Okumura Jun's View Of The Diet Post-Election, And My Own

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, As is his habit and capacity, Okumura Jun has published a magisterial outlook, laying out the political situation in the Diet, post-House of Representatives election.

Okumura-san and I have been in agreement for a very long time that the Tanigaki Line -- block all significant Diet business in a bid to force the Democratic Party of Japan-led government into holding new elections -- was idiotic, as any post-election administration would have to be a coalition between the Liberal Democratic Party and the DPJ. Aggressively toppling the DPJ government through its effective control of the House of Councillors, only to have to reach out to the DPJ post-election because the LDP-New Komeito alliance lacked a 50% majority in the House of Representatives, seemed at best pointless, at worst a recipe for likely catastrophic intra-party strife.

Now that Osaka City Mayor Hashimoto Toru has unleashed his beast, the Nihon Ishin no Kai (or Nippon Ishin no Kai - E), translated as the Japan Renewal Party -- whose initials are, as Okumura-san has noted, the same as Japan's national horseracing organization, an acronym that is as much a brand name as NEC -- I must part ways with Okumura-san.

The political calculus has changed.

The LDP, the DPJ and the JRA will finish first, second and third in the number of House of Representatives seats. However, in the popularity contest, the proportional seat voting, the DPJ will likely finish behind the other two parties, in third place.

As Okumura has suggested, the JRA's policy platform presents problems for any party wishing to form a post-election ruling coalition with the JRA as a partner. In particular, the JRA's Eight Policies (hassaku) include a host of promises requiring changes to the Constitution, a document that has not seen a single comma altered in it since its promulgation 55 years ago.

The sheer number of improbable promises being made guarantees that negotiations with the JRA on a common policy platform will be onerous.

However, the LDP will have little choice but to approach the JRA, the DPJ having an incentive and a cover story for sitting on the sidelines.

The DPJ's reasoning will be impeccable:

"The voters have spoken and rejected our rule. How can we double-guess the voters' judgment and team up with either of the parties whom the voters have chosen as our replacements?"

The LDP and the JRA will come up with something, probably involving a lot of study groups examining such hopeless causes as direct elections of the prime minister, revision of Article 9 and abolition of the House of Councillors. They will agree on policies to assign an identity number to everyone, to further diminish the independence of teachers, to eliminate the ability of local bureaucrats to engage in political campaigns (a delicious bit of hypocrisy, considering the number of local bureaucrats currently enrolled as students at Hashimoto Toru's juku) and to promote greater love of the government country.

Left behind, despite being ideas that both parties share, will be commitments to unifying of the prefectures into lander (doshusei) and ensuring the country's accession to the Trans Pacific Partnership. These policy changes will go nowhere precisely because of loud commitments the parties will make to them. Mandating unification and the TPP require "Nixon goes to China" decisions: only those who have never been supporters have the credibility to make the leap, in light of the country's changing situation.

After the formation of the coalition and the election of a new prime minister, probably Ishihara Nobuteru, the fun will really begin.

It will likely not be over policy, either.

I have criticized Ozawa Ichiro bitterly on many occasions. However, in one area of political endeavor, his efforts have proven spectacular: in the recruitment of talent. He himself has been dogged by unproven and unprovable accusations of corruption. His recruits to the DPJ, however, have been spectacular in their capacity to stay out of trouble, a stirring contrast to the lurid spectacle of that was and is the LDP. The vetting and courting process of potential candidates would often stretch out over years, with Ozawa involved every step of the way. Indeed, the bringing in of candidates into a party is perhaps the only part of politics Ozawa really enjoys.

The JRA's candidates will be recruited primarily out of the enthusiasts and acolytes who shelled out the cash to attend the Hashimoto juku. As such, it will be a collection of a hundred ticking time bombs of scandal. Messy divorces, delinquent taxes, yakuza friendships, love children for whom no child support was paid, buried stints in hospitals for depression -- you name it, they will have it, just like any neighborhood in this country, where the veneer of civility hides a thousand secrets.

The afternoon broadsheets and the weekly scandal magazines have no incentive to protect any of these fresh-minted politicians or bolster the upstart Hashimoto. Even the much beleaguered Ozawa had at least one evening newspaper in his corner: the JRA boys and girls will have nothing.

It will be as sharks at a feeding frenzy, like Abe Shinzo's Year of Living Luridly (remember the four different Ministers of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries? The attempted coverup of the loss of 50 million pension accounts? Matsuoka Toshikatsu's water purification devices and his suicide a few months later?), only many times worse.

At this the DPJ Diet members will just sit and watch, a frieze of Dr. Gachets, stirring themselves only to ask the occasional pertinent and embarrassing question.

An overwrought vision? Possibly. But a damn sight more likely than the LDP and DPJ cohabiting. Unlike the LDP, the DPJ was born an opposition party. Losing power is unpleasant for the party but does not pose an existential threat. The DPJ will not succumb to a frenzied search for anything -- ANYTHING (a Socialist as Prime Minister? We can do that.) to seize control of the Cabinet.

As was the case in 2009, it would indeed be best for the DPJ to just wait and let the golden apple drop into its lap, again.


Later - My apologies for not fixing the typos earlier. Something has been blocking my access to Blogger.

Re Dr. Nakano's Sadness

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Nakano Ko'ichi is a rarity in Japanese academia: a scholar with a brilliant command of the literature of his field, a disarmingly frank and reassuring manner, an ability to examine Japan's contemporary problems in the context of broader flows of world history and fluency both in his mother tongue and English.

And a man, without shading or hedging, of the Left.

He has published a stark and lucid essay on a potential harsh turn in Japan's economic and foreign policy at CNN's Global Public Square:

"Japan: Get ready for a rightward shift"

As is known, I reject the thesis that the "ditching most of its main campaign manifesto pledges and letting the country’s bureaucrats redefine the policy agenda" was the primary reason for the collapse in the popularity of the Democratic Party of Japan as reflected in public opinion polling. Instead, I lay most of the blame at the feet of Ozawa Ichiro and his inability to accept or understand the concept of "party over person" as inextricable to the process of running a party government. Collaboration with the bureaucrats on policy was forced upon the DPJ by the need to fight against the Liberal Democratic Party and its 50 year legacy of misrule. Ozawa Ichiro tried to fight both the LDP and the bureaucrats at once, with the inevitable result of allowing both to make up the huge losses of power and legitimacy they suffered in the elections of 2009.

The DPJ's current leadership had been much, much smarter in dealing with bureaucrats, ceding on some matters of policy, while inflicting deep cuts in salaries and recruitment.

These serious woundings of the bureaucracy have been insufficiently publicized because the DPJ still needs the bureaucrats in their corner. "Look at how we have roughed up the bureaucrats!" is hardly the message you want to be shouting unless you want the bureaucrats to undermine your every move.

As for Dr. Nakano's take on the relations between nationalism, deregulation and unraveling of the social fabric, I am still not convinced of the direct responsibility of government policy in a worsening of social inequality and social disfunction, or, conversely, the capacity of government to remedy the situation.

Take, for example, Dr. Nakano's citation of Japan's stunning suicide rate (which, if you consider it the murder of oneself, makes Japan one of the most dangerous places to live on Earth). The number of suicides soared in 1998, the year the financial system finally lost government support, leading to the spectacular failures of banks and Yamaichi Securities. The levels have stayed high ever since.

It is that "ever since" that has me skeptical. Certainly if unsteadiness of the economy was the trigger for rises in the suicide rate, improvements in the economy should lead to lower levels of suicide -- especially since the post-2008 rise has been almost entirely due to increases in suicides of men, women committing suicide at the same basically the same rate over the last 35 years.

Something else is going on...and the lead probably needs to be taken by non-profit organizations rather than the government.

As for income equality, I have greater faith in the ingenuity of the people of this blessed land than either Nakano or Finance Ministry bureaucrats seem willing to admit. In the absence of a tax registration number system -- the likelihood of the death of a bill establishing such a system, there is still a great deal of leeway for transfers of wealth across the generations, with the asset-rich older generations supplementing the income of their children and grandchildren, with the government's draconian estate taxes as all the incentive older citizens will ever need to hand down their wealth to their descendants.

I also think that international statistics on levels of Japanese poverty vastly underestimate the differences in price levels in between the urban and rural areas, skewing the estimates of rural poverty higher than actual purchasing power should reflect. I may be wrong on this point, however.

As for Hashimoto Toru's programs, Abe Shinzo's programs and Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko's programs, lumping them together under the rubric of the exploitation of nationalism, you insults Noda's and Hashimoto's intelligence...and ascribes to Abe an intelligence he simply does not possess. As for the accusation that Prime Minister Noda is contributing to the escalation of territorial disputes with Japan's neighbors, that is simply untrue. He made a fairly admirable effot to calm the waters -- sending the Hong Kong activists home without charging them with anything, forbidding the landing of Ishihara Shintaro's land survey team upon the Senkakus -- while reiterating what are the existing policy positions of the government of Japan.

Taking Up Sides Against The Family

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Both the Liberal Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Japan suffered breakdowns in party discipline in last night's no confidence vote.

As I noted in my live blogging of last night's vote, seven members of the LDP remained in the chamber and voted for the no confidence motion:

Nakagawa Hidenao
Shiozaki Yasuhisa
Suga Yoshihide
Koizumi Shinjiro
Kawai Katsuyuki
Shibamasa Masahiko
Matsunami Kenta

Disciplining the first four will be difficult. Nakagawa is already serving a six-month suspension of party privileges for having absented himself from the consumption tax bill vote in June. What to do now -- extend his suspension to a year?

Shiozaki presents an equally difficult conundrum. As a card-carrying member of the "Friends of Shinzo" -- the coterie of fanatabulist radicals who seized control of the government after their leader, Abe Shinzo, was elected prime minister -- he represents the vanguard of what has been a heretofore largely silent segment of the LDP's support base: the haters of postwar Japan as it is. Punishing Shiozaki severely threatens the unity of the Machimura Faction, which while ruled by a dove is filled with hawkish opponents of the current leadership group, its policies and its tactics.

As for Koizumi Shinjiro, he is a superstar, with the looks and the hooks to bring the house down. He has been among the LDPs most effective critics of the DPJ, from the very first weeks of the DPJ's turn as the party in power. He is a fourth-generation lawmaker, who won his father's district without his father lifting a finger to help him, a brilliant impromptu speaker and a winner in a year when the LDP first-termers had nearly zero chance of election.

He does not need the LDP: the LDP needs him.

On the DPJ side, there were two members who voted for the resolution: Kobayashi Koki, whom I disparaged yesterday, and Koizumi Toshiaki, who spent seven years cooling his heels after two terms as a DPJ district Representative. He was revived in the landslide election of 2009 as the Representative for Ibaraki District #3.

In addition to these two turncoats, who submitted their resignations from the party prior to last night's vote, five members of the DPJ's House of Representatives delegation called in sick.

Former Prime Minister Hata Tsutomu's illness was real: he has been hospitalized since February with an undisclosed illness.

Four other members, however, came down with illnesses of convenience:

Hatoyama Yukio
Kawauchi Hiroshi
Nakagawa Osamu
Tsuji Megumu

Kawauchi (Kagoshima District #1, 5th term) has been the human quote machine for a news media complex eager to find members of the DPJ willing to talk trash about the leadership. He has been a DINO (Democrat In Name Only) for as long as anyone can remember. His personal website (Link) has as its top line Kokumin seikatsu ga dai'ichi, the Ozawa Ichiro-dreamed up 2009 electoral slogan and the name of Ozawa's new party.

Kawauchi can and should be joining one of Ozawa's parties. However, he is far more useful to Ozawa as a DPJ irritant. The party should expel him. However, to expel Kawauchi and not expel Hatoyama will be difficult to explain.

Nakagawa is in his second term, having served from 2003-05 as a proportional seat member from the Kinki bloc. His career was revived by the 2009 landslide, where he became the district seat holder for Osaka District #18.

Tsuji Megumu has had a nearly carbon copy career, serving in a Kinki bloc proportional seat in 2003-2005. He lost his seat in the 2005 LDP landslide, then failed as the DPJ's candidate for mayor of Osaka City that same year. His career was also revived by the 2009 landslide, where he won the district seat for Osaka District #17.

The latter two mid-career veterans, with only a single district victory under their belts, have to be looking at the popularity of Hashimoto Toru's Osaka Ishin no kai and figuring that they have no chance at reelection as Democrats. Unfortunately for the pair, they have no chance of reelection as independents. If they had remained faithful to the leadership of the Democratic Party, then they might have at least had the chance to return to the Diet from the proportional list.

That is all water under the bridge now. The DPJ's local party organization will not support them as district candidates for the next election, ending their political careers.

As for Hatoyama, he is a special case. He is the co-founder of the DPJ. He and his mother bankrolled the party in its early years, when corporations would turn their backs on the party. He will be disciplined but in an insufficiently severe way, making it impossible to put a lid on the loquacious Kawauchi.

However, Hatoyama has gone too far. He has been both treacherous and useless. His tenure as prime minister was a disaster for the party, laying the groundwork for the party's losing control of the House of Councillors and thus the ability to set the political agenda. Since his downfall, an unrepentant Hatoyama has never ceased engaging in limp but still corrosive efforts to undermine his successors. He also encouraged Ozawa Ichiro, a man who has never understood the concept of party loyalty, to cause mischief.

Hatoyama should probably be considered the Fredo Corleone of the DPJ. He's family, so whadda ya gonna do? He is safe "as long as Mama is still alive" -- i.e., until such time as the current Diet is dissolved. The mainline leadership of the party will have to keep him at arm's length, but no further. After the Diet is dissolved, however, the present leadership will very probably take him fishing.

De Re Osaka

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Okumura Jun has laid down the gauntlet on the complaints Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru made about the bunraku puppet theater, the viewing of which so irked the Hashist that he broke the silence he fell into after revelation of his affair with a bar hostess.

[An aside - but when one considers the depth of contrition the heretofore unabashed Hashimoto has displayed since the publication of the Bungei Shunju article detailing the affair, one has to guess this was not a first offense. There is a strong sense of the wife and mother of his seven children having issued an ultimatum on the order of "if it ever happens again..."]

Okumura presents a synopsis of Hashimoto's five-day long rant against the performance he saw:

"1. Bunraku is a popular art form. As such, it must reach out to masses.* If the cultural elite disagree, it should not ask for public handouts. Maintaining Intangible Cultural Assets is the national government’s business.

2. The current script for The Sonezaki Shinju, which was Hashimoto’s second Bunraku experience, is actually a 1955 adaptation. Maybe they should try something new that appeals to contemporary tastes or go back to the original.

3. It’s hard for the novice audience member to ignore the dressed-up, in-your-face, head-and-right hand puppeteer. They should do something about that."

(Link)

As for the three points, the easiest one to dispense with is the second. Hashimoto is absolutely correct: the performance he saw was a 1955 translation of the Chikamatsu original into modern Japanese. However, if the original were performed, not a soul in the house would understand it. As for performing something more modern, archaic-sounding pseudo-Japanese has not changed much since 1955.

As for the third point, Okumura is dead wrong. In live performance, the three puppeteers manipulating the puppet, including the master who performs with his head exposed, actually disappear. Televised performances give no hint of this -- one's cognitive functions get hung up on the thought, "Hey, I can see the puppeteers' heads!"

As for the first point, bunraku is one of only two things of note in Osaka, the other being Janne Morén.

Much longer is the list of the afflictions Osaka imposes upon the rest of this blessed land, for which the city makes no attempt to atone:

- Osaka Castle, the ugliest remake in the country -- and the town's preeminent landmark

- Kuidaore Taro, the giant moving crab and the Glico man: the city's three most recognized sui generis tourist attractions, all of them advertisements

- the Hanshin Tigers (when Hashin plays the Yomiuri Giants, all persons of conscience mutter, "Amaterasu, is there not a way for them both to lose?")

- Hanshin Tigers fans

- Osaka-style okanomiyaki

- modern manzai

- Yoshimoto Kogyo comedians (see "modern manzai")

- Osaka ben (no, I'm sorry, it does not sound naturally funny)

Osaka should get some credit for birthing our morning reads, the Mainichi Shimbun and the Asahi Shimbun having been founded there. However, the active centers of all the papers switched to Tokyo after the Easter Capital rose from out of the demographic catastrophe that struck it following the abandonment of the sankin kotai rotation system.

The preservation of bunraku is therefore very much in the interest of the Osaka City government. Without the traditional puppet theater, Osaka is little more than a lead candidate for the world's most annoying conurbation.

This Time, Definitely

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, A friend of mine tells a hoary joke about standing one's ground:

"Look, I've got my principles.  And if you don't like like 'em...well...then I got other principles!"

That is what I have rattling around inside my head when I read the news that Hashimoto Toru's Osaka Ishin no kai will revise its "Eight Policies of the Revival" (ishin hassaku) by or around the 20th of this month. (J)

The last two days have seen a heating up of efforts by opposition parties to topple the Noda government (J). This has understandably lit a fire under the Osaka Ishin no kai to revise its six-months old list of basic goals (J), especially since the original "Eight Policies" were simply nuts. That the Osaka Ishin no kai wants to become a real party and not just a political organization, may also have triggered a sudden "you know, maybe in February we got a little carried away" realization.

It will be hard, for example, for the new Ishin no kai political party to run candidates for office in the July 2013 House of Councillors elections, as the "Eight Policies" Version 1.0 called for the abolition of said House. That an amendment to the Constitution to eliminate the House of Councillors would have to be approved by the House of Councillors (with a two-thirds majority!) seems to have never crossed the Osaka Ishin no kai's directorate's mind.

Ooops.

I look forward to reading the revision.

On Hashimoto Toru's Limited Return

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, As Okumura Jun has noted, Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru is tweeting on Twitter, after a 10 day period of silence following the publication of a report detailing his affair with a bar hostess from 2006 to 2008.

What prompted his breaking his silence was his attendance last Thursday of a bunraku performance, after he swore in 2009 he would never attend another one.

The upshot of this second chance for the puppet theater, for which he had cut off public financial support when he became mayor: he hated it just as much as he did in 2009.

The bunraku theater's choice of having the mayor attend a performance of The Love Suicides at Sonezaki (Sonezaki Shinju) was baffling. The story is a complete downer; the motivations of the main characters obscure; their actions nonsensical; and their deaths pointless.

Not what you want to show a man who cut his teeth in the Osaka television entertainment complex.

So he returned to tweeting in order to pontificate on the bunraku and his idea of popular culture, which evolves and thrives without government subsidy.

For five whole days.

Admittedly, there was a brief interlude where he considered an Asahi Shimbun report on his reforms of Osaka's bureaucracy. Otherwise it was all bunraku, all the time.

Finally, on August 1, Hashimoto shifted gears and started bashing one of his more usual great bugaboos: the Board of Education. He then shifted to a discussion of the powers and responsibilities of ward mayors in the city of Yokohama, a part of his own greater discussion his reform of the internal organization and responsibilities of the wards of Osaka City. Not coincidentally, on August 1, Hashimoto held a ceremony at Osaka City hall handing out the mayoralties of 21 of the 24 wards of Osaka, 16 of which were handed out to private citizens -- a step toward his grander scheme of converting Osaka from a prefecture to a metropolitan district. (J)

[An aside: one mystery has always been why, aside from Osakans having a huge chip on their shoulders regarding the Tokyo Metropolitan District, Hashimoto has been so obsessed with this conversion. One possible explanation is that transforming Osaka into a metropolitan district makes it the presumptive candidate for the proposed backup capital to Tokyo, with mirrored national goverment functions in the event Tokyo is destroyed or critically disabled by a natural or human-caused disaster.]

After the Yokohama ward mayors discussion, however, it has been nothing but more bashing of the Board of Education and the freedom the education system from control by elected officials, who represent the will of the majority [A bit of leap there, Toru-kun, given the voter turnout for mayoral elections - MTC].

From his Twitter feed, however, one would never learn that Hashimoto handed off to his protégé Osaka Governor Matsui Ichiro the honor of announcing that Hashimoto's brainchild, the Osaka Ishin no kai, will be participating in the next House of Representatives election as a formal political party (E). To expedite this process, Osaka Ishin no kai will be recruiting five sitting members the Diet to form their own Ishin no kai subsidiary, which Osaka Ishin no kai would then absorb in a reverse merger. (J)

This is huge political news, something that Hashimoto, if his ego were as gargantuan as portrayed in the media, would reserve for himself.

Unlike Ozawa Ichiro, however, who never accepted the political reality that for his reforms to succeed he had to step back and let others run them, Hashimoto acknowledged himself as too damaged by his marital problems to be the man at the microphone at the ceremony announcing the big change.

The reason for the Osaka Ishin no kai's change in course, from a political movement -- which has done extremely well, seizing the Osaka governorship, control of the Osaka prefectural assembly and the Osaka City's mayor's office -- to a full-fledged party is the same reason why Ozawa Ichiro's People's Life First Party seems on a course toward implosion: money.

There are many benefits to being a formal party, due to this blessed land's absurd electoral regulations. As a political party, Osaka Ishin no kai could legally distribute campaign literature, It would be legally empowered to broadcast political ads. With five Diet members as in its embrace, Osaka Ishin no kai would have the ability to have its candidates double listed, as district candidates and on the proportional party list.

The real benefit is, however, the ability to receive money. At present, Osaka Ishin no kai is forbidden from receiving funds from corporations and organizations. It is also, of course, ineligible for public campaign financing (J). It has been sidling up to the small- and medium-sized business owners of the Kansai region, asking them for private donations. However, the prospects of financing a national movement this way are poor. The movement has also had to jump through legal hoops, at one point establishing a non-profit organization with the sole purpose of absorbing one industrialist's gift of 100 million yen. (J)

Just do not ask Hashimoto about the details regarding all this. Oh he knows them; he just will not talk about them. He will refer you to Matsui.

So Hashimoto's back -- but in a truncated form, for the time being.

The July Trade Deficit And The Green Movement

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, While in June, Japan's trade surplus, despite a 24.5% year-on-year increase in the imports of liquified natural gas for power generation, was 60 billion yen -- a minor decline from June 2011, when it was 64 billion yen (J). In the year to June, however, Japan's trade deficit was 2.9 trillion yen, up 103% from the previous 6 month span and greater than the trade deficit for all of 2011. Fuel imports were up 21% in the first 6 months of this year, with LNG imports up a hefty 49.4%. (J)

The trade deficit in July, however, is likely to be even more stunning. With utilities and independent power producers possibly trying to stock up before the worst days of summer, the deficit for just the first half of July was a colossal 368 billion yen. Given unceasing heat waves this blessed land has experience over the second half of this month, it would not surprise if the deficit in July is greater than one quarter of the deficit over the first half of the year. (J)

Headlines regarding a massive importation and burning of fossil fuels for electric power generation will certain provide grist for the mills of those who wish to disparage the anti-nuclear movement. It will be hard to argue for a cessation of the use of nuclear power generation, as the Green Party, established on Saturday, has demanded (J) in this atmosphere. In light of Japan's burgeoning LNG addiction, absolutism about nuclear power is likely to garner the mockery of the news media, the Noda government and the industrial establishment.

The Green Party (Midori no to -- not to be confused with Midori no kaze, the four woman, anti-nuclear, anti-TPP caucus in the House of Councillors) hopes to run district and party list candidates in next summer's House of Councillors election. As for the next House of Representatives election, whenever it is held, the Greens hope to present a list of candidates for the proportional election, while possibly lending support to the candidates of existing and like-thinking parties in the districts.

The existence of a third anti-nuclear party in the proportional voting is bad, bad news for both the SDP and LF. The SDP could conceivably fall beneath the five Diet-member limit for a party eligible for public elections funds. With Green support, however, some of the SDP members fighting for district seats might gain an edge.

Unlike the SDP, the LF has enough viable candidates in the district seats that the Green Party's participation in a House of Representatives election does not pose an existential threat. Nevertheless the LF, with its opportunistic rather than ideological stance against nuclear power, has to worry about a Green Party's whittling votes in the proportional race. The LF's sizable proportional seat contingent in the House of Representatives could face annihilation.

The Greens set out with significant barriers to their affecting policies in the way the party wishes. They will have a hard time fighting an image of anti-nuclear fanaticism. They will also splinter the anti-nuclear movement, paradoxically serving the interests of the moderately-pro-nuclear ruling Democratic Party and the strongly pro-nuclear Liberal Democratic Party.

By the time Hashimoto Toru's Osaka Ishin no kai enters the ring, assuming Hashimoto Toru emerges from his current funk (J) and assuming Hashimoto still wishes to take on national politics after the parties in the Diet went on their knees yesterday, promising to transform Osaka Prefecture into a Metropolitan District by the end of August (J) -- and given Hashimoto's pragmatic "opposed but oh well we need it right now" approach to nuclear power --the importance of the Greens to national politics will become somewhat clearer.

In Sunday's Yamaguchi Prefecture gubernatorial election, Hashimoto's anti-nuclear advisor Iida Tetsuya Tetsunari, campaigning against the completion of the Kaminoseki nuclear power station, finished a respectable second in a field of four, garnering an impressive 35% of the vote to 48% for the LDP-New Komeito backed winning candidate.

Iida's second-place finish and receipt of over a third of the vote was particularly impressive given he had only been in the race for a month; had no formal organization when he started; was practically a carpet bagger (he has not lived in the prefecture for 35 years); Yamaguchi is absolutely dominated by the LDP; and a former DPJ member was one of the other three candidates running.

Now interpreting the results as indicative of a strong anti-nuclear allergy, even the most conservative and public works-dependent of prefectures, might be premature. Nearly 50% of the public nationwide allies itself with no particular political party, meaning that a powerful anti-all established parties feeling already exists in the electorate. Both the LDP-New Komeito-back candidate and the former DPJ member candidates could have also been victims of an anti-MV-22 Osprey backlash, the controversial aircraft having been deployed last week to the U.S. Marine Corps base in Iwakuni.

The high percentage of the total vote Iida received may have also been aided by the low overall voter turnout. Gubernatorial elections have of late had notoriously low turnouts. Sunday's contest was no exception, attracting only attracted 45.32% of the electorate -- the second lowest percentage ever for the normally politically charged prefecture. (J)

Just what percentage of votes a protest candidate like Iida would win in a national contest, when participation numbers are much higher, is at best unclear.

However, it can be argued that Iida's participation likely sparked interest in what was going to be a lackluster contest, increasing voter participation. If slates of outsider candidates can lure to the polls those who would otherwise toss away their ballots, the LDP and the DPJ, but particulary the DPJ, will be in serious straits. The Noda government's rollout of the Oi reactor restarts was a fiasco, energizing as if with a lightning strike the previously somnolent anti-nuclear movement. All the DPJ, even those favoring a nuclear phase-out, are tarred with the brush of the Noda government's impossibly quick determination of the safety of the Oi reactors.

So what will be the color of the revolution, or at least this iteration of it?


Later - Here is the Nihon Keizai Shimbun report on the preliminary July first half trade figures making the same guess I did above. (J - WARNING - link rot sets in fast)

Much later - Many thanks to reader MP for his alert reading of this post.

Checking Up On The Humanization Of Hashimoto Toru

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, For all those who believed that Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru would take the punch to the gut of the revelation of a 2006-08 affair with a bar hostess with scarcely a break in his stride, it is now been eight full days since the Opinionated One has tweeted on his Twitter account.

Today we have news of the notoriously judgmental Hashimoto will be giving those whom he previously disparaged a second chance.

In 2008, during his term as governor of Osaka Prefecture, Hashimoto, Osaka native though he is, attended his first bunraku performance.

His response to viewing this cultural treasure, kept alive by generations of musicians, joruri chanters and master puppeteers:

"I will not go a second time. If the performers don't change and start responding to the demands of the audience, I cannot accept (the Bunraku Kyokai's application for public support)."

And freeze public funding for the association he did, when he became Osaka City's mayor.

However, yesterday, Hashimoto let out that he will be attending a second performance of the bunraku tomorrow (July 26) -- on the grounds that he had heard that the bunraku artists had made significant efforts to promote the art form and increase attendance, such as standing outside of railway stations inviting commuters to become patrons.

It seems that for the new, more humble Hashimoto, a solid effort to do better is good enough to make him break a vow.

The performance he will be attending on Thursday? The war horse of the repertoire, what La Bohéme is to opera and Romeo and Juliet is to theater...you know what is coming...wait for it...The Love Suicides At Sonezaki (Sonezaki shinju). (J)

I do not expect...but heck, there is always hope...that the giri versus ninjo conflict therein gets him thinking about his own situation in a new light.

He Just Keeps Getting Better And Better

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Over at Japan Security Watch and the search-engine-optimization-hostile σ1, Corey Wallace takes a grand tour of East Asia and the pitfalls looming in the massive wave of government changeovers this fall.

READ IT. (Link)

Mr. Wallace hedges in his final paragraph, describing the post's viewpoint as as "mostly cynical."

You can relax, Mr. Wallace: no one has ever lost any money on "mostly cynical" -- ever.

Japan's Depleted Politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Checking In On Hashimoto Toru's Twitter Tweets

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Taking up the story from where we left off on Friday:

July 20 - 0 tweets

As regards the affair Hosono Goshi had with Yamamoto Mona, which has in no way impaired Hosono's career -- indeed, a few of the weeklies have annointed Hosono as the man most likely to succeed Noda Yoshihiko as prime minister -- there was one more reason the news media chose to gang-tackle one of its own rather than the straying, handsome young politician. Yamamoto, aside from having been at the time single, a TV personality, young and beautiful is only half-Japanese, her father being...gasp...a Norwegian sailor! Yes, there is nothing that quite says out-of-control, hot-blooded sexual predator like "Mona Hegdal" -- her birth name.

As for Mona-san, who went through months of being batted around like a ping-pong ball dropped on a floor covered with mousetraps, she seems to be doing all right.

Hashimoto Toru's Infidelity Revealed

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, On July 18, Shukan Bunshun printed a full-documented article (an oddity, for the publication) revealing the existence of sexual relationship between Osaka mayor Hashimoto Toru and a bar hostess since 2006. Unfortunately for Hashimoto, he had married his longtime live-in girlfriend Noriko in 1995, making his sexual relationship with the bar hostess an illicit affair.

Now Hashimoto's ability to escape damage to his image from the revelation of the affair could be helped if his marriage could be categorized as, to put it delicately, unfulfilling. However, in between 1997 and 2007, Noriko gave birth to 7 children -- which, given suppressed fertility during lactation, is evidence of nearly uninterrupted "good relations" from 1996 to 2006.

To those who would dismiss the matter, noting that many other politicians have had affairs exposed with little effect on their careers, I would offer the proposition that times have changed. True, Hashimoto has claimed to be a poor father, if not poor at fathering -- though he perversely won a "Best Father" award in 2006 -- the year he began his affair with the hostess. Hashimoto's his most famous quote on his parenting skills is: "Without my wife present, my limit of my being with the kids is about 30 minutes."

His rubbishing of his fathering skills (which his wife has echoed, saying, "What could I possibly have to tell you about his childrearing?") is one thing, abandoning his pregnant wife for a fling with a bar hostess will hurt him and his Ishin no kai with women voters, who make up at least half of his and his organization's supporters.

In general, hypocrisy does not wear well on lawyers, particularly ones who have made a career out of calling out others for their hypocrisy and stupidity.

Hashimoto is in heavy damage control mode, repeating since the publication of the story that he has caused his wife and family distress (J). Yesterday at a press availability he told reporters 15 times "This is an internal matter of the family" -- which means, of course, that it is not. (J)

How serious does Hashimoto think this story affects his public image? One measure is the extent to which he has clammed up since the Shukan Bunshun article has appeared.

Let us check out his Twitter feed, to be found at http://twitter.com/t_ishin/

July 8 - 97 tweets (!!!)
July 9 - 25 tweets
July 10 - 16 tweets
July 11 - 39 tweets (25 seem to be misdated July 12)
July 12 - 35 tweets
July 13 - 24 tweets
July 14 - 24 tweets
July 15 - 30 tweets
July 16 - 8 tweets
July 17 - 4 tweets
July 18 - 0 tweets
July 19 - 0 tweets

When Japan's most opinionated and possibly arrogant self-made man shuts up, he is telling you something: that he at least thinks himself in the deep bat guano.


Later - The Japan Times article on the scandal revisits Yamamoto Mona's affair with the married Hosono Goshi (E). The scandal did nothing to dent Hosono's standing within the Democratic Party of Japan. Hosono is indeed now the serving Minister of the Environment and the Cabinet's point man on the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Hosono's being able to shrug off the affair was aided by the popular depictions of Yamamoto, at the time a TV news reader and single, as having been the aggressor in the relationship.

They Do Not Even Bother Hiding It Anymore

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, On June 27, the power companies of this blessed land (pax Okinawa) held their annual shareholders' meetings.

At the Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) meeting, Osaka Mayor Hashimoto Toru, speaking as the representative of the company's largest shareholder, the City of Osaka, lambasted the company for pressuring the public into accepting the restart of the Oi #3 and #4 reactors and demanded an end to the company's reliance on nuclear power (E)

At the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) meeting, Tokyo Metropolitan District Vice Governor Inose Naoki, speaking as the representative of the TMD, TEPCO's main shareholder, proposed specific cost cutting measures and urged the new management team to regain the public's trust.

If Hashimoto, who is busy establishing a political party, tearing Osaka's civil service to shreds and fathering (if not exactly raising) children at an impressive rate has time to attend KEPCO's meeting, where was TMD Governor Ishihara Shintaro? Like Hashimoto he had an open microphone, has a serious attitude problem, a gift for the cutting put-down, the nation's full attention and the unquestionable right to speak as the local utility's top shareholder.

Nevertheless he passed on the opportunity to display some serious umbrage, or conversely, go against character to offer some constructive criticism.

Say what one may about Ishihara, at least he had the sense to send to the meeting someone who cares the issues: Inose, his unelected and indispensible subordinate.

On more than one occasion I have called Inose the actual governor of the TMD. What is surprising and telling is that the major news outlets are becoming more bold in portraying Inose as such, at least in terms of imagery. (J)

The Ishihara/Inose partnership has been one of the most peculiar yet productive buddy-buddy acts in local administration. Ishihara is the proudly ignorant bombastic arch conservative writer of junk fiction, still riding on the coattails of his brother Yuji, the archetypal male lead actor of the high-growth era. Inose is the cerebral former 1960s leftist radical turned author of dense studies of the arcana of Japan's economic, bureaucratic and political failings.

Ishihara gets to do the running for office, the ribbon cuttings, the dreaming up of wild schemes (like his plan for the TMD to buy three of the Senkaku islands, a whim saved by Inose's setting up of a bank account where hyper-patriots could send their contributions to the cost of buying the islands) and the insulting of the members of the TMD assembly.

Inose gets to huddle with the bureacrats and planners, working how to provide for the present and the future of the world's richest metropolis, home to 13 million persons and 50 of the globe's 500 largest companies. That Inose never, ever has to beg for votes, think about please campaign contributors or attend single a boring opening ceremony makes his the almost perfect job.

So when one is asked how is it possible that the populace of the TMD, which is not particularly obsessed with the nationalist bugaboos that pump up Ishihara, nor thrilled about his pet megaprojects, has nevertheless elected him governor four times, it is perhaps that for at least the last three elections it has been confident that it is not really electing him the governor. Instead, the people of the TMD have been electing Ishihara the megalomanical circus manager, always dreaming up new, flashy acts, thinking outrageous thoughts out loud, whilst Inose sweats out the details in the big man's penumbra.

That Inose is either emerging from or being forced out of that penumbra begs the question of what happens when Ishihara leaves the arena. Inose has never indicated a wish to run for public office. He seems to lack the personality traits necessary to do so.

Any supporters for the creation of a position of Vice Governor for Life?


Later - Due to an HTML breakdown, the original final paragraphs of this post were somehow erased. The above text is reconstructed from memory.

Hashimoto Toru Comes Back Down To Earth

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, In a Golden Week post ("Chaos Awaits") I made a spectacularly wrong prediction: that private lawyers hired to prosecute Ozawa Ichiro would not bother to appeal the verdict handed down on April 26, despite noting in the very same post that the judge may have ruled Ozawa "Not Guilty," but did not like it, preferring, if he could, to rule the case against him to be "Not Proven."

[I blew it at least two ways. I overestimated the concerns the three lawyers might have as to the negative effects a continued pursuit of Ozawa would have on their images and income streams. I underestimated the likely financial rewards the lawyers could reap -- for "consultations" and "advice" from seemingly not very demanding clients -- should they continue their quixotic tilting at Ozawa.]

In the same post, I proposed three goals for the Democratic Party of Japan and Prime Minister Noda:

- carry out a public relations campaign laying out the government's reason for a need to raise the consumption tax, with the PM in particular stepping forward to sell his vision

- continue to find ways of driving wedges in between the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito

- fail, despite their best efforts, to win the support of regional leaders in the Kansai for a restart of the Oi reactors, setting up Hashimoto Toru, an opponent of the restarts, for a fall.

The Noda government is making good progress on the first item, sending the PM into a buzz saw of a live interview on NHK's 9 o'clock news on May 17.

As for the second item, any progress that had been made, particularly in drawing the LDP and the New Komeito apart on the issue of electoral district reform, has probably been sent into reverse by the Li Chenguang Affair. The two parties will march in lock-step, together with the Your Party and the Sunrise Party, demanding a full investigation into Li's contacts with DPJ politicians.

The third item, as cynical and cold-blooded a political calculus as one can make in Japan, seems likely now to never be tested. Hashimoto has backed away from full opposition to a restart of the Oi reactors, paving the way for them to be brought back online. (E)

Hashimoto may be stubborn and a poll watcher but he is not stupid. He held his ground long enough to make his point -- that the national government is rushing the restarts, having no grounds on which to assert the safety of reactor operations under extreme conditions. However, with the surge in power consumption to come in the months of July and August and the likelihood that no matter how private persons, governments and corporations cut back on power usage, Hashimoto faced being blamed for the brownouts and timed blackouts the Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) would have impose to preserve its transmission grid.

Once the Oi reactors are started, it will be very difficult to shut them down again. Even with the Oi reactors online, KEPCO will make it through the summer only by the skin of its teeth -- and only thanks to loss-creating shutdowns by businesses. Once the summer is over the company will want to shut down at least a few of its thermal plants for maintenance, jacking up the pressure for keeping the Oi plants online.

Given the threats the continued shutdown of the reactors pose to the economic well-being of the people of Osaka -- and their very lives, the loss of the capacity to cool living spaces or keep life-saving devices on being very real -- there was only so far Hashimoto could ride the populist anti-nuclear wave.

Hatoyama and Hashimoto, Hatoyama and Ozawa, Hashimoto and Ozawa

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Oscar Wilde once described the proper English gentleman on horseback chasing after a fox as "the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable." Yesterday on television, we had "the unbelievable examining the undoable" -- Hatoyama Yukio criticizing the "Ishin no Kai Version of Eight Policies From The Ship" (Ishinkaihan no sennchu hassaku). (J)

Nominally, having Hatoyama offering his opinions about the Osaka Ishin no Kai's long-range vision for Japan is a former prime minister calling upon his collected wisdom and practical knowledge to point out the flaws in the policy program of a popular protest movement whose emergence has jolted the political realm. In reality, it is having a man who does not know his own mind commenting about persons who are quite out of theirs.

Why go through this agony? Since Hatoyama has no opinions of his own, he might be channeling the thoughts of his ally/former puppeteer, Ozawa Ichiro. Just what Ozawa is thinking about the Ishin no Kai and its leader Hashimoto Toru is of great interest, as Hashimoto's movement and Ozawa Ichiro's plans for himself and his followers inside the Democratic Party of Japan (the "Is-he-in-or-is-he-out?" question) are the two most glamorized sources of potential disruption of the political sphere.

[Whether or not the two are the most interesting or likely sources of disruption is not relevant. Hashimoto and Ozawa are simply the easiest subjects to write about. In a sense, this concentration of attention is mostly about journalistic sloth.]

Hashimoto and Ozawa coming to some sort of quid pro quo regarding the toppling of the Noda government and the construction of a new political order after a snap House of Representatives election* has been the subject of fevered speculation (E). Just how Hashimoto's corporatism (the next person who calls it "populism" needs to find out how to use a search engine or a dictionary) meshes with Ozawa's Liberal Democratic Party socialism ("Ice cream for everybody now! We'll think about paying for it tomorrow!") has not been clarified, perhaps because elucidating a basis for these two autocrats reining in their colossal egos long enough for a coordinated overthrow of the current, constipated regime is asking too much of the domestic political wind machine.

Finally, for a bit of fun, check out the website for the newest buddy comedy crime thriller Osaka Ishin no Kai (Link). Yes, it does look like a movie version of what a website of a upstart political movement should look like.

As in the life of Hashimoto Toru, politics and entertainment blur.

------------------------------------------------------
* Yes, I know that holding elections at this time would be unconstitutional.  So do all the national political writers and politicians.  However, they still they write and talk about it.

Catching up with Toru and Yoshihiko

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, At little less than two weeks ago, I wrote:

The goals for the Noda Cabinet and the DPJ, if it can hold together as a party, are [snip] hope that after exerting every possible effort to restart the Oi reactors and other reactors feeding into Kansai Electric Power (KEPCO)'s grid, their efforts fail.

The last is a cynical but seemingly necessary failure of the imposition of national will over local governmental authorities. Any responsible national government, looking at the predicted shortfalls of generating power in the Kansai, would be proceeding as the Noda government has proceeded. The politicians and the citizens of the Kansai region, particularly the voters of Osaka City and their mayor, Hashimoto Toru, have perversely been those most opposed to the restart of the reactors, despite KEPCO's assertions that it faces a crushing lack of generating capacity of nearly 20% this summer.

Hashimoto and the voters of Osaka have a deep mistrust of KEPCO, extending back to last year. KEPCO's management has been far from transparent about its power capacity and rate calculations. However, this blessed land dodged a bullet last year, the summer being rather mild and the nation's tolerance for energy saving being exceptionally high. This year may be very different, and will almost certainly be most different not in the capital region or the region hardest hit by the earthquakes and tsunami but in the Kansai and Hokkaido, where the power companies were most deeply committed to nuclear power.

Should Hashimoto and other local leaders persist in hampering the restarts of reactors, and the resulting lack of power generating capacity lead to blackouts, either planned or unplanned, the Kansai's current regionalist challenge to Tokyo control will be severely damaged. Hashimoto's political ambitions may indeed be seriously set back, if the government can pin the blame for the power cuts on him, saying, "We told you so, we told you so, we told you so...and you just wouldn't listen."

(Link)

Well, guess what appeared in The Japan Times yesterday?

Kansai power crunch just political rivalry?
Oi reactor factor tied to Noda's Hashimoto feud

By ERIC JOHNSTON - Staff writer - OSAKA — The confrontation between the central government and Kansai area leaders over the restart of two nuclear reactors in Oi, Fukui Prefecture, has more to do with the growing power struggle between Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto and Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda than with safety or objective attempts to determine how much electricity will be available this summer.

Since February, Kansai Electric Power Co. has revised downward its projected electricity shortages after being grilled by Hashimoto-appointed critics.

On Tuesday, Kepco said that while it currently stands by its projection of a 15 percent shortage, a combination of purchasing electricity from other suppliers, ramping up natural energy use and instituting curbs on power use might actually shrink the projected shortage to 5 percent.

Meanwhile, the governors of Kyoto and Shiga as well as Hashimoto are critical of the way Noda's administration is pushing for the Oi reactors' restart without addressing their detailed safety concerns.

They are also angry the administration and Kepco announced blackout preparations without first consulting independent outside experts who might offer different views.

The reason for these actions, Hashimoto's supporters and critics suggest, is pure politics.

"Right now, the central government says that, depending on the circumstances, it will have to cut power this summer and that if so, it will be Hashimoto's fault. But Hashimoto is not responsible for the Oi reactors. The central government and Kepco are," Tetsunari Iida, head of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies, said in a recent local media interview. He is also a Hashimoto adviser who serves on an Osaka city committee challenging Kepco over its projections of electricity shortages if the Oi reactors remain idled.

"Tokyo is growing increasingly worried about Hashimoto's rising popularity. Warnings of shortages from politicians and bureaucrats critical of Hashimoto have convinced many in Kansai that Noda's real aim is to do whatever he can to halt or at least slow Hashimoto's rise," said Yuji Yoshitomi, a local freelance journalist who has written critically of Hashimoto...

(Link)

The funny/sad aspect of this whole KEPCO vs. Hashimoto struggle, with the Noda government playing the role of concern troll, is that Osaka City is the top shareholder in KEPCO. In theory Hashimoto and the Ishin no kai should be pressuring the KEPCO executives to at least pay attention to their ideas and answer their questions. They are failing, in part because the Osaka stake, while large (9%), is still far from controlling.

Let the game of chicken (or as we say in this blessed land, chikin gemu) roll on!

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.

Chaos Awaits

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko managed to slip out of town over the weekend, leaving to Deputy Prime Minister Okada Tatsuya, Loose Cannon Sengoku Yoshito, Environment Minister Hosono Goshi and State Minister for Reconstruction Hirano Tatsuo the unpleasant and somewhat Sisyphean job of trying to convince regional governors and city officials that restarting the Oi Power Plants #3 and #4 reactors is a simply smashing idea. During his absence from Tokyo, the PM managed to slip in and out of the United States without creating much of a fuss or an impression (E - yes, I am aware of the shortcomings of the source). Luckily at the summit, where the PM would normally face probing questions as to what the government of this blessed land will do to initiate the move of Marine Corps elements from Futenma to a replacement facility at Henoko in Nago City, got completely lost in the strategic and human rights nightmare of the Chen Guangcheng Affair, which has so far managed, in remarkable thoroughness, to make everyone including Chen looking bereft of any sort of long-range thinking.

After these two immaculate escapes from tight spots, Noda will be returning to Tokyo, leaving behind only the impression of a heretofore unremarked-upon bulk: "For a Japanese PM, this guy has some weight to throw around."

The Impenetrable One returns to an ambiguous situation in the Diet. The business in the House of Councillors should be grinding to a halt due to the Liberal Democratic Party's boycott of all Diet official business, including committee meetings. Unfortunately for the LDP, however, its electoral and Diet business partner the New Komeito has elected to continue participating in House of Councillors affairs, straining the strong relationship between the LDP and the New Komeito and putting immense pressure on the easily exasperated and not particularly creative LDP president Tanigaki Sadakazu to craft a bridge to his erstwhile allies.

Meanwhile, withing the DPJ, the question of Ozawa Ichiro's reinstatement to full party membership awaits. It is not really much of a question: with his trial over, a not-guilty verdict and no chance of the prosecutors refiling charges -- double jeopardy being one of the "Surprise, I Still Got Ya" deviations this blessed land makes from the practices of The Greater Mentor -- the United States -- nothing stands in the way of his reinstatement.

[As regards double jeopardy, I can still remember the look of open-mouthed disbelief on Liberal Democratic Party bigwig Muraoka Kanezo's face when he was told he had been reindicted for his part in the Hashimoto Dental Association Affair. "How is that possible?" he asked, incredulous, his certitude collapsing. He was found guilty in the prosecutors office's second attempt to put him away.]

What Ozawa will do once he is reinstated is the big question. The news media, having the incentive to make politics seem far more exciting than it is, have been predicting that Ozawa, with his allies clustered closely about him rather than loosely as they were in his days of exile, will run rampant through party politics, threatening to withhold their votes on marquee policies such as the enabling legislation for the imposition of a doubling of the consumption tax and for the framework allowing Japan to begin preliminary talks on joining the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement.

Truth is, that even despite the suspension, Ozawa and his allies were running pretty rampant before Ozawa's acquittal was handed down on April 26 (one with an implicit warning to Ozawa that the case against him was not proven, that he was not necessarily not guilty of violations of law, only not guilty of the charges under which he had been tried). That they were unable to derail the prime minister's program of imposing the tax, when solid economic arguments against its imposition were available, shows that the Ozawa team is not quite the machine it is purported to be.

As for Ozawa leading his team of intra-party commandos in a torpedoing the Noda Program (and if anyone can tell me what that might be, please leave a comment below), the man in the surgical mask has always done most of his work at home, where no one can see him or out in the countryside. His attendance record at the Diet and at DPJ functions is abysmal.

Getting his suspension lifted will likely not have much of an effect on Ozawa's activities, especially with 77% of the voters (Kyodo news poll of April 28-29) thinking that despite his acquittal, he still has an obligation to go before the Diet and explain the creative accounting practices of his aides and what, if anything, was going on in his name.

Noda himself must face the wrath of the voters, seemingly dismayed by the government's eagerness to restart the Oi reactors, despite a majority of the voters in the cities and prefectures surrounding the plant opposing the restart as premature. The voters of surrounding communities, ones who have not been bought off over the decades by jobs at the plants, top-class public facilities and services and direct subsidies, find that restarting reactors that are guaranteed safe to operate for the most part (omune ni) is an unacceptably qualified state of affairs. Voters around the nation seem to share these feelings. While the Oi restart cannot be directly linked to the loss of public confidence in the government and the DPJ in April (bloody uninquisitive pollsters...) the restart was the only of two significant rows to break out during the month in question.

That the popularity numbers for the Cabinet are poor is a matter of opinion. I have have argued before that the best an active prime minister can hope for is around 30%, after the initial burst of post-election popularity has dissipated. The Noda Cabinet's current reading of 29%, down two points from the March reading of 31% is relatively good in light of the extremely controversial policies (the consumption tax, the reactor restarts) the government is pursuing.

What is in inescapable is that the popularity numbers for the Democratic Party of Japan are dire and that April was a catastrophic month for the party. To the all important question, "What party will you cast your vote for on the proportion ballot in the next House of Councillors election?" the party-by-party numbers for April 28-29 were as below, with the previous month's figures are in [ ].

DPJ 13.2% [20.0]
LDP 22.7% [23.3]
Your Party 6.0% [7.3]
New Komeito 3.6% [4.2]
Japan Communist Party 3.4% [2.7]
Sunrise Party 1.3% [0.8]
Democratic Socialist Party 0.9% [0.3%]
Japan New Party 0.8% [0.6]
Other 2.3% [3.0]

None Of The Above 46.1% [37.4]

In addition to the pell-mell efforts to restart the Oi reactors, the DPJ's ugly and very public internal battles over the consumption tax likely did little to foster confidence in the party's leadership abilities. Internal debate is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when real compromises are weighed and consequences of decisions considered. Just saying "No" to what the other side is suggesting, however, is a sure way to make your assembly look like an overgrown and overpaid PTA.

The real winner in the month of acrimony was, as is seemingly the case with increasing frequency "None of these b___ds" - which pulled in 46% of the vote, up a whopping 9% from the readings a month earlier.

The goals for the Noda Cabinet and the DPJ, if it can hold together as a party, are clear:

- articulate the reasons why the Cabinet sees raising taxes as a necessity

- continue to find ways of driving wedges in between the New Komeito and the LDP

- hope that after exerting every possible effort to restart the Oi reactors and other reactors feeding into the grid served by Kansai Electric Power (KEPCO), their efforts fail.

The last is a cynical but seemingly necessary failure of the imposition of national will over local governmental authorities. Any responsible national government, looking at the predicted shortfalls of generating power in the Kansai, would be proceeding as the Noda government has proceeded. The politicians and the citizens of the Kansai region, particularly the voters of Osaka City and their mayor, Hashimoto Toru, have perversely been those most opposed to the restart of the reactors, despite KEPCO's assertions that it faces a crushing lack of generating capacity of nearly 20% this summer. (J)

Hashimoto and the voters of Osaka have a deep mistrust of KEPCO, extending back to last year. KEPCO's management has been far from transparent about its power capacity and rate calculations. However, this blessed land dodged a bullet last year, the summer being rather mild and the nation's tolerance for energy saving being exceptionally high. This year may be very different, and will almost certainly be most different not in the capital region or the region hardest hit by the earthquakes and tsunami but in the Kansai and Hokkaido, where the power companies were most deeply committed to nuclear power.

Should Hashimoto and other local leaders persist in hampering the restarts of reactors, and the resulting lack of power generating capacity lead to blackouts, either planned or unplanned, the Kansai's current regionalist challenge to Tokyo control will be severely damaged. Hashimoto's political ambitions may indeed be seriously set back, if the government can pin the blame for the power cuts on him, saying, "We told you so, we told you so, we told you so...and you just would't listen."

A brutal political calculus, perhaps. One that even could lead to some persons actually dying for lack of electricity. However, the blame squarely lies on the ambition and blindness of Hashimoto and his ilk, willing to ride a populist wave, even if it leads to disaster.

Bang A Gong

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, The Spring list of awardees of national honors is out and it is a snoozer. Except for Sakaiya Tai'ichi, Iwashita Shima and Jacques Diouf, one is left asking "Who are these folks?" and in the rare instance where one knows the answer, "Why this award, now?"

Sakaiya Tai'ichi (real name: Ikeguchi Kotaro) has received the Grand Cordon Order of the Rising Sun for his contributions as a former bureaucrat and a writer of fiction and non-fiction. He was, until recently, a key supporter of Osaka City Mayor Hashimoto Toru, providing some intellectual firepower and legitimacy to Hashimoto's Osaka Ishin no Kai movement. He has downplayed his ties with Hashimoto since the Ishin no Kai released its eight point Ishin Hassaku plan for reviving the country, parts of which Sakaiya has derided as rubbish.

Choosing to honor actress Iwashita Shima (real name: Shinoda Shima) with an Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, a decidedly low-ranking award for someone who has contributed so much to Japanese cinema, still represents a pretty gutsy call for the awards committee. Iwashita, whatever her actual morals, always played the baddest of the bad girls. In terms of the number of sex scenes in which she has appeared in what have been classed as serious films, she is simply without peer (if I am wrong in this, please tell me).

That Iwashita travels in rather better social circles than the characters she has played can be surmised by her having been one of the featured lecturers last year at Shimomura Mitsuko's juku.

As for the awards, they are, as they always have been, a way of only adding to the disparity between what bureaucrats do for other bureaucrats and what they do for the populace at large. In addition to their pensions, their lump sum retirement grants, their falling gently into sinecures at corporations or non-profits, bureaucrats and other officials are still receiving the lion's share of the gongs: over 56% of the 4110 handed out this spring. (J)

Also as usual, the over 50% of the population of this blessed land with XX chromosomes got gypped, receiving a mere 9% of the awards.

Shintaro Goes To See Toru

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Before Tokyo Metropolitan District Governor Ishihara Shintaro was a politician, he was a renowned author. Yesterday he showed his literary chops by managing to squeeze three lies into a three sentence response of 10 words total.

「何も話すことはない。密談。そのうち話す。」

"Nani mo hanasu koto wa nai. Mitsudan. Sono uchi hanasu."

"I have nothing to say. This was a secret meeting. I will talk about it after a certain period of time."

Lie #1: "I have nothing to say."

Oh come on, Ishihara-san, you have something to say about everything. Indeed, one of the reasons some folks despise you is you cannot stop talking about subjects in which you have not the least expertise.

Lie #2: "This was a secret meeting."

Every single news organization had its reporters camped out in front of the Prince Hotel where you had the meeting. "Secret" cannot be used to describe the environment. The only thing that was secret about it was the departure of both principals via secondary exits in a vain attempt to avoid the reporters. (J)

Lie #3: "I will talk about it after a certain period of time."

Let us assume that Lie #2 was true, that yesterday's meeting was a private, secret, clandestine one. Then why in Amaterasu's name would you be promising to reveal the contents of what was discussed at a not-so-distant future time?

Whatever one might say about Ishihara, he is a genius at concision.

The meeting in question was the first between Ishihara and Osaka City mayor and Ishin no kai leader Hashimoto Toru since Hashimoto made a splashy courtesy call on Ishihara during a visit to Tokyo last December. (J)

Just what was discussed between the non-mainstream conservative leaders of Japan's two greatest conurbations during the 1 1/2 hour working lunch is not known. Informed guesses are that Ishihara sounded out Hashimoto regarding the plan Ishihara has to form a new "true conservative" party putting up candidates for the next House of Representatives election. Since Hashimoto has opened a training school for candidates with thousands of initial students, many presumably from the areas where Ishihara would try to have his candidates running, one can guess that Hashimoto's reaction to the Ishihara plan was muted. Hashimoto's enthusiasm would be further curbed by the fact that the politicians associated with the moves toward toward forming a "true conservative" party are Ishihara, Hiranuma Takeo and Kamei Shizuka -- all three of whom are the creakiest and crankiest of political dinosaurs.

Hashimoto's advice, blunt speaker that he is, was probably, "Ishihara-san, give it up now, before you embarrass yourself."

It is hard to know whether or not to read anything in the fact that it was Ishihara, the governor of the world's richest metropolis, visiting Hashimoto, the regional mayor. Perhaps it was Ishihara just returning the favor of Hashimoto's visiting him last year at the offices of the TMD. If so, why the secrecy? Ishihara was on a visit to Kyoto but made time in his schedule for a fast trip to Osaka for the meeting.

Whatever it was the two discussed, it was too important to be handled in a mere phone call, seemingly.

Anyway, Ishihara's extracurricular activities just reinforces my point of the other day.