Caution: Spewed rice alert
Posted by ampontan on Tuesday, August 30, 2011
ONE of the most colorful words in the Japanese language is funpan, written 噴飯. Used as a noun, it means absurd or preposterous. Used as a verb, it means to burst into laughter. The best part of the word is the combination of kanji; together they literally mean “spew rice” (or food).
Funpan is the word that usually comes to mind whenever I stumble across political analysis from the boys and girls playing newspaper at the Japan Times. JT staff writers Jun Hongo and Hiroko Nakata were in analytical mode today regarding the election of Noda Yoshihiko as DPJ president and imminent prime minister. Their piece should come with the Surgeon-General’s recommendation to read it at least 30 minutes after a meal. Failure to heed that advice could result in so much funpan the knowledgeable reader would be compelled to spend the better part of his day cleaning spewed rice off his computer screen, keyboard, and the wall behind them.
Here’s how it starts:
Market watchers and political experts welcomed the victory of Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda…
No, they didn’t mention the “political experts” by name, their qualifications as political experts, or why the experts welcomed Mr. Noda. That’s Japan Times policy.
….an advocate of a tax hike and a fiscal hawk, in the Democratic Party of Japan’s presidential race Monday
All the computers used at news outlets to write the English-language reports on new prime ministers and finance-related Cabinet ministers from the Democratic Party, both here and overseas, have specially programmed hotkeys. For example, type #%$ and the phrase “fiscal hawk” appears. Since “fiscal hawk” used in this context always means “supporter of a tax increase to reduce the budget deficit”, the editor (assuming the paper has any) missed the Hongo/Nakata pleonasm.
When a Japanese politician is approvingly called a fiscal hawk it never — never — means that the politician cited is serious about cutting government spending.
On the currency market, a Noda administration is likely to have more success in stemming the yen’s sharp appreciation against the dollar, as it will be easier for the Bank of Japan to cooperate with the person who served as finance minister than other candidates, many of whom looked too aggressive in putting pressure on the BOJ in dealing with deflation and the yen’s rise, Dai-ichi’s Kumano said.
Even the Japan Times’s identified experts require a funpan alert. Kan Naoto served as finance minister just before he was named prime minister, and his administration didn’t have any success stemming the yen’s sharp appreciation against the dollar, despite the presence of the Dynamic Fiscal Hawk Duo. The junior journos assured us last year that Mr. Kan was a fiscal hawk too. You could look it up, starting with the search engine on the left sidebar.
There is almost nothing the BOJ can do to stop the yen’s appreciation against the dollar when the Americans are beavering away at the devaluation of their own currency under prevailing economic conditions. The American journo/politico class dares not speak the name of those conditions, but other people do: Depression.
Tax data released earlier this month showed that American incomes in real terms fell 15.2% from 2007 to 2009, and that the number of taxpayers who reported any income from a job fell about 4.2 million during that time. Some people suspect the real unemployment rate is closer to a Rooseveltian 15% than the official 9%+. The official statistics also claim there’s been seven straight quarters of GDP growth. Why, sure there has, Mary Sunshine! But back to Japan.
Fukashi Horie, professor emeritus of politics at Tokyo’s Keio University, was pessimistic. “If Noda is able to seek fiscal balance while also pursuing the political pledges in the DPJ manifesto, then he will make great achievements,” Horie said.
They don’t make professors emeriti like they used to.
The DPJ manifesto contained promises for sharp spending increases for the child allowance and farm household subsidies, as well as the loss of income by eliminating expressway tolls. Noda the Fiscal Hawk voted for all of that. The DPJ manifesto also promised no tax increases for four years. Noda the Fiscal Hawk was down with that, too. He was the shadow finance minister, after all. Finally, the manifesto promised there would be cuts in wasteful government spending to offset the new expenditures.
Well, it’s not so easy for a government to keep all of its promises.
If he can “seek” fiscal balance while pursuing the political pledges of the manifesto, he won’t just “make great achievements”. He’ll be walking on water.
“But I fear that properly managing all the factors that come into play, such as handling of (sic) the resilient bureaucrats, won’t be so easy.”
It is to funpan. Mr. Noda was known in the media — and even in the Democratic Party itself — as the Finance Ministry candidate.
Noda, 54, is replacing Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who leaves a government ¥900 trillion in debt.
Passing the fiscal hawk baton to a younger generation.
Fiscal reform efforts took a back seat during Kan’s tenure due to the March 11 disasters.
Dealing with those disasters also took a back seat during Kan’s tenure. Everything took a back seat during Kan’s tenure to any activity designed to extend Kan’s tenure.
The native of Chiba Prefecture was the sole candidate among those running in the DPJ race considered as being oriented toward fiscal reform measures.
“Fiscal reform” is another one of those phrases people use in Japan when they dare not speak the name of tax increase in the context of bringing down the budget deficit.
Although he has toned down his stance lately, he has been an avid promoter of a tax hike to pay for Tohoku’s restoration. “It is an issue that can’t be shelved in any administration,” Noda said of a tax hike during policy debate over the weekend. “After slashing expenditures, we need a tax hike on a temporary basis.”
The Japanese response to the slashing expenditures part and the temporary part was funpan. The Finance Ministry wants the tax hike to pay for Tohoku’s restoration. The New Fiscal Hawk has never offered a convincing explanation why government funds on hand or (very) long-term bonds can’t be used to pay for Tohoku’s restoration.
He also advocates easing the burden on the private sector, saying the corporate tax should be slashed by 5 percentage points in order to support business competitiveness.
Now you see why Keidanren likes him.
He was also a central figure in writing up a $100 billion program designed to extend loans to domestic firms to spur overseas investment.
Hey, why not? The American stimulus programs have “made a great achievement”, haven’t they?
Hold on…it’s going to take a few seconds to fit $100 billion government loan programs to the private sector into the Fiscal Hawkery concept…OK.
Overall, Noda is known for his expertise in fiscal and economic policies, having served as senior vice finance minister from September 2009 in Yukio Hatoyama’s Cabinet and then being promoted to finance minister when Kan left that post to become prime minister in June 2010.
Mr. Noda applied that expertise to his assignment as vice finance minister to secure the funding to realize the manifesto pledges. His expertise was such that Mr. Hatoyama produced the highest budget with the highest budget deficit and highest deficit bond float in Japanese history (until the following year’s budget, which was produced by Kan The Fiscal Hawk Naoto).
He appears to have a head start on collaborating with the Liberal Democratic Party, whose president, Sadakazu Tanigaki, praised Noda by saying earlier this month that he “is not a person who acts without thinking much.”
Saying he isn’t a person who acts without thinking isn’t what most Japanese normally consider to be praise for politicians. Here’s the translation: He’s not Kan Naoto. The LDP long ago signaled they’d be willing to work with just about anybody not named Kan Naoto.
The first glimpse of how Noda will handle tough economic and fiscal issues will be demonstrated once he reveals his Cabinet lineup. “The key will be for him to appoint a finance minister who shares his beliefs and will not back down against the bureaucrats, in order to materialize DPJ’s policies,” Keio University’s Horie said.
You know, I can’t remember if I’ve ever read a four-dimensional non sequitur before. I think this might be the first one.
But enough of this — There’s a quicker way to get a read on Mr. Noda than by reading the JT analysis, and it too involves interesting Japanese vocabulary.
Recall that the fiscal hawk/financial and economic expert Noda Yoshihiko was vice finance minister during the Hatoyama administration. That government raised taxes on cigarettes by 33% a pack. The DPJ also discussed increasing the liquor tax earlier this year to help fund Tohoku reconstruction.
Mr. Noda demonstrated a nuanced approach to fiscal policy by taking a strong public stand against higher taxes on both tobacco and liquor. In fact, he called it “Oyaji-gari through the tax system.”
Oyaji is how Japanese men sometimes refer to their fathers in the way that Americans use the expression, “the old man”. It can also be used generically to refer to men middle-aged or older. The suffix “-gari” means “hunting”, in the sense of scalp-hunting or head-hunting.
Here’s the punchline: Mr. Noda is a man known to hugely enjoy cigarettes and booze.
Funpan!
Afterwords:
Mr. Noda was a member of the first class of students accepted in the Matsushita Institute founded by electronics magnate Matsushita Konosuke. Matsushita’s expressed ideal was the “taxless state”, and he founded the institute to foster leaders with compatible ideals. He also said that one should not hesitate to die for one’s ideals and resolutions.
Were not Japanese usually cremated, it would be appropriate to say that Matsushita is rolling over in his grave tonight.
toadold said
Well I didn’t spew rice but I did spew coffee on this little nugget
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2940662
“Frankly, Koreans do not need to be concerned about the foreign policy of Japan nowadays. Since the prime minister changes almost every year, it is hard to expect a calculated and systematic foreign policy from Tokyo. We certainly need to be vigilant, but we can also laugh off trivial protests or provocations from Japan. Above all, we must remember that an overly sensitive response or overestimation of Japan in general may backfire on us instead.”
Noda, the Next Do-Nothing Cipher | Rearranging Prejudices said
[...] just want to zero in on the “deficit hawk” bit first. So, that sort of hawkishness refers to monetary policy, not taxes and spending. [...]
Hume's Bastard said
@#1: What prodigies! The South Koreans finally get a basic tenet of the realist paradigm.
Marellus said
Ampontan.
Is there any politician that you have some respect for ???
—————
“A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.”
Or
“Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?”
The blind trust in government is “the survival into our enlightened age of a concept hatched in the black days of absolutism — the concept, to wit, that government is something that is superior to and quite distinct from all other human institutions — that it is, in essence, not a mere organization of ordinary men, like the Ku Klux Klan, the United States Steel Corporation or Columbia University, but a transcendental organism composed of aloof and impersonal powers, devoid wholly of self-interest and not to be measured by merely human standards.”
The daintiest last, to make the end most sweet:
“When we say that (government) has decided to do this or that, that it proposes or aspires to do this or that — usually to the great cost and inconvenience of nine-tenths of us — we simply say that a definite man or group of men has decided to do it, or proposes or aspires to do it; and when we examine this group of men realistically we almost invariably find that it is composed of individuals who are not only not superior to the general, but plainly and depressingly inferior, both in common sense and in common decency.”
- H.L. Mencken (all of them)
- A.
toadold said
Republics are forms of government that are supposed to use “checks and balances” to reduce the effects of corruption by power and money seekers. One group of rats is supposed to keep the other group of rats in check. At least that is my interpretation of the “Federalist Papers”. The authors of the Federalist papers used polite language and referred to those who seek to exploit the government for sex,wealth, and power, as “interests”. The problems start when the rats start cooperating or one group gets an over whelming advantage. It has been a theory that the money hungry “interests” do less damage to the populace than those who seek power to impose their ego on others. Now days we have those who do both at the same time. It is very difficult to find a Washington in public service these days.
Perhaps because I’m a Texan, perhaps because of the blood my family shed and caused to be shed in Korea. I have a certain prejudice in favor of South Korea. They are a very young republic and are still feeling their way. I find them amusing sometimes and I’m sure they find Americans somewhat peculiar. However I will point out that sensible or not, there are still a lot of Texas who regard Yankees as obnoxious occupiers after the South lost the Civil war. Draw your own parallels
Marellus said
Ampontan.
OK OK OK OK OK OK Salaam Salaam Salaam. Mea Culpa. Mea Culpa. I’d rather flame Roissy than you. ( in fact … I did !!!
I couldn’t help myself ) But consider the kind of man that gains power without compromising himself. There is a whiff of religion about such a man : Think Gandhi, Khomeini, and Hitler. And these men did bring change. The problem is there aren’t, and nor will there ever be, that many Gandhis. So rather the status quo then.
Unless you have another idea ? How does one re-invent democracy then ? How does one create a type of state that rewards merit, and is intolerant of incompetence ? It will take money methinks … a re-allocation of money … and will that be tolerated ? … Maybe … but ultimately it will be a choice of SNAFU or Some Fool. So in the words of the Mogambu Guru : ” Haha, we’re freakin doomed !!! ”
Oh well, off to the Chateau then. Hopefully my comment is still in moderation …
@Toadold.
And some say that the South will rise again. Hasn’t there been a movement of economic power from the North to the South of late ? The Fed Governor of Dallas gave some impressive numbers to back this up. And the reason has to do with low taxes and even less regulation. Something California should take note of. Which is strange, since Ronald Reagan made his Presidential bid while California’s governor. How do you explain that ?
As to the legacies of war, here in South Africa the political picture would have pretty different had the Boers not fought the British a hundred odd years ago. Did you know there were Black Tribal Chiefs that actually offered military assistance to old President Paul Kruger ? He declined their help.