics remains a spectator activity. Until this changes, the debate that Yomiuri says is necessary will be a stunted debate, a conversation among isolated elites that largely ignores the interests of the people and gives them no place in the discussion.

Election numerology

The press is filled with important numbers for the seventeen days of official campaigning. These are a few that caught my eye.

28%, 27% — 21%, 22%: These are the DPJ's and the LDP's poll numbers in proportional representation voting and electoral district respectively, as found in Yomiuri's latest poll. I should also add 33%, 34%, which are the numbers for undecided voters in electoral districts and proportional representation voting. What does it say about the DPJ that after months of good fortune, a poll — admittedly, in Yomiuri — shows that undecideds outweigh those committed to supporting the DPJ?

65%: In the same poll, the percentage of respondents who said that the pensions scandal is the top priority issue.

43%: In the Yomiuri poll, the percentage of respondents who said that the consumption tax issue is the most important election issue (it ranked second to pensions).

4.86: According to Mainichi, this is the discrepancy between the value of a vote between the prefecture with the fewest voters, Tottori Prefecture, with 248,091 registered voters, and the prefecture with the most voters, Kanagawa Prefecture, with 1,205,250 registered voters. The differential is over four for five other prefectures (Osaka, Hokkaido, Hyogo, Tokyo, and Fukuoka). That said, 4.86 is actually lower than the 2004 figure, which was 5.16. And so the balancing between urban and rural Japan continues apace, however slowly.

No taxation without representation

Asahi published a poll today addressing the consumption tax issue, and found that 72% of respondents want it to be a point of contention in the Upper House election.

This, remember, is the issue that Mr. Abe insisted, early in his cabinet, would not be discussed until autumn 2007, safely after the Upper House elections (safely given the history of consumption tax hikes and LDP election returns — 1989 in particular comes to mind).

The Japanese people are right to demand that the government, when facing the voters, actually discuss a policy that it intends to go ahead and consider anyway once the voters are safely out of the way.

What does it say about the government that it is afraid to put its policies before the people at election time? This tendency to be less than honest with voters especially at election time (due, I think, to assumptions that the people will misunderstand or otherwise misinterpret a policy) is a profoundly undemocratic trait of democratic governments around the world — it is hardly unique to Japan. In some way I think the Bush administration's low opinion of the American people led the administration to hype the WMD angle, instead of pushing the regime change/democratization argument to the front and taking the risk that the American people might be skeptical about an invasion launched primarily for democratization. On a less catastrophic note, this tendency also sparked last year's riots in Hungary.

But the universality of the tendency of democratic governments to mask their policies because they don't trust their peoples does not excuse the Abe Cabinet's pushing this issue back. If the cabinet thinks that raising the consumption tax rate is right, then it should have to explain its reasoning to the people. The Asahi poll suggests, in fact, that the public's opposition to a consumption tax rise may not be nearly as implacable as the government fears. It found 40% of respondents think it necessary, while 51% find it unnecessary. That's certainly not an impossible margin to overcome. Imagine if the government had decided to raise this issue itself earlier in the year — instead of spending an inordinate amount of time on the vanishing constitution issue, for example — and committed significant political capital to explaining why it's necessary (with Yomiuri following right along, of course). Instead of being a political liability, the tax issue could have been an asset, or at least an example of the government's taking its responsibilities seriously.

Just another example of how the Japanese people deserve better — and why the Abe Cabinet and the governing coalition deserve to be dealt a major defeat by the people.

Campaigning starts in earnest

With the campaign (unofficially) underway — thank you, public elections law — we are now in for a month of maneuvering and campaigning as government and opposition camps push for the seats necessary for an Upper House majority. Yomiuri's latest poll showed the DPJ enjoying a three-point edge over the LDP in proportional representation (25% to 22%), and the LDP enjoying a narrower edge in electoral districts (24.2% to 22.8%). It also echoed the cabinet's dismal support rate (32% in favor, 53.9% disfavor) found in other polls — and confirmed that Ozawa is right to emphasize that this will be the pensions election.

68.8% of respondents said that pensions are the most important issue in the election, followed distantly by education (40.8%), "politics and money" (39.0%), economic growth (31.4%), and beyond that in the twenties social inequality, administrative reform, foreign and security policy, and constitution revision. Keep in mind, of the respondents to this poll, a plurality support the LDP (32.1%), followed by floating voters (31.8%) and the DPJ (21.3).

And yet at the same time the governing coalition has received its first bit of good news in weeks, with two members of Tanaka Yasuo's Shintō Nihon, Upper House member Arai Hiroyuki and Lower House member Taki Makoto, announcing their decision to leave the party to become independents. Meanwhile, Matsushita Shinpei, a DPJ-aligned independent from Miyazaki in the Upper House, announced that he would break his cooperation with the DPJ. Both Matsushita and Arai are former LDP members, and while neither has signaled that they will return to the party, the government will undoubtedly push hard for their support, formally or informally. As Jun Okumura argues, given the probability of Arai's supporting the government, this news lowers the threshhold for the governing coalition by at least one seat. (Jun's thoughts on whether the Kokumin Shintō will support the government, despite the party's leadership nixing the idea, are especially worth reading.)

All of which goes to show that the LDP, while bruised, is still in the fight.

Meanwhile, the Economist has some speculation as to what will happen should Prime Minister Abe resign following a defeat (which is by no means guaranteed), suggesting that a resignation following a narrow loss could lead to an orderly election fight among Aso, Tanigaki, and possibly a challenger from the younger generation.

A bigger loss could result in a caretaker government. And most unlikely, the election could spark a political realignment one way or another, with parties breaking and reemerging along policy or generational lines (an outcome that probably made more sense during the Koizumi years than today). I suspect the latter is grounded more in wishful thinking — of both the Economist and of certain Japanese politicians — than in a clear assessment of probabilities. In particular, if this election is in fact Ozawa's last stand, the DPJ might emerge from the election a more attractive force for younger politicians.

That is a good reminder of how Japanese politics is changing, slowly. Regardless of the election results, with each election, more of the leftovers from the 1955 system are chased out of power. With each round of elections, young, policy-oriented politicians find themselves in ever more important positions (albeit not the party leadership, after the Maehara debacle). But how long can Japan wait for its younger generation of leaders to rise to the top naturally?

Kyuma who?

In a move so blindingly obvious it hurts, Koike Yuriko, Abe's highly touted "national security adviser," has been appointed as the new defense minister.

With a new boss appointed to Ichigaya within hours of Kyuma's resignation, one wonders whether they will also be airbrushing Kyuma out of pictures from the past nine months.

It will be curious to see whether Koike will grow into the ministry position. She entered the cabinet secretariat under Abe as national security adviser in a move widely regarded as signifying the presidentialization of the Kantei — and then vanished. Sure, she was sent abroad on a few trips, but in retrospect it seems that her appointment as an adviser to the prime minister was a sinecure that kept her in the loop on defense policy but did not give her significant responsibilities.

Koike is known as a "wandering bird of the political world." Trained as an Arabist in Cairo, she entered politics in 1992 as an Upper House proportional representation candidate in Hosokawa Morihiro's Japan New Party. The following year in the election that ultimately chased the LDP from power, she was elected to the Lower House from Hyogo Prefecture's second district. After the breakdown of the Hosokawa-Hata coalitions, Koike broke off into Ozawa's New Frontier Party (and after that, Liberal Party). From the Liberal Party, she veered off into the Conservative Party — and finally in late December 2002 she joined the LDP. She was quickly recruited into the Koizumi Cabinet as environment minister, where she developed the Cool Biz concept.

Her final migration — this one literal — was shifting electoral districts from Hyogo to Tokyo as one of Koizumi's assassins to defeat postal reform opponent Kobayashi Kouki.

Will bringing a mediagenic Koizumi assassin into the cabinet staunch the bleeding and make the people forget Kyuma? She certainly has her work cut out for her. Just when the LDP thought that the cabinet's falling popularity had bottomed out, Asahi issues a poll that shows that it has fallen to 28%. If she cannot help stabilize the government's position, she may not be in office long enough to leave her mark on Japanese defense policy.

That sinking feeling

It's a new month, the Diet session has wound down, and there is less than a month until the Upper House elections (and ten days to kouji, when candidates officially file, marking the beginning of the official campaign season).

And to start the month off right, here's the result of a recent Mainichi poll showing that the Abe cabinet's "disapprove" rating has risen to 52%, which Mainichi says is the highest unfavorable rating a cabinet has received since Mori's cabinet in February 2001. Interestingly, the poll shows that among age groups, the disapproval rate among those seventy and above (57%) was actually the lowest among all age groups, despite the pensions scandal. (Those in their twenties disapproved at a rate of 83%, the most of any age group.)

The government, meanwhile, passed its desired legislation on administrative and pensions system reform late Friday, with opposition parties complaining that the government "rammed" legislation through with insufficient deliberation.

Will the posturing surrounding the extension of the Diet session actually make a difference to the electorate a month from now? I highly doubt it. That said, I have a sinking feeling that the public outrage over the pensions scandal visible over the past month is beginning to dissipate, that the government's unpopularity is bottoming out, and that the governing coalition may well eke out a victory this month, a victory completely unmerited by its record since Abe assumed power last autumn.

For a recap, check out MTC's note announcing his plans to take a leave of absence from blogging; this is Abe Shinzo's Japan:

Instead, the NHK segment listed the steamrollered pieces of legislation - without ever mentioning that the legislation had passed only because Prime Minister Abe had had a House of Representatives supermajority GIVEN to him by Koizumi. Not one mention that Abe's ideas had never ever been put to the test before the voters.

In this new narrative, a young leader in a hurry marched his party from triumph to triumph, winning by mid-May an approval rating of 50% for his brave leadership. It was then that fate--cold, malicious fate, struck the young man a pair of cruel blows--in the form of the discovery of the separation of 50 million pension accounts from their owners and the suicide of Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Matsuoka Toshikatsu.

Since suffering these indignities, Abe has fought back, extending the Diet session to win back the people's confidence, certain that he could win the battles for his program and would not rest--yeah that he would even suffer withering criticism--in order to get his bills passed--again without the barest hint of the fact that with his supermajority, Abe could have forced the passage of legislation declaring Urdu the national language if he had wanted it badly enough.

And all through this false retelling of the past--not the distant past, THE LAST SIX MONTHS--the repeated image shown was Abe's face as he watched the DPJ try to fight back with parliamentary procedures--censure motions, a no-confidence motion--all doomed to fail.

The half-smile on the face of a man who had never had to fight for a single thing in his entire life--who had had everything handed to him by others - wanly looking on as the Lilliputian opposition wailed and flailed about helplessly.

The smug, self-satisfied smirk on the face of Abe Shinzō, prime minister of Japan.

The joke was on us...and it wasn't funny.

The election returns are far from guaranteed at this point, and the opposition parties could not have asked for more gifts from the government to help it fight the campaign — it may even be theirs to lose. But Abe and company cannot yet be counted out.

We may be looking at that smug, self-satisfied smirk for years to come.

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.

Free fall

If there were any lingering doubts about the drop in the Abe Cabinet's popularity, the latest Yomiuri poll should dispel those — Yomiuri found that the government's popularity fell to 32.9%, and its unfavorable rating rose to 53.7%.

It also confirmed the Asahi's finding that the LDP and DPJ are running even in electoral districts, and that the DPJ is leading in the proportional representation race.

Also interesting is that Yomiuri tries to spin a 51% approval rating for the government's response to the pensions scandal — when 42% said they were opposed to the government's response.

The substantial drop prompted a Yomiuri editorial chock full of hand-wringing about growing voter distrust of "dirty politics," and calling on the government to do something about it, while at the same time suggesting that making a political issue of the pensions "leakage" could invite voter backlash — so the government and opposition should hammer out an agreement. How about that: the people might get mad at the government's incompetence, so the parties should just agree now and get it out of the way, so the voters don't do something rash. After all, argues Yomiuri, there are important issues for the government to discuss.

Another article (not online), however, suggests that the LDP has greeted this news with a rising sense of alarm. But as the Economist suggests, Abe's position as party president may be protected by virtue of his lacking a successor. Much like his grandfather, Abe may be able to plow ahead with his agenda, regardless of opposition inside and outside the LDP, by virtue of no one's being able to stop him. But that's a remarkably precarious position; while he may last through the election, how long will the LDP stick with him if he fails to win? And even if Abe survives, a weakened Abe Cabinet would undoubtedly depend more heavily on the LDP's power brokers. (Or, as Jun Okumura suggests, Kamei Shizuka, onetime LDP faction head and current Kokumin Shinto boss.)

And it seems that playing the statesman will not help Abe this time. As (London) Times correspondent Richard Lloyd Parry writes, Abe, like many Japanese prime ministers past, has failed to make much of an impression internationally, and is coming home empty-handed.

Are the wheels coming off?

On the same morning that Asahi reports that Abe's popularity has taken yet another blow, dropping to 30%, Yomiuri reports in an article that does not appear to be online that LDP Secretary General Nakagawa Hidenao gave a speech in Toyama in which he suggested that the "abduction problem" will become a point of contention in July's Upper House elections.

In other words: Constitution revision. (At least as a campaign issue.) Voters of Japan, get ready for weeks of "Song for Megumi."

Seriously though, how much more opportunistic can Abe's use of the abductions issue get? Is it really appropriate for the government, when it runs into trouble, to fall back to the maudlin sentimentality of Japan's abducted children — considering the host of problems facing Japan?

Does Abe really think that if he stands in enough public places apologizing for the pension and seiji to kane scandals everything will be ok and he can go back to talking about destroying the postwar regime?

And so the question in the title of this post. Does the LDP stand a chance of retaining a majority in July, with the DPJ now rushing to shift its emphasis to issues that highlight the failures of LDP governance?

Japan's constitution turns sixty

As Japan celebrates Constitution Day, marking the anniversary of the promulgation of the postwar constitution, the Abe Cabinet has renewed its push to revise the constitution — read Article 9 of the constitution — on the heels of bilateral meetings with the US that pointed to a more globally active US-Japan alliance.

In Washington, Defense Minister Kyuma told the Washington Post that revision will go forward, but with "restraint" and with the goal of enabling Japan to uphold UN resolutions, a position that sounds rather similar to DPJ President Ozawa Ichiro's "UN-centric" foreign policy activism.

Meanwhile, on 2 May, at a press conference in Cairo, Abe emphasized that Japan must explain constitution revision to the US and to surrounding countries in Asia so "to not be misunderstood," as the Diet prepares in the coming weeks to pass the legislation establishing a national referendum system for constitution revision.

The problem with coverage of the Abe Cabinet's comments on revision, however, is that these reports take for granted the ease with which Abe will be able to get his way on drafting revisions. Despite this recent Mainichi survey that showed 51% of those polled in favor of revision, other surveys have suggested that support for revision is far from overwhelming, especially where the first clause (renouncing war) of Article 9 is concerned. Of course, even within the political system support is far from assured — with the DPJ opposed to revision at this juncture and moderates within the LDP concerned about the outline of revision — raising questions as to whether the Cabinet would be able to muster the necessary two-thirds majority in both houses of the Diet. (And if Abe's bid to make this summer's election about constitution revision results in a disastrous defeat for the LDP, will constitution revision retain a prominent position on the national agenda?)

Again, as with the transformation of the US-Japan alliance, what matters is the process: if constitution revision results from a genuine debate, engaging all parts of Japanese society, as opposed to being imposed from above, then indeed constitution revision can play an important part in rejuvenating Japanese society in the twenty-first century. But if it just perpetuates heavy-handed, top-down rule from above by authorities in Nagata-cho and Kasumigaseki, then constitution revision is the wrong policy at the wrong time for the Japanese people.

Constitution revision -- still a long way away

The big story out of Japan today, aside from Chinese Premier Wen's final day in Japan, spent visiting Kyoto, is that the Lower House's Special Investigative Committee on the Constitution passed the LDP draft of a national referendum bill that is a critical precursor to constitution revision.

A massive piece of legislation (printed in its entirety in the Yomiuri today, at left), the bill still has to go before the whole Lower House, as well as the Upper House's Special Investigative Committee on the Constitution and the whole Upper House.

The bill will in all likelihood be passed into law, but the question is whether the opposition will be able to stall debate and push the date of passage past 3 May, the sixtieth anniversary of the promulgation of the Constitution and the date by which Abe wants the bill passed.

Beyond the national referendum bill, however, constitution revision remains a distant prospect -- as I mentioned in this post, the Yomiuri's own poll recorded a drop in support for revision, and an earlier poll found that constitution revision was a low priority compared to more pressing policy concerns. The process of revising the Constitution will depend greatly on the leadership of the prime minister, whether Mr. Abe or a successor, and I have great doubts as to whether Abe would be capable of commanding debate within the Diet and selling the product to the nation.

How's this for a sign of Abe's tenuous position: The Mainichi Shimbun reports that former Prime Minister Koizumi's offers of support for LDP candidates in forthcoming Upper House by-elections in Fukushima and Okinawa prefectures have been rejected, according to an unnamed source, who is quoted as saying, "If Koizumi works [on behalf of candidates], Prime Minister Abe Shinzo will necessarily be compared with him. The number one thing Koizumi can do to offer his support is to do nothing."

Does that sound like the strategy of a prime minister and party leader secure in his office and capable of leading a landmark campaign to revise the Constitution?

Courageous or foolish?

The big story in political Japan today is that the drop in the rate of support for the Abe Cabinet has continued unabated, with the Asahi poll finding that the rate of support has dipped below the rate of people actively oppose to the cabinet.

What I found most interesting, however, was the Yomiuri poll (in Japanese), which asked which three issues voters want the Abe Cabinet to tackle. Coming in first, with 61.7%, was reforms related to pensions, health care, and social security; coming in second, policies to promote economic growth, with 52%; and beyond that, in no particular order, taxation, education, administrative reform, and growing inequality. My point here is that near the bottom of this list, clocking in with 6.2%, is constitution reform, the issue that Abe has declared to be the major point of contention in this summer's Upper House election.

I realize, of course, that the mark of a good politician and great leader is a willingness to buck opinion to do what he or she thinks is right, but I think there's a fine line between courageously standing up for one's beliefs and ignoring the public's concerns about the direction the country should go.

As such, after a poll -- conducted by the Yomiuri Shimbun no less -- that shows the public favors dealing with just about every other issue on the agenda before constitutional revision, perhaps Abe should reconsider making this election the constitution election. So, I repeat my question: courageous or foolish?

Abe turns a corner?

After weeks of depressing news, has Prime Minister Abe Shinzo finally turned a corner and found a way to boost his sagging poll numbers?

Two recent decisions in particular suggest this may be in the offing.

First, Mr. Abe announced yesterday that the LDP would not accept campaign contributions from three major Japanese banks that had announced their intention to resume contributions, from which they had abstained since the late 1990s (they were huge donors in the early 1990s). This should have been a no brainer, because it seems more than a little unseemly for the banks to make large political donations to the LDP after having been bailed out by the public.

Then, today, after days of stalling, Abe received the resignation of Honma Masaaki, head of the government's advisory commission on taxation and professor at Osaka University. In a not-altogether-remarkable case of sleaze, Honma, a was discovered to be living with a mistress in a heavily discounted public apartment in a ritzy neighborhood in Shibuya.

Could these decisions actually be the beginning of an Abe revival? It's too early to tell, and there's plenty of reason to be skeptical, not least because in both cases Abe was slow to act despite growing public (and party) disapproval. The Asahi Shimbun (link in English) suggests, in fact, that Abe's reasoning behind the bank donation decision is fairly transparent:

So on Tuesday evening, Abe moved to demonstrate his leadership as LDP president. He told party Secretary-General Hidenao Nakagawa that the party must "refrain" from accepting bank donations.

He then took advantage of a televised news conference to emphasize his decision.

With a degree of understatement he said, "As party president, I decided that accepting political donations from major banks would not win the understanding of the people."

His "surprise" performance was very much in the style of his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, who won a reputation for "Koizumi Theater."

Even party officials were caught off-guard. Hours earlier, Nakagawa had told a news conference that banks should be free to make donations at their own discretion.

But with opinion polls showing public support for his Cabinet had fallen to below 50 percent, Abe decided not to further risk the wrath of voters.

In fact, regaining voter support will be his most pressing task in light of a series of unpopular policy decisions and scandals involving his administration.

As such, there's plenty of reason to question whether the Japanese public will view Abe's latest gestures as indications of his dedication to responsible government.

The 総理 (souri) goes slowly, and pays for it

I spoke earlier today about Abe Shinzo running into trouble with LDP members of the Upper House; now the FT reports that a number of surveys by Japanese newspapers have shown substantial drops in Abe's popularity. Even Yomiuri -- the leading conservative daily -- registered a major fall in his public support.

The article notes, "Survey respondents cited Mr Abe’s lack of leadership and failure to communicate his policy objectives more effectively as key reasons for their disenchantment with the government."

During the LDP leadership campaign and in the early days of Abe's premiership, the biggest concern was Abe's vagueness -- his speeches and his campaign book were long on vision and ideal, short on actual policy ideas. Observers and the public gave him the benefit of the doubt, presuming that sooner or later he would get around to outlining a detailed agenda. He has only done so in small doses, and timidly, and meanwhile he has failed to control his cabinet and his party's executive.

What's surprising is how patient the Japanese public has been with Abe's leadership failings. The honeymoon is over, and it's getting harder to see Abe as the heir to Koizumi. Increasingly Abe looks like George H.W. Bush to Koizumi's Reagan: aloof, pragmatic to a fault on policy, and lacking the flair that endeared his predecessor to the voting public.

The annual foreign policy survey, pt. 1

Nikkei reports today on the results of the Japanese government's annual survey of public opinion on Japan's foreign relations. The results are not particularly surprising. Nikkei leads by reporting that the ratio of respondents (57%) who thought that Japanese-South Korean relations were bad was the highest since the survey began in 1986 -- this likely reflecting the influence of the "Kenkanryu" (the hate-Korea wave).

Nikkei also notes that the survey found a big jump in the percentage of respondents who thought Japan's relations with Russia were bad (eleven percentage points, to 68.2%), attributed by Nikkei to Russia's shooting of Japanese crab fishermen earlier this year. The survey also found that the ratio of respondents who thought Japan's relations with China were good remained low, hovering around 20%.

What surprises me, however, is that when asked about North Korea, respondents said they were more concerned about the abduction of Japanese citizens (86.7%) than the nuclear problem (79.5%) or the missile problem (71.5%), this despite the survey's being conducted from 5th to 15th October, as North Korea tested a nuclear weapon and the international community weighed the best response. I find this number shocking. I knew that the Japanese people felt strongly about North Korea's abduction of Japanese citizens during the 1970s and 1980s, but to feel more concerned about that -- which is a question of righting past wrongs -- than about a very clear and very present danger is mildly unsettling.

This probably reflects efforts by Abe Shinzo during his time as chief cabinet secretary to call attention to the kidnapping issue, but perhaps Gerald Curtis was right: maybe the government needs to back down slightly on this issue and focus the public's attention on more current problems with North Korea. Naturally the survey shows that the public is concerned about North Korea's burgeoning arsenal, but that should be the foremost concern, not the abductions issue, which is a relatively minor symptom of the major problem that is the DPRK.

In any case, the government survey is quite substantial, so I will provide more analysis as I make my way through it.