Mr. Noda's Ambivalent Attitude Toward The National Bureaucracy

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, The conventional wisdom state that Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko is a tool/enabler of a resurrected national bureaucracy.

Signs of the return of bureaucratic power include:

- the reinstitution of the right of bureaucrats, particularly the head of the Cabinet Legislative Office, to testify in the Diet

- the full acceptance of a plan to raise the consumption tax to 10% -- a longtime dream of the Ministry of Finance (actually their dream is to send the consumption tax rate even higher).

This a corollary of Noda's having moved directly from the position of Finance Minister to the premiership. Former prime minister Kan Naoto made the same move in June of 2010, and seemingly the first words out of his mouth upon taking over as the country's leader were that taxes will need to be raised. This statement sent Kan's and the Democratic Party of Japan's popularity ratings southward and is credited as having been a significant factor in the the DPJ's losses in the July 2010 House of Councillors election -- losses that handed control of the House to the opposition, derailing the DPJ's ambitious plans to change the way the country is run.

In the popular view, any politician who serves as the minister of finance succumbs to that bureaucracy's mantras, becoming a glassy-eyed novitiate in the cult of raising the consumption tax ("Must-raise-the-tax. Must-save-Japan")

- the deceleration in the campaign to cut the funding of projects of questionable merit made by the ministries and the quasi-government entities that provide retiring bureaucrat with cushy sinecures

- the acceptance without question or amendment of the budget compiled by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, including spending for a restart of the Yamba Dam project -- the cancellation of which was the signal in 2009 that the new DPJ-led government was willing to go to the wall to effect change in the country

- the selection of the F-35 as Japan's next generation fighter, which seems to have no justifications other than simultaneously pleasing the United States government and satisfying the Ministry of Defense's lust for stealth -- even if Japan's beleaguered defense contractors get nothing out of the deal and the stealth technology remains entirely in the hands of the United States

[Please add to the list, if you can, in comments]

It is tempting to believe that the PM is allowing national bureaucrats (kokka komuin) to run amok because he needs them as allies or at least neutral parties. He cannot be fighting simultaneously on two fronts against both the bureaucrats and the political opposition, as the first DPJ prime ministers Hatoyama Yukio and Naoto Kan tried to do, with catastrophic results.

Evidence exists, however, that the above is only half of a double-sided game the PM is having with the national bureaucrats, the left hand taking while the right hand gives. Noda did nothing to stop his party from swallowing whole a New Komeito bill cutting bureaucratic salaries by an average of 7.8% for the next two years, with a retroactive cut of 0.23% for this year and no collective bargaining rights, the last item being a promise the DPJ made to the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo), a crucial vote machine for the party. He has a government-appointed panel recommending a four million yen cut in the lump sum bonus bureaucrats receive upon retirement, as well as an accelerated program of early retirement buyouts. ( J)

Prime Minister Noda has said and done nothing about Deputy Prime Minister Okada Katsuya's staggering cuts in the intake of new recruits into career track positions, this taking place on top of previous cuts in the number of national bureaucrats:

Number of career-track hirees
by the office, commission, ministry and agency
April 2012 --> April 2013

Cabinet Secretariat 10 --> 4

Cabinet Legislative Office 2 --> 1

Cabinet Office 35 --> 20

Imperial Household Agency 32 --> 16

Japan Fair Trade Commission 37 --> 22

National Police Agency 164 --> 100

Financial Services Agency 42 --> 22

Consumer Affairs Agency 2 --> 1

Ministry of Internal Affairs
and Communications 120 --> 73

Ministry of Justice 1,475 --> 942

Ministry of Foreign Affairs 141 --> 80

Ministry of Finance 1,482 --> 929

Ministry of Education,Culture,
Sports, Science & Technology 66 -> 36

Ministry of Health, Labour
and Welfare 625 --> 298

Ministry of Agriculture,
Forestry and Fisheries 235 --> 120

Ministry of Economy
Trade and Industry 181 -- 107

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure
Transport and Tourism 1078 --> 682

Ministry of the Environment 34 --> 27

Ministry of Defense 575 --> 300

Source:
Ministry of General Affairs and Telecommunications

With these assaults on the income and the number of national bureaucrats (who will have to do the same amount of work as their predecessors, despite their reduced numbers) is it any wonder that the number of those taking the entrance examinations to become national bureaucrats dropped 13% in between 2011 and 2012? (J)

So is Prime Minister Noda just so much putty in the hands of the bureaucracy? The numbers do not seem to support that view.

Bang A Gong

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, The Spring list of awardees of national honors is out and it is a snoozer. Except for Sakaiya Tai'ichi, Iwashita Shima and Jacques Diouf, one is left asking "Who are these folks?" and in the rare instance where one knows the answer, "Why this award, now?"

Sakaiya Tai'ichi (real name: Ikeguchi Kotaro) has received the Grand Cordon Order of the Rising Sun for his contributions as a former bureaucrat and a writer of fiction and non-fiction. He was, until recently, a key supporter of Osaka City Mayor Hashimoto Toru, providing some intellectual firepower and legitimacy to Hashimoto's Osaka Ishin no Kai movement. He has downplayed his ties with Hashimoto since the Ishin no Kai released its eight point Ishin Hassaku plan for reviving the country, parts of which Sakaiya has derided as rubbish.

Choosing to honor actress Iwashita Shima (real name: Shinoda Shima) with an Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, a decidedly low-ranking award for someone who has contributed so much to Japanese cinema, still represents a pretty gutsy call for the awards committee. Iwashita, whatever her actual morals, always played the baddest of the bad girls. In terms of the number of sex scenes in which she has appeared in what have been classed as serious films, she is simply without peer (if I am wrong in this, please tell me).

That Iwashita travels in rather better social circles than the characters she has played can be surmised by her having been one of the featured lecturers last year at Shimomura Mitsuko's juku.

As for the awards, they are, as they always have been, a way of only adding to the disparity between what bureaucrats do for other bureaucrats and what they do for the populace at large. In addition to their pensions, their lump sum retirement grants, their falling gently into sinecures at corporations or non-profits, bureaucrats and other officials are still receiving the lion's share of the gongs: over 56% of the 4110 handed out this spring. (J)

Also as usual, the over 50% of the population of this blessed land with XX chromosomes got gypped, receiving a mere 9% of the awards.

The Best Of Times

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, This is going to be a fun week.

On the 26th, the decision in Ozawa Ichiro's political funds mishandling case comes down.  Expect the otherwise circumspect Ozawa to wax loquacious to the mainstream press on how the investigation and trial were political charades from beginning to end, intiated with the goal of undermining the principle of elected officials governing the country.

On the 29th, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko travels to Washington with next to nada in his travel bag (see my short review of the outlook for the visit here). Of greatest interest to the U.S. officials in the know will be whether the Diet is functioning again and what Noda intends to do about Ozawa and his followers. As for the officials not in the know, they will wonder what the heck Noda is even doing in Washington.

Be Still My Beating Heart

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, I am watching the House of Councillors Budget Committee session broadcast on NHK. Every time I see the head of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau come to the microphone, my heart skips a beat. After the Democratic Party of Japan's election victory of 2009, I was not supposed to see bureaucrats, specifically not that bureaucrat, at the Diet microphones again. Ozawa Ichiro promised that politicians were going to take questions. Early on in the Hatoyama Cabinet, that became the rule. In 2010, the three party coalition even submitted a bill banning bureaucrats from giving testimony. That bill was later withdrawn.

The rule against bureaucrats taking the mike slipped during the Kan Cabinet and was completely undone by Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko.

I have to admit, it depresses me to see the CLB (the only paper on the institution you will ever need to read can be found here) back in the saddle, explaining to law makers what the law is -- at it has depressed me to see any bureaucrats back at the microphones.

However, having bureaucrats giving testimony on the nation's laws and policies is a logical consequence of Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko's promise to be a "no sides" leader of his party. "No sides" means every group within the party will have a chance to have one of its members appointed to a ministerial or sub-ministerial post -- regardless of whether a specific group within the DPJ actually has members who are of ministerial caliber. If you want to know what that means, ask the employees of the Ministry of Defense. They will tell you.

Ironically, the group which has provided the least capable appointees, or at least has failed to keep its appointees out of the line of opposition and news media fire, is the group orbiting around Ozawa.

It is one thing to promise that politicians will lead the country. It seems to be quite another to actually cultivate and promote politicians capable of holding on to the reins.

So Far, No Disaster

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

Just give me what I want
And no one gets hurt.

- U2, Vertigo (2004)

So far the release of Hashimoto Toru's Ishin no kai's radical campaign manifesto has not seriously damaged the credibility of the proto-party. So far the number of defections from the front of allies, friends and wannabee friends has been limited.

Hiranuma Takeo of the Sunrise party, who has been discussing with Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro and People's New Party leader Kamei Shizuka the founding a new, broader-based "true conservative" alternative to the Liberal Democratic Party, said the document demonstrates "a lack of sense of the nation." Hiranuma continued, "This requires all kinds of changes to the constitution; I had been wondering whether or not he [Hashimoto] really thinks this way, a thing I sensed."

Perhaps more painful for Ishin no kai's spiritual leader is the loss of the former unswerving support of former bureaucrat and prolific author Sakaiya Taiichi. Sakaiya's appearances at Hashimoto's side has given Hashimoto's brute populist movement a sheen of intellectual legitimacy. Sakaiya has shaken his head in wonder at the manifesto's radicalism, calling it a plan for the distant, distant future. As for the promise to abolish the House of Councillors, he has called it "incredible." (J)

However, Hashimoto still has on board some important allies and potential allies. By showing a thumbs up signal on the Ishin no kai manifesto, Your Party leader Watanabe Yoshimi kept sensible members of his party from voicing any skepticism over the document. Ishihara has stayed fully in support, making such encouraging statements as, "There are parts with which I am totally in agreement" and "As for the other things, they resemble the kinds of things I myself was saying long ago, so they are really all right." (J) Kamei has remained silent about the manifesto, even though it declares support for Japan's participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and a rise in the consumption tax, two Kamei no-nos.

An aside, but all of the above prompted a senior member of the LDP to remark that if the planned party led by Hiranuma, Ishihara and Kamei goes forward and links up with Ishin no kai, the result will be "an unholy alliance." (J)

No polling data yet exists to show whether the manifesto has affected the public's view of Hashimoto and the Ishin no kai as standard bearers for a viable political movement. The relatively low-level coverage of the Ishin no kai manifesto's contents on television, however, indicates that the release of the document is not seen to be a front burner issue. We will have to see if coverage picks up after all the brouhaha over the emperor's bypass surgery dies down.

If the more radical elements of the manifesto are brushed off as adolescent blowing off of steam, as Ishihara would want us to do, and the Hashimoto-led populist movement still represents a looming threat to the established political parties, then we can expect more cooperation of the sort we saw on Friday, when the policy research council chiefs of the three major parties signed off on an agreement to pass a bill cutting the salaries of national bureaucrats by an average of 7.8% (J). The bill was drafted by the New Komeito and was opposed by the Rengo national labor union organization, the political ally of the Democratic Party of Japan (J). However the cutting of the cost of government is an essential building block for the DPJ public relations effort to swing the public opinion on the divisive and unbeloved bill raising the consumption tax - a bill the prime minister wants passed in this Diet session.

Keeping the main national political parties in a state of terror promotes Hashimoto's immediate goal of transforming Osaka Prefecture into a metropole like Tokyo. Hashimoto needs revisions to the laws concerning municipalities before his vision can be realized. He will need the cooperation of the parties currently dominating the Diet to pass these revisions. Since members of the Diet would under normal circumstances either tell Hashimoto to go take a hike or let the revisions die in committee from neglect, the fear factor the Ishin no kai engenders will encourage the national political parties to pass the required revisions and thereby keep the man-in-an-awful-hurry happy.

Or so the national parties hope.

Image courtesy: The Sanyo Shimbun

The Second Tsunami

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, "If the government treated us like adults…"

That is the killer takeaway phrase in Martin Fackler/Makiko Inoue’s piece in The New York Times this morning (E). If the government, that is to say the national bureaucracy, for politicians are (strangely) absent from this drama, would treat the rest of Japan's citizens as adults, or would at least presume that the Japanese citizenry over 20 years of age would act like adults, with adult levels of skepticism and caution, the collapse in trust in the national government now occurring might be avoided.

Several factors have delayed the onset of the wave of disgust in government that is now driving the country in unexpected directions. First and foremost was the shocking scale of the disaster and the need to focus all available emotional and psychological resources on the rescue, recovery and short-term remediation effort. Second was habitual passivity of the Japanese populace, inculcated by the education system and by rhythms of the workplace (it is neither neither unusual nor unexpected that political action has traditionally been concentrated in the pressing forward of the interests of primary industries or in consumer safety, for only those working in the primary industries and housewives have the downtime necessary for direct participation in political action). Third was the invisibility of the political classes in immediate discussions of the structural causes for the disaster. Prime Minister Kan Naoto remained burrowed in the heart of the Prime Minister's Residence in the initial weeks of the disaster, emerging only to face far-fetched, opportunistic and tawdry accusations of having exacerbated the Fukushima disaster (the venting controversy; the non-existent break in the flushing of the reactors with salt water, et cetera). Fourth was the at first admirable, then later lamentable, fear in the news media of spreading panic. Fifth was the successful application of lessons learned in the Great Awaji-Hanshin Earthquake of 1995. In the immediate, full-force dispatch of the Self Defense Forces, the immediate acceptance of rescue and recovery teams from all over the globe, the acceptance of the unfettered activities of non-governmental organizations and volunteers in the disaster zones, the quick supply of evacuation centers and the relatively quick supply of replacement housing and the focus on the mental health of the dispossessed, particularly the communitarian needs of the elderly, the national government showed a surprising level of competence, given the millennial scale of the disaster.

However, 10 months having passed since the triple disaster, anger over the inadequacies over existing forms of governance is spreading. Recovery from the disaster is running up against practices and mindsets that are clearly incapable of responding to the new needs of citizens. The Diet is absorbed in parochial interests, either of destruction of the opposing party or the implementation of plans inspired by if not fully drafted by bureaucrats. The bureaucracy itself, cast free of political direction, has failed to appreciate that the methods it heretofore applied to suppressing public participation in decisions is no longer appropriate or credible (E). Reconstruction in the Tohoku region and remediation of the radioactive fallout from the explosion of the Fukushima Dai'ichi plants remains passive or even non-existent, as governments on all levels – national, prefectural and local – wallow in wishful thinking and daydreaming, promising, for example, to quickly decontaminate 2 million homes in Fukushima (a pledge whose being honored would depend, one would suppose, on what one defines as "quickly"). By either promising too much or acting too little, government is losing legitimacy, as is demonstrated by the ridiculously low levels of support for any of the existing parties and the pathetic longing for a leader, even one so patently absurd as Hashimoto Toru, who has promised to take his authoritarian, regional, bureaucratic-bashing program national in time for the next House of Representatives elections (J).

It is not too late for both the ruling DPJ or the bureaucracy to rethink their positions vis-à-vis the citizens, to salvage what can be salvaged of their authority and legitimacy. However, the task is so much harder than it would have been several months ago, in the midst of the crisis, when the government was getting a free pass by the citizens to remake Japan – and more importantly, remake themselves.