Is That What We Have Decided To Call It?

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, A few weeks ago, in comments to my post on my unhappiness with the Kurokawa Report and its farcical release problems, I was mocked for asserting:

The rule of thumb is when katakana eigo is used for a new term, it is with the goal of letting elites to speak to other elites, excluding the common run of humanity. This is doubly so in this case where the transliterated English term is used to purportedly explain the kanji+kana term.

This was in reference of the report's usage of the English word "mindset," transliterated into Japanese (maindosetto) and then used as the explanation of a perfectly good Japanese term (omoikomi).

A commenter replied:

As a native Japanese speaker I don't think Kurokawa is "talking to elites" by using katakana. (Where did you get this idea after all? It's sooooo outdated a notion, like in the 1980s.)

It is true I am not a native speaker. As a consequence I do not get an automatic pass on the validity/dubiousness of my ideas. I have to present evidence.

Such as the Prime Minister's testimony in the Diet yesterday:

「さっきもちょっと議論があったマイナンバーであるとか、さまざまな関連するものもあります。あるいは国民会議を早急に設置させなければならない等々あります。一体改革の関連でも。そのほかに、この国会では一体改革の法案以外にも、特例公債等々さまざまな大きな法案も残っております。そうしたものをしっかりやり遂げるというのが私の責任だというふうに思っています」

"There are, as we had in our little debate earlier regarding the mai namba, many different related points. Or, that we have to quickly set up of the People's Consultative Body and such things -- these too exist. Yes, the fundamental reforms of the pension and social welfare systems, but aside from those, bills other than the fundamental reforms, various other big bills are left, such as the special bond issuance bill. For this and bills like it, I believe it my responsibility to see them through."

What caught my attention here, aside from the bald inference "You think I am going to call a snap election after the passage of fundamental reforms of the pension and social welfare system? Keep dreaming...." was the mai namba.

Now I am a native speaker of English, so I know that mai namba is a transliteration of "my number." Since I am not always on top of the latest euphemism, I confess I had a moment's confusion. Then I thought, "Oh wait, if I wanted to keep folks from getting riled up about their being assigned a tax identification number (zeikin kanren mibun shomei bango) and were not confident enough even to semi-cloak it in a social welfare gauze (shakai hosho -- zei bango*), would refer to it with friendly, personal-sounding and foreign-language moniker. 'It's My Number. Mine. Just for me! Yippee!'"

So, perhaps mine is not a sooooo oudated notion after all...

As for what the assignment of a mai namba will do to improve the government's ability to claw taxes from out of the populace, contact Richard Katz.


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* The current technical term for the number.

The End Game

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, The Democratic Party of Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito, the only three parties that matter -- a state of affairs so grating to the other parties in the Diet that the three leftist microparties and the one libertarian miniparty are joining hands to protest the "price fixing going on behind closed doors" (J) -- are putting the final touches on a final agreement on the shakai hosho zei ittai kaikaku an, the bills enabling the combined reforms of social security and tax systems. (J)

There are some hurdles standing in the way of the three parties coming to an agreement by the Prime Minister's deadline of June 15. The LDP wants the Noda government to repudiate the DPJ's 2009 manifesto pledge to rewrite pension law so as to guarantee that all pensioners receive a minimun 70,000 yen per month from the national pension plan. The LDP and the New Komeito together want Noda to repudiate the DPJ manifesto pledge to repeal the special eldercare system for persons over 75 years of age, a terribly unpopular and initially confusing program of mandatory healthcare prepayment the two parties sweated blood to pass when they held the reins of government. The three parties are also at loggerheads over what, if anything, they should do to lessen the impact of the imposition of the consumption tax on those person living at or below the poverty line.

Now according to the news noise machine, Prime Minister Noda is desperate and willing to sacrifice the DPJ's identity (E) or prepared to discard policies intrinsic to the DPJ's unity (E) all for the sake of winning the LDP's and the New Komeito's votes in favor of the passage of the bills raising the consumption tax.

Maybe. It depends on what one believes DPJ policies are.

If one takes the simplistic route, that DPJ policies are all the policies listed in the 2009 and 2010 manifestos, then the above assertions are true.

If, however, one takes the position that the policies listed in the 2009 manifesto were the ones Ozawa Ichiro tossed together trying to buy the support of every special interest the LDP, in its internal shift to becoming a modern, urban-based party, had left lying in the dust, without any concern as to whether the resulting program was internally consistent or affordable -- i.e., LIES -- then:

a) the DPJ is a party of lies and liars, and thus their promises are worthless rhetoric, not policies, or

b) the promises made in the 2009 manifesto, which Kan Naoto tried desperately to render more concrete and believable in the 2010 manifesto, were never the policies of the DPJ, just electoral dandruff clinging to Ozawa Ichiro's jacket.

When Ozawa loyalist and true believer Kawauchi Hiroshi wails about the impending deal on the sheaf of bills reforming the pension and tax systems...

"The LDP's proposal is unacceptable. If we were to agree, the DPJ would become the LDP."

...he is not only showing that he is more a courtier than a politician but also a poor student of history. Fiscal consolidation, realistic pension funding schemes and a willingness to sacrifice growth for stability are core policy positions of the original DPJ. These were the principles undergirding the August 2005 party platform, under then party leader, now Deputy Prime Minister Okada Katsuya.

That DPJ co-founder Hatoyama Yukio forgets what he used to believe and defends the 2009 manifesto as holy writ (J) is neither implausible nor particularly significant. Like the White Queen, Hatoyama can believe a half a dozen impossible things before breakfast.

What the representatives of the DPJ, the LDP and the New Komeito are going to be banging heads over today are the remnants of the fight. The DPJ has a rather weaker position due to the PM's having set a deadline. This prevents the DPJ from exercising its ultimate weapon of extending the Diet session, forcing everyone to just sit on their tailbones until the LDP and the New Komeito fall into bickering in between themselves over just who is preventing the passage of their favorite bits of legislation. It should surprise no one that the DPJ has chosen this moment to float a trial balloon for a radical restructuring of both the LDP's and the DPJ's plans to reform the House of Representatives which hews close to what the New Komeito has been proposing and which would mess up the proportional seat voting for the LDP (E) -- just at the moment the LDP is showing strength in that half of the ballot.

All could go haywire at the last moment. Someone could say something untoward about someone else's sister, leading to a termination of negotiations.

All indications are, however, is that what we are seeing is the end game, one where the LDP and the New Komeito will wander away from the table having agreed to have their members vote with the government on a raft of bills, with neither the promise for elections nor the Noda repudiation of Ozawa Ichiro which the two parties had been demanding.

A Union Is Pulled And The Government Is Better For It

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, At a cursory glance, I have been going a bit overboard on what a bad idea it is to merge Japan's two systems of childcare (Part I and Part II). I saw the unification of the hoikuen and yochien systems as reform for reform's sake: not offering a clear solution to a problem largely restricted to Tokyo and its bedroom suburbs; certain to spawn rivalries in between the personnel of the forcibly merged systems; and encouraging decay in the regulation covering childcare facilities.

Well, the plan to merge the two systems has been dumped. It is being killed in order to win the Liberal Democratic Party's support for the legislation of the combined reforms of social security and tax systems (shakai hosho zei ittai kaikaku, or ittai kaikaku for short). Health, Labour and Welfare Minister Komiyama Yoko (glaringly the only woman in the Noda Cabinet) has stated she will not fight for the unification. (J)

Now commentators would want us to think that this retreat from the promise made in the Democratic Party of Japan's 2010 Manifesto is a demonstration of the hopeless inability of the DPJ to follow through on its promises.

There is of course, another way of looking the situation: that the sacrifice of this promise and others like it are strategic and cheap -- giving up what have upon reflection been very bad or at least unaffordable ideas (eliminating expressway tolls; the 26,000 yen-a-month child allowance system) in return for what would be difficult-to-obtain cooperation from the LDP and the New Komeito on significant reforms, many of which the LDP and the New Komeito were too cowardly to impose upon the country when they held power.

Prime Minister Noda should therefore send gift sets to former party leaders Ozawa Ichiro and Kan Naoto, thanking them for stuffing the 2009 and 2010 manifestos with so many expendable promises.

Why One Can Admire This Man

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

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

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

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