Re Dr. Nakano's Sadness

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Nakano Ko'ichi is a rarity in Japanese academia: a scholar with a brilliant command of the literature of his field, a disarmingly frank and reassuring manner, an ability to examine Japan's contemporary problems in the context of broader flows of world history and fluency both in his mother tongue and English.

And a man, without shading or hedging, of the Left.

He has published a stark and lucid essay on a potential harsh turn in Japan's economic and foreign policy at CNN's Global Public Square:

"Japan: Get ready for a rightward shift"

As is known, I reject the thesis that the "ditching most of its main campaign manifesto pledges and letting the country’s bureaucrats redefine the policy agenda" was the primary reason for the collapse in the popularity of the Democratic Party of Japan as reflected in public opinion polling. Instead, I lay most of the blame at the feet of Ozawa Ichiro and his inability to accept or understand the concept of "party over person" as inextricable to the process of running a party government. Collaboration with the bureaucrats on policy was forced upon the DPJ by the need to fight against the Liberal Democratic Party and its 50 year legacy of misrule. Ozawa Ichiro tried to fight both the LDP and the bureaucrats at once, with the inevitable result of allowing both to make up the huge losses of power and legitimacy they suffered in the elections of 2009.

The DPJ's current leadership had been much, much smarter in dealing with bureaucrats, ceding on some matters of policy, while inflicting deep cuts in salaries and recruitment.

These serious woundings of the bureaucracy have been insufficiently publicized because the DPJ still needs the bureaucrats in their corner. "Look at how we have roughed up the bureaucrats!" is hardly the message you want to be shouting unless you want the bureaucrats to undermine your every move.

As for Dr. Nakano's take on the relations between nationalism, deregulation and unraveling of the social fabric, I am still not convinced of the direct responsibility of government policy in a worsening of social inequality and social disfunction, or, conversely, the capacity of government to remedy the situation.

Take, for example, Dr. Nakano's citation of Japan's stunning suicide rate (which, if you consider it the murder of oneself, makes Japan one of the most dangerous places to live on Earth). The number of suicides soared in 1998, the year the financial system finally lost government support, leading to the spectacular failures of banks and Yamaichi Securities. The levels have stayed high ever since.

It is that "ever since" that has me skeptical. Certainly if unsteadiness of the economy was the trigger for rises in the suicide rate, improvements in the economy should lead to lower levels of suicide -- especially since the post-2008 rise has been almost entirely due to increases in suicides of men, women committing suicide at the same basically the same rate over the last 35 years.

Something else is going on...and the lead probably needs to be taken by non-profit organizations rather than the government.

As for income equality, I have greater faith in the ingenuity of the people of this blessed land than either Nakano or Finance Ministry bureaucrats seem willing to admit. In the absence of a tax registration number system -- the likelihood of the death of a bill establishing such a system, there is still a great deal of leeway for transfers of wealth across the generations, with the asset-rich older generations supplementing the income of their children and grandchildren, with the government's draconian estate taxes as all the incentive older citizens will ever need to hand down their wealth to their descendants.

I also think that international statistics on levels of Japanese poverty vastly underestimate the differences in price levels in between the urban and rural areas, skewing the estimates of rural poverty higher than actual purchasing power should reflect. I may be wrong on this point, however.

As for Hashimoto Toru's programs, Abe Shinzo's programs and Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko's programs, lumping them together under the rubric of the exploitation of nationalism, you insults Noda's and Hashimoto's intelligence...and ascribes to Abe an intelligence he simply does not possess. As for the accusation that Prime Minister Noda is contributing to the escalation of territorial disputes with Japan's neighbors, that is simply untrue. He made a fairly admirable effot to calm the waters -- sending the Hong Kong activists home without charging them with anything, forbidding the landing of Ishihara Shintaro's land survey team upon the Senkakus -- while reiterating what are the existing policy positions of the government of Japan.

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 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.

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.

Reversion To The Norm?

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, One of the most-commented on features of Japanese politics is the short lifespans of Japanese premierships since the long rule of Koizumi Jun'ichiro, abetted by the spectacular meltdowns of Cabinet popularity ratings in the months following the election of a new prime minister.


(Source - Kyodo figures with typo uncorrected)

Perhaps we have been looking at these curves on these graphs the wrong way. Rather than depicting the popularity of a prime minister precipitously declining over time, perhaps the graph shows the unreasonably high expectations of the public at the inauguration, followed by an actually quite gradual fall of each Cabinet's popularity to a low-level norm, conditioned by economic stagnation, an unhealthy number of workers in temporary or contract work, demographically-determined economic and social challenges and the poor stewardship of the nation's wealth in the pre-Koizumi era.

What is striking when one reads the responses to the questions of why a particular prime minister is not supported is the stability of the answers given. Those not supporting the Cabinet explain their views as the result of a lack of faith that the government delivering on policy, that the government is pursuing the wrong policies or that the prime minister lacks leadership. These explanations remain in the same relative positions even as the identity or personal style of the prime minister changes or the Cabinet's popularity travels drifts down the curve. They are always in double digits in the polls, whilst all other explanations remain in the single digits.

We should consider as likely that these three explanations are the three legs of an idée fixe regarding the prime minister and his cabinet. What the curves are indicating is a return to a normal level of cynicism based upon the three principles, completely disassociated from the actual policies or leadership skills of the prime minister, with rare exceptions.

The current curve of the popularity of Prime Minister Noda's premiership is proceeding according to this internal dynamic. Noda is doggedly pursuing a radical path of forcing a doubling of the consumption tax through the Diet, a choice that should precipitate a fall in popularity even more severe than the one we are seeing. Compare the Noda curve with that of the popularity of Kan Naoto, which suffered a sharp fall after Kan merely mentioned the possibility of raising the consumption tax. In addition, whereas Kan suffered from a fully twisted Diet and a vicious campaign to undermine him led by Ozawa Ichiro for most of his tenure, his path was not unsimilar to his four immediate predecessors who had either a supermajority in the House of Representatives or, in Abe Shinzo's and Hatoyama's case, majorities in both houses of the Diet (Abe indeed had both). If actual performance mattered rather than perceived performance, the curves of all the prime ministers should have been different. Furthermore, the prime minister in the weakest political position, with the least-liked policy changes and the least chance of passing them, survived the longest -- though it cannot be denied that Kan's tenure was extended by the disaster of 3/11.

All of which suggests that the norm for voters is mistrust of the cabinet. The initial high popularity ratings of a new cabinet represent not an actual feeling of hope in the new person taking over as prime minister but a shrugging temporary suspension of an ingrained feeling of pessimism and despair.

Mr. Hashimoto, You're Wanted On Line One

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,,
The Yomiuri Shimbun has a new poll out today (J).

The key takeaway is not the fall of the support for the Noda Cabinet to 30%, the lowest level since its inception. Noda wants to pass legislation that will raise the consumption tax to 10% by the year 2015 and rework the pension system in such a way that the self-employed who make a barely comfortable living will triple their national pension system contributions, whilst receiving only a risible increase in their payments once they retire.

Why should the government be popular, under such conditions?

In the perennial "making stuff up column" are the reasons why those opposed to the Cabinet feel the way they do.

36% say they have no hopes as to the current Cabinet's policies
24% say the prime minister lacks leadership

One has to guess that in order to make month-to-month comparisons, the pollster provides the interviewees with a fixed list of reasons not to support the PM, then asks the interviewees to pick one. As a consequence the responses always strangely tangential and dissonant, immune to shifts in the particular kind of leadership each prime minister exercises.

As for whether the government, in compiling the new budget, is combating government waste, only 7% of the populace thinks it is, while 89% thinks it is not.

Not a surprise when one reads news reports like the one highlighted in my last post.

Support for the Democratic Party of Japan fell from 25% to 16% since the last poll. This compares unfavorably to the current 17% support for the Liberal Democratic Party -- but not in a statistically significant way. The tumble merely shows that the January DPJ support number was an outlier and a fluke. The Mainichi Shimbun poll of late January had pretty much the same numbers as the Yomiuri has now, only with the DPJ and LDP numbers reversed.

A massive 54% of the population supports no organized party.

The real takeaway from today's Yomiuri poll can be found the type of government the pollees wished they had.

5% want a DPJ-led government

9% want an LDP-led government

23% want a DPJ-LDP grand coalition

53% want a government based upon a realignment of political parties and a new political fabric

Now far be it from me to draw dramatic conclusions out of just one set of numbers, but the answers to that last question seem to indicate that Japan has a fed up populace ready for yet more change.

Image courtesy: Yomiuri Online

The JNN Poll of February 4-5 - A Quick Review

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, This is a "catch it while you can" post.


TBS has put up the results of its telephone public opinion poll taken February 4-5 (J).

The key takeaways from the post are:

Support for the cabinet has declined to 32.2%, while the percentage of those not supporting the Cabinet has risen to 66.6%. The decline in the Noda Cabinet's support numbers have been uninterrupted since the cabinet's inauguration, with no bounce at all from the cabinet reshuffle of January 13.

This news would be terrible news for Noda if it were not for the conveniently provided numbers for the Kan Cabinet, which stood at 28.3% at the time of the opening of last year's regular session of the Diet. Of course at the time the Kan Cabinet was reeling from the horrible mishandling of the Chinese fishing boat collision and subsequent leak of the video of that collision (a pair of extraordinary blunders that Sengoku Yoshito walked away from with a censure from the House of Councillors. That Sengoku is now in charge of drafting the DPJ's new electoral manifesto shows that some folks and organizations never learn).　Kan received a bump due to his efforts post-3/11 but never regained the popularity Noda enjoys now.

As for the reasons why voters do not support the Noda Cabinet, the tired old "Because we have no hopes for his policies" occupies the top spot with 42% of all those not supporting the Cabinet. The reason why this is tired and old is that "no hopes for his policies" is always in the top spot, that or "no hopes for improving the economy" -- something a prime minister nowadays has almost no control over. As for not implementing policies, in a previous post I have indicated that there is, quite on the contrary, a great deal of movement toward the implementation of policies, if not quite the policies of the DPJ per se.

- As for the fraught legislation raising the consumption tax from 5% to 10% by fiscal year 2015, a majority of those polled, 56% are in favor, with 46% opposed. This is good news for the Noda government, for which the passage of the consumption tax legislation is the highest hurdle in its agenda for the current Diet session.

- Demonstrating that "by the year 2075" has not yet stuck in the voters heads as the height of absurdity, the further 7.1% rise in the consumption tax projected to be need by that date in order to pay for the 2009 manifesto promise of a floor of 70,000 yen per month in national pension payments is unpopular with 72% of the voters. These voters want the DPJ to reconsider its 2009 pledge -- no matter that only a small fraction of those offering this opinion will still be alive in 2075.

- Demonstrating that the sudden burst of activity in regionalist politics is having an effect on voters, 75% of those polled believe it desirable that regional parties participate in national politics. Unsurprisingly, the top vote getter among politicians that the voters find themselves drawn to is Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru, the poster child of the regionalist movement. Number two on the voters' mind is Tokyo Metropolitan District Governor Ishihara Shintaro, who has allied himself in name with Hashimoto's proposed administrative reforms in Osaka Prefecture. Coming in in third place is current Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko.

Though it does not appear in the above linked report, the JNN poll found the support numbers for the main national parties still on a downward slide, with the popularity of both the DPJ and the Liberal Democratic Party below 20% and falling from last month's reading. The continuing decline in DPJ and LDP numbers is good for the country as it reduces to nil the enthusiasm of either party to face the voters in a snap election. These figures and the sudden irruption of interest in the regional parties going national are strong incentives for the two main national parties, along with the LDP's alliance partner the New Komeito, to produce a solid record of achievement in the current Diet session.

Whether the DPJ and the LDP follow these incentives, or find themselves getting sidetracked yet again by new developments in the ever-shifting saga of Ozawa Ichiro and his convicted lieutenants (one of whom, Ishikawa Tomohiro just got married to a former television presenter -- demonstrating that even future jailbirds still got wings to fly), remains the big question.

Image courtesy: TBS

Later - Here it is the next day and the link to the TBS report has already been removed from the Web.

As I said, catch as catch can.