A dongba workshop in Osaka

PEOPLE WHO ARE BORED and can’t come up with a way to fill their spare hours in Japan have only themselves to blame. In every town there is at least one, and usually more, of what are known as karuchaa sentaa. There, for a modest fee, a person can choose to learn or learn about something interesting from among a cornucopia of subjects in classes offered from morning to night, all under the same roof.

If you want to study art, you can dabble in watercolors, oil colors, sketching with pencil (regular lead or colored), charcoal, woodblock prints, ceramics, pottery, origami, wood sculpture, and stained glass–and that doesn’t begin to exhaust the list at only one center in a small town.

There are classes in natural makeup, mah-jongg for women, chess, go, shogi, tarot, feng shui, cooking (just about anything), yoga, chi gung, exercises for the lymphatic system, and martial arts. Budding musicians can learn how to play any kind of instrument, Japanese or Western (including harmonica and ukulele), sing any kind of song, or dance any kind of dance. There are even special classes for karaoke singing.

Those interested in foreign languages can apply themselves to English (at several levels of difficulty), Korean, Chinese, French, and Italian. It goes without saying that there are classes in calligraphy, as well as classes in what’s called pen-ji, or writing kanji using a ballpoint pen.

And if you live in the Osaka area, earlier this month you could have taken part in a dongba workshop for free at the National Museum of Ethnology (link also on right sidebar).

What is dongba? The word is used to refer to the priests, culture, and pictographic script of the Naxi, an ethnic group of about 290,000 people that live in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan. The dongba that drew the Osakans to the workshop was the writing system, which consists of the only pictographs in use in the world today.

The system is used exclusively by priests as a prompt for interpreting ritual texts during weddings, funerals, and other religious ceremonies. By some accounts, there are as many as 2,000 symbols. It cannot be used to represent the Naxi language, but since the Naxi now write in Chinese they don’t need to use it for that purpose.

Students at the museum’s workshop listened to a lecture on Naxi culture and the use of the characters, watched a practical writing demonstration, and tried to write a letter on their own with the script.

There is what the Japanese call a quiet boom in dongba at present. Its popularity is not hard to understand. As you can see from the accompanying examples, the glyphs are simple, unpretentious, and easy to comprehend, particularly for people who use ideographic characters to begin with.

It’s exactly the sort of thing the Japanese find attractive, and the characters are even used in this country on the labels of PET bottles and as motifs on merchandise.

Some dongba manuscripts have been registered in Memory of the World, a UNESCO program to protect cultural heritage that the body thinks is in danger of dying out. How like UNESCO and the UN! To begin with, there are more than 5,000 dongba texts in libraries in the United States and Europe. In addition, the first photo here shows dongba used in a Kirin advertisement, and the second photo shows a dongba decal (translation: I love you) stuck on a cell phone. Since the danger that the world will forget about dongba is negligible–at least the part of the world that already knows about it–one has to wonder if UNESCO just finds it a convenient way to justify its own existence.

For those with an academic temperament, here’s a paper (.pdf file) comparing the development of written Chinese with dongba that you might enjoy. It explains that the dongba pictographs are a relatively recent invention (18th century), and their use became widespread when the Naxi prospered from the opium trade and had more disposable income to produce the texts.

Rolling them bones in Heian Japan

YESTERDAY I wrote that there’s no telling what might turn up when people start rummaging around in a storeroom in Japan. There’s also no telling what they’ll dig up from an archaeological site.

Here’s an example: While shoveling around in the Okuzono ruins in Dazaifu, Fukuoka, recently, researchers uncovered a die made of rock dating from the late Heian period (11th to the 12th centuries) and about 50 small stones that had been processed for use in sugoroku, go, and hajiki.

Sugoroku is a board game that was brought over from China and has two variations to the rules. One is almost identical to backgammon, and the other is similar to Snakes and Ladders. Hajiki is a Japanese form of marbles, and everyone knows what go is.

The ruins are about 500 meters southwest of the Daizaifu Tenman-gu, a well-known Shinto shrine that had already been around for a couple of centuries before they started shooting the local version of craps nearby. The city’s Committee on Education (which is responsible for archaeological matters) said it was possible the location was a former worksite for people who made games and game equipment. They think the items might have been presented in dedication to the shrine or sold to important people who visited there.

Each side of the die is about 1.1 centimeters across. The opposing sides of modern dice add up to seven, but the arrangement of the numbers on this die is different: on the opposite side of the 6 is a 4, for example.

The stones are of different materials and colors and range in size from 0.8 to 2.0 centimeters.

The part of this story that interests me is not that the Japanese used dice. They, along with the rest of the world, have played dice games for millennia. The part that intrigues me is that the archaeologists think they might have been sold at a religious institution—and no one is particularly surprised.

What the heck–many Shinto shrines in Japan have long held festivals for offering home-brewed sake to the divinities. Now it turns out they also countenanced dice games too, some of which surely involved friendly wagers on the side!

Matsuri da! (83): The iron chefs live!

LONG-TIME FRIENDS know that the Japanese can transform almost any behavior into an act of reverence at a Shinto festival, and here’s yet another example: Slicing and serving sushi.

The Sushikiri Festival (literally sushi-cutting) is held every 5 May at the Shimoniikawa Shinto shrine in Moriyama, Shiga, in supplication for a good harvest, health, and protection from disaster. It is now a national intangible cultural folk treasure.

Rather than professional sushi chefs, the slicing is done by two young men clad in traditional haori (half-coat) and hakama (divided skirt), as you can see in the photo. They use 20-centimeter-long metal chopsticks to hold the fish with their left hands while they carefully cut the fish with exaggerated motions using a 40-centimeter-long knife held in their right hands. (It is unusual to see metal chopsticks in Japan; most are wooden. The metal variety are more frequently seen in Korea.)

The fish on the menu every year is the funa, of which there are several varieties, none of which has a familiar English name (though many of them end in “carp”). The sushi is first cut for and served to the head priest of the shrine and the chairman of the local citizens’ association. In fact, they’re sitting in formal Japanese style directly across from the two men, though they’re not shown in the photo. (Try the second photo here to see them.) The fish is later distributed to the parishioners who’ve come to participate.

And this funa is not just the run-of-the-mill sushi; this treat has been fermented for three or four years before it’s served. The process originally came from China and has been used in Japan for about 1,000 years. The fermentation creates an odor that many people find unappetizing, but the dish has become a noted product of Shiga. (You can read more about it here and here. Those with a scientific turn of mind might find this to be of interest.)
　
The official story is that the festival, formally known as the Omi-no-Kenketo Festival (the sushi cutting is just one part of it) originated when funazushi was given to a divinity who drifted ashore to the banks of Lake Biwa on a raft 1,300 years ago.

But there are other stories too. Shimoniikawa is one of the six shrines in the country with Toyokiirihiko-no-Mikoto, the eldest son of the Sujin Tenno (emperor), as the enshrined deity. Some versions have it that the food was originally served to Toyokiirihiko, which would make the event closer to 2,000 years old.

Suijin is supposed to have been the 10th Tenno, but no one is sure that he actually existed. His reign years are given as 97 BC to 30 BC, which Japanese historians think is implausibly early. (His recorded life span of 119 years is just as implausible.) Accounts in the Nihon Shoki ascribe some of the same exploits to both the legendary first emperor Jimmu and to Suijin, which lead some to believe that the deeds of a Sujin who might have existed were attributed to Jimmu.

Incidentally, the Shimoniikawa shrine was in the news in March this year when it was confirmed that a Buddhist temple bell found in the storage area for the shrine’s mikoshi in May 2007 is the oldest example of a bell with both Japanese and Korean designs discovered in the country.

Cast in 1419, it is the sixth bell of this type to have ever turned up in Japan. Shown in the second photo, it is 40.6 centimeters tall, 23.9 centimeters wide, and weighs 11.2 kilograms. Reports say that it was used in the “Buddhist temple hall”, which suggests the shrine was once a joint Shinto-Buddhist facility of the kind that no longer exist, though that wasn’t explicitly stated. The Japanese decorations are the dragon heads at the top of the bell, while the Korean motifs are the plant and flower designs on the rest of the bell.

And that just goes to show: There’s no telling what you’re liable to stumble over when you start poking around in a storeroom in Japan!

Drawing conclusions from Japanese demographics

THE REALITIES OF DEMOGRAPHICS and the aging of Japanese society are causing some people, primarily in private-sector businesses, to draw their own conclusions and act accordingly. Meanwhile, others are oblivious to the new realities because they can’t see–or don’t want to see–beyond their own front yard. The latter group might wind up regretting their failure to pay attention.

Here are some examples:

Item 1

The Nishinippon Shimbun published a survey earlier this week that revealed 58 hospitals and clinics in all seven Kyushu prefectures eliminated their pediatric wards during the period from April 2007 to April 2008. The primary reasons cited for the step included the declining number of children and a shortage of pediatricians. In contrast, 35 facilities added an internal medicine ward.

Some hospital officials pointed out the difficulties of pediatric practice. Because both parents are working in many more families than before, they take their children for medical examinations during their off hours, when most examinations are being conducted on emergency patients. It is also difficult to determine the severity of a child’s illness, and illnesses in children tend to become more severe more quickly than in adults. That means pediatricians must work longer hours without a commensurate increase in pay.

The 2004 reform of the system for medical education resulted in greater freedom for students to select their course of study. Since then, the number of medical students choosing pediatrics has sharply declined.

One hospital director also cited business factors as a reason. The remuneration for treating children is low, their diagnosis and treatment involve a lot of time and trouble, and fewer tests and drugs are ordered. Pediatrics always has been a money-loser for hospitals, but the falling population of children has spurred the elimination of the wards that treat them.

Here’s what is being left unsaid, but is perfectly obvious: Bright young medical students have drawn the conclusion that pediatrics is not a growth sector in Japan, and some hospitals think the sector is more trouble than it’s worth.

Why are pediatrics wards becoming unnecessary in some hospitals?

Item 2

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications released a report for 5 May–Children’s Day–estimating the national population of children on 1 April this year. The estimate counted a record low of 17,250,000 children aged 14 or younger, down 30,000 from the previous year. The number of children in this category have declined every year since 1982, or 27 straight years. According to the ministry, this age group accounts for 13.5% of the population, one of the lowest levels in the world. This percentage has been dropping for 34 consecutive years.

On the same day, the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (link also on right sidebar) reported there will be fewer than 15 million children by 2015, and they will account for less than 12% of the population. The institute said that urgent measures were needed to deal with this situation.

The institute broke down the percentages by prefecture. Tokyo had the lowest percentage with 11.7%, followed by Akita with 11.8%. This is significant because these two locations represent different population extremes. It isn’t surprising that there would be fewer children in Tokyo, a megalopolis with a high percentage of singles. But Akita is a more rural prefecture with a much smaller urban population.

The prefecture with the highest percentage of children was sunny Okinawa at 18.1%. The only one in which the percentage of children rose over the past year was Tokyo–by 0.1%.

The private sector has drawn its own conclusions from this information and is taking steps to seize their financial opportunities.

Item 3

On the same day that its report on local pediatrics wards appeared, the Nishinippon Shimbun ran a feature explaining that Kyushu Electric Power, Saibu Gas, Nishitetsu Railroad, and other big businesses in the Kyushu region are ramping up their business investments in homes for the aged by building facilities on their unused land holdings. These companies are parlaying their name recognition to create facilities that provide services similar to those of hotels. Some are assisted care facilities that require initial payments ranging from several hundred thousand yen to several million yen, and a few upscale institutions require initial entry payments of more than 100 million yen (about US$ 952,000).

A facility built in Fukuoka City by Saibu Gas has 122 units on 24 floors with Italian furniture in every unit and a natural hot spring on the premises. The minimum entry fee is 30 million yen. It opened in 2006 and is now 40% occupied. Two of those units carried the 100-million-yen price tag.

The extreme aging of society

Recall that the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research forecast that children aged 14 and younger would account for less than 12% of the population in seven years. Statistics from the institute’s website also show that the percentage of Japan’s population aged 75 and older rose from 1.4% in 1930 to 4.7% in 1995 and to 8.8% in 2004.

Everyone knows the reasons for this: the Japanese are a healthier people to begin with, and they are living longer as a result of the advances in medical science.

That means the day there are more people aged 75 in Japan than those younger than 15 is just over the horizon. How far away is it? We might be able to count the years on our fingers, with a few toes thrown in.

To its credit, the Japanese government drew its own conclusions about this situation a long time ago. Japan’s semi-socialized medical system provides exceptional care with few of the drawbacks of the systems in Canada or Great Britain, for example. Until recently, the elderly were required to pay just 10% of their costs, and those who were registered as dependents of employed children (not unusual in this East Asian country) were exempt from payments altogether.

Considering the general abundance of modern life and the success of the Japanese pension system, the elderly—who are naturally the primary consumers of health care—had quite a deal for themselves.

But the country is in a difficult fiscal situation: gross public debt is more than 170% of GDP and is expected to continue to rise. More old people are using more health care resources paid for by public funds. And the tax-paying population is going to decline in the future, not grow.

The government began planning changes in the system a few years ago, and they inaugurated the new system on 1 April this year. Those people aged 75 and older will be required to be responsible for their own health care costs (though this has been purposely delayed to limit the political backlash), and there was a marginal increase in the monthly payments.

It’s difficult to blame anyone for the inevitable uproar that resulted.

Gray anger

The government is trying to keep outlays from getting out of hand. It’s not unreasonable to expect people to assume more responsibility for their health care, particularly when the system is so generous and affordable to begin with.

People who have ceded their responsibility for the basic functions of life to the government are not going to act their age when that government tells them fairness requires they start assuming more personal responsibility.

As the novelist Upton Sinclair once observed, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. Replace salary here with benefits, and the statement describes the reaction of many Japanese elderly to the new system.

One old man on the street interviewed for national television blustered for the camera that it was as if the government was telling him it hoped he died early. In fact, some people have started calling this the “hurry up and die” insurance system.

The reaction was so intense it was cited as one of the reasons for the defeat of the ruling party’s candidate in a by-election for a lower house seat in Yamaguchi.

Yes, that is blubbering selfish stupidity, but no one seems anxious to set them straight. Indeed, no one explained the new system to them to begin with. Discussions about the reforms became public around the time the war in Iraq started, and the mass media, being an entertainment enterprise, knows it’s more entertaining when people die, preferably in explosions. Instead of covering a development that involved all Japanese, they devoted their time and resources to covering a story that involved almost no Japanese.

And when it became a public issue, the media chose to fan the political flames and turn it a potential election issue between the ruling party and the opposition rather than discuss it in a reasonable way.

Meanwhile, the Japanese government is not known for the ability to communicate with its citizens.

Failing to connect the dots

The only ones who seem to be unable to draw any conclusions are those people over the age of 75, though they are probably hiding their eyes deliberately. The government is fiscally strapped. Personal liability for health care costs is low. The population is rapidly aging, and more elderly are using health care services more often. The number of children is rapidly declining, which means the pool of potential taxpayers to pay the bills is shrinking.

And yen trees don’t grow in the gardens of Nagata-cho.

Responding to the criticism, Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo said the government would study ways to alleviate the burden on the lower-income elderly using funds from the national budget, but the new system would remain in place.

The contours of future developments are not difficult to make out, however. As health care costs continue to rise in tandem with the number of late-stage elderly, the older citizens will exercise their right to vote until they find a party that will shelter them from financial reality.

There will be no shortage of politicians volunteering for the task.

But that will inevitably place a larger financial burden on an increasingly smaller group of younger people who are employed. As with other social welfare programs, the Japanese health care system shares the same characteristics as a pyramid scheme—it requires a growing population to sustain, and that’s no longer possible in Japan. The taxpaying population won’t put up with it forever, and one day they will demand tax relief, perhaps with an American-style taxpayer revolt.

In that scenario, the logical first step would be to ration health care. Arguments in favor of that step already are being made elsewhere. As this article points out:

(In the book Setting Limits, author Daniel) Callahan proposed that the government refuse to pay for life-extending medical care for individuals beyond the age of 70 or 80, and only pay for routine care aimed at relieving their pain.

As we’ve seen, some people have been calling the new Japanese health care plan for the late-stage elderly the “hurry up and die” system. Of course that’s just silly, but it’s time those people started drawing conclusions of their own.

Otherwise, before too long, they might find that the rest of society really has begun to wish they would hurry up and die.

Matsuri da! (82): The shrine gates are burning!

TORII ARE STYLIZED GATES standing on the path that leads to the main hall of a Shinto shrine. They both mark the sacred space and serve as symbols of the shrine itself. Where there’s a torii, there’s always a shrine nearby.

The reverse of that axiom is not always true, however. There are a few shrines that don’t have torii, and two are in Matsumoto, Nagano. The parishioners don’t mind, however—there’s a good reason for their absence, and they make up for it in a big way once every year.

About 60 of these parishioners conducted the traditional Toriibi, or torii fire, in Matsumoto for three nights starting on 16 April. They placed pine torches on the side of a mountain in the eastern edge of the Shimauchi district to create the outlines of the shrine gate.

The event is held by those two shrines without torii in supplication for a bountiful harvest and household safety. Both shrines have major festivals starting on the 19th, so the Toriibi also includes the symbolism of welcoming the divinity.

The group members have their work cut out for them. The mountain rises at a 40º angle, so navigating the slope to create the roughly 60-meter-square pattern can be tricky. At 8:00 in the evening, the group of men spread out on the mountainside. After a seashell is blown to signal the start of the event, the men lift their torches and let out a loud “Oooh” to summon the divinities. They also set fires in the pattern of the kanji for 大 (large) and 一 (the number one).

The origin of this custom dates back more than 500 years, to the Warring States period that began in 1467 and lasted for about a century. Sometime in that period, members of the Ogasawara family built and defended a castle immediately to the south. This era is called the Warring States period because of the internal conflict that occurred throughout the country between local feudal lords and the military governors appointed by the Muromachi shoguns.

During one of the battles, an insurgent army attacked the castle from the northeast. As part of their attack, they set fires to besiege the castle walls and used a wind out of the north to accelerate it. The castle caught on fire and threatened the defenders. This fire eventually spread to the nearby torii, consuming one part of it in flame. When the torii fell, the wind suddenly shifted to the opposite direction, whipping up the fire and sending it toward the invading army. The castle defenders employed this stroke of luck to their advantage and routed the invaders. They believed that divine intervention caused the wind to shift and chose not to rebuild the torii. Since then, the residents’ creation of a torii out of burning pine torches is considered an act of reverence toward the divinities.

Well, that’s one explanation. Another is that people will seize on any excuse to make huge bonfires at night and have a party!

Ram jam city

EVERY ONE of the following statements that appeared in recent news articles is incorrect.

Reuters, 2 May

In a poll carried out after the government rammed a bill through parliament reinstating the gasoline tax from May 1…

Bloomberg, 2 May

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s ruling coalition pushed through revenue bills that will reinstate a gasoline tax…

AFP 2 May

Fukuda, concerned about a budget shortfall, rammed through parliament bills to reimpose a petrol tax that had expired, under pressure from the opposition.

Radio Australia 2 May

The bill which was rammed through parliament reinstates the 24 US cent tax. (sic)

The only way anyone can state that the bills were “rammed through” the Diet is if one is under the impression that minority parties in a parliamentary chamber should be encouraged to sign off on any legislation they oppose before it can be passed.

It’s as if these news outlets think the democratic deal is for all legislators to hold up their identification badges and vote in a display of unity for whatever idea the Great Man happens to be peddling at the time. That’s standard operating procedure in North Korea, and was in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the Soviet Politburo. But some in the news media seem not to have noticed that’s not how it works in a modern democracy.

American Presidents can veto legislation they don’t care for, but if the Congress insists, it can override that veto with a two-thirds vote, and the bill becomes law. When a veto is overridden there, however, no one talks about how Congress “rammed the bill through”. The New York Times, an unrelenting opponent of the President, dealt with an override of a Bush veto this way.

Here’s the deal: If Japan’s upper house rejects a bill passed by the lower house, or ignores it for 60 days (which is what happened in this instance), the lower house can pass the bill a second time with a two-thirds majority of the members present, and it becomes law.

It’s all right there in the Constitution.

So what the ruling Liberal-Democratic Party did was simply follow Constitutional procedures. They reintroduced the bill into the lower house and passed it on a straight up-or-down vote.

No one in the opposition was locked out of the chamber, stripped of their credentials, had the safety of their family threatened, had their genitals taped to electrodes, or was taken outside and shot.

Of course they got all hot and bothered, but it’s a bit rich to complain about constitutionally correct behavior–particularly if the legislator who would complain is one who supports the policy of “defending the Constitution” to prevent the amendment of Article 9, the so-called Peace Clause.

Perhaps for some folks constitutional law is like a restaurant menu.

Now, this does not mean that anyone has to like the legislation or the fact that the tax was restored in this manner (and most Japanese voters don’t). And you can be sure the opposition will try to win votes in the next election by reminding the voters of LDP behavior (and they are sure to win some.)

But it was a simple legislative procedure. No one was strong-armed and no one is torching Toyotas in the streets.

What is does mean, however, is that the print and broadcast media would rather titillate their consumers rather than stick to reporting the facts and nothing but the facts in a news report, and leaving their Hemingway imitations for the op-ed page.

Here it is again: If your knowledge of Japan is derived from what you see, read, or hear in the Western media, then everything you know is wrong.

Matsuri da! (81): Marching to a different drummer

THERE MUST BE SOMETHING ABOUT THE WATER in Shiga that gets the folks there excited about taiko drums. Two weeks ago, immense taiko were the centerpiece of two festivals in the prefecture.

The first was the Hachiman Festival, held at the Himure Hachiman-gu (a Shinto shrine) in Omihachiman, Shiga, on the 15th last month. The main event of this nationally selected intangible cultural property is the Taiko Festival, in which the parishioners pound on a large taiko drum as they carry it to the shrine. That’s no easy task, as the drum, which has been decorated on the exterior with rope, is nearly two meters in diameter. The participants gather near the shrine before passing through the torii in a predetermined order.

Once inside, they have a grand old time parading around the shrine grounds, pounding the drum, chanting “Dokkoi sah no se” at the top of their lungs, and hoisting the taiko in the air over and over again in front of the main hall.

People who’ve witnessed the event say their body vibrates every time the drum is struck, and the spectators give a rousing cheer every time the drum is raised in the air.

Hey, there’s nothing like throbbing drumbeats to get the blood racing and rouse the primal impulses!

Incidentally, the site on which that shrine is located has been used for Shinto worship since at least 131. Yes, there’s only three digits in that year!

On the same day, the Taiko Tozan, or Taiko Mountain Ascent, is held at the Inamura Shinto shrine in Hikone in the same prefecture. In this festival the participants charge up the side of a steep mountain carrying a large taiko drum.

This traditional event is held to ask the divinities for a good harvest, and has been conducted continuously since the latter part of the Edo period (which ended in 1868). Parishioners from nine districts surrounding the shrine start by coming to the facility to dedicate the drum.

The drum itself weighs 1.5 tons. What do they do with it? This is a Japanese festival, so of course they do something breathtakingly difficult. The people from each of the districts take turns hauling it from the torii at the base of the slope up to the shrine itself about 430 meters away. This is no easy task, as there are outcroppings of rock, the mountain path is steep, and the differential between dips and rises on the plane of the path is as much as 60 meters. Those who take on the task of carrying that motherbruiser up the side of a mountain reportedly approach it with the typical Japanese masculine élan. They don happi coats, put their shoulders into it, and chant “Oisa oisa!” all the way up the mountain.

Of course it helps that more than a few of them are university students who, like all their brethren around the world, are up for any physical challenge as long as it involves free grog at the end!

To give you an idea of the sheer variety of festival events that occur every day throughout the country, by the way, take a look at the two photos on this Japanese-language page. That’s what they do in Omihachiman on April 14th, the day before the first taiko festival described here!

A Koizumi coup?

Political realignment has now started. That’s a 100% certainty.
- Iijima Isao, former principal aide to Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro Koizumi

IT’S NOW OBVIOUS to everyone that Japan’s Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo has become the lamest of ducks whose remaining days in office are numbered. His pillar of support is the retro wing of his own Liberal Democratic Party, but they must surely be dismayed at his performance over the past six months–not that they managed to formulate a winning strategy on his behalf. And the LDP reformers wrote him off months ago.

Meanwhile, the opposition Democratic Party of Japan has kept intact their reputation for never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity to convince anyone they’re capable of heading a government. The glittering jewel of the landslide upper house election victory that fell into their laps last summer slipped between their legs by late autumn due to internal dissension among the leadership and poor political choices.

Since gaining control of the upper house, they’ve alienated an electorate increasingly irritated with both parties by following the script of a political Punch and Judy show, whacking the LDP with a slapstick and exulting “That’s the way to do it!” Unlike the latter-day Pulcinella, however, they’ve harmed themselves as much, if not more, than the cardboard Devil of the LDP. Their poll numbers are even worse than those for Mr. Fukuda’s Cabinet, and they’re having an increasingly difficult time maintaining party discipline.

It’s the Japanese version of government gridlock, and the situation cries out for a patrolman to direct traffic—preferably one mounted on a white horse.

That’s why the recent public reemergence of former Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro is leading to increased speculation that he wants to correct the course of Japanese politics now that it’s veered from the direction he set before stepping down in September 2006. Of particular concern to him must be the regression to faction-oriented politics based on hand-in-glove ties with the bureaucracy, which he spearheaded an effort to destroy during his term in office. Those weeds have been growing for a long time, and their roots go very deep.

We’ve seen before that Iijima Isao, formerly his principal political aide, floated what seemed very much like a trial balloon for a comeback in February. Then, earlier this month came the announcement that Mr. Koizumi—still Japan’s most popular politician—had formed a policy study group consisting of people both in his own party and from the opposition.

Finally, Shukan Gendai ran an article in its 26 April edition suggesting that he would join forces with fellow LDP politicos Nakagawa Hidenao (Machimura faction) and Koga Makoto (Faction leader) to stage a political coup d’etat in May and remove Mr. Fukuda from office. They also speculated that he might form a new party.

Shukan Gendai is one of those wild and wooly Japanese weeklies whose word can’t always be trusted, and the article itself seems to be a congeries of the rumors currently circulating in Nagata-cho. Nevertheless, some of it is plausible enough to make it worth presenting in English here. It’s also an excellent illustration of the opacity and Byzantine maneuverings in the palace intrigue that passes for Japanese politics. The following is a translated summary of the article, called The Great Heisei Political Realignment (Heisei being the reign name of the current Tenno, or emperor) and the voice is that of the magazine itself.

*****

The Fukuda Flop

There is an air of uneasiness surrounding Prime Minister Fukuda. He is reported to have told an associate, “If (the party makes arrangements) to pass the job to Aso (Taro), I’ll dissolve the Diet and take him down with me.”

Mr. Fukuda also exploded in frustration during the question period in the Diet with opposition leader Ozawa Ichiro. He answered few of the questions and angrily went on the attack himself, peppering Mr. Ozawa with many questions of his own.

The Ministry of Finance is now serving as a primary means of support for the prime minister. His proposal for eliminating the contentious temporary gasoline surtax for road construction and placing the funds in the general account was written by Saka Atsuo, an aide to the Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary whose career started in the MOF. Mr. Fukuda’s announcement during a press conference that he intended to eventually reform the tax system concealed the fact that it would mean a boost in the consumption tax rate (currently 5%), which the MOF is desperate to implement.

The MOF plans to increase their control over the prime minister. Now that their efforts to place their own man at the head of the Bank of Japan have failed, they’ve switched to a strategy of infiltrating the Cabinet Secretariat. The ministry is focusing on deputy-level positions, and they initially planned to place Mr. Saka there after the July summit. The name of Muto Toshiro, rejected as the BOJ head, has also emerged for that position. Their free hand in the executive branch will depend on whether Mr. Fukuda can stay in office until the summit.

Are the Prime Minister’s Days Numbered?

Some people are beginning to think he won’t last that long. His itinerary for a foreign trip during the first week of May, which is a holiday period in Japan, has not been finalized, and it is suspected that this is a sign he will be stepping down. Dissolution of the Diet and the subsequent election would likely mean the LDP loses its supermajority in the lower house—making such a step the height of stupidity.

Mr. Koizumi is giving it some credence, however. In a recent speech he broadly hinted that he thinks an election will be called soon, and the LDP will find itself in a tight spot. (See a previous post on that subject here.)

In March, Mr. Koizumi seemed to think that the next election would not be held until the summer of 2009, but he’s suddenly changed his mind. Another change has been his return to active participation in the political fray. He joined former Defense Minister Koike Yuriko (LDP; Machimura faction) and former LDP Secretary-General Nakagawa Hidenao to become honorary advisors for a group of diet members working to achieve Japan’s Kyoto Protocol targets. The Koizumi Children, the political newcomers who were swept into office on the prime minister’s coattails during the LDP’s landslide 2005 victory, have been meeting more frequently behind the scenes.

For public consumption, Mr. Koizumi is now saying, “At a time like this, we should support Prime Minister Fukuda.” In fact, however, he is not sanguine about the future of the Fukuda administration.

On 20 March, Mr. Fukuda met with former Chief Cabinet Secretary Yosano Kaoru (LDP, No faction) and then immediately called Mr. Nakagawa, a Yosano opponent, to the prime minister’s residence. Mr. Koizumi remarked to a friend, “Fukuda has reached his limit. He thinks he’s trying to strike a balance, but neither one of them can stand him.”

One LDP Diet member observed that Mr. Koizumi, who is unsurpassed at reading political tea leaves, thinks Prime Minister Fukuda is finished. He also thinks the LDP will be clobbered in the next election unless the prime minister is replaced beforehand. The voters have abandoned him over his handling of the gasoline surtax and pension issues. Many in the party would have preferred to allow him to go out on a high note after the summit, but he may not last that long.

The magazine quotes an unnamed political reporter for a national newspaper saying the belief is growing that the Fukuda administration will have run its course after Golden Week (an eight-day period from 29 April to 6 May with five national holidays). If the party employs their lower house supermajority to readopt the road construction and gas tax bills, the DPJ could submit and adopt in the upper house a motion to censure him. If the prime minister then chooses to remain in office, the opposition will refuse to conduct deliberations, leaving the Fukuda administration dead in the water.

Kono Taro (LDP; Aso faction), 37 Diet members from the LDP and New Komeito, and 18 proxies convened a meeting to support the Fukuda proposal to put the funds from the gasoline tax into the general account rather than hold them separately for road construction projects. But Mr. Kono says that adopting the measure will require that the revised bill for the gasoline surtax be abandoned because they are contradictory. He told the magazine that he would revolt if both bills are readopted in the lower house. (Note: Chief Cabinet Secretary Machimura Nobutaka, head of the largest LDP faction, disagrees that the bills are contradictory).

Even without a revolt, 16 absences would scuttle the readoption, which in turn would scuttle the Fukuda administration. Some observers believe that Mr. Kono would then form an alliance with Mr. Koizumi.

That would trigger the widely anticipated political realignment, and Mr. Koizumi would be at the center of it.

Yamamoto Ichita (LDP; Machimura faction), upper house member and long-time Koizumi supporter, told the magazine that the former prime minister would play a key role in the political realignment. Mr. Yamamoto said it is not an ironclad certainty that he will actively reemerge, but he is still the most popular politician in Japan and is far and away the most adept at communicating with the public. MPs have a survival instinct, and politicians instinctively place their trust in Koizumi.

Any new political grouping of this type would attract the so-called Koizumi Children, some LPD members, and also some DPJ members. This group would initially consist of LDP members and then become a multi-party group. In the future, it would merge with the reform elements of the LDP.

An LDP official characterized this as a case of the smaller eating the larger. He said that Mr. Koizumi considers the “trump card” for political realignment to be a return to the electoral system with multiple representatives for a single district. He also said that Mr. Koizumi is urging other LDP election officials to bring this about.

Koga Makoto, chairman of the LDP Election Strategy Council, is quoted as saying, “Returning to the multiple seat electoral system will be the major axis of political realignment.” The magazine finds it odd that the reformer Koizumi and Mr. Koga, the unofficial head of those Diet members who want to maintain the status quo with road construction projects, would be in accord. It points out, however, that despite their political differences, they’ve known each other for some time and have personal connections.

The magazine then speculates that Mr. Nakagawa, a member of the so-called “Ageshio group” (ageshio means incoming tide) and a critic of the Finance Ministry, and Mr. Koga, a hyper-realist, are working with the former prime minister to pull off a political coup, having written off the Fukuda administration. It quotes a commentator to the effect that Mr. Koizumi has undergone a change. Gone is his taste for orchestrating political crises for his own benefit. The commentator says that the last time he met Mr. Koizumi, he had become a policy maven interested in the global environment, food safety, and fiscal reform. The commentator concludes by suggesting that instead of choosing to become prime minister again, he might back Koike Yuriko and take on the role of backstage advisor (a common practice in Japanese politics.)

SIDEBAR: The Ageshio group are promoting fiscal reform. Their objectives are, in this order:

1. Ending deflation
2. Reducing government assets
3. Cutting government expenditures
4. Systemic reform, and
5. Increasing taxes

The first words that strike the eye on Mr. Nakagawa’s Japanese-language website are “Small Government”

.

Who is the Kingmaker Thinking of?

A source close to the LDP told the magazine that Ms. Koike is really just a stalking horse, however. The source said to forget about both Mr. Yosano and Mr. Aso in this scenario. He suggested instead that people keep an eye on Watanabe Yoshimi (LDP; no faction), a champion of reform and the Minister of State for Financial Services and Regulatory Reform (who has also clashed with Prime Minister Fukuda over moves to water down reform policies).

Shukan Gendai also cautions that the so-called New Bureaucracy Faction will not stand by quietly without putting up a fight. Yosano Kaoru has close ties to the Ministry of Finance and in April published his first book, Dodotaru Seiji, or Heroic Politics. (Note that several other translations are possible, however.) Mr. Yosano uses the book to criticize the growth policies of Mr. Nakagawa and others, calling them a “sneak attack that is the ultimate in political escape.” He also thinks it’s necessary to undo the structural reforms of the Koizumi-Abe era, and he refers to them as a distortion.

One of those close to Mr. Yosano is Sonoda Hiroyuki (LDP; Tanigaki faction), who in turn is close to members of the former New Party Sakigake (sakigake means harbinger), a 10-man splinter party formed in 1993 by former LDP members that disbanded in 2002. In fact, Mr. Sonoda was himself a member of the party (as were Hatoyama Yukio and Kan Naoto until they left to form the DPJ). Another political reporter for a national paper says this group is looking into the possibility of reviving the party with like-minded people. He suggests that the Finance Ministry is backing this effort with the idea of putting Mr. Yosano in office.

The same reporter also thinks there is a chance Mr. Koizumi might ally himself with this group rather than Mr. Nakagawa because of his ties to the Finance Ministry.

But then the magazine quotes a Japanese proverb by saying that in Nagata-cho, “fear populates the night with monsters”.

The article concludes with the report that several politicians met for an old-fashioned backroom restaurant party on the night of 2 April. In the United States, political deals used to be cut in smoke-filled rooms; in Japan, those deals are settled in expensive restaurants.

The list of those attending the gathering is fascinating:

Liberal Democrats
Yamasaki Hiraku (AKA Taku) (Faction leader)
Kato Koichi (No faction)

SIDEBAR: Both Mr. Yamasaki and Mr. Kato were long-time allies of Mr. Koizumi; in January 1991 they formed a trio that operated as a sort of political chakra within the LDP called YKK after the initials of their surnames. They represented a force opposed to old-style LDP politics and favoring reform within the party. All three were considered prime ministerial material; only Mr. Koizumi grasped the brass ring after an aborted attempt by Mr. Kato to unseat Mr. Koizumi’s predecessor. They are no longer working as allies.

Democratic Party of Japan
Kan Naoto
Edano Yukio (Maehara/Edano group)

Mr. Kan is of course one of the founders of the party.

People’s New Party
Kamei Shizuka

The PNP is a splinter party that formed after Mr. Koizumi threw out of the LDP those Diet members who failed to support his postal privatization plan, and who rejected the invitation to return to the party extended by former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo.

There is no word about what they discussed, but Mr. Yamasaki was quoted after the meeting as saying that an election will be held this year, and that political realignment will follow. He concluded with the words, “Anything is possible.”

Shukan Gendai observes that it is significant people in both of the main parties are more forthcoming about internal conditions than usual, and concludes that the LDP and the DPJ will split and realign.

Aftermath

After the article was published:

• Prime Minister Fukuda cancelled his overseas trip.
• Yosano Kaoru published an article in another weekly magazine calling on Mr. Fukuda to conduct dodotaru seiji.
• The Ministry of Finance openly admitted they wanted to boost the consumption tax.
• Aso Taro visited Yamaguchi twice to campaign for the LDP candidate in a recent by-election. Mr. Aso has been campaigning heavily for local candidates, and said he would run again for the LDP presidency (and therefore prime minister).
• The opposition DPJ candidate won the by-election and party leader Ozawa Ichiro said they would not file a censure motion at this time if the gasoline surtax was readopted.
• The gasoline surtax was readopted, however, and NHK reports that the DPJ is considering a censure motion after all.
• NHK also reports that unidentified LDP members are muttering about having Mr. Fukuda step down after the summit. Is the broadcaster behind the curve?
• Kono Taro has not revolted yet.

Ran (乱) dumb Commentary

The point of the article was a possible alliance between Messrs. Koizumi, Nakagawa, and Koga to unseat Prime Minister Fukuda. The magazine didn’t do a whole lot to connect those particular dots, however. Undoubtedly one factor behind their story was a desire to sell magazines. Yet it isn’t out of the question that discussions of this sort have taken place. Whether it is true or not, this story as a whole is a vivid example of how difficult it is to penetrate the multiple veils of Japanese political circles.

Here’s a case in point: In a speech earlier this year, Iijima Isao said the natural heir to Mr. Koizumi’s policies was Yosano Kaoru.

Now really–That tells you just how difficult it is for people following politics to make heads or tails of anything. Mr. Yosano just published a book saying that the Koizumi-Abe reforms are a distortion and must be rolled back. How then can he be the natural heir to Mr. Koizumi? And what would prompt Mr. Iijima, who was close to Mr. Fukuda for decades, to say such a thing?

Anyone who knows isn’t saying, and anyone who’s saying doesn’t know.

Was Japan’s Lizzie Borden lucky?

POLICE BLOTTER CASES seldom get covered on this site, but yesterday’s verdict in a Tokyo murder trial brings up some aspects of the criminal justice system that the Japanese media don’t seem to be addressing.

Here are the facts, in brief:

Shortly after getting married in March 2003, Mihashi Yusuke, an employee of a securities firm, began beating his wife. The beatings were severe enough that she was admitted to a shelter for domestic violence victims with a broken nose and a bruised face in June 2006. She returned to her husband a month later.

Mihashi Kaori (photo) eventually asked for a divorce, but her husband refused to grant one on her terms. Her lawyers also allege that Mr. Mihashi had taken nude photographs of his wife and threatened to make them public if she insisted on a divorce.

On 12 December 2006, Mrs. Mihashi killed her husband by hitting him in the head with a wine bottle when he was asleep. The evidence showed that she kept whacking him in the head with the bottle just to make sure–an autopsy revealed 10 separate head wounds. She then used a saw to cut his body into five pieces in their Shibuya apartment and hid the pieces in Tokyo.

Mrs. Mihashi was given a psychiatric evaluation by two doctors, one selected by the defense attorneys and the other selected by the prosecutors. In their judgment, the defendant was suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and therefore not criminally responsible for her acts.

Presiding Judge Kawamoto Masaya did not agree, however. Here’s what he said:

Her husband physically abused her soon after they were married, and she began hallucinating. The content of the psychiatric evaluation is reliable…it can be said that her married life was a (living) hell, she felt despair, and on the spur of the moment, she was seized by a homicidal intent. Her psychiatric problems, however, did not create a problem with her capacity to assume responsibility (for her act).

He continued:

She was fully capable of understanding her responsibility. She committed a brutal act by persistently and repeatedly striking her husband in the head, cutting his body into five pieces, and disposing of it. She also trampled on the emotions of her husband’s parents, who were concerned about the safety of their son, by sending them an e-mail that led them to believe he was alive.

Mrs. Mihashi impersonated her husband and sent a text message to her father-in-law on his cell phone telling him not to worry for the recent lack of communication.

The judge also said:

Her motive for murder is understandable, but she repeatedly took several rational steps to conceal what she had done and prevent the discovery (of the crime). These included buying a saw, cutting up the body, and disposing of it.

Cultural note: Cutting up a body and disposing of it is a crime in Japan, and Mrs. Mihashi was charged with that offense in addition to murder.

Judge Kawasaki sentenced her to 15 years in jail. The prosecutors asked for 20, and they’re not certain yet whether they will appeal for a longer sentence.

Mrs. Mihashi’s defense attorney was not pleased:

This contravenes the Supreme Court ruling that psychiatric evaluations of a defendant’s competency should be respected, and is (therefore) unfair.

When asked whether she would file an appeal, he said:

I think she should, but (Mrs. Mihashi) has said she will not appeal. I’ll discuss it with her again.

Mihashi Yusuke’s parents, however, claim that their son was not a wife-beater. They also complained about media coverage of the case that they thought focused excessively on their son’s behavior. (Sound familiar?)

All the information available to us is second- or third-hand, filtered through the media and its infotainment agenda, so it’s impossible for any of us to have an informed opinion. That’s not the reason I bring up the case here, however.

In May 2009–little more than a year from now–Japan’s legal system will undergo a revolution. Trials are currently adjudicated by a panel consisting of three judges. Starting next year, that panel will be expanded to include six citizen judges serving on a case-by-case basis. The presiding judge will be responsible for determining the sentence.

Decisions will be made by majority vote, so citizens can overrule the judges. The judges will be able to overrule the citizens only when all six citizens vote to convict and all three judges vote not guilty. (Here’s a previous post about this with plenty of links.)

Yesterday’s verdict makes me wonder:

• Would the citizens be more likely to accept the psychiatric evaluation in Mrs. Mihashi’s case than were the judges?
• Would a citizen panel with more women than men tend to sympathize with defendants such as Mrs. Mihashi? How would a citizen panel with more men behave?

The Japanese public supports the death penalty by an overwhelming margin. (Surveys usually find support to be more than 70%; the previous post on the judicial system links to an article citing a survey showing 80% support.)

• Would a citizen panel that voted to convict a defendant of murder push the judges to impose a sentence tougher than 15 years? Will the change in the system lead to more executions?

The Japanese have traditionally been more deferential to authority than people in other countries, and some think the members of a lay citizen panel would tend to defer to the judges. Twenty years ago, I would have agreed. But Japanese society has changed so much since then that I’m not sure it’s safe to make that assumption today.

That opinion also fails to take into consideration what might happen once citizens on the panel begin to realize they can exercise real power.

The new legal system is just one of several changes that will transform Japanese society in the coming years. As is usually the case, that transformation will be largely sotto voce. How those changes will reconfigure the life of the nation is anyone’s guess.

Note: Here’s an English language account by the Japan Times, noteworthy if only for all the information it leaves out.

Cars losing cachet in Japan?

A NEW SOCIAL TREND in Japan? The Japanese Automobile Manufacturers’ Association revealed the results of its FY 2007 market trend survey showing that younger Japanese are less interested in car ownership than ever before.

The key figure in the survey is the percentage of primary drivers younger than age 30 in all households that own cars. (The primary driver is defined as that person with the greatest frequency of automobile operation in the household.) This percentage slid four points from the survey conducted five years ago to 7%. That’s the first time this percentage has ever been in single digits.

An association source says this percentage stood at 19% in 1995. Those in the 20-29 age group also accounted for 19% of the population that year. They now account for 14%. Therefore, the decline in primary drivers in that age group has been steeper than the drop in the ratio of that group to the overall population during the same period.

A similar survey conducted by the Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living of men in their 20s uncovered a parallel trend. When asked what they would spend their money on, 31% of the guys in 1996 answered cars. That figure fell to 16% in 2006.

These surveys do not show a corresponding decline for people in their late 30s and older.

An analyst from Demeken (an abbreviation of the Japanese for Digital Media Research Institute) says this represents a shift in the attitude of the generation who grew up in the Internet era amidst the detritus of the collapse of the bubble economy in the 1990s. The people in this age group, he suggests, place more importance on use rather than ownership.

He notes that many in the youngest adult generation view cars merely as a means for transportation and not as a status symbol, as they were for previous generations of postwar Japanese.

Buttressing this analysis is the 35% increase in the number of rental cars in Japan during the 10-year period ended in 2006. Meanwhile, automobile sales fell during that period. (The largest decline occurred from 1995 to 2001).

The Nishinippon Shimbun, the newspaper in which this article appeared, views this as a matter of concern. They’re based in Fukuoka, and local governments and business organizations in northern Kyushu have been lobbying hard—with great success—to attract companies in the auto industry.

The article failed to provide a breakdown by region for these figures, however. It’s a lot easier to get around without a car in Tokyo or Osaka than it is in an area with a lower population density. With the exception of those who live in Fukuoka City, most people in Kyushu would find a car-less life quite inconvenient.

Nevertheless, there has been a noticeable shift in the attitude toward automobiles compared to the early 80s, when I first came to Japan. In those days, it was still the rule for people to work on Saturdays (at least half a day). I was surprised then at the number of people in their 20s whose idea of a good time on Sunday was to go on an all-day automobile jaunt. They went just for the drive and had no specific objective for the trip, such as to attend a concert or sporting event. After driving a few hours in one direction, they’d have something to eat, fool around a little bit, and then turn around and drive back home.

That doesn’t seem to be the case now.