You decide!

No one from the private sector will accept the position as president of Japan Post (if President Nishikawa is forced out). After President Nishikawa steps down, it is very likely that his replacement will be either someone who was a career bureaucrat, or someone from the private sector who will compromise with the bureaucracy
- Takenaka Heizo, in the September issue of Voice

THERE WERE SEVERAL REASONS why it was important to privatize Japan Post. First, there is no need for the government of an advanced, developed nation to operate a banking system, an insurance system, and a postal system, much less in competition with that nation’s private sector.

In addition, the funds in the banking and insurance system were controlled by Japan’s Finance Ministry, the bureaucratic entity most likely to arrogate a political role for itself. By law, these funds can only be invested in government bonds. Those investments were the lifeblood of the Iron Triangle of big business, bureaucracy, and government (i.e., the Diet) that ran Japan Inc. That was the source of funds for all the corruption and the Bridges to Nowhere.

The privatization of Japan Post was the most important such step since the Japan National Railway was broken up into regional private sector companies during the Nakasone Administration. Former Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro dissolved the lower house of the Diet and held a special election specifically to take this issue to the people in 2005. The result was the second-largest majority for the governing party in postwar history. In fact, it was a supermajority that allowed the Government to override any defeats in the upper house. Mr. Koizumi’s support when he left office stood at 70%.

The terminally clueless mudboat wing of his party squandered this advantage, however, and in the following election, in August this year, the opposition DPJ nearly reversed those numbers in the lower house. It was clear that the electorate rejected the LDP because it had turned its back on reforms and minimizing the political influence of the bureaucracy. They wanted the DPJ to continue those reforms.

After little more than a month in office, we can now take it as given that the DPJ is, from several perspectives, a party of charlatans. While some members are just as earnest in their desire for reform as the Koizumians, the party itself is controlled by people for whom power is the real objective. Policy is just something that can be replastered to suit the times, in the words of their political puppeteer Ozawa Ichiro.

The intent of the DPJ has been obvious ever since they formed an alliance with the People’s New Party, which consists solely of reactionaries whose only objective was to reverse Japan Post’s privatization.

Any remaining credibility the DPJ had as serious reformers ended yesterday when Saito Jiro was appointed the new head of Japan Post. As Mr. Takenaka predicted, his background is in the bureaucracy. But not just any ministry—it was the Finance Ministry itself, the Big Swinging Dick of Kasumigaseki. And he was not just any bureaucrat. The Asahi referred to him as “the Don of the bureaucratic alumni”. Mr. Saito once held the position of administrative vice-minister of the Finance Ministry.

That was the same position once held by Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio’s father, Iichiro.

Mr. Saito comes with the added advantage of having had close ties to Ozawa Ichiro since the latter last pulled the strings of the Hosokawa Administration 15 years ago. He was selected by PNP head Kamei Shizuka, who, like all men of low cunning, seems to have been too clever by half.

If nothing else, the selection will give the new government an early lesson in damage control—if it survives the damage. Japanese author, university professor, commentator, and blogger Ikeda Nobuo thinks it’s possible the Cabinet might fall before the Diet is convened, but of course that remains to be seen. A Google news search in Japanese shows there are already more than 500 articles on Mr. Saito’s selection. Every major Japanese newspaper has slammed the pick.

Prime Minister Hatoyama thought it was wonderful, however. He said:

“It’s a very good (selection). A very interesting personnel (choice).”

He seems not to have been intentionally ironical.

Mr. Hatoyama also defended the choice by saying that Mr. Saito had left the bureaucracy 14 years ago. He did not, however, refer to his party’s opposition to Muto Toshiro as the head of the Bank of Japan because of his ties to the Finance Ministry. Mr. Muto had left the bureaucracy only eight years before that.

Referring to that apparent contradiction, Chief Cabinet Minister Hirano Hirofumi said:

“I think any comparison between the two is a little different.”

When pressed by reporters to explain why, he answered,

“I think it’s different. That’s my awareness.”

Fukushima Mizuho, the head of the Social Democratic Party of Japan, a coalition partner, said:

“It was a compromise choice. Rather than whether he was a former bureaucrat, I think they emphasized policy”.

Everyone listening to this statement knew that Ms. Fukushima would have wet her pants in public had the LDP made the same selection.

As usual, the most penetrating observation came from Takenaka Heizo, the man who was more responsible than any for launching Japan Post on the road to full privatization:

(The Hatoyama Cabinet) says it wants to eradicate amakudari (cushy post-retirement jobs in government for retired senior civil servants), but in truth, this is just watari (the repeated hiring of former bureaucrats) under the leadership of the politicians…The idea that they are disassociating themselves from a reliance on the bureaucracy is a falsehood…It is the de facto renationalization of Japan Post”

You get the idea.

I could go on, but as it turns out, I’m going to be away for the weekend and won’t be back until Monday.

Until then, you can take part in the first Ampontan poll, which is shown below. Don’t hesitate to get clicky and make your voice heard. Every vote counts!

See you next week!

Perverting the popular will

THE CONTINUING TURMOIL within the Cabinet of Japan’s ruling Democratic Party over the funding sources for their campaign pledge to provide annual subsidies to families with children threatens to confirm the electorate’s worst pre-election fears about the party. Those fears included:

1. A lack of competence in governance
2. The absence of party unity
3. An inability to keep their word
4. Giving priority to political crises over policy
5. Their true intentions

The DPJ translated their platform into English and placed it on their website, which is linked on the right sidebar. Here’s what it says about the child allowance:

“We will pay a child allowance of JPY 312,000 per annum (about $US 3,450) for all children until they finish junior high school.”

According to their platform, this will require an outlay of JPY 5.5 trillion annually. Critics both outside and in the party have insisted for more than a year they wouldn’t be able to fund the plank in the manner they propose. (Some said they could only come up with half of it that way, and only for the first year.) Now the new Government is admitting what everyone else had known all along.

L-R: Hatoyama, Kumagai, Hirano

Bedlam erupted when some in the Cabinet suggested that local governments and private-sector businesses be made to foot part of the bill. Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Haraguchi Kazuhiro objected that this contradicted their platform promises and would require holding a new election to gain public support.

Those who would make local governments and businesses pay tried to justify their proposal by claiming that the party platform did not specifically state that the national government would be liable for all expenses.

One of them, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirano Hirofumi, said this at a press conference on the 19th:

“The choice of cooperation from local government is possible.”

Note the use of the word cooperation as a euphemism for coercion. Note also that the stratagem itself is the essence of duplicity.

Responded Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio during a speech on the 20th in Yokohama:

“’Local government liability’ is not what I have in mind…Of course the national government will bear the full liability. The nation’s finances are very tight, so the Finance Ministry had the idea of having local government be partially liable. That’s too cold-hearted. I will definitely build a consensus in this direction (i.e., national government) as the prime minister.”

Note that Mr. Hatoyama tries to shift the blame on the Finance Ministry, the most powerful of the bureaucracies and the primary offender among those in Kasumigaseki that would usurp political authority.

But if the Finance Ministry hasn’t changed its ways, why has the new government outsourced the compilation of the new budget to them, as this otherwise fawning editorial from the Mainichi suggests? The DPJ also promised in their platform to make sure politicians handled these matters in the future.

At a press conference that same evening, Mr. Hirano retorted:

“The (prime minister’s) statement carries weight, but we must decide on a specific proposal that includes the prime minister’s opinion.”

Just who’s in charge around here? Are we to believe the prime minister does not set the policy for his own Government? That he has to spend the time to create a consensus for an issue that no one thought existed two weeks ago? Why is the Chief Cabinet Secretary contradicting the prime minister–his boss–within a matter of hours?

For another example of the inscrutability of Japanese politics, Mr. Hirano was selected because he was considered a Hatoyama ally and confidante.

This brought an immediate response from Mr. Haraguchi:

“Once the national government makes a decision, the automatic assumption that local governments should also bear financial liability calls into question our qualifications to promote devolution and reform.”

Mr. Haraguchi is taking an admirable stand on principle, and he’s right to tie the financing issue to the platform promises of greater regional autonomy.

Unless they’re going to try to weasel out of that promise, too.

As inevitable as death, taxes, and duplicitous politicos was the explosive response from Osaka Prefecture Gov. Hashimoto Toru. The wildly popular Mr. Hashimoto was the most prominent of the nation’s governors who spent the spring and summer preaching the gospel of the decentralization of the national government, the devolution of authority, and the end to unfunded mandates. He’s already declared that his prefecture would no longer pay the personnel expenditures for those national civil servants working in Osaka.

The DPJ had to have known he would be livid. Several members of the party’s leadership visited Osaka during the summer specifically to win his endorsement. The party even humiliated itself by retracting and amending its platform after a highly publicized presentation because the governor thought it wasn’t tough enough on the issue of devolution.

Here’s what Mr. Hashimoto said:

“It’s dictatorial politics for the DPJ to arbitrarily decide something and then tell the regions to put up the money. It’s a Communist state. (The use of the expression) ‘Local authority’ (in their platform) was a disguise.”

After the party’s landslide victory at the end of August, some members now apparently assume they can dispense with Mr. Hashimoto and other local reformers and do as they please. Then again, it’s not as if the DPJ was fond of the governor to begin with. The photo above shows Mr. Hatoyama and Mr. Hirano with Kumagai Sadatoshi, the candidate they endorsed in the Osaka election that Mr. Hashimoto won.

A sign of what’s to come?

Will the party continue to come up with excuses to do as it likes regardless of the popular will? There already have been some troubling signs.

Here’s Health, Labor, and Welfare Minister Nagatsuma Akira speaking to ministry employees on 17 September:

“The party platform (contains) our orders from the people.”

And Education Minister Kawabata Tatsuo speaking to his employees the same day:

“The party platform is not a promise. It is something that has weight, instructions that the people said we must carry out. The people have mandated that I implement it as quickly as possible.”

This is, of course, arrant nonsense. The DPJ is in power because they are not the LDP, and for no other reason. Most voters didn’t bother to read their platform, and few could even say what’s in it other than the two or three planks most commonly discussed on television.

Then again, the party didn’t make all of it easy to read either, as a look at the printed version makes clear. They put all the grass for the goats in large print and color up front. Then, starting on page 16, in print small enough for an insurance policy, they advance a different agenda. For example:

“Establish an institution for the relief of the infringement of human rights, and ratify the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights”

That protocol gives individuals the right to complain to a UN body after they’ve exhausted legal procedures in their home country;. i.e., they can’t win their case. It is designed to address individual violations of human rights in the more benighted parts of the world of which Japan is not a part. To cite one example, South Africa in the apartheid era made all its civil servants speak to citizens in Afrikaans only. An appeal based on the use of that protocol ended that policy.

It should go without saying that Japan has no problems of the sort. Unless, of course, one thinks that private sector public baths banning foreigners in some Hokkaido towns after drunken Russian sailors urinated in the shared tubs constitutes an infringement of human rights requiring UN attention. The objective of the leftist elements in the DPJ is to enable the creation of a cottage industry of rights hustlers similar to the shakedown operations run by Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and others in the U.S.

Other countries that have not signed the Optional Protocol include the United States, Great Britain, India, and China.

Also lurking in the fine print is a proposal to provide public support to non-profit organizations. Gee, do we have to ask who the beneficiaries of that one will be?

Does anyone really think it is the people’s mandate for these parts of the platform to be implemented as quickly as possible? A better question would be whether as many as 1% of the electorate has even heard of those planks.

Bait and switch, deceit, and a manifesto that contains stealth provisions and disposable policies–those weren’t part of the people’s mandate either.

Peace and love

IT WOULD BE EASY to understand if people outside Japan were to swallow the media-created image of the country as being populated by dorky otaku, airhead gyaru enthralled by designer brands and octopus tentacles, sexless married couples, whale-murdering xenophobes, and loners so socially inept they have to rent friends. What else are they given a chance to see? Even some self-isolated foreigners living in the country carrying their excess baggage of preconceived notions fall for it.

But there’s more to Japan than meets the media eye. As old American television program had it, “There are a million stories in The Naked City. This is one of them.”

Here’s one of the 127 million stories in Japan, translated from the 1 October issue of the weekly Shukan Bunshun.

*****
The new Democratic Party candidate Kushibuchi Mari (41) defeated Liberal Democratic Party incumbent Ito Kosuke in Tokyo’s District 23 in the recent election. A former official of the NGO Peace Boat, Kushibuchi was all smiles when she and her husband were photographed in front the Diet building on her first visit. Her husband seems to be receiving more attention than she is, however.

Li Song

Her husband is Li Song, one of the directors of the Japanese branch of the Federation for a Democratic China, an activist group working for Chinese democracy. According to a Chinese journalist, “He is quite well known among the democracy activists in Japan. At the torch relay ceremony last year in Nagano (for the Beijing Olympics), he was involved in activities related to the Tibet issue.”

Born in Harbin in 1967, Li came to Japan in 1989 after the Tiananmen massacre. A Chinese activist describes how he met Kushibuchi: “The two of them met in 1994 while working on Peace Boat activities. Li also worked with Peace Boat the next year on relief efforts after the Hanshin Earthquake. When Tsujimoto Kiyomi ran for office the first time as a Social Democratic Party candidate in 1996, Kushibuchi managed her election office and Li drove her campaign car.”

Li earned a reputation as an extremist during a June 1997 demonstration eight years after Tiananmen. The activist explains:

“When Wu’er Kai-shi, a student leader during the Tiananmen demonstrations, visited Japan, he was refused entry to the Chinese embassy at Motoazabu. Li was following Wu’er as his driver. He got upset and crashed the car into the barrier at the checkpoint set up by the Japanese police.”

Li was arrested for obstructing police officers in their official duties. Newspapers at the time ran photos of the car and its windshield, which the police had smashed with their riot sticks. This directly led to his marriage with Kushibuchi.

“After Li’s arrest, it was found that he had overstayed his visa. For some reason he had not applied for a special activities visa. To prevent his deportation to China, Ms. Kushibuchi came forward and said she was his fiancé.”

He was provisionally released from custody, and the two were later married.

Li instantly become a hero to some for his bold action, but not all of his compatriots were pleased. Said one, “We’ve been working peacefully for democratization, but that one incident tarred us as a violent organization. After that, the police shadowed us whenever we had a meeting.”

Kushibuchi Mari

Before this month’s 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese embassy’s public safety division was concerned that “the anti-government activist who is the husband of a new Diet member might stage a political disruption when Prime Minister Hatoyama was visiting from Japan.”

This reporter tried to contact Li by telephone to ask him about it, but he replied, “I am not accepting any interview requests. If you want to know about the Diet member, ask the person herself.”

Ms. Kushibuchi’s office replied, “We consider the activities of Li Song and the political activities of Kushibuchi to be separate. We will not respond to a request for an interview.”

We hope this does not become a headache for the Hatoyama Administration when a new feeling of friendship is emerging between Japan and China.

*****
Afterwords:

I translated this article for the reasons I stated above.

But as a personal opinion, I hold no truck for either of these two. Working for the democratization of China and earthquake relief is indeed commendable. One has to wonder, though, about Li Song, a political refugee who couldn’t be bothered to get his visa straight after eight years in the country, and who thought he was going to accomplish something by pointlessly ramming a car into a police roadblock at a foreign embassy in that country. All he accomplished was discrediting his organization in the eyes of the authorities.

As for Ms. Kushibuchi, all she’s ever done in her adult life is work for Peace Boat. That organization was founded by Tsujimoto Kiyomi with the help of her Significant Other, a Japanese Red Army member expelled from Sweden for terrorist activities, and a man later identified as a KGB agent. They admired the peaceful Yasser Arafat so much they sailed to visit him several times. As for Ms. Tsujimoto, now part of the new Government, she inadvertently told a reporter her aim was to destroy the Japanese state.

It is not unreasonable to assume that Ms. Kushibuchi chose to run as a DPJ member because she realized she would be unlikely to win as an SDPJ member. So few of them do, after all. It is also not unreasonable to assume that she shares some, if not most, of Ms. Tsujimoto’s political philosophy.

Nor does it speak well to her view of openness as a servant of the people in a democracy by stiffing a request from a reporter to ask reasonable questions about her husband. That’s a basic requirement for people in political life.

Then again, there are probably many things she’d rather not talk about publicly.

Bait and switch

NOW THAT the Japanese electorate has unwittingly jumped from the frying pan into the fire by selecting the country’s Democratic Party to lead a government, people are starting to get scorched. Everyone knew before the election that the DPJ’s principal talents were obstructionism and harangues more suited for postgraduate seminars and smoky union halls than a legislature, but people held their noses and voted for them anyway. Entropy had finally had its way with the Liberal Democratic Party, and that party’s mudboat wing stepped up to the challenge by committing the de facto equivalent of hara-kiri.

By trying to implement a platform whose individual provisions never polled all that well and won’t work well at all, the new government is making manifest its shallowness, petit authoritarianism, and disregard of anything outside its self-interest.

From the Mainichi Shimbun

The vernacular edition of the newspaper carried a story that described a chilly conversation last week between Sengoku Yoshito, the Minister of State for Administrative Reform, and Nagatsuma Akira, the Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare.

Mr. Sengoku initiated the conversation about the JPY 12.4 billion-program for one-time payments of JPY 36,000 to parents of children aged 3-5. That program was started by the Aso Administration at the behest of its New Komeito coalition partners. The payments were supposed to have been made by the end of the year.

The Mainichi quoted Mr. Sengoku as telling Mr. Nagatsuma:

“The special child support allowance was begun by New Komeito, so it has to be cut”.

He also said this was a “Cabinet decision”, though why Mr. Nagatsuma—a Cabinet member—was not present when the decision was made was not explained.

The program was a likely candidate for the axe anyway, because it was adopted to please the former government’s junior coalition partner and to deflect attention from the DPJ’s more extensive child subsidy proposal before the election. That alone doesn’t explain the antagonism, however.

What does? Despite sharing a similar political outlook, the DPJ has shown no interest in bringing New Komeito into their ruling coalition. Indeed, they’ve gone out of their way to harass them in the Diet. They’d rather try to reconcile the irreconcilable paleo-old guard of the PNP and the viperous left of the Social Democrats and govern as if they were in a four-legged race.

That’s because the DPJ’s Shadow Shogun, Ozawa Ichiro, has detested New Komeito for years. If the Mainichi report that this was a Cabinet decision is true, now we know who’s making decisions for the Cabinet.

For an insight into the inscrutability of Japanese politics, by the way, Mr. Sengoku is considered to be an Ozawa opponent within the party.

In the end, the Government canceled the program and held a press conference to “apologize to the people and local governments.”

No one was mollified.

From the Asahi Shimbun

The Aichi Prefecture Mayors’ Conference was held last week in Nagoya, their first meeting since the new government took office. All but one of the prefecture’s 35 mayors attended. The mayors passed a resolution asking the Government to assume full financial liability for the DPJ’s own child allowance proposal, as per their political platform, instead of sticking local governments and the private sector with part of the bill. Some participants complained that the DPJ’s ineptitude is causing turmoil in local government.

Said Inuyama Mayor Tanaka Yukinori (affiliated with the opposition LDP):

“The ministers just jump the gun with these statements, without specifying what is wasteful and what was wrong about the previous expenditures.”

Here’s Toyota Mayor Suzuki Kohei on the work his his city already performed for the Aso Administration policy:

“Our efforts wound up being a waste of time and money. (Some municipalities had to hire temporary employees.) When (the Government) says, ‘We’re a new administration,’ some local governments think that’s an insufficient reason or explanation.”

The sentiments were echoed by Aichi Gov. Kanda Masaaki, a guest at the meeting:

“There is uneasiness and turmoil in the communities. I’m going to do everything I can to hold local conferences to convey our concerns to the government.”

From the Nihonkai Shimbun

Tottori Gov. Hirai Shinji was even more scathing. At a press conference on the 15th, he said:

“The people ordered kabayaki (grilled eel), but they were served up something already eaten alive by a viper.”

In reference to the new Government’s inability to deal with the Finance Ministry bureaucrats, Mr. Hirai noted:

“Whenever the Finance Ministry says anything, they just swallow it whole and keep putting it on the tab of local government. Nothing at all has changed. In fact, it’s gotten worse.”

It might be that local governments could be a more effective check than the nominal opposition party, the LDP, which seems to be missing in action at the national level.

Then again, the Hatoyama Administration isn’t in the mood to listen, regardless of the number of conferences Aichi Gov. Kanda holds.

On television

On the 18th, Deputy Finance Minister Noda Yoshihiko reiterated that the Government is still considering having local governments and businesses cough up some of the money for their child allowance scheme.

Bait-and-switch, inflexibility, and policies that smack of Mussolini-style corporative fascism are no way to run a government, son.

Let’s reduce reliance on the bureaucracy by expanding it!

Back to Sengoku Yoshito, the Minister for Administrative Reform, who also appeared on TV on the 18th touting his latest reform idea. He wants to reorganize Mr. Nagatsuma’s MHLW:

“Its jurisdiction is so broad in scope that the problems arising there every day come up nowhere else.”

The Aso Administration was also interested in reorganizing the ministry last May, but, as with the Aso Administration itself, nothing came of it.

His proposal would seem to be hypocritical for a party that co-opted local reformers by promising to disassociate from the bureaucracy, and then changed its tune to disassociating from a reliance on the bureaucracy once they took office.

Instead, he suggests creating three new Cabinet ministries, each with a name that only the left could dream up:

• The Ministry of Children and Families
• The Ministry of Education and Employment
• The Ministry of Social Insurance

The LDP had the capital idea of privatizing the Social Insurance Agency, but the agency itself torpedoed that plan by leaking the news of the colossal, decade-long foul-up of pension records. (All the more reason to privatize, is it not?) Then-DPJ-head Ozawa Ichiro said it should be merged with the National Tax Agency.

But now the DPJ is the party in power. Now they want to make it into a ministry of its own.

The idea behind coupling education with employment was that the Education Ministry, which also includes culture, sports, science, technology, and God knows what-all, was another candidate for reorganization. Mr. Sengoku did not explain why there was a need to end one Rube Goldberg bureaucracy just to create another. Nor was any justification provided for the existence of full-fledged Cabinet ministries focusing on labor, children, or families; it was as if no justification were needed.

In other words, Mr. Sengoku’s idea of governmental reform is to create three useless ministries where one existed and none are needed. Yes, let’s not rely on bureaucrats any more. As if that weren’t enough, he also said he was going to think of other ways to efficiently reorganize the central government.

Well, what sort of administrative reform can one expect from a former labor lawyer who was first elected to the Diet as a member of the Socialist Party? Did anyone really think he was going to consider central government downsizing?

Here’s another one on the inscrutability of Japanese politics: Mr. Sengoku is affiliated with the DPJ’s Maehara-Edano group/faction, which is considered to be on the Right within the party.

Meanwhile…

People outside of Japan are starting to draw conclusions about the new government, particularly those in financial circles.

Phill Tomlinson thinks stagflation will continue:

Many Keynesian economists are still baffled by Japan. Over the years, policy after policy has been proposed by their school of thought, all of which involve some form of government action, but time and time again they all seem to fail. The classic Keynesian rebuttal whenever these policies fail is “Well, the authorities didn’t do enough”. Just like they apparently didn’t do enough during the Great Depression.

And:

The reason why they never recovered to their previous highs was exactly what the Government did, they took over and tried the command economy approach. Roads to nowhere, propping up banks that were insolvent, not allowing private enterprise to take over the means of production. Rather than money going into the private sector, Japanese savings that were accrued during their economic miracle were funneled into Government bonds, wasteful Government consumption. It was quite simply a classic stagflation that is still ongoing.

That was published on the same day it was reported the Government would try to prop up debt-ridden Japan Airlines by putting its ownership in the hands of a quasi-public corporation without having it go through bankruptcy.

Meet the new boss.

Even worse than the old boss.

Down in the boondocks

A permanent, professional, career legislative class is no friend to democracy. In a healthy polity, our representatives should be part-time, poorly remunerated, (and) perk-free.
- Mark Steyn

THOUGH IT’S BEEN LARGELY FORGOTTEN by the mass media in the past month due to the hullaballoo over the new boys on the block, the issue of greater independence for local governments dominated the political discussion for most of the spring and summer. Prefectural governors with stratospheric approval ratings took the initiative to set the agenda, and the national politicians had no choice but to follow the Pied Pipers. The latter ignored the locals and their personification of the public’s aspirations at their own risk. Both parties courted Osaka Governor Hashimoto Toru, who forced an embarrassed Democratic Party of Japan to modify its election platform after a splashy rollout when he found it lacking. Mr. Hashimoto’s comrade-in-arms, Miyazaki Governor Higashikokubaru Hideo, performed a highly publicized pas de deux with the eventual loser, the Liberal Democratic Party, but they wound up tripping over each other’s feet.

To hear them tell it, one would think they were all nabobs of devolution from jump street. In the original Japanese version of Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio’s now-famous article in the September issue of Voice magazine, called My Political Philosophy, Mr. Hatoyama (or his ghostwriter) said:

“In my speech announcing my candidacy for party president, I said, ‘The policy I wish to devote the greatest attention to is transforming the present form of the state based on centralized authority into a country with regional sovereignty.’ I wrote something similar in the proclamation announcing the formation of the former Democratic Party 13 years ago: ‘(We will achieve) devolution and a state based on regional sovereignty through a small central government and Diet, and effective local governments with large authority.’”

Pull the other one, Yukio.

All three candidates in the recently concluded campaign for president of the opposition Liberal Democratic Party were singing from the same hymnbook. Promised eventual winner Tanigaki Sadakazu:

“Our first priority must be to restore the regional areas to health. If elected, I will travel the country, listen to the voice of the regions, and absorb their pain to confront the ruling party.”

Yes, he said “absorb”. Former American President Bill Clinton was famous for telling the voters he felt their pain. Mr. Tanigaki will soak it up like a sponge. Will he die for our sins next?

Challenger Nishimura Yasutoshi agreed, though the second sentence suggests he doesn’t know which end of the telescope is which:

“The first requirement is to rebuild the regions. Local communities are starting to fall apart due to excessive deregulation and budget cuts. I want to create a mechanism for operational stability that responds to conditions in the regions.”

Kono Taro, the only one of the bunch with at least some credibility on this issue, had this to say:

“The DPJ (administration) will result in big government, and that requires big tax revenues. I will create a government that is small, efficient, and supports the regions.”

It remains to be seen just how serious these people are, but the folks down in the boondocks aren’t waiting to find out. Here are three quick hits showing how they’ve been taking matters into their own hands instead of sitting on them.

Their word’s no longer their bond

Delegates to prefectural and municipal assemblies are paid an allowance for “political research expenses” to be used for the study of policy and legislative matters. Other people, however, refer to the money as “a second salary”. The allowance is paid at the beginning of the fiscal year, and the delegates submit an expense account statement with the unused funds at yearend.

Starting in FY 2008, Beppu in Oita, a well-known hot springs resort, required its 29 city council members to attach receipts to their expense account statements for all political research expenses totaling more than one yen. The Nishinippon Shimbun got their hands on the reports and found that six million yen (about $US 66,700) was returned at yearend (31 March this year)—an amount four times greater than that returned last year, when no receipts were required.

The new rule was implemented because some council members were caught using the money to pay off car loans and purchase CDs. Most people also take it for granted that they used it to wine and dine themselves and their friends.

The allowance for political research expenditures for each Beppu delegate is 840,000 yen, or 24.36 million yen in all. Last year, only members of New Komeito, the political arm of the lay Buddhist group Soka Gakkai, and the Communist Party had any money left over after their rigorous, in-depth policy wanking. This year, refunds poured in from all over the political spectrum. Four of the delegates returned at least 500,000 yen, and some of them returned the full amount. In contrast, 13 used all of the money available.

One delegate said he gave it back because he was worried he would be suspected of having spent the cash on food and drink. Another said the standards for judging the suitability of the expenditures depended on the person doing the auditing, and that saving the receipts was tiresome, so returning it to the city treasury was easier. Yet another delegate had a bright idea: the whole system should be scrapped and their salaries raised to compensate for the loss of funds. Hey, give the guy credit for trying!

Proponents of the rule say it clearly had an effect, and that the increase in the amount of funds returned creates serious doubts about the legitimacy of previous expenditures.

Other local governments in Kyushu have adopted the same requirement. Enforcement of the new rule began in both Fukuoka and Kumamoto prefectures this April, as well as Fukuoka City. Nagasaki Prefecture will start as of this month. Kitakyushu, a city of more than one million, has more lenient standards—they require receipts for expenditures above 50,000 yen.

Privatization

One reason for the popularity of former Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro was his mantra of entrusting to the private sector that which the private sector can do. Though that goal is important enough to be tattooed on the wrist of everyone elected to public office, other politicians cancelled the checks on the lip service they had been paying to the concept after he stepped down in 2006.

The idea is still alive and kicking outside the national capital, however, though more out of necessity than choice. To cite one example, Kumamoto City revealed it will transfer the operations of the city-owned bus company to local private-sector bus companies by March 2016. As of 2007, the municipal bus service was carrying the freight of an aggregate loss of 1.3 billion yen.

Here’s how Mayor Koyama Seishi justified the move:

“We must protect buses as (a form of) public transportation. We will fulfill our public responsibility as a government.”

Now that’s an idea with real potential: governments ensuring the provision of public services by getting out of the way and letting someone else do it.

The bus company was founded in 1927, and ridership peaked at 38 million people in 1968. By 2007, however, those numbers had fallen to 12 million. After injecting one billion yen annually into the enterprise for the past 11 years, the city finally decided to stop throwing the taxpayers’ money into a hole.

The business will be transferred to a newly created company formed by three private-sector bus companies in Kumamoto Prefecture.

“The daintiest last, to make the end most sweet.”
- Shakespeare

The municipal hospital in Takeo, Saga, was a similar drain on the public coffers. The hospital had an aggregate debt of 630 million yen, and selling it to private interests was one of Mayor Hiwatashi Keisuke’s campaign promises. After he took the first steps to do so, a citizens’ group opposed to the plan launched a recall drive. The primary support for the recall came from the local medical association, as well as some city council members. (Doctors’ groups donate generously to politicians at both the national and local levels in Japan, and expect quid pro quo for their money.)

The recall process could have taken up to six months, however, so Mayor Hiwatashi resigned to avoid creating a vacuum in the municipal administration. Shortly thereafter, he filed as a candidate in the new election, saying he was running to determine whether his policies had earned the trust of the citizens. That election was held less than two months later, and the mayor was reelected with 54% of the vote.

The Japanese public has repeatedly shown that it will back politicians who are automatic for the people. That some politicians don’t automatically get it is proof of their myopia.

Afterwords:

You think those political research expenses in Beppu are generous? Wait till you look at this previous post and see what the the national Diet members get.

Situation vacant

ONE FINE DAY, Japan will have a real government at last. Despite a few positive moves in that direction by the recently installed Hatoyama Administration, however, it’s starting to look as if that day isn’t going to dawn anytime soon.

Driving in reverse

People are asking questions about members of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan’s policy study group attending the briefings of various ministry bureaus. The problem is that the party members are not bound to uphold the confidentiality of what they hear.

New Health, Labor, and Welfare Minister Nagatsuma Akira discussed the issue with reporters after a Cabinet meeting on the 25th. He said:

“We’re thinking of a method in which we would appoint them as a sort of project team under Cabinet authority and have them work as part-time civil servants, for whom the confidentiality requirement applies.”

The reason the electorate voted in such massive numbers for a change in government was because they thought it was an urgent priority to disconnect the government from bureaucratic control.

How they manage to disconnect themselves from the bureaucracy by becoming part of it remains to be seen.

Legislation?…Oh yeah, that!

Here’s Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio on convening a Diet session in October:

“No decision has been made. We haven’t made a decision yet on what bills we’ll propose. Now we’ll start thinking about whether an extraordinary Diet session is necessary. There are two elections coming up (on 25 October to fill vacant upper house seats in Kanagawa and Shizuoka) and we have to see what happens.”

In other words, the people who’ve been telling us they’re ready to handle the reins of government for the past two years still haven’t got a program ready, though it’s been apparent for most of the year that they’d win the election.

Apparently, by-election campaigns take precedence over the Diet’s business.

The Nikkei points out that Mr. Hatoyama has a full diplomatic schedule next month, including summits with the leaders of China and South Korea. Why summits should be a priority isn’t clear, however. Both countries will be right there where they’ve always been for the foreseeable future, and there are no bilateral problems that either could be or need to be solved right away. That means there’s no real reason for Mr. Hatoyama to give them all his milk and cookies just yet.

As a small-government guy, I think it’s a capital idea for legislatures to meet as infrequently as possible—they only wind up getting into mischief and causing trouble for normal people—but would it have been too much to ask of the DPJ to have settled on what they want to do in Nagata-cho before they got there?

Aren’t they supposed to be the policy wanks, the ones who brought party platforms into Japanese politics?

Then again, if the DPJ wins both of those upper house seats, they might be able to disconnect themselves from one of their useless coalition partners and get to work.

And speaking of useless coalition partners…

More Cowbell from Kamei

It was almost a tradition in Japanese politics for one of the members of a new Liberal-Democratic Party Cabinet to shoot his mouth off within a week of being sworn in and wind up shooting himself and the party in the foot.

Well, the new Financial Services Minister Kamei Shizuka is an ex-LDP stalwart, so maybe he’s trying to keep the tradition of loose cannon fusillades alive.

Recall that Mr. Kamei recently said he favored a three-year moratorium on bank loan repayments for small businesses and homeowners—including some interest payments—and using public funds to prop up any banks that might have trouble making ends meet by forgoing all that income.

Mr. Kamei fired off several salvos on a TV broadcast yesterday as a counterattack to the legions of those who were appalled at the idea, including members of his coalition.

“Banks that are so weak that their stock would fall because of what I said aren’t qualified to function as banks.”

The Asahi dryly wondered whether a statement that employs “vague standards” to discuss the qualifications of banks is appropriate for a Cabinet minister with such broad oversight over those institutions.

“(If this measure) causes investors and citizens to lose their faith (in the banks) to such an extent, the financial institutions themselves should reflect on the reasons for their problems.”

Oh. It’s all their fault.

Finance Minister Fujii Hirohisa has said neither he nor the Bank of Japan thinks the measure is necessary. You may fire when ready, Kamei:

“We agreed to introduce that as a policy measure (during the negotiations to form a coalition). I don’t know what he’s talking about after all this time, but he’s just talking to himself.”

Meanwhile, overseas institutional investors started looking for the nearest exit.

In other news, he’s converted to the Hatoyama philosophy of high school student government:

“People can’t live under this radical philosophy of market supremacy, in which the strong eat the weak. I’m only trying to implement yuai (fraternal) politics.”

Mr. Kamei is also the Minister in Charge of Bloviating About Japan Post Privatization. Haraguchi Kazuhiro, the new Internal Affairs and Communications minister, has offered a suggestion for Japan Post’s reorganization. Said the Man in Charge Around Here:

“I’m the Minister in charge of Japan Post. It’s not that person’s (Haraguchi’s) position to make characterizations (literally, draw pictures) about matters that are my responsibility.”

I’ve remarked several times on Ozawa Ichiro’s propensity for creating inherently unstable coalitions, but this must be a record. The new Government’s only two weeks old and already one of the Cabinet ministers is telling two of his colleagues where to get off.

Despite the criticism from within the ruling party and business and financial circles, Mr. Kamei thinks he’s sitting in the catbird seat:

“If they’re so (opposed), they might hope that the Prime Minister will replace me. But that’s not possible.”

Here’s the problem–Mr. Kamei is right. During the campaign Candidate Hatoyama also came out in favor of a debt repayment moratorium while stumping for DPJ lower house MP Kawauchi Hiroshi, a member of the Hatoyama group/faction. Mr. Hatoyama said the moratorium was Mr. Kawauchi’s idea, but he also supported it. Though it went unremarked at the time, that part of the speech was filmed and is up on YouTube.

This has the potential to get really ugly.

On second thought, maybe it’s a good idea to put off a new Diet session until the by-elections after all.

UPDATE:

Oh, my. According to the Asahi, at a press conference on the 28th, Mr. Hatoyama now said:

“It’s not the case that (the three coalition partners) agreed to go so far as a moratorium.” (モラトリアムということまで)

You know how they say charity begins at home? Maybe yuai does too–starting with the coalition government. If Mr. Hatoyama can’t sell it there, how can he expect to sell it anywhere else?

Open primaries

DANIEL HANNAN, a member of the European Parliament for Southeast England since 1999, has an idea for improving British Parliament.

The essence of democracy is that the country gets a regular chance to turn the rascals out. But, as things stand, almost every seat is owned by one or other of the main parties. If you live in one of these seats, the only way your MP will lose his job is if his party de-selects him. So, being a rational human being, he will tend to side with his Whips against his constituents.

What does that have to do with this country?

Notwithstanding the many new members of the Diet that were coined in the last two lower house elections, that system would also be a tonic for Japanese politics.

Put it to the test yourself by changing just a couple of words in the last sentence and applying the entire passage here:

So, being a rational human being, he will tend to side with the party bosses against his constituents.

Follow the money to find out why.

What could be more democratic than letting the people decide?

Mr. Hannan explains that the benefits would be more than philosophical:

Open primaries would abolish the concept of a safe seat, restoring the independence of Parliament and ensuring that the legislature was once again an effective check on the executive.

In Japan’s case, it would establish the independence of the Diet and ensure that the legislature was an effective check on the executive for the first time.

An additional benefit would be to end the hypocrisy about hereditary candidates. The people would get whom the people want.

By taking power out of the hands of the party bosses, it would also spark a political realignment almost immediately.

Combine that with a residency requirement preventing people from parachuting into a district from somewhere else in the country, and some of the excellent ideas floating around for reforming the upper house, and you’d be cooking with gas.

Kyushu companies

HERE’S HOW Nippon Keidanren, or the Japanese Business Federation, describes itself:

Nippon Keidanren (Japan Business Federation) is a comprehensive economic organization born in May 2002 by amalgamation of Keidanren (Japan Federation of Economic Organizations) and Nikkeiren (Japan Federation of Employers’ Associations). Its membership of 1,609 is comprised of 1,295 companies, 129 industrial associations, and 47 regional economic organizations (as of May 28, 2009).

The mission of Nippon Keidanren is to accelerate growth of Japan’s and world economy and to strengthen the corporations to create additional value to transform Japanese economy into one that is sustainable and driven by the private sector, by encouraging the idea of individuals and local communities.

Kyushu Keidanren, or the Kyushu Economic Federation, has 736 corporate members. It sent a questionnaire to its members asking for their opinions regarding 21 policies of the new Hatoyama Administration. They received responses from 150.

The respondents had their choice of two answers: (1) “Definitely want (them) to do it,” and (2) “Definitely want (them) to rethink it” (i.e., We don’t like this at all).

While the survey subjects are businesspeople at larger companies and not citizens at large, the results are worth examining because it highlights a potential disconnect between what the public wants the Government to do, and what the Government thinks it should do.

Here are the three questions that received the most favorable responses, and the three questions that received the most unfavorable responses. Let’s start with the nays first.

* Eliminating tolls on expressways
Yes: 6.7%
No: 54.7%

* Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 25%
Yes: 5.3%
No: 35.3%

* Paying child-rearing subsidies
Yes: 8.7%
No: 32.0%

It might come as no surprise to see they’re opposed to the “global warming” policies, but I didn’t expect that answer for the other two. Some might think corporations would welcome toll-free expressways because it would reduce overland delivery costs, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Here’s what they liked:

* Reducing personnel costs for national civil servants by 20%
Yes: 35.3%
No: 2.0%

* Drastically revising the system for formulating national budgets
Yes: 32.7%
No: 2.7%

* Devolving authority and financing sources to local governments
Yes: 28.7%
No: 3.3%

It seems clear that people consider the priorities to be smaller, more local, and more efficient government. It remains to be seen whether the new Government understands that.

Shinise

Speaking of corporate surveys, the Fukuoka branch of Tokyo Shoko Research conducted a survey of companies in Kyushu and Okinawa that are at least 100 years old. There’s a word in Japanese for old, established firms with a good reputation: shinise. TSR thinks companies that have been around that long are good investment risks.

They found a total of 1,470 centenarian corporate citizens in the region. The oldest is Kawaguchi Bunten of Nagasaki, a food products retailer that opened in 1470. In other words, it had already become established by the time Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Of the 10 oldest companies, the youngest is Toyo-kan, a ryokan, or Japanese inn, which opened in 1614.

Three date from the 16th century. One is a Fukuoka City shop that’s been selling handmade calligraphy instruments since 1501.

A breakdown by business sector shows that 46.9% are in retail or wholesale sales–not surprising–and 28.2% are in the manufacturing industry.

Tokyo Shoko Research, incidentally, is an old-timer too. It was founded in 1892.

L’etat c’est moi

ONE KEY FEATURE of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan’s political program is to exploit the government’s unused financial assets, excessive budget allocations, and waste in existing programs to ladle out the recovered largesse to various groups of the citizenry. Outside the party itself and its most ardent acolytes, however, there is a near unanimity of consensus on the impossibility of funding the schemes in the way it proposes for more than a year, if that long. But government subsidies enacted for political objectives have a way of lasting forever, unfortunately.

Gucci, Pucci, and Fiorucci for The People

The success of the new Government’s efforts will hinge on their ability to tease out funds from money already earmarked for expenditure, including funds in the FY 2009 supplemental budget. That’s why Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio has asked all the Cabinet ministers to look for waste and extravagance in their budgets that can be diverted to the administration’s priorities. For example, it’s already been announced that the controversial manga museum project will be suspended. Mr. Hatoyama wants the ministers to submit their reports by 2 October.

Fukushima Mizuho, the Minister of State for Consumer Affairs and Food Safety, Social Affairs, and Gender Equality, and the chief of the minor coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party of Japan, this week held her first official meeting with the deputy minister and parliamentary secretary to examine those parts of the current FY supplementary budget for which she’s responsible to see if she can pry loose any of the money.

The 2 October deadline was more than enough time for them. In fact, it took them only three hours to conclude that every last yen in her ministry’s allocation was absolutely essential.

Now that’s governmental efficiency!

She later told the press:

“I am responsible for suicide prevention measures, strengthening local government consumer organizations, and support for domestic violence. Basically, there’s nothing to cut because the new Government is trying to achieve politics that put a priority on human life.”

Ms. Fukushima’s background is that of a radical leftist lawyer who has been associated with Marxist terrorist groups, and who heads the Party Formerly Known As The Socialists. Is it any surprise that she would consider all of the money in her ministry as a crucial asset for the public sector?

It’s axiomatic in politics that the farther left the politician, the more likely he is to believe that the rules and regulations that apply to everyone else don’t apply to his pet causes. Besides, we already know that the bureaucracy believes it needs all that money to spend on office space and furniture and transportation expenses and softball uniforms while it thinks about the ways it can help The People.

Does anyone doubt that given a 2 October deadline, any owner of a small or medium-sized business in Japan would be able to shake loose a substantial piece of change from that budget without disrupting any essential government services?

Does anyone doubt that if a neutral party with an interest in streamlining government were given a free hand, that white elephant of a ministry would be out of the Cabinet, its constituent elements broken up, their status downgraded to those of an agency or bureau, and their functions either consolidated or eliminated?

How quickly the pigs learn to walk on their hind legs!

Card games

LAST WEEK, new Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya gave an interview to the Nishinippon Shimbun’s Tokyo correspondent. It was unremarkable for the most part, save for this passage:

Will you extend the law that provides for the Indian Ocean refueling activities when it expires in January?

There will not be a simple extension.

Is there any leeway for an extension based on the condition of prior approval in the Diet?

There will not be a simple extension. (I won’t say) anything more than that, or anything less than that. I have no comment on the details. We want to have different cards available.

*****

Cards? Cards? When did Japan’s commitment to participate in the UN-approved NATO mission in Afghanistan become a poker game?

Diplomatic cards are used when dealing with hostile or potentially hostile nations to outmaneuver them and gain an advantage. The United States played the “China card” of recognizing the PRC as part of its geopolitical strategy against the Soviet Union.

The UN approved the NATO mission a second time specifically to give Japan the justification it needed for participation. It’s a matter of principle. You either support the mission or you don’t. If you support it, extend it, and if you don’t, end it.

This is not an issue to be manipulated for some imagined advantage either abroad or at home, and trying to do so will only wind up harming Japan. What does he think Japan will win by playing this “card”? I really hope he doesn’t have the Okinawa bases or the SOFA in the back of his mind.

It would have been one thing had he said that the Government wants to keep its options open while it examines the alternatives. But this ain’t mah jongg, and Ozawa/Tanaka Tammany-style politicking doesn’t translate well from the Diet to foreign affairs.

You’re in the Government now, Mr. Okada. It’s time to put away the petty parliamentary games and put on your long trousers.

On 24 April 2004, the Japanese oil tanker Takasuzu was anchored at a terminal near Basra in Iraq when three boats filled with explosives on a suicide mission approached the site at high speed. There was a gun battle with ships from the multinational forces, and one of those boats was destroyed in a huge explosion a few hundred meters away from, and on a direct course to hit, the Takasuzu. No Japanese were hurt, though the tanker suffered minor damage.

Two American sailors and a guard on shore were killed, however.

You think it’s a card game? One of these days, somebody just might pull out the No Blood For (Japanese) Oil card on you.

UPDATE:

Prime Minister Hatoyama has been talking about this issue with his British counterpart, Gordon Brown. Mr. Brown asked him what he intended to do. Here’s the answer, as reported by Breitbart:

“Our country will consider what would be the best way to contribute to the future of Afghanistan,” Hatoyama was quoted by the officials as saying to Brown.

As one example, the new Japanese leader said, “We may instead choose to provide vocational training to Taliban soldiers to help them to return to society, offer the soldiers stability and happiness, and eventually bring about peace in all of Afghanistan,” according to the officials.

It seems as if Yuki-chan might have eaten a bit too much sun for breakfast this morning.

It’s beginning to look as if the recent election was the first time in world history government power was transfered from a group of tired old men to a junior high school girl playing dress up in her grandfather’s clothes.

This has the potential to get really ugly.

Afterwords:

The Sunday before last I met Prof. Shimojo Masao face-to-face for the first time in a few years (see the article on Takeshima at the top of the page). He is utterly disgusted at the attitude of Japanese politicians of all parties toward international relations. “They’re just not interested,” he said.

Indeed.