Excuse Me, But What The [Expletive Deleted] Does That Mean?

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, We were talking about Liberal Democratic Party President Tanigaki Sadakazu and his huge problem: that in 2 and 1/2 years as LDP president, he has taken the party virtually nowhere in terms of its popularity.*

It seems that certain members of the party have been aware of this problem for some time now. Indeed, in the fall of last year, the party established an advisory committee to help Tanigaki develop a more appropriately conservative doctrine and image for the LDP.

The members of this council of advisors?

Former Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro
Former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo
Former Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo
Former Prime Minister Aso Taro

I know what you are thinking: "Wise men...and winners...each and every one."

Put aside for a moment the comedic possibilities of having these four elder statespersons offering adobaisu (just quoting the Japanese text here) on how to make the LDP a more vital party and Tanigaki a more inspiring leader.

You're right, I can't do it either.

Be it as it may, the first public meeting of the group took place on Monday. Well, actually, not. There was a meeting but only Abe and Aso showed up. Mori and Fukuda had better other things to do.

At the meeting the pair representing the collective wisdom of the foursome presented nine proposals. These nine proposals were so salient and pertinent that not a single news organization has published them in their entirety. They furthermore cannot be found on the LDP's, Abe's, Aso's or Mori's websites. It is possible Fukuda would post them on his website, if he had one.

The Tokyo Shimbun, whether out of duty or pity, reproduced two of these proposals in its article on the meeting. (J)

The first suggestion is that rather than focusing on improving the efficiency of fiscal policies and reforms of the tax system, the party should emphasize fiscal reconstruction and not passing on a burden to future generations.

If you can tell how those two ideas are different in a significant way, or how doing the one precludes doing the other, please send me an email.

[Ed. - See Comment #Alex]

The second suggestion is even better than the first. It is -- and I am not making this up:

"Reform of the Constitution and the establishment of a Japan that is more like Japan."

Now this particular suggestion has Abe Shinzo's paw prints all over it. It was Abe who declared that one of the primary goals of his term in office (which turned out to be far briefer than he imagined it would be) would be the promulgation of a constitution "written by our own hands." It seems that the current constitution, drafted in English and in haste by an ad hoc team of SCAP staff members in 1946, suffers from a lack of legitimacy and sensitivity to Japan's spiritual identity.

Tossing away the context -- the faith in Japan's right wing that the U.S. Occupation Forces-drafted Constitution condemns Japanese to an eternal self-flagelatory inferiority complex and domination by left-wing teachers unions -- just what exactly, in an absolute sense, is "a Japan that is more like Japan?" I do not think that the four former prime ministers could come up with a single answer, much less 126 million Japanese citizens. I do not think that Abe and Aso, who managed to both agree to make time in their schedules to show up at this meeting, could come up with a single answer.

To whit, a huge cartoon of a grinning Aso overlooks the maid cafes, electronics bazaars, game figurine emporia and various shrines to AKB 48 and its spin offs in Akihabara. The image of the manga-fan former PM declares his love of all he surveys, the epicenter of Japan's post-post modernist otaku cultural earthquake.

Would Aso classify the seething, transmogrifying mass of Akihabara's simultaneously infantilist, hypersexualized, exhibitionist and alienated sub-cultures as part of Japan that is truly Japan? Judging from what is written in his book, you bet.

By contrast, I do not for one second believe Abe Shinzo has ever spent any amount of time in Akihabara...and if he were ever to spend any time there, I am sure, from what it is in his book, he would not like it.

Not one little bit.

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* The very most recent polls have had some encouraging news for Tanigaki. When subjects were asked which party they would likely vote for on the proportional ballot in the next House of Representatives election, around 23% have said they would vote for the LDP and only around 14% have said they would vote for the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (one example - J).

These figures are far more promising for the party than the absolute party support numbers, which have the LDP and the DPJ in a near statistical tie in their unpopularity.

Growth Neither Nominal Nor Real

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Over the last few days I have had the chance to fulfill a longtime wish: to read Aurelia Mulgan George's Power and Pork: A Japanese Political Life (2006).

It is sobering to read the book six years on, in light of all that has happened since.

At the time of the study's going to print, Matsuoka Toshikatsu, the subject of the study, achieved his life's goal of being named Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, requiring that Dr. George hurriedly insert a few paragraphs on his nomination into the last pages of her manuscript – all which was all to come to naught a few months later when Matsuoka committed suicide, this in order to avoid further Diet inquiry into just the sort of sordid accounting and fund-raising shenanigans Dr. George documents.

"A Political Life" turned out to be a grimly prophetic subtitle.

But it is not only Matsuoka's suicide that provides a somber coda to the work. Nakagawa Sho'ichi, Matsuoka’s predecessor at MAFF and a lifelong antagonist was himself to die at a young age (56) under circumstances that suspiciously looked like suicide, after his untreated alcoholism undid his life's dream of becoming prime minister. If Nakagawa's death was indeed suicide (the investigation into the actual cause of death was willfully unenthusiastic) it was repeat of the death of his father Ichiro, who committed suicide in 1983.

Ichiro's political secretary Suzuki Muneo, who comes across as the sleazeball mentor of Matsuoka, was sent to prison for his funding escapades, but is now rehabilitated as the leader of a regional political movement and a member of the House of Representatives allied with the ruling Democratic Party of Japan – a political marriage of convenience Suzuki parlayed into the chairmanship of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs – the committee overseeing and investigating the activities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the ministry Suzuki had so thoroughly and extensively perverted through intimidation and interference during the years covered in the study.

As for the misuse and misallocation of government funds perfected by Matsuoka and Suzuki during the "Lost Decades" that burned a hole in the Japanese government’s pocket, wasting trillions of yen on makework projects whose operations and maintenance costs far exceed any societal benefit derived from the support they gave temporarily to Japan’s GDP figures, "bad" economic stimulus that has left the country in an Alice in Wonderland state where the government has a net debt greater than 100% of GDP, funds half its budget through bond sales rather than revenues, deflation devours debtors and risk taking, government bond yields are but a shade above 1% despite massive debts and deficits and the current government's policy response – which it labels reform – is to cut spending and raise the consumption tax, despite ironclad economic laws mandating that such actions will shrink the size of the economy, thereby further reducing tax revenues, requiring greater bond issuance to fund the same size national government budget...while the reforms of the Prime Minister's Office's powers to determine policy have evaporated away, leaving Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko buffeted back and forth, a feather in the gale.

It leaves one crying, like the poor father at the end of Coup de Foudre/Entre Nous:

"Quel gâchis! Quel gâchis!"