On Doing One's Job Because It Is One's Job

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, The surest sign to the reader that a columnist or regular feature writer has hit rock bottom and will never again be wortwhile reading is when he or she starts out a piece with:

"I was trying to think of what it is I should be writing about today..."

The second surest sign of reaching writer's having hit a nadir from which he or she shall not rise again is when the writer starts using sports metaphors.

I am about to commit the second of these two blunders.

Way back when, Major League Baseball was blessed with a team manager, Roger Craig. Most managers obsessed about winning, seeking to motivate or cow either through bluster and rage, or through cool calculation.

Craig was different. He cared about winning, yes -- but he cared even more about putting on a good show, one where the players did their best, and the fans would leave the ballpark thinking only of the next time they and families would be coming to see the ballgame again.

Nothing encapsulated Craig's approach better than his handling of disputes. Whenever there would be a close play or questionable judgment, Craig would trot, never run, out of the dugout up to the umpire who made the call. He would then engage the umpire in a conversation, occasionally pointing his finger at the supposed location of the mistake, jawing away. Sometimes he would get ejected from the game, for some seeming insult to the umpire or other infraction.

What the fans and the players did not know was that more often than not, Craig's conversations with the umpires had nothing to do with what had just transpired on the field. He often agreed with the call the umpire had made. He would talk about family news or whatever was on his mind. In one conversation, he managed to arrange with the umpire a day when they both could get together to play a round of golf. When he would get thrown out, it was often after an umpire had given him a warning of not arguing more than a set amount of time, which Craig would then in a friendly way proceed to violate.

Craig's philosophy was that he had a job to do. Arguing with the umpires was what the fans expected him to do, what the players expected him to do. Getting thrown out of games from time to time was what the fans expected him to do, what the players expected him to do. Otherwise, the fans, the players would not have faith that he was fighting for the the team.

By keeping his arguments within limits, and being honest with the umpires that he and they were merely actors on a stage, playing their assigned parts, Craig gained a strategic edge. Having been shown respect and empathy, umpires would be favorably disposed toward making calls that favored Craig's teams.

What does this have to do with Japanese and/or East Asian politics?

We all have an obligation, when watching, listening or reading the news, to remember that what the actors are doing is their jobs, with a greater or lesser degree of skill depending upon their abilities. Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko is doing his job. China Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei is doing his job.

"So what?" is the natural response, "Isn't everyone just doing his or her job?"

Yes, but first, there are those who do their jobs with relish, living inside the roles they are playing. These are the folks one must identify and quarantine, as they are completely nuts. Either these or those who have other persons doing their jobs for them, leaving the otherwise unoccupied to engage in self-indulgent extra-curricular activities (Yes, I am looking at you Ishihara Shintaro and Abe Shinzo).

Second, in talking about the various and sundry events of the day, one has a responsibility to state again and again, "But then, of course he/she is saying/doing X because that is his/her job."

Punching a hole in the fourth wall, deflating a fine tale by reminding the audience that it is only a tale, seems a poor way to sell a story.

Make it dramatic! Make it scary! Make it seem as though we are upon the brink!

Maybe, in the old days, when government officials had to convince ordinary individuals that some Amaterasu-forsaken pile of rocks was worth the dying for. Or when in order to sell the news, one really had to sell the news, as if it were some new, improved version of laundry detergent.

But not now. Not in the 21st century.

So as a pair of Chinese fisheries patrol boats steam for the Senkakus and a squadron of Japan Coast Guard ships maneuver into position to greet them, we should all pray and indeed shout out loud our desire that at the helms of these ships are a slew of Roger Craigs, trotting out to engage in a little make believe confrontation -- because and only because that is their job.

As Regards The Senkakus Dispute

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, This is more a ransom set of notes than a post.

The driver behind the current bizarre conflict between Ishihara Shintaro and the central government over who will purchase three Senkaku Islands from their Saitama-based private owner is the March expiration of the latest lease.  A private purchase such as the one Ishihara is trying to arrange cannot be done without land surveys.  The central government, the current leasee, will not allow Ishihara's survey teams land on the islands, even though the owner wants to sell the islands to the Tokyo Metropolitan District. (E)

The central government's prososal to nationalize the three islands, and indeed the Ishihara-proposed TMD purchase, violate the fundamental principle of Northeast Asian peace: do not try to solve anything.  No matter how twisted, frustrating and dangerous a situation, the cardinal rule is "Don't touch it"--  as any attempt to rationalize a situation instigates nationalist explosions.

Michael Auslin has recently published an opinion article on the Senkakus, "Japan Feels a North Asia Squeeze" and Stephen Harner has blogged on the subject "The Japan-China Territorial Dispute is Serious, and Escalating."

Both authors make claims that do not stand up to scrutiny.

Auslin claims that declining U.S. power projection in Northeast Asia has left Japan vulnerable to pressure from China and Russia, and that if Japan should walk back from a hardline stand now, that its neighbors will make even more demands of Japan.

First, the recent visits by the president, now prime minister Dmitry Medvedev to the Northern Territories do not represent an escalation of demands on Japan.  Russia has effective control of the Northern Territories and has had it since 1945.  What Medvedev's visits have tried to do is whip up a fear of a military reconquest of the Northern Territories by Japan's Self Defense Forces.  Making such an absurd claim is a measure of the Putin government's desperation to simultaneously justify Russia's current borders and to bolster an expansive Russian identity.

As for China's putting a squeeze on Japan, it is due to China's expanding military reach, which no one, not even the Obama Administration and its pivot to East Asia, can do anything about.  While China's PLA Navy is not directly involved in the current provocative actions in and around the Senkakus, the PLAN is the big stick looming behind the increasingly bold tests of the Japan Coast Guard's resolve to halt unapproved fishing in the area and the swings through the contested zone by Chinese fisheries vessels ostensibly keeping tab on the actions of China-based fishermen.

Mr. Harper's post contains the claim that:

Japan seems compelled to force the issue with China, while China would very likely be satisfied to live with the status quo, as long as Japan would acknowledge that it too has a claim on the islands and surrounding area.

While the first part of that statement is true -- that the government of Japan feels compelled to force the issue with China, due to the imminent danger of a radical nationalist coming into at least nominal control of the islands (and achieveing the ability, should the procedures of the past be followed, to extort extraordinary rent from the central government at the time of the renewal of the annual lease) -- the remainder of the sentence is poppycock.

First, China is an outlier of the 21st century.  It is the only country in the world seeking to reestablish the imperial reach it possessed at the zenith of its power at the beginning of the 19th century.  Every one of the rest of the world's imperial powers has receded, even the United States, which despite its messianic missions of the last few years, has no capacity or desire to hold on to the countries its troops have invaded and occupied (one can argue that the expansion of NATO is a soft form of imperialism but since participation in that organization is voluntary the argument does not hold water).  That the government of China should be seeking to nail down ownership of the lion's (tiger's?) share of the South China, East China and Yellow Seas, as well as obliterate the ancient semi-independent Uighur khanates and the Tibetan kingdom, demonstrate an anachronistic national purpose, based on a spurious "humiliation" of China from the Opium Wars onward (You want to talk about national humiliation? As the British and the French about the Suez Crisis).

Second, how can Japan admits that China has a claim on the islands and surrounding areas?  It would lose all ability to claim legitimate control of the Senkakus.  China does not accept Japanese claims on the islands and surrounding areas, for precisely the same reason.

Mi casa es su casa?  Not if you want it to remain mi casa for very long.

Ishihara Nobuteru's Interesting Gambits

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Ishihara Shintaro, the elected, if not actual, governor of the Tokyo Metropolitan District, sure has made himself scarce since the death of the Ueno Zoo's panda cub yesterday morning.

It was Ishihara who hilariously, in his own mind, at least, suggested that the new cub be named Sen-sen, with a later sibling to be called Kaku-kaku, in order to form the duo Sen-kaku, to needle, oh so very cleverly, the owners of the pandas the TMD, the proprietor of Ueno Zoo, is paying somewhere aroung 1 million USD a year to display, and highlighting Ishihara's suddenly favorite uninhabited islets -- the TMD seemingly not having enough far-flung uninhabited islands to keep him occupied. (J)

I cannot decide whether it is Ishihara's unwisecrack or the significance of panda exchanges to Sino-Japanese relations that had Google News Japan listing the death of the cub among the "Politics" stories all morning long.

Ishishara's attempted purchase of the Senkakus pushed the central government to muscle in on the sale this week, spoiling Foreign Minister Gemba Ko'ichiro's meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in Phnom Penh (E). The announcement of the government's plan to pip Ishihara and the TMD no doubt led to yesterday's riposte of Chinese fishery agency ships entering the 12 nautical mile exclusion zone about the Senkakus.(E)

While Ishihara Senior has been creating headaches for the Noda Cabinet, #1 son Ishihara Nobuteru, the Secretary-General of the Liberal Democratic Party, has been a positive boon for Noda Yoshihiko and his Democratic Party of Japan.

Yesterday, it was Nobuteru who delivered the most devastating of the many put-downs of Ozawa Ichiro's new Putting the People's Livelihood First Party:

"Cannot raise the consumption tax; eliminate the nuclear power plants... Can you protect the people's livelihood this way? Waving the Manifesto the DPJ could not carry out, will they not just go on down the same road the DPJ has come down?"

(Link - J)

Politician that he is (and long has he enjoyed my appreciation of his dedication to his craft), Ishihara did not rule out working with the Livelihood Party on a no-confidence motion against the Noda government.  However, he did say he would do so only following "an exhaustive examination of the situation."

On the same day, Ishihara hosted a coming out press conference for former Olympic speed skater Horii Manabu. Horii, a bronze medal winner at the Lillehammer Olympics, has been assigned the role of "assassin" (shikaku) of former prime minister Hatoyama Yukio, challenging him for the Hokkaido #9 seat in the House of Representatives. With Hatoyama the biggest, most pustulent boil on the face of the DPJ, the LDP's selection of a strong candidate to unseat him is like a Christmas gift in July to the prime minister and his party.

On paper, upending Hatoyama is a daunting task. He humiliated his 2009 LDP opponent, a former toy company employee (the beauty of the politics of this blessed land...I never have to make anything up), winning 66% of the vote to the LDP candidate's 26%.

However, Hatoyama was carried upon the wings of the public's rage against the LDP and Hatoyama's presumptive election as prime minister should the DPJ win and win big.

Since August 2009, Hatoyama has only stumbled, embarrassing his constituents. The manner by which he was forced to relinquish his premiership was epic in its combination of hubris, mendacity and blind stupidity. On one visit to his home prefecture, he mused about retiring from politics to take up farming, only to rescind that plan a week later.

Hatoyama's constituents would also not be out of place asking the Tokyo transplant: "Excuse us, but what have you done for us lately?" In Horii, the voters would have a chance to vote for someone who actually achieved something in his life, without his wealthy mother having bankrolled it.

The helpful Ishihara has also recently positioned himself as the next likely leader of the LDP. He did so by, paradoxically, declaring on July 6 that if current LDP President Tanigaki Sadakazu presented himself as a candidate for the party presidency in September, he, Ishihara, would support him. In the deliciously contrarian world of LDP internal politics, this was a knife in Tanigaki's back.

The primary qualifications of a candidate for the LDP presidency are loyalty and a studied disinterest in becoming president. By expressing his desire to be loyal to Tanigaki, Ishihara has put pressure on Tanigaki to reciprocate by not seeking reelection. Ishihara punctuated his camouflaged request with a whomping non-sequitur:

"If there is no dissolution of the Diet, there will be all kinds of folks coming out as candidates. I too may have to think about it."

(Link - J)

Try thinking that statement through. Think of the counterfactual: the Diet is dissolved, and an election is held. Tanigaki, as the president of the party, leads his forces into electoral battle. If the LDP triumphs, Tanigaki, as the president of the LDP, becomes the presumptive prime minister while Ishihara is rewarded with a reappointment to the position to the post of secretary-general. If the LDP fails to make significant gains, or is indeed wiped out, Tanigaki, if he still has a seat in the Diet, immediately resigns, setting up a leadership election. Ishihara, as the point man on elections, at least according to LDP tradition, follows Tanigaki into disgrace and becomes ineligible for the presidency.

So while sounding as though it says something, the statement actually says nothing -- except, of course, silently, "Tanigaki-san, if you cannot push the Noda Cabinet to the wall before the end of the Diet session on September 8, you had better get the heck out of my way."

Wonderful, wonderful stuff...

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.

Of The Financial Times And Japan

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, I love the Japan team of the Financial Times. Mure Dickie, Jonathan Soble and Michiyo Nakamoto (and former Tokyo bureau chief David Pilling, when he takes a flyer at writing about his former home base) deserve nothing but the most effusive of praise for presenting the country as it is, without only-in-Japan dross or a misguided/lazy rephrasing of what appears in the less-than-reflective, scandal-fluffing domestic news media.

I just wish they would stop one-on-one interviews with Japanese figures. It causes their interview subjects nothing but trouble.

The latest victim of the curse of the FT interview is ambassador to China Niwa Uichiro (J). In an interview with the FT, he was asked about Tokyo Metropolitan District Governor and agent provocateur emeritus Ishihara Shintaro's plan to have the TMD purchase three of the Senkaku Islands from their private owner (if you are Chinese, Taiwanese or from Hong Kong, p-r-iv-a-t-e o-w-n-e-r is of course pronounced "färs-kl ˈkleɪmənt").

According to the FT, Niwa responded:

“If Mr Ishihara's plans are acted upon, then it will result in an extremely grave crisis in relations between Japan and China.”

(Link)

True, or at least possibly true. It depends on how the Chinese view Ishihara's making Kurihara Kunioki (E) a very rich man in the one-hop transfer, thanks to the quick thinking of Vice and Actual TMD Governor Inose Naoki, of private donations to Mr. Kunioka's account (E). If the Chinese government, which has been very circumspect and withdrawn of late, shrugs the sale off as bunch of self-described patriots throwing their money away, all will be well.

Trigger the deluge of condemnation, nevertheless, from the usual suspects: Ishihara (no surprise here), the anti-government press (E) and the Noda government, obsessed as it is with the concept that nothing -- NOTHING -- can get in the way of the passage of the bills raising the consumption tax.

As for the Financial Times, it landed a two-for-one deal out of the interview, publishing the interview, then publishing the government's response to the interview. (E)

It has been six years since I dashed off my ever-more-seriously-in-need-of-an-update-and-revision Rules of Japanese News. Despite the list's intemperate origins, Rule #2 still seems to have some juice left in it:

"If an exclusive interview produces a scoop for the Financial Times, the interviewee probably did not understand the question."

Later - Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko was waded in the Niwa controversy. In testimony to the House of Representatives, the PM stated he will not be asking for Niwa's resignation, saying that Foreign Minister Gemba Ko'ichiro delivered a warning to Niwa, and that Niwa had reflected deeply upon his actions. (J)

Of course, this was the same vote of confidence that Noda expressed in Minister of Defense Tanaka Naoki and Minister of Infrastructure, Land, Transport and Tourism Maeda Takeshi...and we all know how well that turned out for those two men.

In Lotus Land

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Thank goodness for The Tokyo Diplomat. Without it I would never have been alerted to Tokyo Metropolitan District Governor Ishihara Shintaro's spectacularly weird suggestion that nuclear power plants be built on Nokogiriyama in Chiba Prefecture ("There's a lot of empty land up there," the governor claims), under the reasoning that if the Greater Tokyo Area is the consumer of the power produced by nuclear power plants, it should host a few. (J)

Guys, and Kannon-sama, Ishihara-chiji thinks you need some big time engineering company.

Black-tailed gulls (Umineko - Larus crassirostris) over Nokogiriyama.


Kannon of the Nippon-ji.
Nokogiriyama, Chiba Prefecture.


Jigoku nozoki ("The Glimpse Into Hell").
Nokogiriyama, Chiba Prefecture.


One of the 1,500 Rakkan.
Nokogiriyama, Chiba Prefecture.


The Great Buddha of the Nippon-ji
(carved 1783-6 and until 1984 the largest Buddha figure in Japan).
Nokogiriyama, Chiba Prefecture.


Face of the Great Buddha of the Nippon-ji.
Nokogiriyama, Chiba Prefecture.

All photos: MTC

Some Very Tense Family Dinners

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, A sweet little tidbit from the Yomiuri Shimbun's home page:

LDP secretary general postpones China visit

Jiji Press

Nobuteru Ishihara, secretary general of the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party, has decided to postpone his visit to China, party sources said.

The decision came after his father, Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, unveiled a plan earlier this week for his metropolitan government to buy the Senkaku Islands claimed by Japan and China, provoking fierce criticism in China.

The junior Ishihara had planned to visit China for four days from Friday to give a lecture at a university in Shanghai. However, he was informed by the university that his safety could not be ensured, the sources said Thursday...

(Link)

I would not be at all surprised if Ishihara fils is convinced that Ishihara père is out to ruin his future.

Poor I. Nobuteru has a decent shot at replacing Tanigaki Sadakazu as the president of the LDP this fall, his only plausible rival being former defense minister Ishiba Shigeru. However, I. Shintaro keeps sucking up all the oxygen in the room -- whether through his linking up with Kamei Shizuka and Hiranuma Takeo to create a "true conservative" party, his crusade (a remake) to bring the Olympics to Tokyo or his pulled-from-out-of-his-nether-regions proposal to buy some of the Senkaku Islands from their private owner (E). At every moment, I. Nobuteru has to be ready to crouch down to duck the shrapnel flying out from his father's playing around with explosives.

One can imagine I. Nobuteru thinking, "Dad, why can't you announce incredibly expensive idiot plan to eliminate cloud cover over the Tocho, just to ruin my older brother's day?"

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.

Everything Has Got To Be Just Like You Want It To

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Maybe it was an awesome April Fool's Day prank, but Ishihara Nobuteru and the Liberal Democratic Party seemed deep into wishing for ponies on Sunday -- because for as long as one is asking for the impossible, one might as well ask for a pony too*.

In a speech in Nara on Sunday, Ishihara, the LDP's Secretary-General, said that his party would cooperate with the ruling Democratic Party of Japan on the passage of the legislation raising the consumption tax to 10% if:

1) Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko engineered an expulsion of Ozawa Ichiro and his followers from the DPJ

2) The DPJ would drop its insistence on a minimal national pension payment of 70,000 yen per month promised in the DPJ's 2009 manifesto, and

3) The prime minister would make a firm commitment to dissolve the Diet and hold elections immediately after the passage of the consumption tax legislation

(Link - J)

Actually, Ishihara did not say that his party will definitely cooperate should the Prime Minister Noda and the DPJ deliver on the above. What he said was, "The shoots of the LDP's agreeing with the bill would emerge."

Oh, what a lovely seasonal reference!

Seriously, the above was Ishihara's offer.

No, I do not think he had been drinking. Why do you ask?

..........................

* The concept of wishing for a pony too was a putdown of conservative and libertarian thinking used by liberal Americans during the presidency of George W. Bush. It is derived from this famous blog post.

Further Evidence That Inose Naoki Is The Actual Governor Of Tokyo

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, If the blinking one has time to jet off to Washington for this event at the Heritage Foundation...

The U.S.-Japan Alliance and
the Debate Over Japan's Role in Asia

The Honorable Shintaro Ishihara
Governor of Tokyo

A fixture on Japan's political scene, long-time Governor of Tokyo (1999-present) Shintaro Ishihara is far and away one of Japan's leading political figures... [Link]

...we can state with some degree of certainty that:

1) Ishihara Shintaro is more interested in drumming up interest for his new, "true conservative" party than running the world's richest city

2) The person keeping the lights on, the sewers flowing and the roads passable is Inose Naoki and not the Tokyo Metropolitan District's elected leader.

The latter of those two points is a damn good thing.

[Hyperbolic hyperbole alert: "...is far and away one of Japan's leading political figures"

"Far and away"?

What is wrong with "is one of Japan's leading political figures"?]

OK, So Maybe We Are Wrong

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Let us assume that Ozawa Ichiro is right, that the public wants the Democratic Party of Japan to fulfill its campaign promises of 2009 -- and that unless the DPJ returns to the true path (that, we shall not forget, Ozawa authored) by the time the next elections come around, the party.

Or, let us assume that Tanigaki Sadakazu, Ishihara Nobuteru and Oshima Tadamori are right, that the nation is sick to death of the bumbling and stumbling of the DPJ, particularly its inability to come to internal agreement on the government's major policy plank, the revitalization of the social welfare compact through a rise in the consumption tax.

Or, let us assume that the league of anonymous analysts are right, that the government is incapable of making the significant changes Japan needs to invigorate itself, meaning that Noda Yoshihiko is heading downhill and out the door the same way his last five predecessors have.

Then why in the dickens are the support levels of this Cabinet rising at this time? The Kyodo News poll of this morning finds support for the Cabinet rising to 32% from 29% the month before. This finding echoes the Jiji Press finding of cabinet support at 27%, a rise of 3 points from a month earlier (J) and NHK's finding of cabinet support at 33%, up 2 points from a month earlier (link expired). A week ago, the Yomiuri Shimbun found cabinet support at 35%, 5 points up from a month earlier (J). A week before that Nippon Television found a similar 5 point rise in public support for the cabinet (link expired).

Now these moves, while in sync with one another, may not represent an updraft for the Noda government. For all we know, they may represent a firming of confidence in government in general in response to the upwelling of feelings of national unity over the 3/11 anniversary. The politics-news-entertainment complex may have been pulling its punches pre-anniversary, giving the government a breather from the usual battering it faces, allowing the electorate to have a brighter view of the present.

Still, if the Noda government were really messing up, or the country on the way to a political train wreck, one would expect at least some polls to show declines in cabinet support.

Obviously, that is not happening.

Indeed, even more reassuring the PM and his government should be the fall in the percentage those holding negative views of the Cabinet: down 5 points in the Kyodo poll, down 3 points in the Jiji Press poll, down 5 points in the Yomiuri poll.

On the all-important question of which party the electorate will vote for in the bloc proportional vote (noting, of course, that a national survey does not reflect the strength of a particular party's appeal in specific blocs) the prime minister's party still trails the Liberal Democratic Party. The Kyodo poll finds the split to be 20% for the DPJ versus 23% for the LDP: the Yomiuri poll finds find the split to be 17% versus 21% (J).

For both parties, the real pain will be in the Kinki bloc, where the Yomiuri poll found that the top vote getter would be Hashimoto Toru's Ishin no kai receving 24% of the committed vote, with the LDP second at 18% and the DPJ third at 10%. (J)

The Ishin no kai's participation in the next House of Representatives election, even while not generating direct support of greater than a quarter of the voters in its home region, is still popular overall. In the Yomiuri poll, 58% of the electorate has positive expectations over the Ishin no kai's participation in national politics. In a poll the Mainichi Shimbun conducted in the first week of March, 61% of the electorate had favorable views of Ishin no kai participation in national politics (J).

Today's Kyodo polls frames the question of the Ishin no kai's rise and the possible formation of a "true conservative" party under the command of some combination of Ishihara Shintaro, Hiranuma Takeo and Kamei Shizuka in a different way: if the government could be rearranged according to your wishes, what would be its constituent parts?

A government with the DPJ at its heart 8%
A government with the LDP at its heart 13%
A grand coalition government of the DPJ and the LDP 23%
A new structure based on a realignment of the political world 38%
Other 4%
No opinion 12%

(due to rounding, the above does not add up to 100%)

A grand coalition, which the press has been talking up ad nauseum over the weekend after Deputy Prime Minister and designated go-between with the opposition parties Okada Katsuya purportedly talked about a grand DPJ-LDP coalition over several bills --- an offer Okada denies making, not that he might not be making it at some future time, mind you (J) does not set the public's heart a-flutter. The large number of persons wishing for a whole new political world, together with the miserably low numbers for a future DPJ-centered government may light a fire under the tails of some in the DPJ to accept the Noda government's already significant openness to the opinions of the opposition, particularly the New Komeito but the LDP as well (the other opposition parties might just as well not exist).

As to when the electorate next wants a shot at choosing its representatives, those desiring to have an election next year outnumber those wanting an election this year 66% to 27%, with the plurality (44%) wanting the current House of Representatives to serve out their full terms, again according to Kyodo News.

So we are on course for a double (House of Representatives - House of Councillors) election next year in mid-summer -- which is good because the Diet has yet to tackle the black hole in the nation's voting systems, the methods of electing the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors both being unconstitutional.

Fewer Than Two

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,,

This is for all the lonely people
Thinking that life has passed them by
Don't give up
Until you drink from the silver cup
And ride that highway in the sky

This is for all the single people
Thinking that life has left them dry
Don't give up
Until you drink from the silver cup
You never know until you try

- America, "Lonely People" (1974)*

If you are in the Tokyo Metropolitan district, and you are alone, you are not alone. Indeed, you are in the whopping majority.

The TMD released the results of its survey of households yesterday. As of January 1 of this year, Tokyo had 12,686,067 residents living in 6,368,485 households, an average of 1.99 residents per household. Considering the number of families with children in the TMD, the balancing number of persons registered as living alone is simply immense -- over 60% of all households registered.

The Mainichi Shimbun provides a nice graph of the crash in the number of persons per registered household since 1957, the first year the survey was conducted.

TMD Governor Ishihara Shintaro, ever the one to come up with the conservate morality play view of a situation, remarked, "I am shocked. It a matter of grave concern. It's truly unhealthy. I feel as though the family unit has fallen to pieces."

If so, then our dear governor (How is it possible that he has won election four times?) should be worried about our neighbors to the north, with all their cows, corn and sunflowers, for the next in line is Hokkaido, with 2.06 residents per household. (J)

The TMD being the great vampire squid of Japan's prefectures, it still managed to eke out a 0.31% increase in its population, the 16th straight year of population growth, despite its shrinking household size (J). It also has remained relatively youthful, with persons in their 30s being the largest age cohort and the percentage of those over 65 years of age still a low (for Japan) 21% of the population. (J)

So all the ongoing creative destruction, with old neighborhoods and commercial properties being demolished and being replaced by high-rise and low-rise condominium and rental units is not necessarily cheap financing leading developers to run amok.

* Yes, I know that the song is an appeal to rebith through faith in Jesus Christ. However, it was either this or "Eleanor Rigby."

Photo credit: MTC

So Far, No Disaster

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,,

Just give me what I want
And no one gets hurt.

- U2, Vertigo (2004)

So far the release of Hashimoto Toru's Ishin no kai's radical campaign manifesto has not seriously damaged the credibility of the proto-party. So far the number of defections from the front of allies, friends and wannabee friends has been limited.

Hiranuma Takeo of the Sunrise party, who has been discussing with Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro and People's New Party leader Kamei Shizuka the founding a new, broader-based "true conservative" alternative to the Liberal Democratic Party, said the document demonstrates "a lack of sense of the nation." Hiranuma continued, "This requires all kinds of changes to the constitution; I had been wondering whether or not he [Hashimoto] really thinks this way, a thing I sensed."

Perhaps more painful for Ishin no kai's spiritual leader is the loss of the former unswerving support of former bureaucrat and prolific author Sakaiya Taiichi. Sakaiya's appearances at Hashimoto's side has given Hashimoto's brute populist movement a sheen of intellectual legitimacy. Sakaiya has shaken his head in wonder at the manifesto's radicalism, calling it a plan for the distant, distant future. As for the promise to abolish the House of Councillors, he has called it "incredible." (J)

However, Hashimoto still has on board some important allies and potential allies. By showing a thumbs up signal on the Ishin no kai manifesto, Your Party leader Watanabe Yoshimi kept sensible members of his party from voicing any skepticism over the document. Ishihara has stayed fully in support, making such encouraging statements as, "There are parts with which I am totally in agreement" and "As for the other things, they resemble the kinds of things I myself was saying long ago, so they are really all right." (J) Kamei has remained silent about the manifesto, even though it declares support for Japan's participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and a rise in the consumption tax, two Kamei no-nos.

An aside, but all of the above prompted a senior member of the LDP to remark that if the planned party led by Hiranuma, Ishihara and Kamei goes forward and links up with Ishin no kai, the result will be "an unholy alliance." (J)

No polling data yet exists to show whether the manifesto has affected the public's view of Hashimoto and the Ishin no kai as standard bearers for a viable political movement. The relatively low-level coverage of the Ishin no kai manifesto's contents on television, however, indicates that the release of the document is not seen to be a front burner issue. We will have to see if coverage picks up after all the brouhaha over the emperor's bypass surgery dies down.

If the more radical elements of the manifesto are brushed off as adolescent blowing off of steam, as Ishihara would want us to do, and the Hashimoto-led populist movement still represents a looming threat to the established political parties, then we can expect more cooperation of the sort we saw on Friday, when the policy research council chiefs of the three major parties signed off on an agreement to pass a bill cutting the salaries of national bureaucrats by an average of 7.8% (J). The bill was drafted by the New Komeito and was opposed by the Rengo national labor union organization, the political ally of the Democratic Party of Japan (J). However the cutting of the cost of government is an essential building block for the DPJ public relations effort to swing the public opinion on the divisive and unbeloved bill raising the consumption tax - a bill the prime minister wants passed in this Diet session.

Keeping the main national political parties in a state of terror promotes Hashimoto's immediate goal of transforming Osaka Prefecture into a metropole like Tokyo. Hashimoto needs revisions to the laws concerning municipalities before his vision can be realized. He will need the cooperation of the parties currently dominating the Diet to pass these revisions. Since members of the Diet would under normal circumstances either tell Hashimoto to go take a hike or let the revisions die in committee from neglect, the fear factor the Ishin no kai engenders will encourage the national political parties to pass the required revisions and thereby keep the man-in-an-awful-hurry happy.

Or so the national parties hope.

Image courtesy: The Sanyo Shimbun

The JNN Poll of February 4-5 - A Quick Review

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, This is a "catch it while you can" post.


TBS has put up the results of its telephone public opinion poll taken February 4-5 (J).

The key takeaways from the post are:

Support for the cabinet has declined to 32.2%, while the percentage of those not supporting the Cabinet has risen to 66.6%. The decline in the Noda Cabinet's support numbers have been uninterrupted since the cabinet's inauguration, with no bounce at all from the cabinet reshuffle of January 13.

This news would be terrible news for Noda if it were not for the conveniently provided numbers for the Kan Cabinet, which stood at 28.3% at the time of the opening of last year's regular session of the Diet. Of course at the time the Kan Cabinet was reeling from the horrible mishandling of the Chinese fishing boat collision and subsequent leak of the video of that collision (a pair of extraordinary blunders that Sengoku Yoshito walked away from with a censure from the House of Councillors. That Sengoku is now in charge of drafting the DPJ's new electoral manifesto shows that some folks and organizations never learn).　Kan received a bump due to his efforts post-3/11 but never regained the popularity Noda enjoys now.

As for the reasons why voters do not support the Noda Cabinet, the tired old "Because we have no hopes for his policies" occupies the top spot with 42% of all those not supporting the Cabinet. The reason why this is tired and old is that "no hopes for his policies" is always in the top spot, that or "no hopes for improving the economy" -- something a prime minister nowadays has almost no control over. As for not implementing policies, in a previous post I have indicated that there is, quite on the contrary, a great deal of movement toward the implementation of policies, if not quite the policies of the DPJ per se.

- As for the fraught legislation raising the consumption tax from 5% to 10% by fiscal year 2015, a majority of those polled, 56% are in favor, with 46% opposed. This is good news for the Noda government, for which the passage of the consumption tax legislation is the highest hurdle in its agenda for the current Diet session.

- Demonstrating that "by the year 2075" has not yet stuck in the voters heads as the height of absurdity, the further 7.1% rise in the consumption tax projected to be need by that date in order to pay for the 2009 manifesto promise of a floor of 70,000 yen per month in national pension payments is unpopular with 72% of the voters. These voters want the DPJ to reconsider its 2009 pledge -- no matter that only a small fraction of those offering this opinion will still be alive in 2075.

- Demonstrating that the sudden burst of activity in regionalist politics is having an effect on voters, 75% of those polled believe it desirable that regional parties participate in national politics. Unsurprisingly, the top vote getter among politicians that the voters find themselves drawn to is Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru, the poster child of the regionalist movement. Number two on the voters' mind is Tokyo Metropolitan District Governor Ishihara Shintaro, who has allied himself in name with Hashimoto's proposed administrative reforms in Osaka Prefecture. Coming in in third place is current Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko.

Though it does not appear in the above linked report, the JNN poll found the support numbers for the main national parties still on a downward slide, with the popularity of both the DPJ and the Liberal Democratic Party below 20% and falling from last month's reading. The continuing decline in DPJ and LDP numbers is good for the country as it reduces to nil the enthusiasm of either party to face the voters in a snap election. These figures and the sudden irruption of interest in the regional parties going national are strong incentives for the two main national parties, along with the LDP's alliance partner the New Komeito, to produce a solid record of achievement in the current Diet session.

Whether the DPJ and the LDP follow these incentives, or find themselves getting sidetracked yet again by new developments in the ever-shifting saga of Ozawa Ichiro and his convicted lieutenants (one of whom, Ishikawa Tomohiro just got married to a former television presenter -- demonstrating that even future jailbirds still got wings to fly), remains the big question.

Image courtesy: TBS

Later - Here it is the next day and the link to the TBS report has already been removed from the Web.

As I said, catch as catch can.