Abe Shinzo: The Remembering

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Some subjects are just not funny. This post will be about one of them. If you are visiting for the usual irreverent take on the Japanese political scene, you should probably stop reading now.

In honor of the zeitgeist, I will address the subject directly, though he is not really here.

Abe-san,

Forgive me for addressing you as an equal. I know you are not used to it.

Abe-san, you frighten me. On Wednesday the 29th, you went to the offices of Machimura Nobutaka, your faction leader, to tell him you are running for the position of president of the Liberal Democratic Party. (E)

I knew relations between you and Machimura were bad. I knew this on April 23, when the Machimura faction held its annual fundraising party. I was there; you were not.

Incidentally, the take at the party you did not attend? 600 million yen. Not bad for a guy whose leadership you fail to respect.

I hope, I pray that you told Machimura of your intention to run only to dissuade Machimura himself from running, as he has indicated he might. I hope, I pray that your formation of a study group, the usual first step toward a run for the presidency, is just a feint. I hope, I pray that the sixty-one lawmakers signed up for your study group are just a show of force by what used to be called the "non-mainstream" segment of the LDP, not the nucleus of an actual support group.

I hope, I pray that on September 14, your name will not be among the roster of candidates.

As a defender of the Democratic Party of Japan, which has never had a serious chance at undoing 54 years of LDP malfeasance, I should be dancing a jig on the tatami. There is no potential leader of the LDP that the DPJ would rather run against. You have foreign policy prescriptions that would have would have the entire region in flames (You have limited your study group's focus to the revitalization of Japan's economy so maybe even you have some awareness of just how inflammatory your security views are). Your silver-spoon-in-mouth upbringing just irks, in comparison to DPJ leader Noda Yoshihiko's relatively modest beginnings and Hashimoto Toru's emergence from the muck. Your history of political thuggery, of simply ignoring the opposition (Remember June 30, 2007, the last day any business got done in the House of Councillors prior to the election? The vote after vote in the morning, every one with the same result: 123 to 96, 123 to 96, again and again? Remember how the opposition just gave up over the lunch break and did not return?) will be disinterred. Your groveling lust for power, refusing to follow the LDP's tradition of the party president resigning after the party suffers a humiliating electoral loss, will be revisited. The chaos that your refusal caused, making unclear exactly who was running the country in August 2007, will be page 4 analysis again.

And of course, your suddenly quitting as prime minister, after saying you would not. For medical reasons, even though you never mentioned them in your resignation speech.

Yes that.

Abe-san, you may not remember that last stunning week, almost exactly five years ago.

Let me help you.

You came back on Sunday night, from the APEC meeting in Sydney, burnt out. August had been a terrible month for you, with many of your party members screaming at you to resign, with Aso Taro conspiring with Yosano Kaoru to replace your "friends of Shinzo" cabinet with one to their and the faction leaders' liking. Your trip to India, Malaysia and Indonesia had been a complete bust politically and left you physically debilitated from the food and the travel. The Cabinet was reshuffled and blew up almost immediately, with Minister Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Endo Takehiko forced to resign after a week in office -- not at your request, but at the request of Aso and Kaoru, who had arranged to have themselves appointed LDP Secretary-General and Chief Cabinet Secretary, respectively.


Then came summit in Sydney. You promised Prime Minister John Howard and President George Bush that Japan would be their stalwart ally on the global stage, when you knew full well that upon returning to Tokyo Ozawa Ichiro's majority in the House of Councillors was going yo kill Japan's participation in Operation Enduring Freedom.

It was the last straw.

Upon your arrival back in Tokyo, you told Aso, who was waiting for you, "I cannot go on."

Unfortunately for you, you chose as your confidant a man with zero sensitivity as to human frailty, a man who when he became prime minister a year later appointed an alcoholic as his minister of finance, in the midst of the worst financial crisis the world had known in eighty years*.

He told you to gambaru, the most heartless and vapid of wishes.

The next day, Monday, you delivered a policy address opening the extraordinary session of the Diet that was so pugnacious and ambitious, it sounded delusional.

You somehow made it through Tuesday.

On Wednesday morning, however, either you or someone near you decided you were finished, done, finito, deep-fat fried. You resigned in the afternoon, claiming you were not capable of saving the Indian Ocean dispatch legislation.

Then on Thursday morning, you left the office of prime minister prematurely, never to return.

Abe-san, do you remember how you left?

Not in the back of ambulance, like most persons suffering from acute, chronic gastroenteritis would. Not with your loving wife beside you. Not with a doctor monitoring you. Not having arranged a formal transfer of your prime ministerial powers to another member of the Cabinet.

No, in the back car of a two-car motorcade packed with panicked SPs (Japan Secret Service) with you in the back seat of the second vehicle, barreling through traffic to the Keio University Hospital.

Remember?

I will be honest: your breaking down was the first hint I ever caught of your being human. Your previous behavior, until the voters of Japan liberated us of you, left me speechless with horror.

Which is why I am terribly afraid at the news you want to be LDP president again.

The LDP, the country, does not need a leader as brittle and fragile as a glass vase, especially as the next LDP leader will be facing a political situation many times more complex, more poisonous and more energy-sapping that the one that felled you in 2007. The LDP, the country does not a new improved bullet proof Abe Shinzo either. You are the archetype of the fantabulist conservative, a man who disdains his country and its people, wanting through revisions of the education system and the Constitution to create a new citizenry, replacing the one you cannot stomach.

Whichever Abe Shinzo you are, after your five years of rest, you should not be running for the presidency of the LDP.

Sincerely,

MTC

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* A belated word of praise for the bizarrely departed Nakagawa Shoichi. To his eternal credit, until that fateful plane flight to Italy, he had remained, probably for the longest period of his adult life, clean and sober. He was an addict, in the grips of a terrible addiction, yet for the good of the country and world he toughed it out.

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

This Time, Definitely

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, A friend of mine tells a hoary joke about standing one's ground:

"Look, I've got my principles.  And if you don't like like 'em...well...then I got other principles!"

That is what I have rattling around inside my head when I read the news that Hashimoto Toru's Osaka Ishin no kai will revise its "Eight Policies of the Revival" (ishin hassaku) by or around the 20th of this month. (J)

The last two days have seen a heating up of efforts by opposition parties to topple the Noda government (J). This has understandably lit a fire under the Osaka Ishin no kai to revise its six-months old list of basic goals (J), especially since the original "Eight Policies" were simply nuts. That the Osaka Ishin no kai wants to become a real party and not just a political organization, may also have triggered a sudden "you know, maybe in February we got a little carried away" realization.

It will be hard, for example, for the new Ishin no kai political party to run candidates for office in the July 2013 House of Councillors elections, as the "Eight Policies" Version 1.0 called for the abolition of said House. That an amendment to the Constitution to eliminate the House of Councillors would have to be approved by the House of Councillors (with a two-thirds majority!) seems to have never crossed the Osaka Ishin no kai's directorate's mind.

Ooops.

I look forward to reading the revision.

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.

Essential Reading on Hashimoto Toru

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, This has been a fertile weekend for postings on the rolling snowball that is Hashimoto Toru.

First we have the essay from Spike Japan on the personal history, amazing sayings and local achievements of Osaka's more-than-just-a-mayor. (Link 1)

I, for one, do not really care if Hashimoto and his family came from the wrong side of the tracks. The Liberal Democratic Party's Nonaka Hiromu came from the wrong side of the tracks and he managed through grit, patience and knowing-where-you-had-dinner-last-night-and-with-whom to push past many a princeling and former elite bureaucrat to become a force within the party, eventually becoming secretary-general. Nonaka, however, never forgot about where he came from, and he would lacerate bureaucrats for their institutionalized prejudice against persons with suspicious ancestral addresses. Nonaka also retained a sympathy for Japan's North Korean population -- the country's least beloved and most misunderstood minority.

What worries me about Hashimoto is he has seems to have the airs of a self-made man. Few things are worse than self-made men, as they believe their success is due to their own special form of greatness, rather than because in their case talent transected with chance and opportunity.

Then we have the always comprehensive Corey Wallace on the confusion Hashimoto has whipped up in the political world, particularly the cosy little corner of the world inhabited by the Liberal Democratic Party. (Link 2)

The part of Hashimoto's Ishin no kai's declaration that has me shaking in my boots (and I am wearing boots) is the proposal for direct elections of prime ministers. (J) Such a proposal faces the same soaring constitutional hurdles as the other major radical reform: the abolition of the House of Councillors. Unlike the abolition, which has no chance of passing as the House of Councillors would have to vote itself out of existence -- a decidedly unlikely event -- a move toward a direct election of prime ministers could gather up enough support to pass through both Houses of the Diet and then received the people's imprimatur in a national referendum.

Nothing would guarantee gridlock in the Diet or, paradoxically, tyranny than to have a popularly elected prime minister. Floating Japanese voters do not vote for something, they vote against the status quo, often in the absence of logical examination of the content of a person's political program (Japanese undecided voters are, of course, far from unique in possessing this trait). Japan lacks the formal institutional brakes or political and social structures necessary to channel the energies of a leader voted into office for negative reasons into positive, rather than merely populist, directions.