OK, Morons. Now What?

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

Yamaguchi Kunio Natsuo (L) and Tanigaki Sadakazu (R) are Leader and President of the New Komeito and the LDP, respectively.

As can be expected in these lamest of times, the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito, having failed to halt the passage of the bond isuance and electoral reform bills in the House of Representatives, submitted at a velocity somewhat faster than the speed of thought a censure motion to the President of the House of Councillors.

So what happens now?

All business in the House of Councillors comes to a halt, the motion taking precedence. The membership gathers in the plenary chamber. The parties submitting the motion explain their reasons for submitting the motion. The chamber votes.

Should the measure pass, nothing of consequence happens, as a censure motion has no legal effect. The prime minister, however, will be persona non grata in the House, stripped of the dignity of his office.

The presumed result is that the House of Councillors will cease to conduct any of its business, despite the Diet's still being in session -- the continued acceptance of high salaries for no work being extremely popular with the taxpayers. (J)

I am looking forward to the LDP's and the New Komeito's speeches. New levels of casuistry will be necessary to prevent folks from laughing.

The prime minister's faults:

- "He convinced us to vote for a rise in the consumption tax, which was our own policy."

- "He has increased Japan's international prestige by keeping his cool at a time when Japan is beset with challenges to its territories and territorial claims."

- "He disposed of non-Japanese activists landing on the Senkakus in exactly the same way Koizumi Jun'ichiro did."

- "He has led his party into passing a bill that provides the legal basis for the government to pay its bills."

- "He has led his party into passing an electoral reform bill that a) resolves the issue of the unconstitutionality of the districts due to over- and under-representation, b) cuts the cost of government by eliminating 40 seats of the House of Representatives and 3) increases the chances of the smaller parties to win seats."

A damning list, to be sure.

The live broadcast from the House of Councillors chamber is scheduled to begin at 10:00 a.m., accessible at http://www.webtv.sangiin.go.jp/webtv/index.php.

Photo image credit: Kyodo News

"Wenn Ich Kultur Höre..."

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, This report from Malcolm Foster of the Associated Press was going so well...

Doctors: Japan nuclear plant workers face stigma
Associated Press

TOKYO – A growing number of Japanese workers who are risking their health to shut down the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant are suffering from depression, anxiety about the future and a loss of motivation, say two doctors who visit them regularly.

But their psychological problems are driven less by fears about developing cancer from radiation exposure and more by something immediate and personal: Discrimination from the very community they tried to protect, says Jun Shigemura, who heads a volunteer team of about ten psychiatrists and psychologists from the National Defense Medical College who meet with Tokyo Electric Power Co. nuclear plant employees.

They tell therapists they have been harangued by residents displaced in Japan's nuclear disaster and threatened with signs on their doors telling them to leave. Some of their children have been taunted at school, and prospective landlords have turned them away.

"They have become targets of people's anger," Shigemura told The Associated Press.

TEPCO workers — in their readily identifiable blue uniforms — were once considered to be among the elite in this rural area 230 kilometers (140 kilometers) north of Tokyo. But after the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami set off meltdowns at the Fukushima plant, residents came to view them as "perpetrators," Shigemura said.

Many TEPCO families in the area now hide their link to the company for fear of criticism, local doctors and psychiatrists say.

Shigemura likens the workers' experience to that of U.S. Vietnam veterans returning home to hostility in the 1960s and early '70s.

"They both worked for (the good of) their countries, but they got a backlash," he said.

(Link)

Wonderful. Sensible. Relevant across national boundaries, showing a commonality of human experience! Excellent contrast with prejudice shown the Hiroshima survivors (today is the anniversary, for those who forget these things).

That members of the public should lash out in frustration against TEPCO workers is understandable. As was the case in the Vietnam protestors' channeling of their frustrations on the blameless Vietnam veterans, the leaders of the organizations responsible for a national, preventable disaster accepted no blame for what had gone seriously wrong on their watches, and the system of representative government, which should have protected to the people and failing that, quickly rectified the problems, instead responded with platitudes and shoddy, dishonest, desultory diddling.

Then, after so much good has been done, someone has to go and shoot the report in the foot:

Culture helps explain some of these dynamics, including the strong Japanese sense of duty and group responsibility.

"People believe the workers share in the responsibility" for the disaster even though they didn't cause it, Tanigawa said.

Ach, ach, ach!

How did one of the co-authors come up with this analysis? Public opinion polling? Interviews with citizens not linked to TEPCO? Post-disaster ethnographies?

Oh, one of the subjects felt as though society was against him (Link). But that is not quite the same thing as society actually being against him, is it?

Can we have some sort of rule here? That when an interviewee from this blessed land cites culture as a reason for a certain outcome, that the questioner ask, immediately, before one more word leaves the interview subject's mouth, "On what data do you base that statement?"

When the interviewee turns out to not have any hard evidence to back up his or her claim, the interviewer should say, "Thanks. I know what you were trying to do. However, it is not helping. Let's stick to what the data says, OK?"

Japan's Depleted Politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We Can Have Elections!

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Well of one kind. And only with regrets. And they are not the elections everyone is talking about.

Quietly, and without very much fuss, it seems that Ishikawa Yasuo, the disgraced former minister of defense (Mister "I am an amateur in defense issues and that is the epitome of civilian control" to you and me), now secretary-general of the Democratic Party of Japan's House of Councillors delegation, has crafted a simple plan to rectify the disparities in that House that the courts have ruled unconstitutional. The plan has the agreement of the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito and the disappointed acquiescence of the rest of the opposition parties. In contrast with the reform of the House of Representatives districts, which has the various parties talking past one another, the Ishikawa Plan has an excellent chance of being converted into law by the end of this extended regular session of the Diet.

The plan is a minimal, hair-splitting solution to the Supreme Court-mandated reform of the disparities in the House of Councillors. Kanagawa Prefecture, which currently suffers from the fewest Senators per capita, will be bounced from six senators to eight. Osaka Prefecture, which is the next in line in terms of underrepresentation, will be similarly bounced from six to eight.

To supply these four new Senate seats, someone will have to give up seats. Those someones will be Fukushima Prefecture (great timing!) and Gifu Prefecture, both of which will drop from four senators to just two.

This is a quick and dirty solution. The highest level of disparity in the country, currently 5.11 to 1 in between the voters in Kanagawa Prefecture and those in Tottori Prefecture, will drop to 4.75 to 1 in between those in Hyogo Prefecture and those in Tottori. This slips below the court-mandated maximum of 4.99 to 1, allowing for a legal election to take place on schedule in July next year. (J)

While the Ishikawa Plan seems unremarkable for what it contains, what it does not contain makes it interesting. Gone, for example, is any hint of the DPJ's manifesto promise to cut 40 seats from the House of Councillors. This is a huge concession on the part of Ishikawa, a reputed Ozawa Ichiro toady. Also absent from the plan is any hint of an attempt to accommodate the New Komeito Party's and the Democratic Socialist Party's desires to replace the d'Hondt proportional seat distribution system with the Additional Member System. The minor parties have been asked to wait to have their desires answered prior to the 2016 electoral cycle, ostensibly in order give everyone time to think about the proposal.

In the absence honoring the promises of massive seat cuts made in the DPJ's 2009 manifesto, reform of the House of Councillors was always relatively simple. This is due in part to the greater level of disparity allowed -- 4.99 to 1 as opposed to 1.99 to 1, the standard set by the Supreme Court for the House of Representatives districts.

Another contributing factor is, perversely, the knowledge that the House of Councillors had all the constitutional sense wrung out of it decades ago. Designed to be friendly to independents, and thus a brake on party mob rule, it became partisan battleground through the 1982 introduction of the awarding of proportional seats from party lists. The takeover of the House by parties failed to upend the relationship between the two Houses thanks to the persistence of the 1955 System, whereby the LDP retained dominance in the House of Representatives and the country and the Socialist Party played the part of an opposition while being the dominant party's tacit accommodators. However, in the 1990s the concorde collapsed, half after the breakup of the LDP in 1993 and half in the Socialists' committing ideological suicide from 1994 onward.

The person who really cracked the nut, however, was, unsurprisingly, Ozawa Ichiro. First through the New Frontier Party and then later through the DPJ, Ozawa capitalized on the perversion of the the House of Councillors' original purpose and status to make it, and not the House of Representatives, the fulcrum point in politics.

That the minority parliament in the Diet can now, through control of the House of Councillors, hold the rest of the apparatus of government hostage, was never the intent of the writers of the Constitution. The Ishikawa Plan's meagre reforms will make no dent in this anomalous situation.

The resolution of the unconstitutionality of the districts in the House of Councillors sets up a huge battle over the reform of the districts of the House of Representatives. It will not be resolved, as the LDP desires, with a simple abolition of the five smallest electoral districts. The DPJ rank-and-file will demand an Armageddon over House of Representatives redistricting.

Expect them to get one.

What Knowledgeable Friends Are For

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

It seems I have won my bet with Okumura Jun on the size of the July 6 protest in front of the Prime Minister's Residence. According to Tokyo Metropolitan Police estimates 17,000 demonstrators showed up on June 29, the day after the restart of the #3 reactor of the Oi nuclear power plant. According to the same source, 21,000 demonstrators showed up on Friday night (Protest organizers have of course said that far more protesters showed up on both nights than the police claim. Given the incentives, I am sure the correct number is somewhere in between).

Now Okumura-san can claim that the 24% increase in estimated crowd size, rather than the greater than 25% decrease he predicted, was due to the free-for-all that happened at the Foreign Correspondent's Club earlier in the day, when the non-Japanese press bludgeoned Kurokawa Kiyoshi, chairman of the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Commission for the discrepancies between the English language précis and the Japanese text, including the foul attribution of the failure to "Japanese culture" found only in the English version ((F and E). Perhaps it was the obvious the desire of the folks on Friday to be out protesting in the rain, rather than under clear skies as was the case the week before.

Whatever.

All joking aside, what was stunning and important was that the mainstream news media on Friday stopped pretending the protests were not happening. TV news broadcasts had helicopters circling the Prime Minister's Residence (try that one in Washington DC, Beijing or Moscow) broadcasting live images of the crowd. The newspapers stepped up their coverage, including even the Yomiuri Shimbun, which refused to report on the June 29 protest. (J)

So over lunch at Aux Bacchanales (Okumura-san spent part of his formative years in a majority French-speaking city and I went to a bilingual school where one of the languages was French -- so our having lunch in a Tokyo bistro appropriate, thank you very much), I will have the chance to discuss why he and I have such different views of the timing of the next House of Representatives election.

As far as I can see, there is only one human being of consequence who wants a snap election after the passage of the consumption tax bill through the House of Councillors: Liberal Democratic Party President Tanigaki Sadakazu. Tanigaki knows that if the Diet is not dissolved before the end of its session on September 8, he will have to face an LDP presidential election. Due to his lackluster performance as LDP leader -- the party failing under his leadership to capitalize on numerous bumbles and fumbles of the Democratic Party of Japan -- he will go down as only the second LDP president, after Kono Yohei, to never become prime minister.

Sadly, and all too typically, Tanigaki is alone in believing that the stage is set for elections. The news media complex, after reporting at length in February that the current electoral map is unconstitutional, then repeating the process in May following the Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko's on-air admission that the districts are unconstitutional, are humming that elections will be held in the next two months -- proving once again that for the domestic media, facts will never be allowed to get in the way of a good story*.

For his party and party-to-be, Ozawa Ichiro has been declaiming that elections are imminent (J - check out the invaluable pyramid of the number of elections of the House of Representatives members of Ozawa's proto-party). However, Ozawa is merely using the threat of elections in order to 1) keep his fellow rebels close to him, 2) encourage to other members of the DPJ to defect (this in order that they might avoid going into elections tarred with the brush of raising taxes) and 3) perpetuate the illusion that he knows more than he actually knows**.

As for Tanigaki's fellow LDP's members, they are worried that entering a campaign with Tanigaki at the head of the party will lead to disaster. Better to wait until September, replace Tanigaki with someone more dynamic like Ishiba Shigeru, Ishihara Nobuteru or Hayashi Yoshimasa***, then push the Noda government to the wall in the fall extraordinary Diet session.

As always, there is the unresolved matter of rendering the holding of elections constitutional. The current situation would make a great trivia game "gotcha" question: "Name the countries in Northeast Asia where the holding of national elections is illegal." In a recent GlobalTalk 21 post, Okumura-san argues that a snap election is possible, either via the legislative fiddle devised by the LDP -- eliminate the five smallest electoral districts and their 5 seats in the Diet, lowering the discrepancy between the smallest remaining district and the largest to 1.78, well below the Supreme Court's threshold of 1.99 -- or simply bullrush the Emperor and the Supreme Court, in succession, over the unconstitutionality of the districts.

As for the latter solution, forget it. There is no way under the sun (intentional allusion) that Prime Minister Noda will convince the present emperor to send this blessed land spinning into an extra-constitutional void. He is a people's emperor, willing to junk tradition when tradition is contrary to fact or contemporary practice. Moreover, he is the son of Hirohito: he will never, ever, ever allow an extra-constitutional assertion of power by any branch of the government.

As for the first solution, not even the LDP, which dreamed it up, believes the DPJ will ever accept it. Redistricting is the key to the kingdom of heaven: he or she who holds in his or her hand determines who shall rule this nation for the next decade. It is the prize that the DPJ fought for -- to reward the DPJ's core urban/suburban constituencies with the representation they had so long been denied under LDP rule...and lest it be forgotten, the sad-sack district, the one whose voters are the least represented in the House of Representatives, whose votes are worth only 40% of the votes in the least populous Kochi #3 district -- that is Chiba District #4 -- Prime Minister Noda's district.

As if the DPJ needed any more reason to delay the next election, the popularity numbers for Hashimoto Toru's Ishin no kai have not yet plateaued. Until such time as it is clear just how far Hashimoto's political movement can roll, the incentive is to sit tight.

So a snap election? In the evening newspapers' dreams perhaps.

---------------------
* The "Ozawa Ichiro is corrupt" presumption is another example.

** This is a classic smart prophet's double game. If the prophesied comes about, then the prophet was right. If the prophesied does not come about, the prophet claims it was precisely because of his/her prophecy that those in control altered conditions so as to render the prophesied impossible.

*** Hayashi has already founded his own study group, a precursor to a major candidate's run for the office of the presidency. He is the default Washington candidate (E). He is, however, a member of the House of Councillors, a huge demerit in LDP internal politics. Party members want to a leader from the House of Representatives, where he/she will share in the fates of those thrown into an election by a Diet dissolution.

The Illusion of Choice

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

"What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies, when he can't have babies?

- Reg, Life of Brian (1979)

NHK (J - Time Sensitive) and Fuji TV (J - Time Sensitive) released the results of their latest random dial public opinion polls last night.

The pollsters found that:

- The popularity of the Cabinet remains mired in the zone of mediocrity, indicating the Prime Minister received no bounce for ridding his Cabinet of its most troublesome members.

Do your support or not support the Noda Cabinet?

NHK
Support 27%
Do not support 51%

Fuji TV
Support 28%
Do not support 61%

- That anti-nuclear power feelings in the country are not visceral, at least not on the national level, and do not extend to a continued moratorium on the restart of Kansai Electric Power's Oi reactors.

NHK
Do you agree with the prime minister's statement on Friday that the restart of the Oi nuclear reactors is necessary to protect the livelihood and security of Japan?

Agree 31%
Disagree 27%
Neither 37%

Fuji TV
Are you in favor of a restart of the Oi reactors?

In favor 49%
Opposed 43%

- That the country is once again favoring an early election, after backing off earlier this year.

When should the next House of Representatives election be held?

NHK

As soon as possible 20%
Before the September leadership elections of the DPJ and the LDP 15%
Before the year's end 21%
At the end of the current Diet's tenure 36%

Fuji TV

Summer this year 27%
Before the year's end 26%
At the end of the current Diet's tenure 34%


As to who would prevail in an early elections, one has to consult other survey results. The Kyodo poll of June 4-5, which found support for the Noda Cabinet at 32%, makes for grim reading for the ruling Democratic Party of Japan.

Which party would you vote for in the proportional seat selection of the next House of Representatives election?

DPJ 16%
LDP 30%
Your Party 7%
New Komeito 4%
Communist 4%
Socialist 2%
Other 5%
Do not know/no response 33%

Given party support numbers like these, the probability that Prime Minister Noda will call a snap election is zero. He will not lead his party into oblivion.

Nevertheless, the news media dutifully reports that in his Diet testimony yesterday Noda signaled that should the bills raising the consumption not pass during this Diet session, he might ask the Emperor to dissolve the Diet, triggering elections. The prime minister was purportedly cracking the whip at the anti-tax forces in his own party, most of whom are allied with former party leader Ozawa Ichiro and many of whom would lose their seats should an election be called tomorrow. (J)

Except of course, that the Diet cannot be dissolved tomorrow. Technically the emperor could dissolve the present House of Representatives but the result would be the implosion of the 1946 Constitution.

My bet is that the Heisei emperor will not honor a request to dissolve the Diet -- a refusal that itself would trigger a constitutional crisis.

Indeed blessed land's continuing constitutional constipation and the ruling party's abysmal poll numbers combine to form a blockage rendering public opinion largely moot. The public may dislike or hate certain decisions the government is making. However, that displeasure has no outlet. Unless an alliance is forged in between Ozawa's followers and the LDP -- a pact that the LDP, having once concluded with Ozawa, is determined to never conclude again -- nothing can budge the Noda government from its perch.

So while the poll takers continue to take the pulse of the people, the opinions expressed have no impact on the government's actions.

It is the illusion of choice.

Catching Up On The News - Unconstitutional Elections

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Something huge happened yesterday.

In a footnote to my post of yesterday, I noted that NHK announcer Okoshi Kensuke last Thursday confronted Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko with the bald fact that the current map of the House of Representatives districts is unconstitutional, rendering an election impossible on technical grounds. While the Prime Minister had no alternative but to concede that the current map is unconstitutional, he dodged the thrust of Okoshi's question, saying that the Diet had too many important and difficult issues before it for anyone to be discussing a dissolution and an election at this time.

Noda had been, until the live NHK interview, careful to not get cornered on the question of the constitutionality of holding an election. He had left it up to Koshi'ishi Azuma, the Democratic Party of Japan's secretary-general, to tell the seemingly bone-headed members of the political press over and over again that since the issue of the disproportionality of a single vote (ippyo no kakusa) had not been resolved in accordance with the standards set down by the Supreme Court judgment of March 2011, no House of Representatives elections could take place.

While any position aside from the one Koshi'ishi has taken is ludicrous -- unconstitutional meaning “contrary to the basic law of the land, the law upon which all other laws are based” -- Noda has been careful to preserve the notion that the holding of an election is a matter of opinion -- his opinion -- rather than a matter of law.

The reason Noda has needed to maintain this fallacy is simple: his power to call an election is the whip he needs to keep the followers of former DPJ party leader Ozawa Ichiro in line. Nothing terrifies the Ozawa-vetted first termers like the possibility being plunged into an election. With the disdain the public has at present for the DPJ and perhaps permanently for Ozawa, each and every one of these Ozawa acolytes would be wiped out.

Perversely, the opposition Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito have aided Noda in the maintenance of this illusion. The leaders of both the LDP and the New Komeito know just as well as anyone else that elections are impossible if the districts are unconstitutional. Nevertheless they have been calling for elections for two years straight. And why not? It is the biggest free lunch in history. The public opininon polls on the level of public support for the LDP and the New Komeito could find that both have 0% support and it would not matter: the two parties would still call for elections.

Noda, for his part, tacitly used opposition demands for elections as a means of bolstering the illusion he has wished to preserve. If the opposition is demanding elections, it stands to reason that the opposition at least believes elections can be held.

Hence the sound of breaking glass yesterday when LDP Secretary-General Ishihara Nobuteru asked Prime Minister Noda, in special Diet Committee session, whether in fact the failure to correct the disproportionality of votes in the electoral districts put a shackle on the right to dissolve the Diet. Noda replied that no, failure to act did not shackle the right and that elections would be held when they he thought they were needed. (J)

Technically, both men are correct. Following through on Ishihara's thought, a dissolution of the Diet would trigger the implementation of Article 54 of the Constitution, which states that following a dissolution of the Diet, an election must be held within 40 days. Since the current electoral districts have been ruled unconstitutional, and the Diet would no longer be in existence to fix them, the election would a priori be void.

As for Noda's insistence that the right to dissolve the Diet is not compromised, his position is true only via the most painstaking of hairsplitting. The right to dissolve the Diet, held by the Emperor but exercised upon the advice of the Prime Minister, is not compromised until the moment the right is exercised, at which point the country would be blasted out into extraconstitutional space.

While the constitutional implications of this conundrum are fascinating*, what was of immense political importance in Ishihara's question was that unless the LDP tries to pull off the same trick that the DPJ has been pulling -- i.e., having the party secretary-general insisting that holding a House of Representatives election is impossible while the party president maintains that it is not -- the delicate minuet Noda and the opposition have been dancing together has come to a sudden stop. If a gaggle of reporters corner LDP president Tanigaki Sadakazu and press him on whether or not Ishihara's question means the LDP now believes holding elections is unconstitutional, chances are the not terribly swift-thinking Tanigaki will not have an intelligible response.

If and when Tanigaki flubs his moment in the spotlight, the political game board will become completely scrambled, just when Ozawa Ichiro, the master of Go (Part 1 and Part 2) is set to meet with the prime minister. (J)

-----------------------------
* The current emperor, being the conscientious, cautious but independent-thinking man that he is, would likely, on the most perfect of legal grounds, toss post-1945 precedent into the dustbin by refusing the prime minister's request for a dissolution.

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.

Just What The Heck Did They Think They Were Doing?

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Yesterday, a leak of huge proportions sailed through the halls of Nagata-cho, the home of Japan's national legislature and the various offices attached to the prime minister: PM Noda Yoshihiko and head of the opposition, Liberal Democratic Party President Tanigaki Sadakazu, had had a secret one-on-one meeting in a Tokyo hotel on February 25. (E)

Both men inexplicably denied that the meeting had taken place. While certainly both of them face very difficult reelection campaigns in the fall -- ones where they will be challenged by forces within their parties extremely unhappy with the way each has been handling party and Diet affairs -- and the news of a secret meeting would only inflame the passions of those opposed to their respective party leaderships --denying what everyone knew to be true seems, at this point, the height of folly.

Just what the two could have been discussing in secret is the subject of wild speculation. The most common supposition is that the two were discussing a quid pro quo: passage of the bill raising the consumption tax in return for an early dissolution of the Diet. This "discussion dissolution" (hanashiai kaisan) has been a favorite proposal of LDP party elders and conservative members of the commentariat in recent weeks. That the LDP had been chattering about it so much was unsurprising, given that the period of time during which the prime minister could dissolve the Diet and call and election without provoking a constitutional crisis was rapidly closing.

Unfortunately for this theory, the timing of the meeting does not neatly match up with the schedule of the constitutional problem with a House of Representatives election. The meeting was held in the evening on February 25. This was also the last day that the House of Representatives could be dissolved without an unchallengeable unconstitutionality of the current electoral map. Basically, the two would have to agree with a three-step process: the passage of a bill fixing the unconstitutionality of the electoral map, then bring together elements of each of their two parties together to vote for the tax increase, followed by a Noda's exercising his right to unilaterally dissolve the Diet. Seeing as neither Noda nor Tanigaki has enough support within his party to drag their colleagues into this scheme -- the DPJ's proposed reform of the House of Representatives cutting far too many of the House of Representatives' proportional seats for the LDP's ally the New Komeito to swallow -- made the entire subject moot.

If the two were not talking about a hanashiai kaisan over the consumption tax, what could they have been talking about? Another line of speculation is that Noda was testing Tanigaki's willingness to fashion a broad, even if only a loose, coalition government of fiscal conservatives to oppose the internal challenge Noda faces from Ozawa Ichiro. With the tossing out of the most damning piece of evidence in Ozawa's accounting irregularities trial on February 17, Ozawa has been on a tear to reestablish himself as the most important power broker within the DPJ. In his most stunning step outside the boundaries of his comfort zone, he agreed to a long interview with The Asahi Shimbun, outlining his opposition to nearly everything the Noda government is trying to achieve. Since Ozawa agrees to mainstream media interviews less frequently than Japan changes prime ministers, this was a sign that he feels himself now nearly bulletproof in intra-party infighting, even as his membership in the DPJ remains formally under suspension. Given his propensity to take his followers out of a party when he feels slighted, and that so many of the DPJ's first-termers and even middle-ranking members are terrified that a rise in the consumption tax condemns them to electoral annihilation, the number of folks Ozawa could take with him has swelled from the estimates of 50 or so prevalent a few months ago. He could conceivably take half the DPJ with him, given the results of the September 2010 leadership election between Ozawa and Kan Naoto. (J)

Whatever the two may have been discussing, that they should meet should not be such a big deal. Leaders meet in secret all the time, feeling out where the other really wants go out, away from the extremism that the camera lights bring out in every politician. This is particularly the case for Tanigaki, who has been forced to cling to a hopeless strategy of saying "No" to everything the DPJ has proposed, a stance which has exasperated certain of the clearer thinking members of the LDP. True, meeting in secret just four days before the two were heading into a clash of the titans Question Time session looks like match-fixing. However, given the way that Prime Minister Noda pummeled Tanigaki in the February 29 session, it seems hardly likely the pair had agreed to treat each other with kid gloves.

So why the denials regarding the meeting? Credibility is a far more precious currency than consistency. So you went behind your colleagues' back to find out what the other side is willing to give up -- so what? Lying in public -- that is fatal.

There was in a time when if the Chief Cabinet Secretary, the government's main spokesman, would say something is true or not true, that was the end of the discussion. Secret agreements on the return of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty? They do not exist. But there are copies in the U.S. National Archives! That is irrelevant, they do not exist.

We do not live in such a time anymore. Indeed, under the DPJ-led coalition government, the heretofore non-existent Okinawa agreements were shown to have existed. That something was secret cannot be denied when the secret gets out.

So for the increasingly pathetic and irrelevant Fujimura Osamu to insist that the meeting never took place is the pretty much same as a confimation that it did.

On Sunday, We Enter A State Of Transcendance and Transgression

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, On Saturday, February 25, the clock runs out on the Diet's efforts to come up with an electoral map for the next House of Representatives election. In March of last year, the Supreme Court declared the 2009 electoral map unconstitutional due to excessive disproportionality in between the populations of the smallest electoral districts and the largest. It suggested that the maps be redrawn so that the disproportionality of population between the smallest and largest districts does not exceed 1.99. Otherwise, the Supreme Court might for the first time in its history invalidate an election.

It is only on Sunday, however, that this blessed land enters of state of transcending the Constitution and transgressing against the Supreme Court's orders.

The Diet was given a reprieve by the judicial branch. It had up to one year after the announcement of the results of the 2010 population census to make the necessary adjustments to the electoral map to bring the disproportionality in districts below the 1.99 threshold.

It was one year ago on Saturday that the results of the 2010 decennial census were announced.

Due to the split control of the Houses of the Diet, both the ruling parties and the opposition parties had to come together to devise an electoral map that fell within the guidelines set by the Supreme Court's ruling.

This the parties have failed to do.

The parochial interests of the parties are in opposition. The ruling Democratic Party of Japan, in particular, has wanted to make good on its 2009 Manifesto promise to cut the number of proportional seats in the House of Representatives to 100 from its current 180. This guaranteed a showdown with the mini- and micro-parties, which remain viable solely because of the large number of proportional seats available. Since the major opposition party, the Liberal Democratic Party, desperately needs the votes of the mini-party New Komeito to elect its candidates in the district elections, it (the LDP) could not support the DPJ's proposed cuts.

The winners and losers are easy to distinguish. The ruling DPJ, which is languishing in the popularity polls, has no wish for an election at this time. For the DPJ, it is no elections, no problems. The New Komeito and the micro-parties are also winners, as the logjam has prevented the DPJ and the LDP from colluding in chopping down the number of proportional seats, which is in both DPJ's and the LDP's interests as the only two parties currently capable of running credible campaigns for the district seats.

One sure loser is the LDP. According to recent poll results, a head-to-head contest against the DPJ would lead to a reversal of the losses the LDP suffered in 2009. The LDP has a strong desire to force an election while this iron is still hot. The LDP is also desperate to contest andelection before the regionalist parties, the most important of which is Hashimoto Toru Ishin no kai, get themselves organized for running candidates for House of Representatives seats. Once the regionalist parties nominate candidates, the voters will have two large anti-DPJ parties on the ballot. Given the still strong public aversion to the LDP brand and a natural wish to not admit a mistake (for having dumped the LDP from power in 2009) the default anti-DPJ vote will like fall into the hands of the regionalists.

The major news outlets are enraged at the political parties for allowing the country to fall into a state of constitutional disgrace (Here is The Asahi Shimbun's editorial. Here is the Nihon Keizai Shimbun's -- better hurry up and copy this latter one).

News dudes and dudettes, the time to get enraged was last year, not days before the deadline.

Does the end of the grace period mean that the prime minister cannot dissolve the Diet, since a valid election cannot be held? Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osamu would want everyone to believe that the prime minister could still call an election (J) -- this in order to scare the living daylights out of the first-termers and Ozawa Ichiro supporters in the House of Representatives, as they would likely be utterly wiped out were an election to be called today.

Unfortunately, that the Chief Cabinet Secretary says something is so does not make it so. In this case, Fujimura is clearly wrong/being economical with the truth (take your pick).

Rest assured that Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko and current DPJ leadership will use this suspension of normal constitutional processes to drive the LDP leadership nuts -- and to hold out electoral reform carrots to the New Komeito in repeated efforts to entice the mini-party into betraying the LDP, its longtime ally.

On Electoral Reform and the Possibility of Constitutional Crisis

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Members of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan and the opposition alliance of the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito met inside the Diet building yesterday to discuss the New Komeito's proposal for a brand new way to distribute the proportional seats in the House of Representatives. The New Komeito, with the backing of the mini- and micro-parties, has proposed the adoption of the hirei daihyo renyosei, which Wikipedia translates as the "Additional Member System."

The new system would strongly favor medium-sized parties while penalizing large parties. In a bid to drive a wedge between the members of the alliance, the DPJ has been inviting the New Komeito to make its case on the application of the new system. With a comfortable majority in the House of Representatives and a mandate running out in August of next year, the DPJ has the luxury of sitting back and watching the two erstwhile allies slug it out over the new system. (J)

The onus on passing electoral reform quickly is upon the LDP. Both parties are in the dumps in terms of public popularity, with party support numbers in the teens. Both would rather not hold an election at this time, given the uncertainty over which direction the non-aligned voters will break. The LDP, however, feels far more threatened by the rise of regional parties such as Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru's Ishin no Kai and the nascent force Aichi governor Omura Takeaki hopes to raise through the establishment of his political training school (J). The new forces, should they be able to field candidates in a sufficient number of constituencies, will represent the non-LDP alternative to the DPJ -- i.e., the party to vote for when you want to vote against the DPJ but just cannot stomach a return to power by the LDP.

The longer the time it takes to reform the electoral system, the longer the amount of time the new regionalist politicians have to build their political machines, the worse look the odds for the LDP.

Hence, when you hear about the Noda government cutting a deal with the LDP and the New Komeito over passage of the consumption tax bill in return for early elections, reach for the salt shaker. The party that has the incentive to sacrifice is the LDP, not the DPJ.

Now as to the other strange thought -- that Prime Minister Noda can call a House of Representatives election -- a warning. Last March, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional any apportionment system where there are electoral districts with populations 1.99 times greater than the population in the smallest district. According to the official population census of 2010, 97 of the current 300 House of Representatives districts have populations 2 times those of Kochi District #3, the current smallest district by population. The 97 districts are thus unconstitutional.

"So what?" some say, "The courts have declared House of Representatives elections unconstitutional before but have never nulified an electoral outcome. The March ruling invalidated the 2009 results and the Supreme Court did nothing." True, but all previous rulings have been ex post facto. The Supreme Court had no incentive to try to reverse what had already taken place.

In this instance, however, the constitutional standard is already in place. The current system has already been declared invalid. Holding an election may be physically possible but the Supreme Court would trigger a constitutional crisis if it were to not invalidate the results.

As to those who speculate on a constitutional fiddle, such as the one devised to allow the existence of the Self Defense Forces in seeming defiance of Article 9 of the Constitution, based largely on the playing around with the names ("It's not an army; it's a Ground Self Defense Force. They are not soldiers and sailors; they are Self Defense Forces personnel!), another warning -- there is really no constitutional fiddle possible.

Article 81 of the Constitution reads:

The Supreme Court is the court of last resort with power to determine the constitutionality of any law, order, regulation or official act.

and Article 47 reads:

Electoral districts, method of voting and other matters pertaining to the method of election of members of both Houses shall be fixed by law.

(Source: Prime Minister's Residence website)

These two Articles put up a solid wall. There is no crack to squeeze a snap election through. If there were, the parties would not be meeting right now and fighting so fiercely over the eventual bill.

The DPJ has set a date of February 25 for the final draft of a compromise bill. Frankly, given the incentives on all sides to hang on for dear life to their own plans, it will take a miracle for the parties to meet this deadline. (J)

But under duress, miracles sometimes occur. Necessity is, as they say, the mother of invention.