Oh Please Just, Go Away

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Kaere! Heisei datsuzei no o!" **

-----------------------------------------------

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

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

Photo courtesy: Mainichijp

Of Course I Do

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Of course I want to write a contrarian post about the present situation inside the Democratic Party of Japan and the Diet following the House of Representatives vote on the three bills paving the way for a raising of the consumption tax, insulting along the way a whole raft of persons, including:

- Hatoyama Yukio

- Ozawa Ichiro

- Tanigaki Sadakazu

- Yamaoka Kenji

- Watanabe Yoshimi

However, such was the jet lag from my trip that when I sat down at my computer, I could see five objects on the screen when I knew there were only three -- meaning I was in no shape to try to tackle the grand opera performance we folks in the cheap seats are not expected to even think about, much less understand.

Suffice it to say that not all the 57 members of the DPJ who voted against the bills or the 16 members who sat out the vote are necessarily ready to commit political suicide out their love for Ozawa Ichiro. A certain fraction are true believers, with enough brains to figure out what their interests are but incapable of seeing that their dear leader is only using them, alternating between bullying and flattering them, terrifying them into craving his approval. A goodly number, the most senior members of the cabal, have made the journey with Ozawa from party to party -- meaning they are just flunkeys, with scarcely a brain wave disturnbing their cerebellums. There are also idiot-savants like Hatoyama who have such a blind faith in the Doctrine of the Mean that they forget the Texas Rule of Politics: "The only things in the middle of the road are yellow lines and dead armadillos."

It should also be remembered that the larger-than-expected number of nay-voters and abstainers may not represent a victory for Ozawa but indeed a failure of the imagination of the prognosticators. Think about it: you are a fence sitter in the DPJ, not tight with Ozawa but not tight with the mainstream leadership either. You have a tough election fight ahead of you. The New Komeito and the Liberal Democratic Party are all in on the vote, meaning it will pass by a huge margin. Why not be on record as an opponent of tax rises?

As for the threat to the cohesion of the DPJ, one cannot threaten that which has never existed. Every voter in 2009 had read what was on the DPJ label -- "Contents do not represent an organized political party, just an organized movement against the LDP. Westministerian-like levels of party discipline will be freakish and brief." (E)

The electorate also knew, because the newspapers, magazines and news programs went over the numbers in excrutiating detail, that the 2009 manifesto was a Potemkin Village, an improbable passel of promises to every possible constituency -- and that electorate was still was willing to grant the DPJ a huge majority in the House of Representatives.

As for Ozawa, he is on trial again. Ostensibly, he should have been stripped of his party privileges upon the refiling of charges against him. That he has not means that the party central leadership can choose to strip him of his privileges, making it impossible for him to run or even vote in the September DPJ leadership election. All those who followed his lead in voting against the legislation could suffer similar, if lesser, trimmings of their wings. If those are not punishments eliminating Ozawa's influence on party affairs, then what are? Recall that Ozawa already ordered an auto-purge of his followers from their government and party positions in April. Without party privileges, the rebels are dead to the party.

So whatever it is that Koshi'ishi Azuma and Ozawa Ichiro will be discussing this afternoon, it is likely not the end of Noda Yoshihiko's world.

The Noda-Ozawa Meeting

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Tomorrow at this time, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko will be meeting with former party leader Ozawa Ichiro. Noda's stated goal going into the meeting is to convince Ozawa to support the government's bills raising the consumption tax from 5% to 10%. Ozawa has publicly stated that he is not inclined to support the tax. (E).

So is the meeting a preamble to a breakup of the Democratic Party of Japan over a point of principle? Or it red meat thrown to sate the voracious news media monster? A song-and-dance show put on by the two men in order to confuse the opposition Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito?

That I should ask these rhetorical questions telegraphs my feelings that this is a charade.

Why feel that this is a meeting with a predetermined outcome, one of Ozawa tossing the decision to vote for or against the bill to his followers to decide on their own?

- Ozawa is meeting Noda at DPJ headquarters. As a general rule, Ozawa meets with no one -- though the weeklies have Ozawa "going to Hachioji" with some regularity -- unless there are votes as the door prize (remember his pilgrimage to Koya-san?).

Ostensibly, DPJ headquarters is a neutral venue for the meeting. After all both men are DPJ members. However, as Noda is the DPJ's leader, party headquarters is his house: he is the master of it. For Ozawa to show up at headquarters makes it clear who is calling upon whom.

- Noda has stated there will be only one meeting, or as he colorfully put it, "I will explain that my intent is for this to be a single meeting on this one issue, a single last throw of the dice for everything (kenkon itteki)." (J)

Such brinkmanship is not Noda's style. The PM is something of an anaconda. He wraps his coils around you, waiting patiently, tightening his grip each time you inhale, until you asphyxiate.

If he is saying, "This is it. My way or the highway," in advance of a conference with the kingmaker who supposedly enjoys the loyalty of 1/4 of the DPJ's Diet delegation, then the likelihood that the two are going to have a serious debate with an outcome still in doubt is pretty close to zero.

- The DPJ has already had its internal debate on the bills raising the consumption tax. Ozawa's side lost that debate.

Noda will not throw a defeated man a lifeline.

- Cultivating the image of the DPJ as hopelessly divided has its uses. In addition to keeping journalists busy chasing after wild geese, it confuses the heck out of the opposition.

It would be unwise to head into a general election with the party's image being that of a house divided. However, due to the effective current constitutional ban on elections, the leadership of the DPJ has the freedom to play this purported deep split for at least a little while longer.

- Ozawa is in the Hotel California of Japanese jurisprudence ("You can check out any time you like/But you can never leave"). On May 9, the private lawyers prosecuting Ozawa on violation of the political funds act appealed his April 26 acquittal. The appeals process is normally relatively speedy, with the higher court judge having a strong incentive to affirm the judgment of the lower court. However, in the Ozawa case, the presiding judge's presentation cast doubt upon the veracity of Ozawa's testimony -- and by extension his determination of Ozawa's innocence. This opens the door for the appeals judges to reverse the verdict.

In any case, Ozawa will be stuck in an indicted state for a goodly while -- which makes it highly unlikely he and his flock will leave the DPJ. With their champion hobbled, the Ozawa loyalists have almost zero chance of surviving as an independent political force.

So though his loyalists and hangers-on attend Ozawa's seminars and he their fundraising parties, he is not going anywhere, party-wise.

The question for the political commentariat after tomorrow should not be "Whither Ozawa?" but how many of Ozawa's followers will abstain from the votes on the consumption tax bills, considering the light punishments the party meted out to the first-termers who absented themselves from vote on the no confidence measure against Kan Naoto's Cabinet.

Extended And Revised Thoughts On The Decision To Retry Ozawa Ichiro

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Masked Man Returns

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, For those defenders and friends of Ozawa Ichiro -- and I know you are out there -- will you please tell him, beg him if you have to, to reconsider the wearing of a surgical mask on days when he is hot water?

Ozawa Ichiro, leaving his home on May 9, 2012.

I know that this all could be coincidence. After all, the above photo was taken at around noon and the press conference announcing the appeal of his case was not until the afternoon.

However, the instances of Ozawa's sudden comings down with colds at awkward moments have been painful to observe.

As for the prosecuting private attorneys, if they really wish anyone to believe that they are under no political pressure at all to appeal the not-guilty verdict of April 26, then sweating rivulets during their press conference on a mild May day is not the way to do it. While cool cucumber Yamamoto Ken'ichi (J - far right) managed not even a glow, Omuro Shinzo and Muramoto Michio were spurting like the fountains of Trevi.


Later - To be fair, Ozawa's lawyers were sweating even worse than the prosecuting attorneys.

Ozawa Ichiro As Potential Troublemaker

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, [Flash - the three lawyers who failed to win a conviction of Ozawa Ichiro with violations of the Political Funds Control Act have decided to appeal the not guilty verdict (J).

It is not too surprising a decision. The trio have an incentive to prove that they were not the fools losing the case made them out to be. They surely received an extra jolt of energy from the trial judge's statements casting doubts on parts of Ozawa's testimony. While the judge's asides did not find Ozawa, as Ishihara Nobuteru put it yesterday, "99% jet black" (J) they did not allow Ozawa to proclaim hiself pure as the driven snow either.

Later - Guessing as to whether or not the prosecuting lawyers have sought to humiliate the Democratic Party of Japan by announcing their decision to retry Ozawa after the DPJ executive voted to reinstate his party privileges is something the reader should not take two seconds to ponder over. Of course, they did. Such abusive behavior is in line with the conduct of this trial and the trials against Ozawa's secretaries, which from the outset have been politics by the most thuggish of means.]

Now, where was I?

I am on the record as believing Ozawa Ichiro faces constraints on his behavior preventing him from becoming the ogre the mainstream and scandal press predict he will be, now that his shackles are being loosed. (E)

However, my assertions have been predicated on Ozawa's understanding that the Democratic Party of Japan is different from the Liberal Democratic Party. Underpinning such a vision is a belief that after winning the control of the Diet through emulating the pork-barrel promises that made the LDP such an unshakable part of the post-Occupation reality, the DPJ would then shift gears and return the decentralized authority, anti-subsidy, anti-protectionist, anti-pork barrel program that made the pary the darlings of the urban white collar consumer vote.

Intrinsic to such vision was a completely overhaul the disenfranchising House of Representatives single-member districts system. At present, 91 of the single-member districts have population greater than twice the population of the smallest district, Kochi #3. The disparity shook even the somnolent Supreme Court to rule last year that the current system is unconstitutional, violating the right of all citizens to equal protection of the law.

However, when Ozawa effectively came to power through the puppet regime of Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio, revising the electoral system was not the first item on his agenda -- which it should have been if the DPJ were to have any chance at retaining power in the next House of Representatives election. Instead, what Ozawa did, to the horror of many in the media, was to order all of the first-termers, many of whom had specialist knowledge and had entered politics in order to affect and implement policy, out of the government positions to which Prime Minister Hatoyama had appointed (nakedly and brazenly showing who was calling the shots inside the DPJ). Instead, he ordered those stripped of their government positions and all other first-termers to forget policy and concentrate instead on politicking inside their home districts -- which, when you think about it, only makes sense if the borders of the districts were not set to change.

It is true that at the time Ozawa was not under the gun of the Supreme Court, which was not to deliver its ruling for another year, long after Ozawa had been toppled from power over the Futenma climb-down and the revolt of the middle-ranking lifers of the DPJ. However, numerous lower-ranking decisions had found the existing House of Representatives districts unconstitutional. Also, while the DPJ had won control of the House of Representatives with a mixture of disgust for the LDP and borrowing some of the LDP's vote-buying strategies (an Ozawa innovation that transformed the DPJ from a losing urban-surburban party to a winning national party) -- it was clear that the DPJ could not pull those same two rabbits out the hat twice.

For the DPJ, the choice was either reform the system or die.

So as Ozawa is given his freedom, the question is whether during his time in suspension, did he learn what it means to be a member of the DPJ? Or has he remained adamant in his thinking that the way to run Japan is to accept the country as it is and work around the margins, even though that approach has brought him grief time and time again, whether it was in the LDP, the New Frontier Party, the Liberal Party and his time as the power behind Hatoyama's throne?

In terms of policy, the signs are not encouraging. His opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which, given the disparate interests of its negotiating members, may just as well end up crashing of its own accord, reveals an unfortunate attachment to the rural vote as it is currently super-empowered.

Ozawa's unwillingness to play ball with the current party leadership over the imposition of a rise in the consumption tax, which is represents a tough, and yes, contractionary solution to a debt mountain not of the DPJ's making, paints a picture of him as a factional bully, throwing around the weight of the 100 or so members of the DPJ beholden to him, rather than as a party man.

Ozawa's defenders insist that whatever the methods employed, Ozawa's primary interest has been the seizing of policy from the bureaucracy and making it answerable to the voters. To be sure, on the surface, the government of Noda Yoshihiko seems to have relinquished whatever gains not only his party made but much of what the LDP's Koizumi Jun'ichiro wrenched from out of the hands of the bureaucrats. For this reason, an unleashed Ozawa immediately challenging the legitimacy of the current leadership group is not only inevitable but salutatory.

It would be a grave mistake, however, for Ozawa to take on the leadership of DPJ. He must meet with Noda, one-to-one, and see what Noda's real goals and strategies are.

I do not refer to Noda as The Impenetrable One out of laziness. Noda is almost perversely parsimonious with his actual thinking on any given issue, no matter how beautifully he may talk about every issue. You can read Noda's words in the newspaper or on the Web, or hearing speaking him out loud on television or in person. However, as to what he thinks, one draws a blank. He may have a silver tongue but he does not appear to be speaking his mind.

Does Ozawa have the humility to go to the Kantei for a meeting of minds? The outlook is admittedly not promising.


Note - this post has been edited for greater clarity and precision.

The Emperor After The Fall

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Today is The Big Day -- when the judge in the Ozawa Ichiro trial on violations of the Public Funds Control Law Political Funds Control Act hands down his verdict and if Ozawa is found guilty, his sentence. The news is full of analysis of the meaning of the Ozawa verdict, including these two pieces by Toko Sekiguchi (E) and Aurelia George Mulgan (E).

I hate to be the grump in any instance -- but the verdict today is largely irrelevant. As Sekiguchi points out in her piece, Ozawa will appeal if he is found guilty. If he is found not guilty, the Association of Those Seeking the Truth (Shinjitsu o Motomeru Kai) will have failed in its quest to milk the arrest of Okubo Takanori for some evidence to put Ozawa away. Given that the members of this group, whoever they are, all seem to be in retirement and thus with plenty of time on their hands to cause mischief (the Devil makes work for idle hands, after all), it is likely the Association will just find another blind alley to send prosecutors running down.

(An aside: the slavering anti-Ozawa weekly Shukan Bunshun decided that yesterday, the eve of the verdict, was the perfect day to release an exclusive story about a heretofore unknown child Ozawa fathered out of wedlock. Classy rag, that Shukan Bunshun.)

Whatever the purported goals of the cases against Ozawa and his aides, the political purpose has been served. The arrest of Okubo forced Ozawa to resign as head of the Democratic Party of Japan on the eve of the election that was to push the Liberal Democratic Party off its perch and install a DPJ-led coalition government. The resignation as party leader prevented Ozawa becoming prime minister. While Ozawa was able to engineer the election of his ally-puppet Hatoyama Yukio as his replacement, with Ozawa taking the role of effective party leader through the post of DPJ Secretary-General, Ozawa was denied the prize which he had long desired and had long labored to seize. As for the arrests of former aides Ishikawa Tomohiro and Ikeda Mitsutomo, on the basis of evidence of violations of the Public Funds Control Law found by the prosecutors after a proctological search through the documents seized in relation to Okubo's arrest, these weakened Ozawa's position in the party, making it possible for middle-level legislators to challenge his stranglehold on party policy making.

Ozawa's indictment on January 31, 2011 (E) gave the anti-Ozawa members of the DPJ, including prime minister Kan Naoto, the leverage needed to force party secretary-general Koshi'ishi Azuma, an Ozawa ally, to suspend Ozawa's party privileges.

Stripped of all formal party positions and even access to party funds for his own reelection. Ozawa had to exercise influence indirectly through the first-term and second-term legislators in Houses of Representatives and the House of Councillors whom he had hand-picked as candidates, and through the largely second- and third-grade legislators who had followed him through party after party. These nominal disciples number about 150 legislators, a third of the DPJ's membership in the Diet.

However, without his hands on the money spigots of the party, particularly the public financing provided to finance elections, Ozawa has had to rely on the bonds of affection, loyalty and his own funding apparatus to keep his allies faithful. This bond has weakened, however, as Ozawa's time in internal exile has dragged on. On issues of policy, such as opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the rise in the consumption tax, he has had to ally himself with other disaffected elements of the party, such as Mr. No To Everything Yamada Masahiko. He also found himself, in June 2011, on the verge joining hands with the LDP, the party he had worked so hard to unseat and dismantle, in a vote of no-confidence against Prime Minister Kan. Only a last-minute and ultimately empty face-saving compromise worked out by the feckless Hatoyama prevented Ozawa from fulfilling the media's negative portrayal of  him as a selfish destroyer of parties and governments.

Even this indirect influence over party policy making has evaporated, however. In a show of principle and utter political naïveté, Ozawa's allies in the DPJ dragged out the party debate over the legislation raising the consumption tax from a projected 3 days to 3 weeks. Exasperated, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko cut off debate, giving the final decision on the legislation to Policy Research Chairman Maeda Maehara Seiji -- an outcome that effectively negated the entire three weeks of debate. In response, four of Ozawa's acolytes in government positions and 30 in party positions resigned their posts. Eager to preserve party unity, the party leadership refused to accept the resignations, giving the legislators and Ozawa a chance to reconsider their actions. After six days of waiting, the government accepted the resignations of the government appointees on April 5 (E). It still left the door open, though, for those who had resigned party posts.

The party, however, very quietly shut that final door on Monday (J,) accepting resignations of the Ozawa allies who had resigned their party posts.

So as the political commentariat and twitterati await the verdict with bated breath, the political impact of the outcome is less significant than political observers will admit. Ozawa is now more shadow than shadow shogun. The current leadership group, knowing his tendencies, will not permit his appointment to any position of power. He will not be allowed near the party's pot of political funds. His followers have abandoned the positions they could have used to influence or if necessary gum up policy making.

Ozawa has been the most influential, hated and fascinating politician of the last 30 years. However, whatever happens today will not shake the political world to its roots. Its branches may shiver a bit -- but that is all.

 Later - My apologies for the HTML failures that led to half the original text being swallowed up into the ether.

Still later - Many thanks to alert readers O.J. and M.P. for catching the errors.

He Who Laughs Last

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

I'm sure my critics will say
It's a grotesque display.
Well they can bite me baby
I perform this way.

- Al Yankovic, "I Perform This Way" (2011)

Despite the best effort of Shukan Bunshun, Kaieda Banri (Wait, was he not Ozawa Ichiro and Hatoyama Yukio's candidate in the last DPJ election? Yes, but he was also the 1996 author of this tome. Ambition has many colors) and mysterious associations working their magic from the shadows Ozawa Ichiro has survived to serve more than 25 years in the Diet. After passing the 25-year milestone, members of the House of Representatives are entitled to a number of perquisites, one of which is the hanging of his or her portrait in the Diet Building.

Ozawa, being a retiring, secretive individual of course...wait, here he is, beaming in front of his portrait as it is being hung for the benefit of the cameras both still and video. In a dose of purest irony, the portrait is hung in the room where the Committee for Judicial Affairs has its meetings.

The portrait has its host of critics. To be sure, it sure clashes with the more genial and relaxed mood of its immediate neighbors.

The Liberal Democratic Party's Hirasawa Katsuei -- "Mr. Abductees Issue" to you and me -- has complained that it gives him the creeps (iwakan - 違和感). "I feel like it's staring at me," he complains. (J)

Hirasawa and others have declaimed that now, while Ozawa is still on trial for violating the political funding laws, is hardly the time to hang his portrait. Such complaints have very little traction, however, given that the House of Representatives Steering Committee has just greenlighted a similar hanging in the Diet of the portrait of jailbird Suzuki Muneo, the multi-year winner of the "Most Corrupt Member of the Diet" in public surveys. (J)

But while Ozawa is beaming, possibly even laughing in the above photo images, I am not sure whether or not the joke is on Ozawa's many enemies or on himself.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, a close-up of the portrait, painted a former graduate of Ozawa's political training school:
I have heard it said that truth is beauty, and beauty truth.

Though my artistic judgments have landed me in trouble of late, I will venture that the adage is hereby proven wrong.

Image courtesies:
Top: Tokyo Shimbun
Middle: Jiji Press
Bottom: TV Asahi

Ozawa Ichiro Clears A Major Hurdle

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, In his trial for purportedly overseeing the filing of false political funding organization accounts, Ozawa Ichiro today received a huge gift from the Tokyo District Court. The court threw out as evidence the confession investigators forced from Diet member Ishikawa Tomohiro, Ozawa's former political secretary. (J)

Ishikawa's confession was the one damning piece of evidence the prosecuting attorneys had against Ozawa. It had been thrown out of court in Ishikawa's own trial due to evidence of prosecutorial misconduct. Ishikawa was still convicted along with two other former or present Ozawa secretaries of filing false funding accounts based on other evidence.

Commentators agree with Ozawa's lawyers' contention that without the acceptance of Ishikawa's confession into evidence, the case against Ozawa falls apart (J). Only in Ishikawa's confession was there any statement that Ozawa unambiguously assented to the falsification of the recording of a personal loan Ozawa made to his political funding organization, the Rikuzankai.

Ozawa's full exoneration will not come until April, when the court renders its verdict. However, with an acquittal now a near certainty, Ozawa will have greater leeway to inject himself in the political fights within the DPJ, particularly the battle over the raising of the consumption tax (E). He can also be expected to cause headaches for Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko over whether or not he will lead his followers and allies within the party to join with the opposition in passing a no-confidence motion against the Cabinet, as he nearly last June did against the Kan Cabinet.

From all appearances, the big dog has slipped his leash.

Hatoyama Never Ceases To Amaze

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

The planet Horse Manure.

When will the man stop making nonsense promises?

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

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

Like he said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Somehow, I would not bet on it.

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

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!"