Japan's Politics Stomps On The Accelerator

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, In The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens entitles one of the chapters "TOO FULL OF ADVENTURE TO BE BRIEFLY DESCRIBED."*

I feel the same way about events in politics these past few days.

-- Liberal Democratic Party president Tanigaki Sadakazu faced reality yesterday, giving up on even running for reelection (E). That he waited so long, forcing his second-in-command Ishihara Nobuteru to forego advance preparation for his own bid for the presidency, either represents faith triumphing over observable fact, or payback for Ishihara's only half-hearted expressions of support for Tanigaki's running for a second term.

Though Ishihara appears to be on course for a victory in the presidential race, and, after the next House of Representatives election, the premiership, it bears noticing that historically his presidential bid is an aberration. Only two secretary-generals have taken over as president since the peaceful, negotiated transition from Nakasone Yasuhiro to Takeshita Noboru in November 1987.

The first was the closed-door, five person negotiated agreement for Secretary-General Mori Yoshiro to take over the premiership from the brain dead but still on life support Obuchi Keizo, three days after Obuchi suffered his fatal stroke.

The other instance of a secretary-general succeeding a party president was Aso Taro taking over for Fukuda Yasuo when Fukuda suddenly resigned on September 1, 2008. Aso had only been in office a month, having been named secretary-general in a leadership shakeup on August 1.

The Aso case points out the main reason why most secretary-generals cannot usually make the direct transition from the party #2 position to the presidency. Under normal circumstances, the secratary-general has been the right-hand man to the president, as much responsible for the daily decisions, right or wrong, as the man in the #1 spot. The secretary-general has also always been seen as bearing ultimate responsibility for the LDP's performance in elections. Many a leadership transition was triggered by the party having a poor showing in an election, mandating that the secretary-general resign and serve a brief stint in limbo.

However, in this instance, the abrasiveness and shallow party roots of Ishihara's main challenger, foreign and security policy specialist Ishiba Shigeru, seem to be showing a green light for Ishihara's election, possibly even in the first round vote of the LDP local chapters.

The other challengers in the LDP race -- former prime minister Abe Shinzo, Machimura Nobutaka and Hayashi Yoshimasa -- seem to be in the race for tactical or public relations reasons.

Hayashi is the Washington think tank candidate -- fluent in English and a familiar face in Washington. He is, however, a member of the House of Councillors -- whose members are seen as not having a personal investment in the party's performance in the House of Representatives.  Hayashi is seen as being only technically available to step into the position of prime minister.

Machimura is the faction head candidate, participating so that the list of candidates has at least one faction head in it. Machimura's candidacy presents another hurdle for Machimura faction member Ishihara, as he would normally count on the votes of his faction as the core of his support in the Diet members' round of voting.

Abe is entering the race for purely tactical reasons. He used to be both the ultra-conservative and Washington think tank candidate. His breakdown while in office, unsurprisingly cooled most Washington and national interest. He does remain, however, the most recognizable of the unapologetic, fantastic history-believing nationalists. He is thus probably running in order to play the part of kingmaker in between Ishiba and Ishihara, extracting a promise of accelerated militarization and anti-Chinese and anti-South Korean stances in return for the votes of his supporters.

-- The window for declaring oneself a DPJ leadership candidate closed yesterday. With Hosono Goshi having been talked out of running on Friday last, a field of four candidates-- deridable as "Noda Yoshihiko and the Three Dwarfs" -- now are set for a whirlwind campaign ending on September 21. (E)

As Okumura Jun has noted, the explosion of interest in a Hosono candidacy last week was prima facie evidence that the three remaining Noda challengers -- Haraguchi Kazuhiko, Akamatsu Hirotaka and Kano Michihiko -- do not inspire. In speeches yesterday, each of the candidates, whilst criticizing the prime minister and his policy of accommodation with the LDP-New Komeito alliance, revealed his particular weakness. Haraguchi fulminated about the public's loss of faith in the party due to the abandonment of the promises in the 2009 manifesto. Haraguchi seems unaware that 1) manifesto author Ozawa Ichiro and his most of his acolytes decamped a few months ago, leaving a very small audience, at least among Diet members, for the "we have forgotten our roots" message.

Akamatsu's and Kano's candidacies seem more tactical, given their comparatively advanced ages (Akamatsu is 63; Kano 70). Akamatsu represents the potential votes of the party's under-appreciated socialists, while Kano can offer the votes of his own group and the votes of the members with a visceral hatred/fear of a DPJ commitment to participate in the Trans Pacific Partnership. Kano already has a history of vote trading, his support having been a crucial component of Noda Yoshihiko's victory over the Ozawa-supported Kaieda Banri in the 2011 leadership election.

Both Akamatsu and Kano railed against the three-party agreement that made the passage of the social welfare and pension reform bills possible. Noda defended it, and defended the extension of the three party agreement into the fall extraordinary session. Both sides are just blowing smoke, however. The three party agreement has falls into abeyance with Tanigaki's withdrawal from the LDP presidential race and the automatic evaporation on Spetember 8 of the bond issuance bill and electoral reform bill.

-- Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru on Sunday hosted a symposium (E) introducing the ideas that will vault his regional movement into a national political party, the Nihon (or Nippon) Ishin no Kai (the Japan Renewal Party or Japan Restoration Party. By the way, forget about running a search on 日本維新の会 -- what you get is the Facebook page of a Haraguchi Kazuhiko study group of the same name). At the seemingly interminable meeting (five hours in real time) Hashimoto introduced the seven members of the Diet who will today (Tuesday) tender their resignations from their current parties in time for the the JRA's coming out reception on Wednesday. That three of the seven are House of Councillors proportional seat members of the Your Party indicates the prescience of Michael Penn's private circulation article, of August 27, "Yoshimi Watanabe's Your Party in Terminal Crisis."

Of the remaining four defectors, three come from the DPJ and one from the LDP. Matsunami Kenta of the LDP is a proportional seat member of the House of Representatives, and from the Kinki bloc where Osaka is located. That the majority of the JRA's Diet members are proportional seat members indicates the cautious attitude district seat holders are taking with towards to Hashimoto's leap into national politics. That the majority of the defectors are also from the House of Councillors, rather than the more volatile and politically significant House of Representatives, indicates a further lack of certainty among those dissatisfied with the status quo that Hashimoto has coattails.

Also attending and speaking at the meeting were the usual suspects of devolution of power to local governments: former comedian and Miyazaki governor Higashikokubaru Hideo and two of The Three Hiroshis: former Kanagawa Yokohama pretty boy governor mayor Nakata Hiroshi and former revisionist textbook inceptor and Suginami City mayor Yamada Hiroshi, whose Spirit of Japan Party (Nihon soshinto) went nowhere. (J)

That Hashimoto featured these pre-August 2009 election retreads at his talk fest, and indeed wants them to run as Nihon Ishin no Kai candidates, indicates that for all the media interest and public opinion poll enthusiasm for the new party, there is little meat yet on the bones.

-- The deployment of MV-22 Osprey aircraft to the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station in Okinawa received what was ostensibly a significant blow on Sunday from a mass protest (E). Organizers claimed 101,000 persons participated in the rally. Aerial images on television seemed to indicate the size of the crowd was closer to 20,000, though it is possible thousands were, like crowd at the July 16 nuclear protest, hiding under the trees from the blazing sun.

Given that signing off on Osprey operations is electoral poison, it is likely that the final OK will be given by a lame duck Cabinet after after the results of a House of Representatives elections are in. That the U.S. Marine Corps generally gets what it wants means that the effectiveness of the protest is about as doubtful as its crowd numbers.

-- The purported suicide of Financial Services and Postal Reform Minister Matsushita is still the top of the news -- as a such a rare occurrence should be.

I loathe conspiracy theories and theorists but the official narratives so far regarding this case do not hold together. We are supposed to believe that a man found toppled over had hanged himself, or strangled himself with cords of some kind. We are being asked to believe that his security detail did not have a key to his condominium, having to use Minister Matsushita's wife's key to open the condominium front door. We are being asked to believe that he left goodbye messages to his wife, Prime Minister Noda and the Cabinet. We are being asked to believe that the imminent publication of a Shukan Shincho expose of a purported mistress may have pushed Matsushita to take his own life. (J)

As to the last claim, when you are seventy-three, recovering from prostrate prostate cancer and are revealed to have engaged in extra-marital shenanigans, you are well past the "this will ruin my career" stage.

Next up should be revelations of the content of the purported three goodbye notes.

Do I expect to be seeing the actual texts, ever?

No.

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* Demonstrating that British comic writing has been in the dead-pan, self-referential subversion of the narrative voice business for a very long time.

Oh Please Just, Go Away

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, On Friday, former (thank Amaterasu) prime minister Hatoyama Yukio showed up in front of the Prime Minister's residence to show his support for the Friday evening anti-nuclear protests.

Hatoyama and Social Democratic Party leader Fukushima Mizuho -- the woman he fired when she would not approve his repudiation of his campaign promise to move the U.S. Marine Corps elements currently at Futenma to a location outside of Okinawa Prefecture.

Honestly, this man should be behind bars, not out on the streets.

During his premiership, his immediate underlings were discovered to be running a criminal enterprise, converting, through thousands of false transactions, taxable gift mountains of cash from his mother into bogus, non-taxable political donations, some, mysteriously and remarkably, from persons no longer living.

Ozawa Ichiro is roasted over the coals, and continues to be roasted over them, over a single loan he made to his own political organization where no taxes were evaded nor no illegal profits made.

Hatoyama gets to pay the back taxes on the gifts (600 million yen's worth of back taxes), his underlings get prison terms and he walks away scott-free.

My bad if I misunderstand the legal niceties involved, but was there not a requirement to investigate what Hatoyama knew and when it was that he did know it?

Had I been at the protest on Friday, I would have screamed "Kaere! seikyoku iranai!" * -- a sentiment seemingly shared, quietly, by some of the protest participants (J) -- or to get under Hatoyama's notoriously thin skin, insert Yosano Kaoru's deathless and dead-on epithet, delivered in Diet session two years ago (E):

"Kaere! Heisei datsuzei no o!" **

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* "Go Home! We don't need political maneuvering!"

** "Go Home! King of the Heisei Era tax evaders!"

Photo courtesy: Mainichijp

Extended And Revised Thoughts On The Decision To Retry Ozawa Ichiro

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Yesterday, the three lawyers appointed by the court to prosecute Ichiro Ozawa under Japan's Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution system announced they would be appealing the not guilty verdict the Tokyo District Court handed down on April 26. The decision to appeal comes less than 24 hours after the DPJ's Standing Officers Council voted to end the suspension of Ozawa's party privileges and 24 hours before the deadline for the three lawyers had to file an appeal.

Given that the lawyers had two weeks to make this decision, their choice to do so within the same news cycle as the DPJ executive's having made its move on reinstating Ozawa indicates that it is politics, not the law, that is driving this case.

Three major cases come to mind of countries with democratic elections where the courts have been used to prevent a challenger of the system from seizing upon his chance to take power: Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Russia and Ichiro Ozawa in Japan.

Elevating Ozawa to the level of the other two may seem perverse. After all, he has never spent a day in jail while the other two have languished in prison for years.

However, the cases are comparable in the use of pliant prosecutors and flimsy charges to effectively short-circuit the democratic process, to the benefit of politicians and corporate managements grown fat and lazy on crony, state-assisted capitalism and patronage.

While the cases of Anwar and Khodhorkovsky have served as reminders of just what kind of states Malaysia and Russia were and are, the judicial houndings of Ozawa and his aides have raised few warning bells worldwide. Indeed, the persecution of Ozawa has some in Washington dancing in the aisles. The 2009 arrest of Okubo Takanori, the beginning of the process that has led to yesterday's decision to retry, not only prevented the installation of a prime minister wishing to redefine the Japan-U.S. relationship as a more equal partnership but one seeking to meet the challenge of a rising China with an extended open hand rather than a closed fist.

The continued court cases against Ozawa and his subordinates also eat away at the support for the DPJ, which many in Washington see as a party too spiky and independent for the smooth operation of the Japan-U.S. military alliance.

However, those craving to see the return to power of a seemingly more U.S.-friendly and purportedly more competent LDP are either ignorant of history or in the pay of the wrong sorts of people. The LDP, as an illegitimate ruling party – which means its continued hold on power was dependent upon the suppression of votes – was a terrible interlocutor for the United States and the world. It was the party of delay, always whining about its inability to make good on its promises until “after the next election” – a plaint that tested the listener’s capacity to reason out, “But wait, after the next election, there will be another election, and after that, yet another…” Given their electoral lock on the country, LDP governments cared little that policy makers, journalists and scholars saw through this “wait until after the next election" canard  – and that under its thrall Japan would always underperform and punch below its weight. Under the"serious" and "seasoned" LDP, trade and IPR talks would drag out for decades, the Futenma-to-Henoko move went nowhere and the Self Defense Forces remained marginalized and internationally insignificant.

Some might argue that there are immediate benefits to this decision to retry Ozawa, that hobbling him will smooth the passage of important legislation tackling the national debt emboldening the Noda government to be more aggressive in pushing Japan into negotiations on joining the TPP. Unfortunately, opposition to the government's plans to raise the consumption tax, cut spending and join the TPP negotiations runs across the political spectrum. It is not just Ozawa.

There is the further problem that turmoil in Tokyo has promoted the rise of regional challengers to the main national triumvirate of the DPJ, the LDP and the New Komeito. The most successful and obvious of these is the Ishin no kai of Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto. These new regional movements are the wild cards now in Japan’s national politics. The old boys and the rare old girls of the bureaucracy and the non-profit foundations probably assuring their counterparts in the world's capitals that these new political forces can be tutored in the ways of behaving themselves on the international stage. However, there are no guarantees of that Hashimoto, Mayor Takashi Kawamura of Nagoya or other regionalists will listen to what their tutors tell them.

The legal persecution of Ozawa has had a corrosive effect on the development of a two-party system, where two legitimate, centrist, responsible parties with largely equal access to national office slug it out over differences in policy. Those who wave off what is happening with a dismissive “Ah, this is just the law finally catching up a grubby old time party hack, nothing new” have agendas of their own, obsfucating the truth being one of them.

The Poetry of the Everyday – Part II – Senryu for the week of February 26

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Haiku has a bastard cousin, senryu. If haiku takes a moment and seeks to make it poignant and timeless, senryu takes a subject, comments on it in the present time, then gleefully evaporates into nothingness.

Relentlessly topical, senryu have a lifespan of about two weeks, or sometimes even less. There are no schools or traditions to follow. Authors, invariably non-professionals with a gift for word play and a brazen willingness to tell bad jokes in public, take the basic 17 syllable verse unit – with some leeway as to how one defines 17 syllables — and run with it. Punning, rhyming, assonance and slipping parentheses are applauded, as are references to popular culture and most importantly, politics.

You can probably guess which poetry form I prefer.

Here is a selection of senryu from the Tokyo Shimbun of Saturday, March 3.

日本丸「八策」よりも「金策」急
Nihonmaru
hassaku yori mo
kinsaku kyu

The Japanese ship of state
Rather than the "Eight Proposals from the Ship"
Has to hurry up with "the scramble for cash"

Here the apposition is between the policy program of Hashimoto Toru's Ishin no kai which the proto-party has pompously called the “Eight Proposals from the Ship” (hassaku) in reference to Sakamoto Ryoma’s reform proposals of the same name — and the grubby search for revenues, including seizing dormant bank accounts, currently gripping the government (kinsaku). Both hassaku and kinsaku have the same second Chinese character. "Nihonmaru" is here used both as a common metaphor for Japan and specifically as a ship reference, as Sakamoto composed his eight proposals while onboard a vessel.

お馬鹿キャラクイズに弱い防衛相
Obakakyara
kuizu ni yowai
boeiso

Our idiot role-player Minister of Defense
Who is weak at quizzes

or

Our Minister of Defense who is weak
At even quiz shows for idiots

Minister of Defense Tanaka Naoki has been an absolute disaster in parliamentary committee meetings. He has been constantly providing laughable interpretations of law, misunderstanding questions, pathetically stalling for time and coming back from gaffe after gaffe with apologies for either providing false information or no information. In this he is like an obakakyara, an archaismic version of the obakatarento, the “idiot celebrity,” the likes of whom have been infesting the airwaves en masse since five years ago. These are individuals, usually pretty young women, who have absolutely nothing in between their ears. Their abject stupidity is their charm. They are popular guests on certain quiz shows, or at least get booked on them, precisely because the answers they concoct are so idiotic.

再建に記憶絞れよエルピーダ
Saiketsun ni
Kioku shibore yo
Erupida

In restructuring
Let's extract some memory, shall we?
Elpida

The word play is in the phrase "extracting memory" (kioku shibore) since Elpida, which filed for bankruptcy last week, is a memory chip maker. The writer is hoping that Japan's powers that be learn something from the experience of trying to cobble together and prop up a national champion manufacturer in an industry where Japan has no clear national competitive edge.

言うだけの番長やがて腰くだけ
Iu dake no
bancho yagate
koshi kudake

The gang leader who just talks tough (iu dake no bancho)
Has at last had to take a fall

On the 23rd of last month, Maehara Seiji, the Democratic Party of Japan's policy research chairman, took the extraordinary step of banning from his press conferences the right-wing national Sankei Shimbun. The Sankei had it coming, as it is, to be polite, a "fact-challenged" newspaper. The Sankei raged, the other newspapers tut-tutted, but Maehara stood firm. Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, when asked what he thought of the brouhaha, did not say that he supported the action. He did say, however, that he would leave the matter up to Maehara. After five days, Maehara let the Sankei back in. When the Sankei reporter asked his first question — "Why did you ban us?" – Maehara shot back, "You wrote things not based on facts. As the questions and answers you had in your text never took place, I refused you entry." (J)

What is interesting here is the author takes the Sankei's view of the incident – which is all the more interesting as the Tokyo Shimbun is a card-carrying lefty paper. He (and it is a he, as the names of the authors along with the towns they live in are listed alongside the verses) says that Maehara had to bend at the hips and fall (koshi kudake) which, given the broadside Maehara shot off at the Sankei reporter (which all the other papers dutifully and merrily reproduced) is a very idiosyncratic interpretation of the outcome. He also uses a slightly modified version of the Sankei's personal epithet for Maehara, the "gang-leader who just talks" (iudake bancho) which is itself a near homophone of a famous manga series Yuyake bancho (You Tube video). The first four syllables of the poem (iu dake) also rhyme with the last three syllables (kudake).

Here is one for the Japan-U.S. alliance fans, one which is also blessedly straightforward:

普天間と辺野古動かぬ千日手
Futenma to
Henoko ugokanu
sen'nichite

Futenma and Henoko
The endless series of non-moves

Sen'nichite, according to my dictionary, is a term from shogi describing "a potentially endless repetition of moves leading to a draw." Which, 15 years into the process, is a damn accurate description of the Futenma mess.

If you have persevered this far, time for some serious play.

ハシズムもいつかはシズム時がある
Hashizumu mo
itsu ka wa shizumu
toki ga aru

Hashism
Will also have its time when
It will sink

or

Hashism will also have its time

Those skeptical of or antagonistic toward Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru’s blend of enforced patriotism, browbeating opponents and lacerating bureaucrats deride his political program as hashizumu (“Hashism”) a play on fascism (fuashizumu).

The joke in this poem is in the way shizumu, “to sink” is written in katakana, rather than in kanji and/or hiragana,. It follows the topic marker wa, written as it should be with ha of hiragana. Together, the wa and the shizumu together become hashizumu, repeating the first word.

Then there are the senryu that, try as I might, I am at a loss to understand.

原発は嫌とムンク「叫び」たり
Genpatsu wa
Iya to Munku
"Sakebi" tari

Ok, we have the reference to Edward Munch's "The Scream." We have folks screaming that they hate nuclear power plants. How it all fits together, seeing as how there are only six syllables in the middle line, defeats my meager powers of interpretation.

Anyone willing to have a go at it?

Why One Can Admire This Man

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko has finished his two-day visit to Okinawa. He paid the obligatory visit to the Himeyuri Monument and also the War Dead memorial. He, however, had a private, informal dinner with the governor at the governor's residence, the sort of respectful yet warm and egalitarian gesture that escaped the grasp of his predecessors. In the formal meeting at the prefectural government offices the next day, the PM apologized profusely for the conduct of various officials and his party, putting the governor in the position of the superior. The governor reciprocated as good manners demanded, by saying a magnanimous, "No, no, no need to apologize."

It is both encouraging and sad to see Prime Minister Noda trying to make amends for the supercilious attitudes of his many predecessors. He had a tough message to transmit: that the move of Marine Corps elements from Futenma Airbase to a new base to be built at Henoko was the only possible solution to the danger posed by Futenma's continued operation. It is a deeply unpopular message, even on the mainland -- the Mainichi Shimbun (J) and Asazuba! newscast this morning castigating the PM for calling the move to Henoko the only effective solution (Henoko isetsu ga yu'itsu, koka na hoho). However, he delivered the message with such humility and reason that in a less enervated time, he might have pulled the Henoko rabbit out of his hat. As the atmosphere on the island is irrevocably poisoned -- that the PM must abnegate himself for a plan that the rival Liberal Democratic Party agreed to but never carried out -- is deflating.

Noda perseveres, putting his shoulder to wheel on issues like pension reform, raising of the consumption tax, closing down Futenma and building the Henoko Replacement Facility, watching his public popularity plummet despite his bringing responsibility and dignity to the office in which serves. That many of his efforts look Sysiphian, or destined to collapse into failure -- especially now that the near certain exoneration of Ozawa Ichiro and the now undeniable unconstitutionality of dissolving the Diet exposes him to a revolt from within this spring, elicits a sigh of pained resignation. Were it that Noda or his like in charge of the country a decade ago, these these many gestures, courtesies and displays of spine would have made a huge difference.

Now...so much is exhausted, broken and hobbled with cynicism.

Enough About Hashimoto Toru Already!

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Why this sudden focus on Hashimoto Toru? Why not write about some other important topic, one with greater interest to the international relations crowd? What about the stunning package deal on the movement of U.S. Marines announced a week ago?

OK, yes it was remarkable that the United States relented on having the return of five facilities in southern Okinawa (including Naha Port!) being conditional on the building of a Futenma Replacement Facility at Henoko. Yes, it was historic that the plan to move 8,000 Marines and their dependents to Guam was downsized to sending only 4,700 Marines to Guam, with the remainder of those slated for redeployment scattered about the Asia-Pacific. (E)

Nevertheless, one has to wonder who the genius was -- whether it was someone in the U.S. Pentagon or, in a brilliant reverse strike against the congenitally anti-bureaucrat Democratic Party of Japan, a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and/or the Ministry of Defense -- who had the brilliant idea of proposing to send 1,500 of the Futenma Marines to Iwakuni, in Yamaguchi Prefecture. (E)

For it is not often that just days after signing off on what is purported to be a big win for Japanese diplomacy (E) that the government of Japan has to send two cabinet ministers to visit a prefectural governor and a mayor and assure them with their heads bowed that under no circumstances is the government of Japan considering to send more Marines their way (E) -- especially as the threat of such a move led to the mayor of Iwakuni City to cancel a land sale necessary for the provision of housing to the U.S. Navy service members and their dependents already being moved out of the Atsugi Airbase. (E)

Technically, the 1,500 Marines to Iwakuni proposal is a snafu, the result of not thinking something through -- and thinking things through is sort of what government officials are paid to do.

So somebody -- or a lot of somebodies -- did not do his/her/their job(s).

Now, as to Hashimoto Toru, the latest stunning revelation -- and it is a doozy -- is that upon discovering that Osaka City employees last November carried out anti-Hashimoto campaign activities using Osaka City property (J) the man-in-a-awful-hurry ordered all of Osaka City's 35,000 employees to fill out a questionnaire detailing their political and union activities, requiring them to return it by the 16th (yesterday - J).

The local teacher's union told Hashimoto to go take a hike (J). Japan's Communist Party is in a complete, slavering snit (J). Japan's national bar association has told Hashimoto he was out of his mind (J).

Something about the mayor's order being a violation of the Constitution, something about Article 14, Article 15, Article 19...Article 21...Article 28...

Why did Hashimoto bother to do this? He won the election, running away. Furthermore, what Osaka City employee in his or her right mind would fill out the questionnaire truthfully?

The incident just adds another brick to the wall of what is being derisively referred to as Hashimoto's "Hashism."

Hatoyama Never Ceases To Amaze

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Due to his bulging eyes and spacey pronouncements, former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio earned the sobriquet "the Alien." To be sure, he acts as if he is from another planet.

The planet Horse Manure.

When will the man stop making nonsense promises?

Yesterday, in Muroran City, he told a group of 700 supporters he wanted to change the Chinese characters of his name Yukio (由紀夫) to Yuukio (友紀夫) in order to promote his and his father's concept of yuuai (友愛). (J)

Sure. Like he is going to change the pronunciation of his name to something ridiculous.

Like he said:

- he would move the operations of the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma outside of Okinawa Prefecture (19 July 2009)

- "Trust me" to U.S. President Barack Obama, when asked whether or not he had a solution to the Futenma problem. (13 November 2009)

- he was "totally unaware" of the hundreds of millions of yen his mother donated to his political funding organization (25 December 2009)

- he would have a solution to the Futenma problem by the end of May 2010 (7 January 2010)

- in the Diet testimony that he had "a secret plan" to solve the Futenma plan (31 March 2010)

- to supporters in Hokkaido that he would not seek reelection to his Diet seat (made June 2010, rescinded on 18 December 2010)

- he had secured the resignation in the very near future of Prime Minister Kan Naoto (claimed on 2 June 2011, repudiated by Kan on 3 June 2011)

It remains an open question of course, whether or not Hatoyama will, upon his retirement from the Diet, take up farming (21 February 2010).

Somehow, I would not bet on it.

Ozawa Ichiro sure did the party a favor when he railroaded the election of Hatoyama to head the Democratic Party of Japan in May 2009. Yep, he foisted upon the country a real leader for a new age.

Hi, My Name Is Tanaka Naoki And I Do Not Know Anything

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, It was cruel. It was theater.

On the one side was Koike Yuriko, the Iron Butterfly, attack dog of the Liberal Democratic Party in the non-Japanese media.

On the other was Tanaka Naoki, the Minister of Defense, about whom not much of substance can be said.

Koike - "What is the strategic goal of 'AirSea Battle'"?

Tanaka - "We welcome the new strategy of the United States...but as far as what has been said so far, I don't really understand it."

Koike - " Uhhh...I am at a loss for words...but seriously, in the ABCs of defense, this is 'A'."

(Link - J)

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What was he thinking? The "he" in this case being Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, who plucked Tanaka out from well-deserved obscurity to take over for the disastrous Ichikawa Yasuo, he of the "I am an amateur in defense matters...but this is the very essence of civilian control [of the military]" fame. The guy who did not know about the 1995 child rape case that set off the frantic rounds of Japan-U.S. discussions resulting in the plan to move Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to Henoko. The guy who was censured by the House of Councillors for his embarrassing lack of knowledge of defense matters.

Noda should have known the knives would be out for his next minister of defense. He should have known he would have to pick a sharpie to meet the onslaught from the opposition.

So what does the PM do? He picks his new minister of defense based on the number of times the man in question has been elected to the House of Councillors...because the cabinet needs to have a balance of members from the House of Representatives and from the House of Councillors.

It has been a raining snafus ever since.

- The promise to "begin construction at the Henoko site by the end of the year." Huh? Anyone tell the governor of Okinawa about this? (E)

- Confusing the weapons usage restrictions placed on Self Defense Forces members when they are assigned to peace-keeping operations with Japan's three principles on arms exports. (E)

- Upon visiting the city of Ginowan, where the operations of helicopters in and out of the Futenma base are viewed as a threat, particularly since one fell on a nearby university in 2004, Tanaka remarked to his aide, "There don't seem to be so many [helicopters flying about]." (E)

- When asked what country's forces will be cooperating with SDF personnel in a PKO in South Sudan, Tanaka responds, "That has not been decided yet." His senior vice minister pipes up, "The request has been put to a Bangladeshi construction battalion." Tanaka is forced to apologize. (E)

- Leaving the committee room from the same questioning session without informing the chair, Tanaka brings the session to a halt. When he returns 15 minutes later to cries of "Where have you been?" he apologizes for disappearing, saying that since his nose had been running uncontrollably he had gone to his office to get some cold medicine. (J)

- So frustrating the LDP's Sato Masahisa with his answers that the former SDF colonel and commander of Japan's forces in Iraq blurts out, "Gibberish! Trying to debate policy with an unqualified individual like you just drives one out of one's mind!" (J)

In an essay published by the East Asian Forum last week, I described Defense Minister Tanaka Naoki as a defense naïf. In my first draft, I had used the phrase "defense ignoramus." On the advice of friends, I softened my remark.

Possibly a bad instance of self-censorship.

The irony in all this? Prime Minister Noda's father was a career SDF man...a fact not lost on former colonel Sato:

"Prime Minister Noda's father was an SDF soldier. In his heart, the PM must be thinking, 'I would hate to have had my father working under this man.'" (ibid - J)

The Socialist Party Slides Toward Extinction

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Though it hardly seems worthwhile to report on the political decline of a micro-party, the political news of the day is Social Democratic Party leader Fukushima Mizuho's certain reelection as the head of her party. Certain as in she is running unopposed and there will, as a consequence, be no vote for party leader at the party's congress on February 24.

Fukushima's victory comes as a result of both party rules and the SDP's continuing failure at the polls. Party rules state that a candidate for party leader must have the nominations of at least 4 Diet members. With only 10 Diet members in total, the SDP has only just enough members for two competing candidates, if every single Diet member plays along. Fukushima nailed down her fourth nominee on the 20th. Party policy chief Abe Tomoko, who had wanted to challenge Fukushima, managed to win the support of three of her colleagues but failed to win the endorsement of the last remaining Diet member before the nomination deadline today.

With her failure to gain enough support to challenge Fukushima, with whom she has clashed in terms of the SDP's unwillingness to work with other parties, Abe is left with a rather unpalatable choice: either stick around with Fukushima glaring daggers at her all the time or leave the party. "As a politician I have a decision to make and when I make it I will hold a press conference," was Abe's comment to the press (J). Unfortunately for Abe, she is a proportional seat member, meaning that she can only serve as independent, since those elected on a party list who defect from their party can only found a new one, not join an existing one. Abe cannot make the journey from relevance to irrelevance to relevance again trod by district seat holder Tsujimoto Kiyomi who lost her sub-cabinet post when the DSP left the ruling coalition over the Futenma relocation dispute. In revenge, Tsujimoto left the DSP, sat as an independent for a while to cool off, then joined the Democratic Party of Japan.

If Abe leaves, the full Diet membership of the DSP will drop down to nine seats, putting it at a par with the brand new and already much-loathed Kizuna party. If her three supporters in the leadership fight decide to leave with her, the party will be left with three House of Representatives members and three House of Councillors members, leaving it perilously close to the five Diet member limit for political organizations that wish to be identified as parties.

Even without this nasty split over party leadership, the Socialists and indeed all the micro-parties were already in peril. The ruling Democratic Party of Japan has said it will submit a bill in the next session eliminating 80 of the 180 proportional seats in the Diet, ostensibly as a cost-cutting measure but really as a sop to its own rank-and-file, who are ticked off at the party leadership for not making the least effort to carry out the proposals listed in the DPJ's 2009 manifesto and indeed backtracking on almost all of them. The measure has very little chance of passing, despite its attractiveness to the main opposition party the Liberal Democratic Party, since the new bill would decimate the numbers of the LDP's ally, the New Komeito Party. Any reduction of the number of proportional seats, however, would imperil the continued existence of the SDP in the House of Representatives. Simulations show that if the 80 seat reduction were to be carried out, all of the Socialist Party proportional seats, including the one Abe sits in, would vanish.

The disappearance of the Socialists would, of course, end a grand chapter in the history of Japanese politics, one with the cautionary lesson of never giving up one's ideals and policies for the brass ring of power. Once the number two party in the Diet, locked in a seemingly eternal love-hate relationship with the dominant LDP, institutionalized in what became known as "the 1955 system," the Socialists were already in alarming decline after the establishment of center-left alternatives to the LDP in the 1993 election. Real rot and rebellion did not set in, however, until after the Socialists made what they were to find out was really the deal of a lifetime: an alliance with the LDP that had a clueless Murayama Tomiichi become the first Socialist PM since the unifications of the two main parties in 1955. In order to win this prize, the Socialists shed virtually all of their major points of difference with the LDP's left-leaning members. Bereft of the mantle of the party of persons of conscience (because clearly the Socialists did not have one), the party rapidly lost its voting base to the rising DPJ.

The passing of the Socialists into history would not be of much consequence save that in its brief time as the coalition partner of the ruling DPJ-- and its departure from the ruling coalition over policy -- the SDP had regained some of the luster of being the party of conscience. It was its members, not the members of the DPJ, who really tried to find a workable alternative to the move of Futenma to Henoko promised by DPJ party leader and prime minister Hatoyama Yukio. When the coalition voted to backtrack on Hatoyama's promise to find an alternate site to Henoko, the SDP pulled itself out of the coalition (E).

Sic transit gloria Showa mundi...