Japan's Politics Stomps On The Accelerator

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, In The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens entitles one of the chapters "TOO FULL OF ADVENTURE TO BE BRIEFLY DESCRIBED."*

I feel the same way about events in politics these past few days.

-- Liberal Democratic Party president Tanigaki Sadakazu faced reality yesterday, giving up on even running for reelection (E). That he waited so long, forcing his second-in-command Ishihara Nobuteru to forego advance preparation for his own bid for the presidency, either represents faith triumphing over observable fact, or payback for Ishihara's only half-hearted expressions of support for Tanigaki's running for a second term.

Though Ishihara appears to be on course for a victory in the presidential race, and, after the next House of Representatives election, the premiership, it bears noticing that historically his presidential bid is an aberration. Only two secretary-generals have taken over as president since the peaceful, negotiated transition from Nakasone Yasuhiro to Takeshita Noboru in November 1987.

The first was the closed-door, five person negotiated agreement for Secretary-General Mori Yoshiro to take over the premiership from the brain dead but still on life support Obuchi Keizo, three days after Obuchi suffered his fatal stroke.

The other instance of a secretary-general succeeding a party president was Aso Taro taking over for Fukuda Yasuo when Fukuda suddenly resigned on September 1, 2008. Aso had only been in office a month, having been named secretary-general in a leadership shakeup on August 1.

The Aso case points out the main reason why most secretary-generals cannot usually make the direct transition from the party #2 position to the presidency. Under normal circumstances, the secratary-general has been the right-hand man to the president, as much responsible for the daily decisions, right or wrong, as the man in the #1 spot. The secretary-general has also always been seen as bearing ultimate responsibility for the LDP's performance in elections. Many a leadership transition was triggered by the party having a poor showing in an election, mandating that the secretary-general resign and serve a brief stint in limbo.

However, in this instance, the abrasiveness and shallow party roots of Ishihara's main challenger, foreign and security policy specialist Ishiba Shigeru, seem to be showing a green light for Ishihara's election, possibly even in the first round vote of the LDP local chapters.

The other challengers in the LDP race -- former prime minister Abe Shinzo, Machimura Nobutaka and Hayashi Yoshimasa -- seem to be in the race for tactical or public relations reasons.

Hayashi is the Washington think tank candidate -- fluent in English and a familiar face in Washington. He is, however, a member of the House of Councillors -- whose members are seen as not having a personal investment in the party's performance in the House of Representatives.  Hayashi is seen as being only technically available to step into the position of prime minister.

Machimura is the faction head candidate, participating so that the list of candidates has at least one faction head in it. Machimura's candidacy presents another hurdle for Machimura faction member Ishihara, as he would normally count on the votes of his faction as the core of his support in the Diet members' round of voting.

Abe is entering the race for purely tactical reasons. He used to be both the ultra-conservative and Washington think tank candidate. His breakdown while in office, unsurprisingly cooled most Washington and national interest. He does remain, however, the most recognizable of the unapologetic, fantastic history-believing nationalists. He is thus probably running in order to play the part of kingmaker in between Ishiba and Ishihara, extracting a promise of accelerated militarization and anti-Chinese and anti-South Korean stances in return for the votes of his supporters.

-- The window for declaring oneself a DPJ leadership candidate closed yesterday. With Hosono Goshi having been talked out of running on Friday last, a field of four candidates-- deridable as "Noda Yoshihiko and the Three Dwarfs" -- now are set for a whirlwind campaign ending on September 21. (E)

As Okumura Jun has noted, the explosion of interest in a Hosono candidacy last week was prima facie evidence that the three remaining Noda challengers -- Haraguchi Kazuhiko, Akamatsu Hirotaka and Kano Michihiko -- do not inspire. In speeches yesterday, each of the candidates, whilst criticizing the prime minister and his policy of accommodation with the LDP-New Komeito alliance, revealed his particular weakness. Haraguchi fulminated about the public's loss of faith in the party due to the abandonment of the promises in the 2009 manifesto. Haraguchi seems unaware that 1) manifesto author Ozawa Ichiro and his most of his acolytes decamped a few months ago, leaving a very small audience, at least among Diet members, for the "we have forgotten our roots" message.

Akamatsu's and Kano's candidacies seem more tactical, given their comparatively advanced ages (Akamatsu is 63; Kano 70). Akamatsu represents the potential votes of the party's under-appreciated socialists, while Kano can offer the votes of his own group and the votes of the members with a visceral hatred/fear of a DPJ commitment to participate in the Trans Pacific Partnership. Kano already has a history of vote trading, his support having been a crucial component of Noda Yoshihiko's victory over the Ozawa-supported Kaieda Banri in the 2011 leadership election.

Both Akamatsu and Kano railed against the three-party agreement that made the passage of the social welfare and pension reform bills possible. Noda defended it, and defended the extension of the three party agreement into the fall extraordinary session. Both sides are just blowing smoke, however. The three party agreement has falls into abeyance with Tanigaki's withdrawal from the LDP presidential race and the automatic evaporation on Spetember 8 of the bond issuance bill and electoral reform bill.

-- Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru on Sunday hosted a symposium (E) introducing the ideas that will vault his regional movement into a national political party, the Nihon (or Nippon) Ishin no Kai (the Japan Renewal Party or Japan Restoration Party. By the way, forget about running a search on 日本維新の会 -- what you get is the Facebook page of a Haraguchi Kazuhiko study group of the same name). At the seemingly interminable meeting (five hours in real time) Hashimoto introduced the seven members of the Diet who will today (Tuesday) tender their resignations from their current parties in time for the the JRA's coming out reception on Wednesday. That three of the seven are House of Councillors proportional seat members of the Your Party indicates the prescience of Michael Penn's private circulation article, of August 27, "Yoshimi Watanabe's Your Party in Terminal Crisis."

Of the remaining four defectors, three come from the DPJ and one from the LDP. Matsunami Kenta of the LDP is a proportional seat member of the House of Representatives, and from the Kinki bloc where Osaka is located. That the majority of the JRA's Diet members are proportional seat members indicates the cautious attitude district seat holders are taking with towards to Hashimoto's leap into national politics. That the majority of the defectors are also from the House of Councillors, rather than the more volatile and politically significant House of Representatives, indicates a further lack of certainty among those dissatisfied with the status quo that Hashimoto has coattails.

Also attending and speaking at the meeting were the usual suspects of devolution of power to local governments: former comedian and Miyazaki governor Higashikokubaru Hideo and two of The Three Hiroshis: former Kanagawa Yokohama pretty boy governor mayor Nakata Hiroshi and former revisionist textbook inceptor and Suginami City mayor Yamada Hiroshi, whose Spirit of Japan Party (Nihon soshinto) went nowhere. (J)

That Hashimoto featured these pre-August 2009 election retreads at his talk fest, and indeed wants them to run as Nihon Ishin no Kai candidates, indicates that for all the media interest and public opinion poll enthusiasm for the new party, there is little meat yet on the bones.

-- The deployment of MV-22 Osprey aircraft to the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station in Okinawa received what was ostensibly a significant blow on Sunday from a mass protest (E). Organizers claimed 101,000 persons participated in the rally. Aerial images on television seemed to indicate the size of the crowd was closer to 20,000, though it is possible thousands were, like crowd at the July 16 nuclear protest, hiding under the trees from the blazing sun.

Given that signing off on Osprey operations is electoral poison, it is likely that the final OK will be given by a lame duck Cabinet after after the results of a House of Representatives elections are in. That the U.S. Marine Corps generally gets what it wants means that the effectiveness of the protest is about as doubtful as its crowd numbers.

-- The purported suicide of Financial Services and Postal Reform Minister Matsushita is still the top of the news -- as a such a rare occurrence should be.

I loathe conspiracy theories and theorists but the official narratives so far regarding this case do not hold together. We are supposed to believe that a man found toppled over had hanged himself, or strangled himself with cords of some kind. We are being asked to believe that his security detail did not have a key to his condominium, having to use Minister Matsushita's wife's key to open the condominium front door. We are being asked to believe that he left goodbye messages to his wife, Prime Minister Noda and the Cabinet. We are being asked to believe that the imminent publication of a Shukan Shincho expose of a purported mistress may have pushed Matsushita to take his own life. (J)

As to the last claim, when you are seventy-three, recovering from prostrate prostate cancer and are revealed to have engaged in extra-marital shenanigans, you are well past the "this will ruin my career" stage.

Next up should be revelations of the content of the purported three goodbye notes.

Do I expect to be seeing the actual texts, ever?

No.

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* Demonstrating that British comic writing has been in the dead-pan, self-referential subversion of the narrative voice business for a very long time.

The Mini- And Micro-Parties Wing the DPJ And Clobber the LDP

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, There were a lot of long, exhausted faces at Liberal Democratic Party headquarters yesterday. A basic fact of life had sunk in: nobody loves the LDP.

Check out this [TBS video report - link already dead] NHK video report of the leaders minus Tanigaki filing into headquarters yesterday (WARNING – link will likely fail within 24 hours). Even someone knowing not a jot of Japanese can tell from LDP Secretary-General Ishihara Nobuteru’s blank stare and flat diction that his real message is: "Disregard what my lips and tongue are saying. I do not want to be here. If you do not believe what I am saying, don't worry: I don't either."

The LDP and its coalition partner the New Komeito had been hoping to have their cake and eat it too: first vote with the government on a set of reform bills including a rise in the consumption tax, then turn around and submit a motion of no confidence against the Cabinet in the House of Representatives and a motion of censure against Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko in the House of Councillors.

Coalitions of the mini- and micro-parties of the Diet blew that plan to splinters yesterday. A six-party coalition submitted their own no confidence motion to the Speaker of the House of Representatives. A seven-caucus coalition submitted a motion of censure to the president of the House of Councillors. (E)

Under the rules of order of both Houses, these submissions put all other Diet business on hold, pending the outcomes of the votes on these two bills. This includes the House of Councillors vote on the reform bills, which the LDP had seemingly forced the DPJ to move forward to today (August 8).

The only way the LDP can delay a vote on these no confidence and censure bills is to submit its own two bills, which the party has threatened to do if Prime Minister Noda does not promise today to dissolve the Diet within the next 40 days.

The LDP’s original deadline for action by the prime minister was yesterday. However, yesterday passed by without prime ministerial action. One can pretty much expect the same lack of action today.

If the LDP follows through with its threats to submit its own versions of the bills, the attempted flanking action runs up against a wall of procedure. Which versions of the no-confidence and censure motions make it to the floor is a matter of trans-party negotiations. Since the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the president of the House of Councillors are both members of the DPJ, though on hiatus from membership during their tenures in their offices, the likelihood that the LDP versions of the two bills will win out is nil.

In theory, the LDP could treat the six-party and seven-caucus submissions with contempt, absenting themselves from the votes saying:

"We are the main party of opposition. Nothing happens without us. You did this without consulting with us. We do not care what is on offer: we do not vote on motions where we have been passed over and our views not considered."

Such a strategy has an Achilles heel, however. There is a rule – but an unwritten one (kanrei) – that a House cannot consider the same bill twice in a single Diet session. The LDP’s voting down or abstaining from the vote on the six-party coalition motion or the seven-caucus motion would, under the accepted patterns parliamentary behavior, shut the door on revisiting the substance of those motions until the fall extraordinary session of the Diet.

Of course, the LDP could try to argue that the rule is an unwritten one, and submit a no-confidence motion or a motion of censure after the vote on the consumption tax bill. The news media and public's reaction to the LDP's opposing a piece of legislation only to resubmit it later would be ferocious.

Furthermore, a major party has a strong incentive to uphold the informal rules of order of the Diet, lest under its rule, the opposition, in a tit-for-tat response, flouts the rules to the point that the Diet becomes unmanageable.

A contrarian option remains open, whereby the LDP abstains or votes down the six-party coalition’s no-confidence motion and the censure motion now, freeing up the House of Councillors to vote on the reform package. The LDP then submits a motion for a vote of confidence in the Cabinet in the House of Representatives, which it then votes against.

This option is freakish (submitting a bill in order to vote against it?) and has not, to my knowledge, been discussed by major commentators. However, it does not violate the "one vote on a single bill per session" (ichiji fusaigi) principle.

As for the six-party and seven-caucus coalitions, all of their members deserve a bouquet from the DPJ. This includes, perversely, the People's Life First and Kizuna parties, which are composed of DPJ defectors. While submitting a no-confidence motion in the House of Representatives and a censure motion in the House of Councillors seems a strange way of making oneself beloved of the DPJ and the prime minister, the timing of submission has both tied the LDP up in knots and damaged the LDP's relations with its partner the New Komeito.

The mini- and micro-parties have their issues with the Democratic Party of Japan. There are many things that the mini- and micro-parties want that they are not getting. However, the leaders of the mini- and micro-parties are not nearly so stupid as to believe that they will receive the benefits they seek following a return to power by the LDP.

A pair of motions that appear to attack the DPJ but in fact box in the LDP, driving its leaders to commit absurd acts, are very much to the mini- and micro-parties’ liking. That the motions can be submitted out of what seems to be principle, opposing a raising of the consumption tax because an increased tax rate will have a depressive effect on the national economy, is icing on the cake.

The Show Must Go On

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, A grinning Ozawa Ichiro, leader of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan's splinter party "The People's Livelihood Must Come First" Party (a.k.a. - the "Livelihood Party") paying a courtesy call on the offices of the leading opposition Liberal Democratic Party, shaking the hand of a grinning LDP president Tanigaki Sadakazu.

O - "I am Ozawa, leader of the new Livelihood Party. Please look upon us kindly."

T - "Tanigaki of the LDP. You are the Anti-Christ."

O - "Thank you, thank you. You are the worst president the LDP has ever had."

T - "Your policy platform is pure pandering, without a hope of ever being implemented."

O - "Your party has no policies at all. You are mere hand puppets of the bureaucracy."

T - "When the election comes, your party will be annihilated."

O - "When the election comes, your party will be superseded by whatever that pipsqueak Hashimoto Toru cooks up."

T - "You call Hashimoto a pipsqueak now, but I know that once this meeting is over you will be on the phone, begging him to repudiate his praise of Prime Minister Noda."

O - "I am actually not here to see you. I came here to shake hands with Nobuteru and Tadamori, whom I know have an actual future in your party's leadership."

T - "I see you brought your nodding dashboard ornament Shozo with you. If he is such a committed policy wonk, where does he find the time to work on his suntan?"

O - "Don't diss him. He's got 5 elections to the Diet."

T - "I know. Second in your party to you in terms of Diet experience. Pathetic. You really have no friends, do you?"

O - "Permit me to shake hands with your colleagues."

T - "Be my guest, panda-hugger."

O- "Not the best of times to be using that epithet (E). Anyway, you're the one who refers to his own collected thoughts as "The Analects" (J) and whose grandfather was reassigned from his command in China because he was being too nice to the Chinese (J)."

T - "I look forward to our working together."

O - "Me too."


Ooooh, aaaahhhh...

Photo courtesy: The Yomiuri Online

Ishihara Nobuteru's Interesting Gambits

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Ishihara Shintaro, the elected, if not actual, governor of the Tokyo Metropolitan District, sure has made himself scarce since the death of the Ueno Zoo's panda cub yesterday morning.

It was Ishihara who hilariously, in his own mind, at least, suggested that the new cub be named Sen-sen, with a later sibling to be called Kaku-kaku, in order to form the duo Sen-kaku, to needle, oh so very cleverly, the owners of the pandas the TMD, the proprietor of Ueno Zoo, is paying somewhere aroung 1 million USD a year to display, and highlighting Ishihara's suddenly favorite uninhabited islets -- the TMD seemingly not having enough far-flung uninhabited islands to keep him occupied. (J)

I cannot decide whether it is Ishihara's unwisecrack or the significance of panda exchanges to Sino-Japanese relations that had Google News Japan listing the death of the cub among the "Politics" stories all morning long.

Ishishara's attempted purchase of the Senkakus pushed the central government to muscle in on the sale this week, spoiling Foreign Minister Gemba Ko'ichiro's meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in Phnom Penh (E). The announcement of the government's plan to pip Ishihara and the TMD no doubt led to yesterday's riposte of Chinese fishery agency ships entering the 12 nautical mile exclusion zone about the Senkakus.(E)

While Ishihara Senior has been creating headaches for the Noda Cabinet, #1 son Ishihara Nobuteru, the Secretary-General of the Liberal Democratic Party, has been a positive boon for Noda Yoshihiko and his Democratic Party of Japan.

Yesterday, it was Nobuteru who delivered the most devastating of the many put-downs of Ozawa Ichiro's new Putting the People's Livelihood First Party:

"Cannot raise the consumption tax; eliminate the nuclear power plants... Can you protect the people's livelihood this way? Waving the Manifesto the DPJ could not carry out, will they not just go on down the same road the DPJ has come down?"

(Link - J)

Politician that he is (and long has he enjoyed my appreciation of his dedication to his craft), Ishihara did not rule out working with the Livelihood Party on a no-confidence motion against the Noda government.  However, he did say he would do so only following "an exhaustive examination of the situation."

On the same day, Ishihara hosted a coming out press conference for former Olympic speed skater Horii Manabu. Horii, a bronze medal winner at the Lillehammer Olympics, has been assigned the role of "assassin" (shikaku) of former prime minister Hatoyama Yukio, challenging him for the Hokkaido #9 seat in the House of Representatives. With Hatoyama the biggest, most pustulent boil on the face of the DPJ, the LDP's selection of a strong candidate to unseat him is like a Christmas gift in July to the prime minister and his party.

On paper, upending Hatoyama is a daunting task. He humiliated his 2009 LDP opponent, a former toy company employee (the beauty of the politics of this blessed land...I never have to make anything up), winning 66% of the vote to the LDP candidate's 26%.

However, Hatoyama was carried upon the wings of the public's rage against the LDP and Hatoyama's presumptive election as prime minister should the DPJ win and win big.

Since August 2009, Hatoyama has only stumbled, embarrassing his constituents. The manner by which he was forced to relinquish his premiership was epic in its combination of hubris, mendacity and blind stupidity. On one visit to his home prefecture, he mused about retiring from politics to take up farming, only to rescind that plan a week later.

Hatoyama's constituents would also not be out of place asking the Tokyo transplant: "Excuse us, but what have you done for us lately?" In Horii, the voters would have a chance to vote for someone who actually achieved something in his life, without his wealthy mother having bankrolled it.

The helpful Ishihara has also recently positioned himself as the next likely leader of the LDP. He did so by, paradoxically, declaring on July 6 that if current LDP President Tanigaki Sadakazu presented himself as a candidate for the party presidency in September, he, Ishihara, would support him. In the deliciously contrarian world of LDP internal politics, this was a knife in Tanigaki's back.

The primary qualifications of a candidate for the LDP presidency are loyalty and a studied disinterest in becoming president. By expressing his desire to be loyal to Tanigaki, Ishihara has put pressure on Tanigaki to reciprocate by not seeking reelection. Ishihara punctuated his camouflaged request with a whomping non-sequitur:

"If there is no dissolution of the Diet, there will be all kinds of folks coming out as candidates. I too may have to think about it."

(Link - J)

Try thinking that statement through. Think of the counterfactual: the Diet is dissolved, and an election is held. Tanigaki, as the president of the party, leads his forces into electoral battle. If the LDP triumphs, Tanigaki, as the president of the LDP, becomes the presumptive prime minister while Ishihara is rewarded with a reappointment to the position to the post of secretary-general. If the LDP fails to make significant gains, or is indeed wiped out, Tanigaki, if he still has a seat in the Diet, immediately resigns, setting up a leadership election. Ishihara, as the point man on elections, at least according to LDP tradition, follows Tanigaki into disgrace and becomes ineligible for the presidency.

So while sounding as though it says something, the statement actually says nothing -- except, of course, silently, "Tanigaki-san, if you cannot push the Noda Cabinet to the wall before the end of the Diet session on September 8, you had better get the heck out of my way."

Wonderful, wonderful stuff...

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.

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* 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.

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)

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* 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.

Some Very Tense Family Dinners

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, A sweet little tidbit from the Yomiuri Shimbun's home page:

LDP secretary general postpones China visit

Jiji Press

Nobuteru Ishihara, secretary general of the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party, has decided to postpone his visit to China, party sources said.

The decision came after his father, Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, unveiled a plan earlier this week for his metropolitan government to buy the Senkaku Islands claimed by Japan and China, provoking fierce criticism in China.

The junior Ishihara had planned to visit China for four days from Friday to give a lecture at a university in Shanghai. However, he was informed by the university that his safety could not be ensured, the sources said Thursday...

(Link)

I would not be at all surprised if Ishihara fils is convinced that Ishihara père is out to ruin his future.

Poor I. Nobuteru has a decent shot at replacing Tanigaki Sadakazu as the president of the LDP this fall, his only plausible rival being former defense minister Ishiba Shigeru. However, I. Shintaro keeps sucking up all the oxygen in the room -- whether through his linking up with Kamei Shizuka and Hiranuma Takeo to create a "true conservative" party, his crusade (a remake) to bring the Olympics to Tokyo or his pulled-from-out-of-his-nether-regions proposal to buy some of the Senkaku Islands from their private owner (E). At every moment, I. Nobuteru has to be ready to crouch down to duck the shrapnel flying out from his father's playing around with explosives.

One can imagine I. Nobuteru thinking, "Dad, why can't you announce incredibly expensive idiot plan to eliminate cloud cover over the Tocho, just to ruin my older brother's day?"

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.

Tanigaki's Ticking Clock

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, President of the Liberal Democratic Party Tanigaki Sadakazu must be feeling pretty blue these days, despite the relatively mild weather in Tokyo (mild as compared to the Japan Sea side of the nation, which has been absolutely flattened with snow this season). He has led the LDP from a nadir of around 17% popularity in the aftermath the Democratic Party of Japan victory in August 2009 to its current 17% after two-and a half years of DPJ fumbling and bumbling. He has never cultivated a particularly memorable personality: whether of that of an intellectual, of a super-nice guy or of a calming influence upon the fractious factionalism of the LDP barons -- all of which were reasons given for his appropriateness as party leader in September 2009.

In the meantime, the DPJ, whilst originally setting itself apart from recent (post-Mori Yoshiro) LDP practices in terms of foreign affairs and fiscal policies, is now plundering the LDP party manifesto for ideas, which the LDP, even though it is the main opposition party, obviously cannot oppose. When the DPJ cannot stomach the LDP's proposal, it turns to the LDP's ally the New Komeito for draft legislation, whether it is for the reduction of the remuneration of national bureaucrats or the counter-reformation at the post office (J). The DPJ's acceptation of the latter draft bill is especially ominous for the LDP and its leader, as the original reform of the post office was an LDP government crusade, admittedly under the iconoclast prime minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro. Walking back a reform that split the LDP asunder in 2005 is very difficult for the LDP to contemplate. That not backing the New Komeito bill would create a rift in between the LDP and the New Komeito makes the eventual decision on what to do all the more fraught.

Now to Tanigaki's woes are added the rise of regional parties, the most prominent of which is Hashimoto Toru's Kansai-based Ishin no kai. The emergence of these regional parties means that the LDP cannot rely on the stance of being the default anti-DPJ alternative, even in the districts, the contestible ones of which the LDP was hoping to recapture in the next House of Representatives election. The emergence of these regional parties and the low poll ratings of the LDP have undermined Tanigaki's core policy of demanding a dissolution of the Diet and elections. At worst, the LDP may not come out of an election in less dire straits than it is in now; at best it and its ally the New Komeito will not have an outright majority, requiring cohabitation either with the DPJ or the volatile regional parties.

There has even been a blowup over the LDP's latest campaign poster. The choice of a side-lit image, with most of Tanigaki's face in shadow, is unusual, to say the least (J). Major party figures, including past prime ministers, have called the image dark and depressing; many in the party have demanded the poster's withdrawal and destruction.

Tanigaki's term ends in September. He can run for reelection. However, he faces rivals already maneuvering to oppose him. Acting policy research council chairman Hayashi Yoshimasa has already established a study group, the equivalent of a candidacy exploratory committee (J). Hayashi has a handicap in that he is a member of the House of Councillors, a body from which no LDP leader has ever been elected. As the first speaker to his study group Hayashi invited a stronger candidate, the former policy research chief and agriculture minister Ishiba Shigeru (J). Ishiba has a voice that takes some getting used to, but once one has inured oneself, one clearly recognizes a formidable intellect and drive. He has had not restrained himself in criticizing both the leadership of Tanigaki and the LDP's current drift into the party of simply saying "No."

Still quiet but very much in the race to replace Tanigaki is party secretary-general Ishihara Nobuteru. Being Tanigaki's right hand man until September will make it hard for Ishihara to do anything but sotto voce campaigning for the top spot. When visiting Washington (hard on Ishiba's heals, it should be noted) Ishihara did tell audiences there, "If Tanigaki does not run again, I am am thinking of running." (J)

Tanigaki is staring at leaving a historical record of mediocrity. It will be interesting to see whether this psychological burden pushes him to greater recalcitrance or a resigned cooperative stance over these probable last few months of his presidency. Prior to his election as party president, Tanigaki had alway been portrayed as a moderate -- and he probably is one -- which would explain his ineffectiveness as a party bulldog. He may not want to act the poodle or the lapdog. However, with the DPJ insinuating itself in between the LDP and the New Komeito, he may feel he has no choice during but to do so.