The Dog That Has Not, Or Had Not, Barked

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

Gregory: "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."

Holmes: "That was the curious incident."

-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "Silver Blaze" (1892)

It is often the case that something not happening is far more interesting than when something does.

What is that is it that has not happened that is so gobsmacking, eye-opening amazing?

That since the Ozawa Ichiro breakout of July 2, neither the Noda Cabinet nor the Democratic Party of Japan has won even a percentage point of their popularity back. In fact, the support numbers have gone down.

Jiji Press poll, July 6-9 (previous poll: June 8-11)

Noda Cabinet

Support 21% (24%)
Do Not Support 60% (55%)

Party Support

DPJ 7% (9%)
LDP 13% (13%)


Kyodo News poll, July 14-15 (previous poll: June 26-27)

Noda Cabinet

Support 28% (29%)
Do Not Support 60% (54%)

Party Support

DPJ 15% (17%)
LDP 18% (22%)

The one tiny point of light in the news is the centimetering up of the percentage of voters willing to plunk down for the DPJ in the proportional vote of a House of Representative election.

Kyodo News poll, July 14-15 (previous poll: June 26-27)

Will, in the proportional vote, choose the:

DPJ 14% (13%)
LDP 19% (22%)
Osaka Ishin no kai 13% (13%)
Livelihood Party 6%
Your Party 5% (4%)
JCP 4% (3%)
New Komeito 3% (3%)
Other parties 2% (2%)

Don't know/don't care 34% (37%)

That the DPJ and the Noda Cabinet have not gained any traction from emerging from beneath the supposedly looming shadow of Ozawa Ichiro made yesterday's resignations of Tanioka Kuniko, Koda Kuniko and Funayama Yasue absolutely unsurprising. All three are district seat holders of the House of Councillors, first termers up for reelection in July of next year (E). All three, need it be said, were Ozawa recruits.

Indeed Tanioka's not resigning from the DPJ on July 2 was one of the dogs that "did nothing in the night-time." If ever there was a Ozawa-Hatoyama loyalist, it is she. Remember the infamous party at the Hatoyama villa in Karuizawa on August 19, 2010, when the Ozawa groupies began chanting "kiai da, kiai da" ("Now is the moment! Now is the moment!") -- encouraging Hatoyama to declare his support for Ozawa, should Ozawa choose to run against Kan Naoto for the party presidency (which Ozawa did, a fortnight later) -- with such hysterical fervor some of them must have wet themselves? Here is the photo of Hatoyama's toast at the party, with the host looking already at least three sheets into the wind:

Tanioka is the one with the beer glass and the broad grin, standing equidistant between the two big men -- a position she has also occupied in Nagata-cho.

That Tanioka has jumped ship finally solves one riddle but poses another. She, Funayama and Koda are joining hands with Kamei Akiko, the daimyo heiress, to form a new parliamentary group, the Green Wind (midori no kaze) which sounds a lot better in the Japanese and hearkens back to the Ryokufukai, the Association of the Green Wind -- the caucus of independents in the first Diet elected under the present constitution. With one more Diet member, either from the House of Councillors or the House of Representatives, Green Wind could apply to be an actual party, attracting both public and private funding. While Tanioka is very well-off and Kamei, being the Tsuwano hanshu's lineal descendant, is probably not hurting for cash, Funayama and Koda were, until their elections, housewives. The latter pair could hardly fund independent reelection campaigns, even with help from Ozawa and Hatoyama. With party backing, however, the pair would likely win reelection.

So is Tanioka, who faithfully carried water for both Hatoyama and Ozawa, breaking out on her own?

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...