The warring sandbox period in Japanese politics

You’re only young once, but you can be immature forever.
- Larry Anderson

NO SOONER do I compare the behavior of Japanese politicians at the national level to that of the daimyo during the Warring States period than one of those prominent politicos uses a different historical reference that underscores the internal disarray which has turned the ruling Liberal Democratic Party into a Warring Sandbox. It also provides a disturbing glimpse of how some politicians might view their personal role in what everyone else views as a liberal democracy.

Hatoyama Kunio makes a political statement

Kicking the sand this time was Hatoyama Kunio, a former Cabinet minister in three different governments. He most recently headed the Internal Affairs ministry in the Aso administration until he resigned over a dispute about the sale of a Japan Post-owned business. He’s also the younger brother of Hatoyama Yukio, the head of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, of which Kunio was a founding member until he split as the result of a fraternal dispute.

Hatoyama the Younger and Aso Taro have been celebrated in the Japanese media for having a close friendship, and it’s easy to see why. The former represents district #6 in Fukuoka Prefecture, and the latter represents district #8 in the same prefecture. They are both well-to-do grandsons of former prime ministers, who themselves were members of the old postwar Liberal Party that merged with other right-of-center parties to become today’s LDP.

But Mr. Hatoyama appears to have some difficulty staying on good terms with the people closest to him. His conflict with his elder brother doesn’t seem to have been completely resolved–witness his recent reference to him as a “momma’s boy”, which, come to think of it, does jibe with the public personality of Hatoyama the Elder. It also might be an expression of chagrin over the amount of family money that some suggest momma has been funneling to Big Brother’s campaign war chest. In any event, however, petty family feuding is never conducive to good government at the best of times, and this is not the best of times.

Now he’s all upset with buddy Taro since his hissy fit and resignation. But Mr. Hatoyama caused some eyebrows to rise even further when he said that Prime Minister Aso was “the Northern Court” and that he was “the Southern Court”.

He’s referring to an ancient dispute over Imperial succession in Japan that led to two separate courts from 1337 to 1392. In brief, the Imperial house split into two lines created by brothers who both served as tenno (emperors). The Kamakura Shogunate cut a deal in which the two lines would alternate members on the Chrysanthemum throne. One tenno of the junior line wanted to keep the succession in his family, however, so he wound up creating the Southern Court. After a few decades of intrigue and military skirmishing, the Muromachi Shogunate brought them back to the original compromise involving the alternation of the two lines, but the Northern Court didn’t keep its promise and the Southern Court died out.

The dispute over the legitimacy of the two lines kept cropping up over the years, as some scholars claimed the Southern court had the bona fides because they maintained possession of the Imperial regalia. That argument continued until the early part of the 20th century, when the Meiji Tenno—himself a descendant of the Northern Court—officially recognized the legitimacy of the Southern Court. Thereafter, history textbooks have treated the Northern Court as the outlier.

But that brings up the question of why a politician who sees himself as a potential prime minister would compare his dispute with Mr. Aso to one more than half a millennium ago involving the Imperial household. Does this not suggest that Mr. Hatoyama’s background of wealth and heritage has created a sense of identity that causes him to believe he’s a member of the political nobility bestowed with the divine right to rule Japan?

And wasn’t the lad being clever when he chose for himself the identity of the Southern Court? Japan’s history books recognize that court as being the legitimate line of succession whose members were deprived of the opportunity to reign. Remember also that the Southern Court was founded by the younger brother, suggesting that Mr. Hatoyama sees himself as the rightful ruler even if Big Brother becomes the next prime minister.

Finally, there’s yet another factor that really brings this down to the sandbox level. Not long ago there was an informal group in the Diet called the Taro-kai (the Taro Association). The membership consisted of MPs from several LDP factions, and the group’s objective was to promote Aso Taro for the job of prime minister. After Fukuda Yasuo abruptly resigned last year, it swung into action and finally achieved its goal.

The chairman of the Taro-kai was Hatoyama Kunio.

Now where’s the mass media when you really need them? One thing they do quite well is to cut people down to size when they get too full of themselves. Yet the media seems content to use the childish bickering as a way to provide entertainment without having to pay fees to show business performers rather than an opportunity to do something useful. Does not their enabling behavior make them a willing accomplice?

***
The quarreling brings to mind a passage from the ironically titled book, Jiminto ha Naze Tsuburenai no ka? (Why doesn’t the LDP Fall Apart?). That consists of the edited transcripts of a series of roundtable political discussions between Murakami Masakuni, a former Labor Minister and head of the LDP delegation in the upper house of the Diet, and current jailbird sentenced to the pen for influence-peddling; Hirano Sadao, a former DPJ upper house member and close associate of Ozawa Ichiro; and Fudesaka Hideyo, a former Communist Party member of the upper house who resigned after an accusation of sexual harassment.

Here’s a quick translation of the relevant part:

Hirano: When I was in the New Frontier Party, we discussed the subject of a possible conservative coalition with some members of the LDP. (Then-party leader) Ozawa Ichiro asked me to meet with Aso Taro and tell him that he (Ozawa) would support him if he left the LDP and formed a new “Aso Taro Party”. Mr. Aso is (former Prime Minister) Yoshida Shigeru’s grandson, and Mr. Ozawa’s father Ozawa Saeki was a very close associate of Yoshida Shigeru. Prime Minister Yoshida entrusted him with some important tasks. It was Yoshida Shigeru who talked me out of joining the Communist Party when I was about to become a member. So knowing that background, that’s why he sent me to talk (to Mr. Aso).

Mr. Aso’s political thinking in those days was just like that of a child. To me it looked as if he didn’t really care about principles, policies, or human relations. I thought it couldn’t be possible that he was related to Yoshida Shigeru.

Fudesaka: Not all second- and third-generation politicians are like that, but when I look at Mr. Aso…I get the impression that he’s playing.

Murakami: He’s (like some) chairman of the Junior Chamber of Commerce. In the end, he’s just the young master who’s never had to deal with any hardships.

Hirano: An Akihabara otaku, eh? He’s the captain of the otaku.

Fudesaka: Hatoyama Kunio is the same type (of person). They don’t seem as if they’re seriously concerned about the country’s direction.

***
In addition to captain of the otaku and head of the Junior Jaycees, a third description of Aso Taro might be the best one of all. After observing Mr. Aso in action years ago, the late former Prime Minister Takeshita Noboru remarked:

“He’s like a man on stilts.”

***
Please don’t get the impression, by the way, that I’m singling out the aged bon-bons of Japan. People of this type can be found in politics the world over, and two who come immediately to mind are Al Gore, who grew up in the Washington D.C. hotel rooms of his Senator father, and Ted Kennedy.

To the credit of the Japanese, at least the LDP mudboaters didn’t throw a tantrum that threw their country into turmoil as Al Gore did when he lost an election in Florida—several times, in fact—after first trying to steal it. Nor did it cause them to go so far off the deep end that they morphed into the political equivalent of a Bible Belt evangelist darkly warning that global warming meant the end of the world was nigh. And just as some of those preachers are revealed as hypocrites when their sexual liaisons come to light, so too does Mr. Gore show his true colors by purchasing offsets for his immense carbon footprint from a company in which he has an ownership stake.

Nor did any of the Japanese politicians–as far as we know—get drunk and drive off a bridge with a staffer/girlfriend in the car, leave her to die trapped underwater, and spend the better part of a day trying to find a fall guy and getting his story straight before calling the police. How lucky for him that his money and family name eliminated the possibility of a jail term for criminally negligent homicide.

***
And lest the DPJ supporters start indulging in schadenfreude over the rapidly imploding LDP, a word of caution is in order that their time will come too.

More than one serious Japanese journalist thinks former DPJ (and Liberal Party, and New Frontier party) boss Ozawa Ichiro’s eventual aim is to use Hatoyama Yukio as a vehicle to take power, break up the DPJ, and realign Japanese politics more in accordance with his own tastes.

Even if that scenario is a flight of fancy or never comes to pass, the LDP’s incipient collapse and shift to the opposition gives it a head start on rearranging itself into more workable groups–something the DPJ is also going to have to do, soon or late, willing or not.

***
But let’s be fair–Hatoyama Kunio does have his movements of lucidity. He’s been recently quoted as saying that it would be hell to leave the LDP and hell to stay in the party.

He should have extended his analogy. It will be hell if the LDP retains power and hell if it doesn’t. But since a trip through Hades is both inevitable and necessary, getting through the flames as quickly as possible means that the first step should be taken as quickly as possible.

Japan’s political Big Bang, V.2

WE’VE ALL HEARD THE EXPRESSION about running around like a chicken with its head cut off. That’s derived from the way in which chickens will thrash around the barnyard in a headless state.

After the reports on the radio I heard yesterday morning about how the pols in the ruling Liberal-Democratic Party were taking their party’s defeat in the Tokyo Metro elections on Sunday, I can imagine what it must have been like to see dinosaurs with their heads cut off.

Some thought a lower house election should be called right away, while others were aghast at the prospect. Former Cabinet member Hatoyama “Little Brother” Kunio was uncharacteristically lucid when he said that holding an election now would be like group suicide. Yamasaki Hiraku (AKA Taku), who’s already pushing a petition from within the party to oust Mr. Aso, observed that dissolving the lower house would be fine if the prime minister intended to leave the LDP a burnt-out wasteland. Mr. Yamasaki purposely chose a phrase the Japanese use to describe the state of their cities after the flyovers of Allied bombers during the war.

About an hour later, NHK interrupted their broadcast to announce that Prime Minister Aso had chosen the group suicide/wasteland option after briefly consulting with leaders in the LDP and the party’s New Komeito coalition partners. He’ll dissolve the Diet later this month and scheduled an election for 30 August.

Some reports claim there was shock over the election results in the LDP camp, but surely they jest. Japanese pollsters can add just as well as those elsewhere, particularly the ones hired by the major parties, so they already had to have put two and two together. Not that anyone needed a pollster to know in advance. Indeed, if they really are shocked, they need to be looking for another job, and as soon as possible, please.

Mr. Aso put on a brave face and said the Tokyo Metro results were unrelated to national issues. He plans to campaign on his government’s financial policies, i.e., a promise to be responsible and raise taxes. (The more responsible position would be to eliminate wide swaths of the Nagata-cho and Kasumigaseki Leviathan while cutting some taxes, but I digress.)

He knows that’s nonsense, of course, because his party’s national polls have to be showing the same numbers as the Tokyo results writ large. Does he think he can prevent the opposition Democratic Party of Japan from obtaining a majority and limit them to replacing the LDP as the largest party in the Diet? A DPJ government in an alliance with their motley crew of potential coalition partners would certainly be a chabangeki, the Japanese term for a farce or burlesque. Perhaps the party poobahs are calculating that a DPJ-led coalition government likely to strew its own path with banana peels would cause a voter revulsion and reversion back to the LDP that much sooner.

Or does he and the rest of the party realize that Nagata-cho needs a political realignment, and it won’t start unless the LDP is in the opposition? The party isn’t capable of resolving its internal conflict between the mudboaters and the reformers while it’s still in power, so they can conduct their headchopping out of public view while the DPJ circus occupies center ring.

Reorganizing around philosophical viewpoints rather than personal associations—if that’s what they intend—will be a lot easier after the smoke clears, the bodies are counted, and the identity of the survivors is known next month.

Quo Vadis?

Political predictions in Japan are pointless, which is why I seldom read or write any, but here’s one anyway: The upcoming lower house election will be Part Two of the Japanese political Big Bang, following an interval of more than a decade after Part One and the short-lived Hosokawa administration. Or from a scatological perspective, it will be the second flush of the toilet. There’s still too much residue in the bowl that needs to be sent to the sewer, and political health demands proper hygiene.

With some luck, it just might happen. For example, former Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro is worried about the challenge in his district from ex-tour conductor Tanaka Mieko, who is less than half his age. On the one hand, it was already time for him to go during the 20th century, and I’m of the school that holds we’d get better government by picking names at random from the phone book. Then again, Ms. Tanaka’s voting choices will probably be determined at party headquarters by people who should be shuffling on board the same ferry across the Styx as Mr. Mori.

Here’s something else that shouldn’t be a surprise: DPJ leader Hatoyama Yukio now says a DPJ-led government won’t end the refueling mission in the Indian Ocean for the NATO-backed effort in Afghanistan. That should make some people feel foolish—including some English-language journalists—for taking the party seriously in the fall of 2007 when they tried to leverage Japan’s reputation abroad for petty political advantage at home. There’s a reason the LDP calls on its opponents to pursue policy rather than political crisis, but the Japanese phrase for that is uma no mimi ni nembutsu: Like a sutra in a horse’s ear.

Why should anyone be surprised about their about face when that’s the only dance step they know? Mr. Hatoyama promised to vacate his office to accept responsibility if Ozawa Ichiro resigned as party head, but instead wound up in Mr. Ozawa’s old office less than a week after the resignation. Now that’s a golden parachute! The party also opposed the bill dealing with the Somali pirates, but also said they wouldn’t eliminate it if they formed a government.

And now comes the report that DPJ and three smaller parties will introduce a motion in the upper house to censure Prime Minister Aso, coupled with a no-confidence measure in the lower house. Well, what’s the bleedin’ point, as Basil Fawlty would ask. The man will be gone before autumn. Then again, what’s the bloody point of bothering with serious criticism of the DPJ when they’ve demonstrated the only thing they take seriously is a manufactured political crisis? At least the Koizumi Children—or most of them—behaved like adults.

What to do?

If the LDP had an ounce of wit left in their collective DNA, they’d see the DPJ’s bet and raise it by agreeing with them. They could say yes, we know, but since we’ve already set the election date, we’ll replace Mr. Aso with (Fill in the Name of Plausible Reformer) until the election. That seems to be a longshot now; the members most likely to be interested are heading back to their districts to keep their own necks off the chopping block. Some say one of the men who could lead that effort, Nakagawa Hidenao, is thinking of developing his own platform to position himself and his fellow travelers for an apres-election aligment with Watanabe Yoshimi and other reformers.

Some well-meaning and serious people are urging the citizens to read the political platforms of the parties before deciding how to vote. Now what would be the bleedin’ point of that? It’s obvious even to real children that policy for a DPJ-led government will be an ad hoc affair. Why read their platform when the key point about the DPJ’s behavior regarding the Indian Ocean refueling mission won’t be in it? That might let down the policy wanks, but it isn’t as if there’s anything scientific about “political science”, now is there?

An additional benefit of the upcoming election will be to set the fuse for Part Three of the Japanese political Big Bang, whether it is lit soon or late. Or, to put it another way, there’s so much crap in the system it will take another flush—at least—to get rid of it all.

For the next two months, many in the old and the new media will be making the cyber-welkin ring with unreadable/unwatchable meta-commentary on Japanese politics, but it’s safe to predict they too will miss the bleedin’ point. Flushing away this layer of crap won’t result in a clean toilet bowl: It will just expose the next layer of crap outside the LDP that the older layer has partially obscured until now.

Looks like a job for Ben and Joe the Plumbers!

Open letter to Yosano Kaoru

To: Yosano Kaoru, Minister of Finance, Liberal Democratic Party headquarters
From: Ampontan, c/o This Website
In re: Your criticism of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan’s new platform

Mr. Yosano:

The Asahi Shimbun account of your recent speech in Unnan, Shimane, in which you slammed the DPJ platform, contained some most interesting quotes.

For example:

“It’s mostly a world of pipe dreams and trompe l’oeil.”

And:

“It makes me think even the Communist Party is more serious.”

I agree completely. It is a world of pipe dreams and optical illusions, and considering how they hold fast to their core beliefs, the Communist Party of Japan is more serious (despite offering even stronger opiates and more distorted optical illusions). Then again, at least they have party-wide core beliefs to hold fast to.

In fact, I suspect that most of the Japanese electorate would agree with you too. The DPJ’s policies are a weird blend of the childish and the cynical, are they not? No one in Japan believes their numbers—least of all themselves—and the internal contradictions of the platform show a disrespect for both the electorate and the political process. In some ways, it does border on the criminal, as a Kyodo report quoted you as saying.

And bringing up the Communists is apropos, because the DPJ platform is a bit Bolshie in places, isn’t it?

For example, the Asahi report said you specifically mentioned the DPJ policy of giving income supplements to individual farm families, after which you commented:

“You cannot trust a party that appeals to the people with assertions that are mistaken in their most basic aspect.”

There’s an even better example you could have chosen: Their plank calling for the elimination of the income tax deduction for children and replacing it with a direct monthly government stipend through junior high school. Of course they’ll want to extend that through high school, eventually, once they put the hook in.

But you couldn’t very well mention that one, could you? After all, that idea originated with your New Komeito coalition partners in the Tokyo Metro District.

Still, all these complaints are beside the point, and we both know why. Absent a change in the status quo, they’re going to beat you like a drum in the lower house election.

And just about everyone in the country understands the reasons for it but you.

Here’s the most important one: You didn’t learn the Koizumian lesson. Mr. Maverick came into office with public support rates above 80% and left five and a half years later with those same rates at 70%, after delivering the second-largest lower house electoral victory in postwar history. That might well be unprecedented for a modern democracy, particularly one of the larger ones like Japan.

Did he achieve all the reforms that he promised? No, but politics is the art of the possible, and he had to lay his political life on the line to get as much as he did.

But let’s be honest–It’s not as if you understood any of that to begin with. It took the political equivalent of a Hail Mary pass after the porcine ineptitude of Mori Yoshiro and a revolt from the local rank and file to force you to select him at all.

Yet within months after he stepped down, you readmitted the people he threw out of the party for opposing postal privatization, which immediately sliced 20 percentage points off those public support numbers. You must have suspected that would happen, but you did it anyway, didn’t you?

According to Nakagawa Hidenao, 70% of the lower house members are (were) reform supporters, but you allowed the party machinery and the bureaucracy to slowly grind them down.

The drubbing the electorate administered to your party in the upper house election of 2007 should have been enough to grab the attention of the most slack-jawed of dullards, but you didn’t learn even after that brick wall fell on you.

You might have been relieved by the rebound of the Cabinet support rate to almost 60% after you installed Fukuda Yasuo as prime minister, but that was a pipe dream of your own. It fell back into the 20s as soon as everyone understood that Mr. Fukuda’s forte was that he had no forte, as a DPJ wag put it. But that’s one you should have understood to begin with.

It could not have been clearer what the Japanese people have thought for nearly 20 years about the wicked way your party has gone about its business, and how they will reward anyone who makes the effort to do something—anything–else.

So you’re finally worried about losing to the party that behaves like a primary school student with a loaded pistol, as Mr. Ibuki so accurately described them?

You’ve got no one to blame but yourselves for that, I’m afraid.

And now you’re stuck between several rocks and the proverbial hard place. You can have Mr. Aso lead the party into the election on a platform of raising taxes and defending the bureaucracy, and stand on the deck of the Mudboat-maru as it crumbles and dissolves.

Or, you could replace him with some semi-plausible reform alternative and prepare for the election. But no one will blame the DPJ for screaming bloody murder over that one. And your coalition partners say they’ll withhold support from any LDP Diet member who calls for Mr. Aso to step down.

Goodness only knows what backroom deal you cut with them behind the scenes—a promise to delay the election until October so they can play their shell game with Japan’s 90-day residency requirement for voters after the local Tokyo balloting? Whatever it was, you’re stuck with it.

On the other hand, replacing Mr. Aso with a serious reformer holds the risk that the bureaucrats will find a way to bring him (or her) down too. We’ve seen how the Social Insurance Agency nailed shut Mr. Abe’s coffin when you were ready to privatize them. That’s one lesson you did seem to learn. More than a few people think sources in Kasumigaseki provided the prosecutors with information on the fund-raising practices of Ozawa Ichiro. Isn’t it funny how no one could find any dirt despite sniffing around Mr. Ozawa’s finances for years—until it looked like his party might win?

And now the same thing’s happening to Mr. Hatoyama. What a coincidence!

Mr. Koizumi might have caught them off guard, but you can be sure that won’t happen again. They’ll be ready for your next reformer.

So it’s a bit late in the game for you and the rest of the LDP sleepwalkers to start worrying about a party that offers only pipe dreams, isn’t it?

You might be familiar with an old English expression–You made your bed, now you’ll have to lie in it.

Don’t forget to turn out the light.

Sincerely,

Amp

You say you want a devolution

YOU’LL SELDOM SEE it covered on the front page of newspapers or on prime time television—their game is infotainment, not issues—but the political equivalent of a civil war is raging in Japan. The insurgents in this war are the governors, mayors, and other chief municipal officers storming the barricades of the central government in Tokyo.

Though both the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan claim they support greater devolution, the rebels take neither at their word. Still, the issue in Japan is not whether there will be regional devolution and a restructuring of government, but when and to what extent. Here are some dispatches from the front lines.

A pox on you both!

Eguchi Katsuhiko

Eguchi Katsuhiko chairs a government panel for examining the state/prefecture concept, the official policy of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its New Komeito coalition partner. It would create 9-12 large sub-national entities to replace the current 47 prefectures at the level between the central government and municipalities. Supporters say this plan would revitalize the country by reducing the size and authority of the central government while curtailing the influence of the Kasumigaseki bureaucracy.

Prime Minister Aso Taro says he supports the LDP program in particular and devolution in general, but Mr. Eguchi thinks he’s full of bologna. He publicly slammed the prime minister for his failure to actively promote the state/prefecture concept, calling his approach retrogressive. He didn’t stop there; he also criticized Mr. Aso for his attitude toward devolution and civil service reform, and said those in business and financial circles were fed up with him. Neither did Mr. Eguchi spare Hatoyama Yukio, the head of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan:

Regrettably, neither Mr. Aso nor Mr. Hatoyama seem interested in reforming Japan. The bureaucracy dominates and the politicians and the people are being led by the nose. The prime minister doesn’t seem to be aware that he’s being used by the bureaucracy.

Mr. Eguchi is a supporter of small government, and he’s got a good reason:

The central government creates dependency among the people. The form of the country must be changed.

The very public criticism by Mr. Eguchi raised eyebrows because it’s unusual for the chair of a government group of this type to criticize the prime minister in public.

He’s so committed to the issue he’s written a book about it, called Chiiki Shuken-Gata Doshusei (A State/Province System Based on Regional Sovereignty). His specific proposal calls for the reorganization of sub-national governments into 12 states/provinces and 300 municipalities (or “basic governmental units”), with both levels receiving substantial authority to levy and collect many of the taxes now paid to the central government. In return, they would be given the authority to conduct those governmental functions with the greatest impact on daily life.

Mr. Eguchi is the head of the PHP Research Institute founded by Matsushita Konosuke. He’s also allied with reform firebrands Watanabe Yoshimi and Eda Kenji (click on the Tags for more), and joined them to establish a political organization this January. That organization is about to be transformed into a political party. PHP publishes a line of trade paperbacks and the monthly current affairs magazine Voice, so the group has a ready-made medium through which to make its views known.

Mr. Inside

Meanwhile, the LDP’s Koizumian standard-bearer Nakagawa Hidenao continues his daily barrage against the party’s mudboat wing. He recently threw a party at a Tokyo hotel for young Diet members (probably first-termers who owe their seats to Mr. Koizumi’s coattails in 2005) and invited that well-known loose cannon of devolution and reform, Osaka Gov. Hashimoto Toru.

During the meeting, Mr. Nakagawa told those assembled:

“The people’s expectations for changing the Kasumigaseki bureaucracy lie with the DPJ. They will not be with us unless we offer a compelling plan that goes above and beyond theirs…The only message that will counter the DPJ’s call for a change in government is to dismantle Kasumigaseki.”

Some of the party’s mudboaters have begun firing back. Machimura Nobutaka, the head of the LDP’s largest faction–of which Mr. Nakagawa may or may not still be a member–took issue with the latter’s promotion of a bill to completely outlaw the means through which retired civil servants find cushy post-retirement employment in organizations affiliated with the government. It also would allow for the demotion or salary reductions of senior civil servants. Said Mr. Machimura:

“We already can demote or cut the salaries of those bureaucrats under the present law. I have to think that those people who claim it isn’t possible, and that this is a new law, have some different end in view.”

Retorted Mr. Nakagawa:

“Flexible salary reductions are difficult under the government’s proposal.”

Translation: “Difficult” is often a euphemism in Japanese. It usually means that the subject under discussion is either (a) impossible, or (b) so unlikely as to be impossible in practice.

There is speculation in the Japanese media that Mr. Nakagawa’s redoubled efforts are a counterattack against the tribal MPs (zokugiin) with close ties to Cabinet ministries (in a sense, lobbyist-legislators working for the bureaucracy) who scuttled the recent proposal to reorganize the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare.

The human howitzer

Speaking of Mr. Hashimoto, he is slinging so much lead at both the LDP and DPJ he’s on the verge of exploding into space. Keeping track of the governor’s daily activities is akin to following a spectator sport. But his sky-high ratings among his Osaka Prefecture constituency mean that both the LDP and the DPJ are desperate for his endorsement in the upcoming lower house election.

The governor knows an opportunity when he sees one, so he’s letting them have it with both barrels.

Here’s what he said about the LDP at that Tokyo hotel party hosted by Nakagawa Hidenao:

“As long as there is no change in the Kasumigaseki system, the people will think that nothing’s going to happen. The LDP and (coalition partners) New Komeito will lose the election if they approach it this way…I’d like to see you (the Diet members) introduce a compelling plan (to deal with the bureaucracy) that will astound every citizen.”

He later told a press conference:

“The LDP is not doing enough. The ruling party in government has the authority, so I hope they submit a terrific plan.”

Mr. Nakagawa agreed that the prime minister’s efforts were insufficient:

“If he can’t (come up with a good plan), the election result will be as Gov. Hashimoto said.”

Après-party, the governor let loose a volley against the government’s Robust Policy Plan for 2009:

“There’s not enough about devolution. It’s worse than last year’s plan. Last year’s plan had a chapter heading with a promise to look into the problem of local agencies (i.e., the local agencies of the central government that prefectural governments must pay to support). This year, there’s no chapter heading and less talk about the bureaucracy…not enough effort is being put into cutting expenditures.”

Salvos at the DPJ

While the Osaka governor has praised the DPJ’s stance on reforming the bureaucracy at Kasumigaskei, he’s not entirely convinced they’re serious. For example, he’s said he thinks the party will try to end bureaucracy-led government—the way things have worked here since the Meiji Era. But he’s also said:

“With the DPJ riding on the backs of (public sector) unions, are they capable of civil service reform?”

But he hasn’t had anything good to say at all about the devolution plan the DPJ is most likely to adopt. Mr. Hashimoto supports the LDP’s state/province system with three layers of government.

It’s difficult to determine exactly what plan the DPJ favors. Party members have told the media the issue divides them more than any other. DPJ boss Hatoyama Yukio has supported the LDP state/province system plan in the past, but it’s now apparent that he can’t be taken at his word for much of anything.

The plan most people think they’ll back is one that former DPJ leader Ozawa Ichiro has touted for at least 15 years: a two-level scheme divided between the central government and 300 sub-national governmental units. It still isn’t clear who wears the pants in the DPJ family, however, and they’ve yet to nail this plank into their platform. Here’s Mr. Hashimoto on the Ozawa plan:

“This image of the state is divorced from reality…No head of local government agrees with them. The people in charge of this issue in the party should hold a public debate.”

And:

“The DPJ talks about (strengthening) regional authority, but that’s not what will happen. Central government will be stronger under a two-level structure, making top-down decision-making more likely.”

And:

“The approach of making the central government the next highest government body above the basic local government units (without anything in between) is dangerous. It could lead to egregious central governmental authority.”

Tokyo Deputy Governor Inose Naoki, a Hashimoto ally, thinks the Ozawa idea is a warmed-over version of the governmental system in Japan during the Edo period, from the early 17th century to the mid-19th century. The Shogun sat atop the food chain, and under him were 300 primary daimyos and their fiefdoms, defined as those offering at least 10,000 koku of rice (about 51,200 bushels) as tribute.

(To be precise, most historians say there were really only 260 to 280 primary fiefdoms, and that the number 300 is used as a convenient shorthand.)

The Hashimoto charge that the Ozawa system would lead to egregious central government authority is not without merit. Japanese historians say that while the local daimyo were granted some authority and privileges, including law enforcement and the right to levy taxes, the central government was extremely powerful.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the man who prefers the role of shadow Shogun would be atttracted to that concept.

Mr. Inose recently discussed the issue with Haraguchi Kazuhiro, who holds the portfolio for the Internal Affairs and Communications ministry in the DPJ Shadow Cabinet. He told Mr. Haraguchi that the DPJ plan was too abstract for serious discussion.

One potential difficulty is that Japan has just been through a series of extensive municipal mergers. The so-called Great Heisei Mergers (Heisei being the reign name of the Emperor), have reduced the number of Japanese municipalities–cities, towns, and villages–from 3,300 to 1,800. It just isn’t possible to slash that number to 300 while eliminating the prefectures at the same time, and officials in the Internal Affairs Ministry have told the party as much.

Mr. Haraguchi sheepishly admitted to the Tokyo Deputy Mayor that the first step to attaining the goal of 300 would be a reduction to 700, but said, “we really haven’t thought this out. This is as far as we’ve gotten.”

Strong opposition to the Ozawa plan has also emerged from the National Association of Towns and Villages, an association for the municipal officers of machi and mura nationwide. (Those municipalities designated as cities are excluded.) While the association is a strong supporter of devolution, they are opposed to further consolidation because they maintain the last round of mergers did more harm than good.

There were 2,652 towns and villages before the merger mania started, and the total as of 1 June was 992, according to the NATV website. (A further complication is that there are no clear-cut definitions under the law to differentiate cities, towns, and villages. Generally speaking, cities have the most people and villages have the fewest, but some municipalities classified as towns have a larger population than some smaller cities.)

The NATV recently pried another admission out of the DPJ that the Ozawa plan is unrealistic and has to be reworked. The DPJ official who let that cat out of the bag was Osaka Seiji, the managing director of the party’s devolution survey committee.

This issue is taken very seriously by business and financial leaders throughout Japan–Keidanren, the country’s most influential business organization, is a staunch supporter of the LDP plan–but the DPJ still hasn’t decided where it stands as a party.

And they think they’re ready to assume leadership of the government?

The governors’ rebellion

Perhaps the most stunning development in the battle between local and central government was the response of the prefectural governors to the national government’s explanation of the prefectures’ liabilities for the maintenance and management costs of the local agencies of central government ministries. (For a more detailed look at the issue, try this dialogue between Mr. Hashimoto and Mr. Inose.)

The Kyodo news agency conducted a survey by questionnaire of the 47 prefectural governors regarding their views of the explanation and itemization of the charges provided by Kaneko Kazuyoshi, the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport. Forty of the 47 said it wasn’t sufficient.

Of those 40, 21 gave as their reason the continued prefectural financial liability for the maintenance and management of national roads and rivers. The National Governors’ Conference is seeking its immediate abolition. The dissenters thought the information was lacking and said they were dissatisfied with the government’s partial modification of the system while maintaining its essence. (This is a hallmark of governmental operations under the LDP.)

As specific examples of the inappropriate use of the funds they’re required to provide, 33 cited construction costs for agency buildings and dormitories for the civil servants. Eighteen of the governors cited footing the bill for the personnel costs of management personnel at research institutes and agencies under the direct control of the ministry. In addition, 36 said the breakdown of liabilities in the FY 2008 budget presented by the ministry at the end of May lacked critical information.

I’m not kidding about rebellion. Of the 47 governors, only three said their prefectures would pay the money the central government is asking for. In addition, Gov. Hashimoto of Osaka said his prefecture wouldn’t pay other inappropriate expenditures in addition to retirement and pension benefits. The remaining three governors did not specifically say what they would do. The Saitama governor said they might freeze payments if they thought the information disclosed was inadequate, while the Wakayama governor said the prefecture wouldn’t hand over any money until they received a reasonable explanation.

A total of 46 of the governors said the system should be either modified or eliminated entirely (only the Mie governor dissented), and of those 46, 27 opted for complete elimination.

Now imagine what would happen if 43 of the 50 American state governors flipped the bird in unison to the federal government after being told it was time to pay up. There would be so much activity on the Internet and in the mass media it would melt optical fiber cables worldwide and smoke would be issuing from the vents of your CPU.

It sounds like a rebellion to me!

So pointless it’s comical

ONE MEANS by which the opposition Democratic Party of Japan promises to finance some of the extravagant spending promises in its platform is to eliminate government waste, fraud, and abuse. That’s plausible on the surface, because waste, fraud, and abuse is the hallmark of governments (and large organizations) everywhere. Even the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has formed a project team to ferret out and eliminate waste in government.

A Satonaka work of media art

Earlier this month, the LDP team called for the elimination of a government plan to build what was described as a national media and arts center that would collect and exhibit comics, cartoons, and video games.

The plan was contained in the FY 2009 supplementary budget passed at the end of May, which allocated JPY 11.7 billion (about $US 122,500,000) for the center. Some ruling party MPs were opposed from the start, but their opposition went for naught.

Explained a bureaucrat:

“As a content industry, (this industry) has a role in supporting the Japanese economy. There is meaning is pursuing this as a national policy.”

The Agency of Cultural Affairs calls this “world-renowned ‘media art’” and hopes it “creates a whirlwind of new art originating from Japan.”

To his credit, DPJ President Hatoyama Yukio has repeatedly criticized the project. During a debate with Aso Taro in the Diet, he said:

“I know the Prime Minister likes comics and cartoons, but is it necessary to spend 11.7 billion yen to create a giant state-run comic book coffee shop and further enrich an independent administrative agency?”

Replied the prime minister:

“I think it is important now to create an international center for the media arts, referred to as the Japanese Cool, for cartoons, comics, and games. It will be a core institution for promoting Japanese culture. The new National Media Arts Center will be established as part of the Independent Administrative Institution, National Museum of Art, but the management and operation of the center will be outsourced and the funds it requires will be self-generated.”

Is that the stench of amakudari—cushy second jobs for retired bureaucrats—wafting through your monitor? And who really believes this center will be financially self-supporting?

Some also criticize the project for lacking originality. A panel of experts produced a lackluster report that proposes the center be housed in a four-or-five story building in Tokyo with exhibition rooms and a hall for screening films. They’ve yet to offer suggestions for the content to be displayed.

The lack of clear standards for the content troubles more than a few people. Perhaps the panel of experts would exclude items that many would find objectionable. (Or perhaps they wouldn’t, if the controversy of the public funding to exhibit Piss Christ in the United States is anything to go by.) The unanswered question is who knows where they would draw the line. One can almost guarantee it: The wrong place.

The panel of experts initially consisted of seven people, to which another seven were added. They are primarily from academia and the related industries. One of them is University of Tokyo Professor Hamano Yasuki, a specialist in Media Environment in the Department of Human and Engineered Environmental Studies. He has written several books, one of which is called Media as an Ideology.

Another is cartoonist Satonaka Machiko. Golly, what do you suppose she thinks of the project? On her blog, she says it is too easily misunderstood, and adds:

“Unless Japan is recognized overseas, there will still be a tendency to look down on Japanese culture. This must not be allowed to continue forever. We need a center to promote the country and say, ‘Here’s how wonderful the Japanese media arts are!’”

What Ms. Satonaka doesn’t seem to realize is that if any people overseas do look down on Japanese culture (and I suspect there aren’t many, rather than it being a tendency), their disregard is more likely caused by those who want to pretend that comic books and cartoons have serious artistic value. Why not just admit that the project is designed to attract the cash of the people attracted to chewing gum culture and be done with it?

Project team member Kono Taro of the LDP told reporters the project should be halted immediately because insufficient consideration was given to the taxpayer’s liability and the selection of the items to be exhibited.

When Mr. Kono was asked why he voted to approve the budget, he replied:

“The ruling party must also accept the responsibility.”

After speaking to the media, Mr. Kono briefed the chair of the project team and the Diet members aligned with the Education Ministry (the so-called tribal MPs), which is also involved with cultural affairs. Are the dots starting to connect yet?

The Cultural Affairs Agency plans to acquire land for the center this year and open the doors sometime in FY 2011. They haven’t stopped work, the project team’s objections notwithstanding. The preparatory committee plans to meet on 2 July and formulate the standards for the content to be displayed later this month.

Ms. Satonaka claims the annual Japan Media Arts Festival is insufficient to promote the industry. The 13th festival begins in mid-July and continues until mid-September; here’s their website. Take a look and see if you think a permanent government-financed home for all that is worth an investment of more than 120 million dollars.

Let’s be clear about this: This project is a perfect illustration of what people mean when they say they want to smash the Kasumigaseki bureaucracy. Japan’s infamous Iron Triangle still exists. The three legs of the triangle are the bureaucracy, the legislature, and industry, and they’ve formed a unit for their mutual enrichment at the expense of the taxpayers. People usually associate the Iron Triangle with public works projects, including highways and bridges to nowhere, but this plan demonstrates there is no limit to the imagination of bureaucrats with nearly unlimited public funds at their disposal.

It’s time to cut out the nonsense, admit that former Prime Minister Koizumi, Takenaka Heizo, and their allies were right, and maintain the fight against this expensive foolishness. It’s not possible to say, “end it once and for all”, because this fight never ends, anywhere. Mr. Hatoyama may be on the side of the angels in this battle, but he’s just as anxious to stop the privatization of Japan Post as he is to stop this project. Just as there’s no reason for the government to fund a comic book museum, there’s also no reason for the government to operate a retail financial institution, life insurance company, resort chain—or even deliver the mail.

Maintaining this fight requires the vigilance of the mass media, but they’re unreliable allies because they often pay attention to the wrong things. They require ratings and consumers, and that means pandering to the popular imagination. For example, they’ve filed few stories about this issue over the past month, yet found plenty of time and space to cover a flu epidemic that will infect very few in Japan and kill even fewer.

I stumbled across this story by accident in Akahata, the house organ of the Japanese Communist Party. That the controversy was semi-buried in the mainstream media speaks volumes about their priorities. Their failure to cover the debate despite their knowledge of it makes them just as culpable for producing this barrel of pork as the bureaucrats and the self-serving “media arts” content producers.

Afterwords:

One of the winners in the Manga Division of the 2008 Media Arts Festival was a comic called Real Clothes. Here is the summary from the MAF website:

Kinue, a woman of 27, works for a major department store in Shinjuku, a very competitive environment. Unexpectedly, she is transferred from the bedding floor, where she loves to work, to the women’s clothes floor. This is the story of her search for meaning in dressing, working, and living, and also of her personal development through her work and dealings with devious new coworkers.

Here is the reason given for the award:

I was not only captivated by the artist’s outstanding drawing skill and sharp, effective lines, but also by the clever storytelling, and healthy elegance and liveliness of the heroine, who almost seemed as though she were coming out of the picture. Although the same can be said of her other works, the exhaustive research into the thematic subject matter is amazing. This story is set on a women’s clothes floor, one of the topliner sections in a department store. She lives positively and energetically. However, her romance begins to hinder her work, and she must choose between them! It is the sort of life-changing turning point that all working women have to face once in their lives. The artist faces this matter squarely, portraying the naked soul of humanity. The heroine eventually chooses her work, and breaks up with her beloved boyfriend. The expression of her intense feeling of loss is strongly conveyed and the reader cannot help but feel deep compassion. This modern heroine’s way of life is very interesting, and I hope that women currently facing similar decisions in the workplace have the opportunity to open the pages of this manga.

Another award was given to the comic Shiori to Shimiko. The creator was asked about his motivation. He said:

“With regard to Shiori to Shimiko, my main intention was to produce a horror manga for girls.”

Taxpayers might consider this: You’ve spent at least 12 years of study to graduate from high school, and many of you have devoted an additional four or more years to university study. You’ve hopped through all the hurdles to finding employment, and now spend the better part of the day five days a week to provide for yourself and your family.

But instead getting to spend the money you earn on your priorities, a band of brigands in Tokyo (it makes no difference that they wear business suits instead of masks and work in offices instead of hiding in caves) has decided to confiscate part of your income to create a comic book/cartoon/gameboy museum. One of their excuses is that some people overseas still don’t take Japanese culture seriously.

Who’s serving whom here? Is the government (including both the legislature and civil servants) serving you? Or are you shackled in servitude to them?

To conclude, Japanese readers should not misunderstand. This isn’t about Japan; it’s simply a Japanese example of what goes on every day, everywhere else. The United States, where I come from, is just as bad, if not worse. It’s just that I pay taxes to the Japanese government now instead of the American one.

Japan’s political kaleidoscope (2): Aso edition

THE YEASTY FERMENT brewing in the world of Japanese politics is a heady blend with ingredients ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. Anyone who thinks politics in this country is moribund either isn’t paying attention or their beverage of choice is Kool-Aid. Today’s draft is drawn primarily from the Aso Taro keg.

Politicians say the darndest things

Logorrhea is an occupational hazard for politicians, and all sorts of things come out of their mouths when they’ve switched on cruise control. This is from a recent speech by Prime Minister Aso Taro:

“(The current Japanese national soccer team) doesn’t have a superstar like Nakata Hidetoshi. Eleven people working together—that’s Japanese soccer. If Japan had a superstar, it would be His Majesty the Emperor.”

Do you ever wonder how Mrs. Aso would answer if someone asked her whether her husband talks like this when they’re relaxing together at home?

Then again, if the idea of Jesus Christ Superstar can sell millions of albums, launch productions on Broadway and the West End of London, generate two films with a third planned, and still be performed on stage 35 years later, it should be harmless for some Japanese to consider the tenno to be the local superstar.

Why people dislike journalists #4,937

Journalists defend themselves from the charge of pointlessly repeating the same question by saying it’s their job. Well, yes, for some people, working for a living does involve creating make-work projects designed to convince the boss you’ve got the situation well in hand. All they usually accomplish, however, is to waste the time of people with more productive things to do. Try this dialogue from a recent Aso Taro press conference:

Reporter: First, about the personnel for senior party positions and the Cabinet…

(Mr. Aso leans back and smiles)

Reporter: Last Saturday you had a discussion with Mr. Kuroda (LDP secretary general), and at that time you took a negative approach to making major personnel changes. You said, “I’ve never talked about it; it’s just outsiders making things up.” Could you tell us again what your thoughts are about the personnel issue?

PM: I haven’t thought about personnel.

Reporter: Does that mean you won’t think about personnel until the Diet is dissolved and there’s a general election?

PM: It means I’m not thinking about it now.

Reporter: Now.

PM: Now look, you’re jumping on everything I say as soon as I say it, and you also did it not long ago. This sort of thing…saying these needless things will just lead to a pointless conversation, so let’s drop the subject…well, that was a close call (laughs).

Reporter: I see.

PM: (Clear voice) I haven’t thought about it.

Reporter: OK. Next…

PM: Do you understand?

Reporter: You’re not thinking about it all?

PM: (Laughs, doesn’t answer)

Update: Well, it looks like this reporter knew more than I gave him credit for. The very next day, Mr. Aso said that he had been thinking for a while about “the most suitable people at the most suitable time”. Nevertheless, it should have been obvious he didn’t want to answer the question when he was asked. That’s no reason to bug the man.

Why would Mr. Aso double back on his word so quickly? Some television journalists speculated that former PM Abe Shinzo, a long-time Aso friend, had been urging him to reshuffle his Cabinet and had nearly convinced him. But then party bigwig Mori Yoshiro told Mr. Aso not to waste his time.

How typical: Mr. Aso’s lack of decisiveness and willingness to listen to either of those men for political advice are two of the reasons his popular support is negligible to begin with.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the latest teacup tempest in an administration known for them is that one of the TV journalists casually commented that “he lied” the first time before moving on to comment about subsequent developments.

That does not speak well of contemporary Japanese politics at the highest level, does it?

Grated Aso

A lower house election must be held within the next few months, and it looks very much like the LDP is going to be trounced, allowing the opposition Democratic Party of Japan to form a government for the first time. The ruling party no longer offers a coherent political philosophy, and their post-Koizumi prime ministers have been the politically clumsy manipulated by the terminal klutzes behind the scenes.

It’s no wonder then that some senior party members want to move up the September election for LDP party president (who would become prime minister) to find an alternative to going down with Mr. Aso and the rest of the mudboat crew before the lower house election.

LDP faction leader Yamasaki Hiraku (AKA Taku) has submitted a petition to LDP MPs and other party members specifically calling for an early election. He also set up a special area on his website for citizens to provide their input.

Said Mr. Yamasaki:

“It’s not (designed) to bring down the Aso Cabinet”.

It is to laugh. No one believes that, particularly because the special area materialized on his website the day after the LDP candidate was defeated in the election for Chiba City mayor. A former Cabinet minister also admitted off the record that the idea is to create a popular consensus to replace Mr. Aso.

Indeed, Mr. Yamasaki later quit beating around the bush. A week ago, he claimed he had 108 signatures from lower house LDP members, though he wasn’t showing them to anyone. That’s about halfway to his goal of signing up an outright majority of LDP MPs in the lower house. He says that would prevent Mr. Aso from calling a snap election out of petulant frustration.

Then came the release of the following poll:

• People intending to vote for the LDP: 16.4%
• People intending to vote for the DPJ: 40.4%

A 24-point differential causes alarm bells to ring so loudly even those with earplugs can hear them. It also tends to shake up senior party leaders with heretofore safe seats because an electoral tsunami that large could just as easily wipe them out as it would the small fry in marginal districts.

The secretaries-general

Said Kato Koichi at a press conference:

In my 37 years as a diet member, I have never seen the reputation of the LDP sink as low as it has now. It’s the lowest it’s ever been. Calling an election now would be an act of suicide…Some MPs say we can take only 165 seats, but I think that outlook is too optimistic.

Said Takebe Tsutomu to reporters at party headquarters:

“We (Diet members) will work hard until the end of the term on 10 September, (but) we should have a showdown in the election with new policies promoted by a new leader.”

Ibuki Bunmei was slightly more optimistic, if optimistic is the word to describe a prediction of the loss of the party’s lower house majority:

“The cabinet support rate has fallen. We could have taken 241 seats with New Komeito, but now that will only be 220 to 230.”

All four of these gentlemen have served as LDP secretary-general, the top position in the party apparatus, so they know when electoral defeat is staring them in the face. Another former SG, Nakagawa Hidenao, has been saying the same thing every day for months now.

The names that arise most frequently as possible replacements are the Acting Secretary-General (i.e., representative) Ishihara Nobuteru, the son of Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro; Health, Labor, and Welfare Minister Masuzoe Yoichi, a former University of Tokyo professor who won public favor as a TV commentator slamming bureaucrats for their handling of public pensions; and former Defense Minister Koike Yuriko, a favorite of the Koizumian wing of the party, but disliked by some for a perceived shallowness of loyalty to the LDP. The problem with all three is that none of them are strong enough on their own to serve in that role without substantial help from the old boys in the backroom, most of whom have been out of touch for a generation.

Not everyone has jumped on the dump Aso bandwagon, however. Those who think they can swim–or cling to the flotsam and jetsam–when the ship sinks include former postal rebel Noda Yumiko and former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. Mr. Abe may be a man of principle and party loyalty, but he is sorely deficient in the third P of political acumen.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Kawamura Takeo is also opposed to a change:

“Party unity is of the utmost importance before the lower house election. Turmoil in the party will cause its own downfall. Would the people really understand if we only changed the leader? How would we answer the criticism that holding a party leadership election before the general election was done only with the general election in mind?”

Yes, the people would understand if you removed a leader they don’t support who lacks a firm political touch. They’d probably sympathize with you, in fact. To answer the carpers, you could always point out that the parties sitting in the opposition rows don’t get to make policy.

New Komeito, the LDP’s coalition partners, also want to stick with the loser. Said a senior official:

“It will have a negative impact on the election for governor in Shizuoka and the Tokyo Metropolitan District council. It’s also possible the voters would not support (the coalition) in the lower house election.”

You mean the same voters who already favor the opposition over the coalition by a 24-point margin? Those voters?

The official dropped hints the party would withhold support from LDP Diet members who tried to oust Mr. Aso.

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to them that candidates running behind a party leader promoting regional devolution, delinking from the mandarins of the civil service, putting the nation’s finances in order before raising taxes, continued privatization, and a resolute foreign policy probably wouldn’t need New Komeito support to win.

Naturalists speak of the cornered prey summoning all its energy for a desperate counterattack. Some hunters, however, know that cornered prey tracked for a long time often become too tired and dispirited to continue, and willingly surrender. What else could be the explanation for those people who are ready to fight an election campaign led by Mr. Aso—a man who has demonstrated no leadership ability, is not amenable to the reforms the public knows are needed, and who thinks that promising a large tax increase will earn the party public favor?

Mr. Aso might even be among those willing to surrender to the hunter. He’s dropping hints that he’ll hold the lower house election in August. Was this done to forestall a putsch? Was it his idea, or did someone put him up to it?

Why is it that the dimmest bulbs invariably think they’re the brightest?

Taro and the pirates

But let’s be fair: Mr. Aso does have his moments. The Diet recently passed a bill that allows Japanese self-defense forces (i.e., the military) to be sent overseas with the authority to fire on pirate vessels overseas if they do not respond to an order to cease and desist their attacks—even on non-Japanese ships—and allows Japan to participate in joint international anti-piracy operations. It also criminalizes piracy, which permits the offenders to be apprehended and punished in Japan.

Yet the DPJ chose to potentially sacrifice Japanese lives and ships by refusing to pass the bill in the upper house. They and the other opposition parties delayed the measure for two months and forced the LDP to use its supermajority in the lower house to get it through.

Said the prime minister:

“Naturally you’d protect yourself if you were attacked by thieves. I don’t understand (their opposition to the use of weapons). What are they thinking about when it comes to the safety of the Self-Defense Forces and the Coast Guard?”

There have been about 150 pirate attacks on shipping off Somalia this year, already exceeding the 111 attacks in 2008. What was the opposition “thinking”? For starters, the DPJ and the Social Democrats were concerned that the bill allows the Cabinet to send the SDF overseas without Diet approval.

Well, their two-month foot-dragging and gamesmanship while piracy continues unabated demonstrates why waiting for the approval of more than 700 people in both houses of the legislature, many of whom are all too willing to create artificial political crises to delay bills on any pretext, is unwise and possibly fatal when real world circumstances demand prompt action.

Meanwhile, the SDP and the Communists think the Coast Guard should be the only military forces involved against the pirates, and called into action only in Japanese territorial waters. They were also opposed to the relaxed rules on the use of weapons. What do they think works against Third World pirates looking for a multi-million dollar payday? Moral suasion? Do they expect the Somalians to start raiding along the Seto Inland Sea?

Let’s be clear: Many in the DPJ supported this bill as it was. That meant it could have sailed through the upper house with little or no problem, but the party leadership felt compelled to object. That’s partly because they lack the political sophistication to understand that for critical areas of national interest, it really is OK to agree with the government and not to oppose something merely because they’re the opposition. It’s also because they chose again to ignore the national interest by playing a numbers game for their own political ends and ally with the SPD solely to bring down the government.

What this demonstrates:

1. The SPD hold their countrymen in such contempt that they believe Japanese are still too irresponsible to be trusted with lethal weapons overseas in matters of self-defense. (It’s also possible that the wool in their heads has grown so thick they’re no longer capable of coherent thought.) That, combined with their other positions, past associations with North Korea, their socialist/Marxist background (which includes circumstantial evidence linking a leading party figure to the Japanese Red Army terrorist group of yesteryear) reveals serious character flaws.
2. That the DPJ would put to risk Japanese lives, commercial interests critical for an island nation with limited natural resources, and nascent efforts to show that the country is a responsible international partner willing to help enforce the basic concepts of right and wrong, solely to feed the fantasies of miniscule fringe parties for the sake of gaining power, is another sign that they are too immature to successfully lead a government.
3. Communists always behave like Communists.

Want more? DPJ President Hatoyama Yukio was asked if he would roll back the decision if they gained a lower house majority and formed a government later this year. You know, if you’re opposed, you’re opposed, right? His answer:

“We will not make a hasty decision to do an immediate about-face.”

Bless their pointed little heads, but aren’t they dependable? The DPJ can always be counted on to choose expediency over principle.

Some claim the DPJ maintains its alliance with the SPD because it “needs them” in the upper house.

“Needs them” for what? It’s not as if the SPD is going to start voting with the LDP if the DPJ tells them to bugger off.

The Democratic Party of Japan—still shameless after all these years.

Getting real

During the same discussion, Mr. Aso continued:

“It’s the same with North Korea. At a minimum, we must fight when we should fight. If we aren’t prepared to do that, we won’t be able to defend the nation’s safety.”

Added current LDP Secretary-General Hosoda Haruyuki in a Yurakucho speech:

“Who knows what North Korea, which has nonchalantly abducted hundreds of people, will do if they develop nuclear weapons? We must apply more pressure to North Korea. Our ultimate objective is to bring about a collapse of the current regime and have the country be reborn as a peaceful state. The DPJ’s response to (this issue) is extremely soft.”

And why not? Who better than the Japanese to understand that a malevolent regime can become a peaceful state?

Messrs. Aso and Hosoda aren’t the only ones tired of the international pussyfooting. The aforementioned Koike Yuriko resigned last week from the chairmanship of a special LDP committee studying the question of enemy military bases. A party council submitted a statement to Prime Minister Aso on whether Japan should maintain the capability of conducting an attack on enemy military installations. The council adopted a policy of ruling out preemptive defensive attacks, which caused Ms. Koike to walk.

Instrumental in adopting that policy was Yamasaki Hiraku (also mentioned above), who said:

“We must not cause misunderstandings overseas”.

Retorted Ms. Koike:

“A policy exclusively oriented to defense is too restrictive, and a defensive preemptive attack policy is even more restrictive. All we talk about is limiting what we can do. Is it such a good idea to continue to limit Japan’s policies for defense? People say it’s done out of consideration for neighboring countries, but they don’t show any consideration for us at all.”

Bingo. And give that last sentence bonus points.

Duh

The people overseas who might misunderstand could be divided into two groups. The first consists of those in the region who would choose to purposely misunderstand. That would allow them to use Japanese policy as both a diplomatic weapon in bilateral relations, and as a domestic weapon to stir up anti-Japanese sentiment at home. Their feigned ignorance would enable them to continue painting the country as a false enemy, thereby strengthening their base of support.

North Korea threatens Japan with military action every day and has the hardware to make those threats very real. The Chinese are not going to stop until they have made themselves the East Asian hegemon (at least). Russia seized Japan’s Northern Territories after Japan surrendered in 1945 and refuses to return them. South Korea used military force to seize Takeshima in 1954, still illegally occupies the islets, and still refuses international mediation (which Japan says it would accept).

The second group of people who would misunderstand is in the West and principally consists of politicians, academics, and journalists, most of whom can’t be bothered to do the research to get it right to begin with. Perhaps that’s because a real understanding would conflict with their preconceptions.

Japanese diplomatic and military behavior has been the gold standard in Northeast Asia since 1945. Ms. Koike, Mr. Aso, and Mr. Hosoda are right: Japan should choose to defend its legitimate interests as a sovereign nation. The decision-makers in neighboring countries will understand perfectly, regardless of what they say in public for the gullible or the Barnumesque suckers who want to be deceived. As for the people on the other side of the Pacific, there’s a Japanese expression that covers them: Baka ni tsukeru kusuri wa nai. There’s no medicine to cure a fool.

Some people in this country pretended they didn’t understand what Abe Shinzo meant when he said he wanted Japan to move beyond the postwar regime. Well, here you are.

But of course they always knew exactly what he was driving at—they just didn’t want to face the implications. It’s not always easy for adolescents to embrace responsibility and take charge of their lives.

I know what you are; we’re just haggling over the price

Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
- Ronald Reagan

AND TO THINK that some people considered the late American president to be an amiable dunce! To prove his point, let’s read the lips of some of the practitioners of Japanese politics. First, however, we’ll start with a forecast from an unidentified bureaucrat.

The civil servant was speaking to freelance journalist Yokota Yumiko for an article she wrote in the June 2008 issue of Shokun! magazine. His prediction involved the relationship of the Kasumigaseki bureaucrats and the politicians in a possible government led by the current opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan. He said:

“No matter how you look at it, no policy proposals can be implemented without Kasumigaseki. Even if the Democratic Party of Japan were to form a government, it would be unlikely to have an adverse impact on our work. Indeed, it would make our work a lot easier if the DPJ did us the favor of winning the next lower house election and breaking the logjam in the Diet. It would be easier to pass bills, and we would be able to free ourselves from the chains that tie us to the engorged LDP politicians.

“If the DPJ were to form a government, they would wind up having to restrain their current irresponsibility. Having them take power once should be enough for the voters to realize they have no ability to handle the reins of government.”

Now for the political lips. Here’s Aso Taro of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party just after he was selected prime minister last year:

“I’m a politician that can skillfully utilize the bureaucratic organization…There is a distinction between what one should entrust to government officials without recklessly opposing everything they do, and what politicians should do….The bureaucracy is something to be managed.”

On 9 February this year, then secretary-general and now party president of the DPJ, Hatoyama Yukio, said during a speech:

“We will have everyone with the rank of bureau chief or higher in every ministry and agency submit their resignation, and then confirm whether or not they will implement the policies that the DPJ has in mind.”

It certainly sounds like he’s serious about reforming the bureaucracy, doesn’t it? It also sounds suspiciously like a loyalty test for government employees, but let’s read some more lips.

Here’s Acting DPJ President Kan Naoto answering a question at a press conference just this week:

Q: Will you seek the resignation of all personnel with the rank of bureau chief or higher (if you form a government)?

A: “It would be next to impossible to automatically force those resignations. Separating oneself from the bureaucracy does not at all mean being opposed to the bureaucracy or eliminating the bureaucracy. We want to utilize the bureaucracy’s experience and knowledge for crafting legislation. We want people to understand that the roles of politicians and bureaucrats are different, and to create a cooperative relationship in a new business model.”

By jingo, he sure sounds a lot like Aso Taro, doesn’t he? But Mr. Aso is the one people think Kasumigaseki has under its thumb!

It also sounds as if that unidentified bureaucrat was on to something.

And if you compare the statements of Messrs. Hatoyama and Kan, one has to wonder if all DPJ promises are delivered with a pre-existing expiration date.

At least this one expired before the election.

Up next is Nakagawa Hidenao, the de facto leader of the reform wing of the LDP. Mr. Nakagawa and a group of allies have drawn up a bill for consideration in the Diet that completely prohibits amakudari (the practice of giving senior bureaucrats important jobs in government-affiliated organizations and private companies when they retire) and watari (the name for the ministries’ arrangement of successive jobs for retired bureaucrats at government-affiliated corporations, with the former civil servants receiving a pension each time).

It also has a provision for reducing the rank and salary of senior bureaucratic executives, presumably for substandard job performance.

Mr. Nakagawa has collected 125 signatures in support of the bill from LDP MPs: 111 in the lower house, and 14 in the upper house.

Any Diet member can submit a bill for consideration; it requires 20 signatures for the lower house and 10 for the upper house, and Mr. Nakagawa obviously has them.

When bills are submitted, however, the speaker usually refers them to a committee. In this case, Mr. Nakagawa submitted his proposed legislation to the LDP’s Diet Affairs Committee and an LDP organization first. The committee chair said the legislation would be discussed in conjunction with the government’s civil service reform legislation.

Both Mr. Nakagawa and the DPJ have said the government’s legislation lacks muscle. He designed the bill specifically to gain the support of the opposition, giving it the potential to become a true bipartisan reform measure.

What has the DPJ said in public about the bill put together by Mr. Nakagawa?

…………

Their lips haven’t moved yet.

If the opposition wanted to put pressure on the government, establish their reputation as serious reformers, and actually achieve real reform much needed by the government and much desired by the people, wouldn’t they have been all over this already?

Could it be they’re waiting for Ozawa “The Puppeteer” Ichiro, the party’s Shadow Shogun, to tell them what to think first? Or could it be they weren’t all that serious to begin with?

It looks like we’re about to find out which members of the world’s second-oldest profession in the Diet are really part of the first-oldest.

Who’s the servant and who’s the master?

“Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.”

“People are beginning to realize that the apparatus of government is costly. But what they do not know is that the burden falls inevitably on them.”

- Frederic Bastiat

“Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.

- Oscar Wilde

THE PARAMOUNT POLITICAL ISSUE of our time is not the death of “capitalism” or the end of the free market, the premature ejaculations of wishful thinkers and the commentariat notwithstanding, but rather whether the members of the political class demonstrate by their behavior the belief that the state should serve the people or the people should serve the state.

The electorate must insist that politicians demonstrate their beliefs by their behavior. The first rule for dealing with politicians, after all, is that nothing they say can be taken at face value.

The litmus test for the political behavior of politicians is how they treat the subject of taxes. Are their views on taxation based on the understanding that tax revenue is not their money to begin with? Are they aware of the concept of fiduciary responsibility? Are the uses to which they would put the money the legitimate concern of government? Would those uses penalize innocent people at the expense of others? Are there no solutions other than taxation and the inevitable growth of the program and the taxes levied to maintain it? Are the politicians making every effort to keep government spending to a minimum? Have they evaluated policy options based on the knowledge that the best solution is most often to do nothing at all—thereby allowing the citizens to keep their own resources instead of forking it over to the government? (This one never occurs to the policy wanks.)

The national pension

Japan has a national pension for which all residents aged 20 or older must register, including foreign nationals. Individuals are responsible for their own payments, however, and they must pay into the system for at least 25 years to receive retirement benefits. That quirk makes the system voluntary, in a manner of speaking. There is also an employee pension insurance system, but all the participants are automatically enrolled in the national pension system. The premiums paid in the latter scheme are in addition to those of the basic national pension premiums, and they are deducted from the employee’s salary.

The 2004 and 2005 campaign platforms of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan included planks stating it would be necessary to increase the consumption tax, currently 5% for all purchases, on the premise that the tax revenue would fund the pensions. The platforms treated this as an issue to be dealt with in the future and did not call for an immediate tax increase.

During the collegial discussion that masqueraded as a debate in the DPJ’s presidential election last month, both the winner Hatoyama Yukio and the unsuccessful challenger Okada Katsuya vowed to fund the national pension through compulsory taxes. Mr. Okada held that the consumption tax must be raised by three percent right away. Mr. Hatoyama allowed only that it was not necessary to pay for this immediately, nor was it necessary to discuss the issue just yet. He also thought the funds for the pension could be found by eliminating government waste.

Politicians promising tax increases of this magnitude and with such an impact on the way people conduct their lives, without fully discussing the alternatives, should be easy prey for their political opponents. But the politicians currently in control of Japan’s ruling party, the Liberal Democrats, are an odd exception. Finance Minister Yosano Kaoru (technically the Minister of State for Financial Services, Economic and Fiscal Policy) found Mr. Okada’s argument refreshing and serious, and dismissed Mr. Hatoyama as being vague. “I heard that he was spouting a fairy tale, so I wasn’t surprised.”

Mr. Yosano also approvingly noted that Mr. Okada will not run away from the problem, but that Mr. Hatoyama will.

What exactly it is that Mr. Okada will not run away from was not made clear. Mr. Yosano didn’t specify the monster in the fairy tale, or if he did, the mass media didn’t tell us about it.

In fact, he and his nominal boss in the Cabinet, Prime Minister Aso Taro, believe raising taxes is a red-ink badge of courage. They think it demonstrates their higher qualities as politicians. Mr. Aso actually wants to promise to raise the consumption tax in the LDP’s election platform. He thinks this will win the party popular acclaim by displaying what he calls his sense of responsibility.

His sense of responsibility to whom? The green eye shades in the Finance Ministry, or the people who will actually have to do without the money? It goes without saying, of course, that neither he nor Mr. Yosano have bothered with the litmus test above. Nor did the Finance Ministry drones who insisted on the idea to begin with.

It’s not just the consumption tax, either. It never is when politicians devise ways to spend the people’s money for legal vote-buying schemes. Here’s Mr. Yosano testifying at the Diet:

“I believe there will be consideration of raising the highest rates on the income tax. The opinion is overwhelming within the LDP too that the highest rates should be raised.”

Within the LDP too? They’re really not serious about winning that next election, are they?

The Cabinet Office has it all figured out. They suggest starting in 2011 to increase the current consumption tax of 5% in stages to reach 10%. This, they claim, will enable them to achieve “fiscal soundness” by the early 2020s. Their original projections called for budgetary health by 2018, but the money borrowed to deal with the fiscal crisis and the economic downturn will reduce anticipated tax revenues.

They’re basing their projections on an economic recovery that won’t die a crib death, suffocated by the consumption tax increases. Oh, and the fiscal balance they project in the 2020s will not include the expenditures to pay off the debt incurred from the recent financial crisis.

Nakagawa Hidenao

These people remind me of a doctor who told a friend of mine not to worry about a certain condition because medical science can easily handle problems such as his nowadays. What the doctor neglected to mention was that one of the primary options was the removal of the organ in question. He would survive, but at the cost of his quality of life. He would be medically sound, just as the Cabinet Office, and Messrs. Okada, Yosano, and Aso would make Japan fiscally sound in their theoretical world. But what would happen to the quality of life of the people?

Is there someone who still realizes it is not possible to increase the role of the central government and reform the bureaucracy at the same time? Is there someone who still understands that free markets are always a better solution than government paternalism or the nanny state? (Pick the authority figure of your preference.)

It’s not as if we don’t know the revenues to fund the welfare state will run out again in another few years, and a new generation of politicians will promote themselves as responsible public servants while pointing their fingers at others for running away. That’s why they say the only two certain things in life are death and taxes.

Is there someone who still realizes that the self-proclaimed responsible politicians have it backwards by expecting the citizens to serve the state, rather than having the state serve the citizens? And who understands that serving the citizens often means just getting out of the way?

Yes, there is. He’s Nakagawa Hidenao, and he’s known as the leader of the Ageshio, or “Rising Tide” movement in Japan. In brief, his platform is:

1. Ending deflation
2. Reducing government assets
3. Cutting government expenditures
4. Systemic reform, including major invasive surgery on the bureaucracy
5. Then, and only then, increasing taxes

Mr. Nakagawa has taken the trouble to write books outlining his proposals both for fiscal policy and systemic reform. The standard-bearer for small government in Japan recently sat for an interview with the Sankei Shimbun. The newspaper didn’t print the questions, but Mr. Nakagawa has the answers anyway. Here’s a quick translation.

***
Yosano Kaoru and the consumption tax

It seems that Mr. Yosano wants to use the consumption tax in the lower house election campaign. It’s not my intention to critique an individual’s statements, but I’m absolutely opposed to a major tax increase during a deflationary period, or to pledging a major tax increase when the economy is in the doldrums. If we were to do that, the bottom would drop out of (our) economy and have a negative impact on the global economy.

Fighting deflation and moving toward structural reform

The LDP should promise fiscal reform before they raise taxes. The first priority is to formulate a growth strategy based on fighting deflation and structural reform. Even if you accept that increasing the citizens’ liability for social welfare expenditures will be inevitable in the future, it’s incomprehensible to say you’ll increase taxes without implementing such reforms as making government more efficient and strengthening its functions.

We’re in a critical period for the economy now, so we must formulate economic measures of the type used only once every 100 years. But when normality returns, we must resume the process of the 2006 Robust Policy Statement, compiled when I was the head of the Policy Research Council. That calls for a primary balance in national and local government finances by 2011.

Systemic reform

The reform of Kasumigaseki (the bureaucracy) is critical. I’ve formed a group of Diet members to study ways to reform Kasumigaseki, and we created an outline of member-initiated legislation to supplement the bills submitted by the government to reform the civil service system.

We did this to obtain the consent of the DPJ, which claims that the reforms in the government’s legislation related to senior members of the bureaucracy don’t go far enough. Our proposals remedy that insufficiency. Without an agreement between the ruling and opposition parties, the bill won’t be passed during this session of the Diet. The LDP must show that it is more passionate about reform than the DPJ.

I haven’t talked to Prime Minister Aso about this issue, so I don’t know if there’s any common ground. But whenever I try to speak out, you in the mass media immediately start writing about a confrontation. I don’t care about such petty things. I made it my priority to make Japan better.

Trouble with the LDP

I haven’t been to a meeting of the Machimura faction since February. Interpersonal relations are important, but if the only objectives are just to maintain the old senior-junior relationships and to listen to the “wisdom of the elders”, then I can only call that an old faction. The Machimura faction should be a policy group. The issue is whether the member MPs share the same philosophy and direction, and trust each other.

I’ve fought for reform at every general meeting of the faction. But when that becomes a dispute, (you) play up the idea that the split is widening, and that causes trouble for the members. That’s why (I haven’t attended). I haven’t said that I’ll leave the faction.

The points at issue in political realignment are tax increases and reform of Kasumigaseki

I have consistently maintained that it is important to have a lower house election at the earliest possible time, and for the LDP to put every effort in promoting policies to win the trust of the people. But the timing is up to Prime Minister Aso.

I suspect we still haven’t won the support of the independent voters who want to see reform. (But) our support will rise if we formulate a platform that serves as a bridge between conservatives and independents. One of the people who could write that platform is Suga Yoshihide (Koga faction; the deputy chief of election campaigns for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party), who is expected to chair a research team. In principle, I am not opposed to restrictions on hereditary candidacies (which Suga supports).

In the future, the points at issue for political realignment may become the debate over raising taxes during an economic crisis and reforming Kasumigaseki. Do I want to become party president (with the implication of possibly being prime minister)? I won’t answer questions like that. It depends on the will of the people!

***
From a later speech

“The ruling party will not earn public support as long as it does not incorporate sweeping reform of Kasumigaseki in its platform.”

He added:

“Superficial responses such as the division of the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare are insufficient. We’ll be playing second fiddle in the lower house election if people have the impression that the DPJ’s reform plan is more advanced than ours.”

On raising taxes:

“That is a far cry from the popular will. The people want us to eliminate waste before we raise taxes.”

Some numbers

Mr. Nakagawa knows he has the numbers on his side. From a public opinion poll conducted 11 June:

What do you think of government by bureaucracy?

I prefer government by politicians: 72.2%

I prefer government led by the bureaucracy: 16.2%

I don’t know: 11.6%

His political future

Speculation continues to mount in the press about Mr. Nakagawa’s next move. That an unbridgeable chasm separates him from the mudboat wing of his party is now clear. Most observers expect there will be a parting of the ways, his excuses for not attending faction meetings notwithstanding. The only questions are when and under what conditions. He is not expected to have much difficulty in holding his Diet seat in the upcoming election.

One set of rumors has him trying to snatch back control of the LDP for the reformers. At a fund raising party in Tokyo last week, he said:

“Like-minded comrades will, using the common sense of the people, battle it out with common sense in Nagata-cho, which is the antithesis of the common sense of the people. This is a declaration of war.”

He threw down a challenge:

“The LDP is the party promoting reform. We reformers are not the ones who will leave the party—the ones who are not reformers should leave.”

On the DPJ:

“I can state with certainty that they lack the common sense of the world. We will make the common sense of the world national policy.”

That sounds as if he is thinking of trying to unseat Aso Taro before the election and have the party run a reformer in his place. (It might not be out of the question if the poll numbers have made enough of the party’s lower house MPs desperate. They ought to be.)

Having served as both chief cabinet secretary and LDP secretary-general, Mr. Nakagawa was being groomed for the job of prime minister himself, but he became embroiled in scandals involving both women and money. They were of a level that prevented him from rising further, but permitted him to stay in the Diet and out of jail.

As a result, he backed Koike Yuriko in the party’s election in an unsuccessful bid to replace Fukuda Yasuo (which Aso Taro won) rather than run himself. (Ms. Koike was also supported by former Prime Minister Koizumi, a Nakagawa soulmate.)

A different set of rumors has floated up in the current issue of the weekly Shukan Shincho. Those have him waiting for the election results to bolt the LDP and form a new party. The rumors include the new party’s name (Kaikaku, or Reform), and sounding out Takenaka Heizo to be the standard bearer. The magazine also noted that an alliance with independent reformer Watanabe Yoshimi would be a natural, and it would attract the first-term Diet members elected on Mr. Koizumi’s coattails in 2005.

Why government pensions?

In their 12 June issue, the editors of the weekly Shukan Post thought their readers might be interested in seeing how they would be affected if the national pension were eliminated altogether. They found what other simulations in other countries have long shown—people would be financially better off by handling their own pensions.

Their simulation postulated a 45-year-old man who started work at age 22 after college, and whose wife did not work. They calculated that he would have already paid in JPY 13.41 million, counting the employee pension insurance, in which the employer kicks in an amount equal to the employee contribution above the basic national pension.

Simulation Man will have to pay an additional JPY 17.42 million until he retires at age 60. Therefore, he will have paid total pension premiums of JPY 30.83 million during his working life. If he starts receiving a pension at age 65 and lives out an average lifespan, he and his wife will receive about JPY 36.90 million (about $US 375,000) in benefits.

But if the pension system were to be eliminated, all premiums returned, and if his future contribution (including the company’s contribution) is added together and invested under the same conditions as those in the present system, the 45-year-old man would wind up with JPY 48.60 million in benefits, or JPY 11.70 million more than under the current system.

The Shukan Post article might not be an isolated phenomenon. The current edition of the Sunday Mainichi weekly magazine has an article about how one can enjoy a comfortable life in old age with JPY 30 million.

Of course, if the pension system were to be eliminated, not everyone would employ a mechanism to provide for their old age.

But why should the ants who would find a way to handle their own retirement be forced to fund a system that rewards the grasshoppers?

Update:

Yes, the paramount political issue of our time. Here’s an article in the Telegraph by London Mayor Boris Johnson, showing himself to be a kindred spirit of Nakagawa Hidenao. The headline? Public Spending Begins with Private Enterprise.

He writes:

This whole debate is back to front. We are putting the cart before the horse. Every time you hear a politician stand forth and invite your good opinion by offering to “cut” this or “invest in” that, ask yourself the prior question: just how did the politicians come by this money? Who created it? And what are we doing to help them create more?

This is taxpayers’ money, amigos. It was produced by the sweat upon the brow of the 23.6 million private-sector employees, and by the hundreds of thousands of British businesses – 80 per cent of them with five employees or fewer – that are struggling on in spite of the recession.

And:

Instead of this arid debate about “cuts versus spending”, we should be having a grown-up national conversation about the cost of regulation to business, and the growing burden of public-sector pensions.

(The emphasis is mine.)

He concludes:

I want to hear politicians talk less about themselves and their priorities and more about the entrepreneurs, the people who get up at 5am to organise their business or cut deals with the other side of the world. Every time you hear politicians swanking about what they are going to do with public funds, remember that wealth was ultimately created by private enterprise; and, if they don’t help the wealth creators, they won’t have any money to spend.

He also seems to have invented a word: necrarchy, or a zombie government. Not only is that a perfect description of the mudboat wing of the LDP, that’s what Takenaka Heizo called them in a Bungei Shunju article in December 2007.

Campaign slogan or Freudian slip?

AGREE OR DISAGREE, it’s always worth reading the opinions of Takenaka Heizo, the economics and privatization guru for former Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro. I usually agree, so it was satisfying to see him present in the first paragraph of a recent article in the Sankei an argument I’ve had half-written for this site for two months. Here’s my quick translation of that paragraph. I left one Japanese expression untranslated for a reason. Stick with me for a little bit and the reason will become apparent later.

Mr. Takenaka is speaking of the Democratic Party of Japan, the primary opposition party.

“In essence, seiken kotai must ultimately be just a method. Emphasizing seiken kotai is a channel for clearly identifying and achieving whatever policy one has. Certainly, the DPJ is offering a fresh perspective on the conduct of governmental affairs, including eliminating (excessive) bureaucratic (influence), but the content of the policies they want to achieve isn’t clear at all. That’s precisely why the rate of support for the DPJ is lower than one might expect. If (the upcoming election) is simply to be a negative choice in which the voter thinks that, well, at least they’re better than today’s Liberal Democratic Party, they will be immediately met with powerful opposition as soon as they take power. The DPJ has a responsibility to clearly present solid policies for the sound development of Japan’s economy and society.”

No sooner had I begun congratulating myself for having come up with the same idea than this quote from Prime Minister Aso Taro floated up:

“Seiken kotai is a method, not an objective. The issue is what you want to do after seiken kotai, and what sort of policies you will implement.”

He’s right, of course, but that’s sure starting to sound like the LDP message of the day, isn’t it? Why would Mr. Takenaka would feel compelled to coordinate his message with that of the prime minister, whom no one would mistake for his intellectual soulmate? But we’ll leave that for another day, if it ever happens again.

My enthusiasm was further dampened by this commentary, also in the Sankei:

“The prime minister’s interest is a manifestation of his dread of the expression seiken kotai. No matter how the ruling party criticizes the individual DPJ policies, the DPJ can always counter by telling the people that they won’t know for sure unless they’re given a chance to form a government”.

Is the LDP afraid of what the expression represents, or are they disdainful of it? I suspect it’s a combination of both.

It’s not unusual that so many people would notice it, however—that’s all they talk about. It’s as if they sing it to themselves in the bathtub at night. Mr. Aso was correct when he noted that seiken kotai is the DPJ objective. He’s only repeating what they constantly say themselves.

Here’s the new DPJ head Hatoyama Yukio earlier this year when the DPJ drama queens were stressing out over Ozawa Ichiro’s scandal:

Our objective is ultimately seiken kotai. I’ve said that (Ozawa Ichiro) and I will share the same fate….If we think it will be difficult to achieve seiken kotai, we will both take responsibility (and step down).

How’s that for a revealing quote? It shows the ultimate DPJ objective, what Hatoyama Yukio means by taking responsibility, and whether he can be trusted to keep his word.

This is from Okada Katsuya, Mr. Hatoyama’s opponent in the recent DPJ presidential election, from about the same time:

I understand that with (the people) unable to comprehend (the campaign finance scandal), we will not be able to achieve seiken kotai.

It’s no exaggeration to call it the party line; even Mr. Ozawa’s DPJ opponents spout it. Here’s Komiyama Yoko, the Education Minister in the party’s Shadow Cabinet and a member of the Maehara/Edano group, at a press conference during the crisis:

“The priority is to take an approach for seiken kotai. At this point, he really should withdraw. I do not think we can win a difficult election with apologies and excuses.”

The DPJ clearly thinks the phrase is critical, and the LDP just as clearly thinks it’s worth using as a line of attack. Now there are suggestions that the DPJ will use it as their slogan for the upcoming election. So what does the phrase mean in English?

It literally means alternation of government; in other words, a system in which the two major parties alternate power rather than power being exclusively in the hands of the LDP, as has usually been the case since 1955.

The DPJ themselves translate it as a “change of government” on their English-language website. Some have translated it as “regime change”, but that’s not a good idea. Joseph Stalin had a regime. Pol Pot had a regime. Saddam Hussein had a regime. Kim Jong-il has one now. Great Britain has governments and America has administrations, but free market democracies do not have “regimes”.

Mr. Takenaka makes an excellent point when he reminds us that the DPJ has a lower support rating than one would expect with the LDP’s backsliding from reform and the demonstrated lack of a rudder on their mudboat.

Is it that the phrase does not resonate with the public in the same way that the word “change” has for many years in American politics? Since I’m not a native speaker of Japanese, I’m not qualified to say with certainty. It’s worth noting, however, that the phrase is a four kanji compound, which the Japanese have long used for national sloganeering (and the Chinese for even longer). The impact might be greater than I realize.

But even though I’m not a native speaker, I do believe this: the DPJ’s choice of that expression demonstrates why it’s been so difficult for the party to get traction with the electorate even though the voters are clearly fed up with the recent conduct of the LDP. Further, the party’s behavior has prevented the people from taking their use of the expression seriously.

It didn’t have to be that way, and to see why, one need look no further than Mr. Koizumi and two governors who champion reform, Higashikokubaru Hideo of Miyazaki and Hashimoto Toru of Osaka. The reason the three of them have maintained sky-high popularity ratings for a period of time almost unheard of in politics is that they put citizen-centered reform first. There’s no better example than Mr. Koizumi ignoring his party’s advice and calling for a lower house election to let the public decide the issue of postal privatization. Both his party’s mudboat wing and the DPJ were opposed, but he was rewarded with one of the most decisive mandates in Japanese political history.

Why haven’t the DPJ gotten the same political love, despite their desperate chanting of the mantra of reform?

It’s the slogan, stupid. Citizen-centered reform is not the first thing they mention. For them, it’s all about seiken kotai…Is that two-party government? Change of government?

No. The voters know what that expression really means to the DPJ.

Our objective is to take power.

From the people’s perspective, what they’re saying is that they want to be part of the problem, rather than the solution. That’s why it’s taken so long for the electorate to even think about taking them seriously.

Even worse for the dim bulbs of the DPJ is that their actions have spoken louder than their words, especially after they gained control of the upper house in 2007. Rather than present coherent policy alternatives and use the new platform as a bully pulpit for the discussion and debate of those alternatives, they chose to behave as a teenager behind the wheel of a new muscle car with a six-pack on the passenger seat. Many people share the sentiments of the LDP’s Nakagawa Hidenao:

“They should dispense with this philosophy of making political crises a priority and compete on citizen-centered reform.”

The way to the Japanese electorate’s heart is easier to see than a neon-festooned pachinko parlor on the outskirts of a country town on Sunday night. Mr. Koizumi certainly saw it, as well as the two governors. Of course they’re ambitious—they wouldn’t be politicians otherwise—but they made sure to put citizen-centered reform first, or at least do a believable job of faking it. They’ve made themselves answerable to the people.

The castrati in the DPJ, on the other hand, have made themselves answerable only to the cynical calculator Ozawa Ichiro, not out of a sense of conviction for his principles—whatever those are this month—but out of the fear that he’ll split and deprive them of their chance to take power.

Forget about walking the walk—they can’t even talk the talk. What was that Mr. Hatoyama said about accepting responsibility if Ozawa Ichiro had to step down? And what was the reason he and Mr. Ozawa gave for stepping down? To apologize for the arrests over campaign financing? To demonstrate the sincerity of their claims of being the clean party? To honor their own sense of decency?

No. The reason they gave is that the scandal would prevent them achieving their objective of seiken kotai: Taking power.

Mr. Hatoyama should make a dandy prime minister.

It doesn’t take much insight to know exactly why the party’s rates of support are lower than common sense says they should be. The DPJ has done nothing to make people feel good about voting for them. That’s why Mr. Takenaka’s observation about the party confronting enormous opposition on taking power is likely to be dead on. And since they’ve done nothing to win the goodwill of the people—indeed, they’ve done everything to ignore it—any honeymoon period is likely to be very short.

If the party succeeds in forming a government this year, their first problem will be illustrated by the old story of the barking dog that forever chases the family car. What will the dog do when it finally catches the car?

Don’t ask the DPJ. They haven’t figured it out themselves. After all, their objective is to take power.

But they’d better start thinking fast. When you’re the party in power, words really do mean things.

Japan’s political kaleidoscope

NOW THAT THE OPPOSITION Democratic Party of Japan has stuck a feather in former leader Ozawa Ichiro’s cap and called it macaroni instead of calling on Jack to hit the road, events in the world of Japanese politics are accelerating with a potentially historic lower house election just a few months away.

Here are some reflections from Japan’s ever-revolving political kaleidoscope while we wait to see how long it takes the mudboat of the ruling LDP’s zombie wing to dissolve, whether the party dumps Aso Taro and replaces him with Hatoyama Kunio to set up a brother-take-all election, and if the members of the DPJ will ever start acting their age instead of their (Western) shoe size.

Kato and Takenaka: Off with the gloves!

Former LDP Secretary-General Kato Koichi has just published a book critical of the Koizumi administration’s structural reforms. To borrow a term used to describe some members of the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, Mr. Kato would be a “wet” in the LDP. He and the very dry Keio University Prof. Takenaka Heizo, the lead privateer of the Koizumian reforms, went toe-to-toe on a recent TV Asahi program.

Mr. Kato’s first punch:

“The reforms exceeded the limits of the weakened regional areas. Your ideas (were inconsiderate of) society.”

Countered Prof. Takenaka:

“(You’re) the man responsible for “ten lost years” (of sluggish economic growth). It’s odd that you would attack Mr. Koizumi, who ended all that, as if you were some cultural critic.”

Mr. Kato thinks the Koizumi administration’s approach of zero interest rates and what he saw as a focus on corporations, reduced personal assets and income, upsetting the public:

“All of society is now irritated!”

Prof. Takenaka pointed out that his antagonist held several important positions in the 1990s, including LDP secretary-general, after the collapse of the bubble economy.

“(You) failed to deal firmly with the non-performing debt, so we did. It’s a mistake to argue there’s a future in going backwards.”

Expect to see more of these arguments, particularly if the LDP falls apart after going into the opposition, thereby liberating its reform wing.

Going backwards

Speaking of retrograde movement, Finance Minister Yosano Kaoru continued his own backwards march into the future, slapping himself during a meeting of the lower house finance committee for daring to support the complete privatization of the Development Bank of Japan as scheduled:

“I’ve done some soul-searching over the shallowness of my thinking for failing to anticipate the current economic crisis. The DBJ should remain as an important tool of the government.”

Which shows that Mr. Yosano remains an important tool of the Finance Ministry, the Big Swinging Dick of the Japanese bureaucracy. The bureaucracy will do anything to maintain its stranglehold on government policy short of strangling babies in the crib. Prime Ministers Koizumi and Abe made some headway on blasting a path through the mountain, but their two successors let the Sisyphean rock roll back down the hill again.

Not only did the lower house committee agree with Mr. Yosano, they also voted to expand the range of assets the bank can buy. The media report said the bank was scheduled for full privatization in three years, but their website (right sidebar) says about five.

Failing to foresee a once-in-a-century economic crisis is forgivable. What is inexcusable, however, is failing to see that it originated in a meddlesome government’s interference with banking practices, and that partial government ownership of those banks to facilitate further meddling will be a cure worse than the disease.

All politics is local, #1

The news media got interested in the usually uninteresting mayoral election in Saitama City last month because it was the first local poll after Ozawa Ichiro resigned from the DPJ presidency. Politicos wanted to know whether his retreat from center stage to the control booth in the wings would boost the local DPJ candidate.

The local DPJ group supported newcomer Shimizu Hayato (47), who easily defeated the incumbent backed by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The café commentariat saw this as a win for the new Hatoyama-led LDP, especially as Hatoyama Yukio himself campaigned there.

They’d have a point if people always elected municipal chiefs based on the behavior of national political parties, but other factors confirmed the only coherent point former U.S. House Speaker Thomas O’Neill made in his career: “All politics is local”.

Mr. Shimuzu was a newcomer nearly 20 years younger than his opponent, Aikawa Soichi (66). Mr. Aikawa was seeking a third straight term, or a sixth straight term if you count his time as mayor of Urawa before a municipal merger. Many people were looking for a change.

Some of them were in his own party. While Mr. Aikawa had official party backing, a third candidate in the race was Nakamori Fukuyo, who had been a former LDP lower house member with a proportional representative seat until March. The party didn’t support Mr. Nakamori, but former Secretary-General Ibuki Bunmei and former postal privatization rebelette and current Minister of Consumer Affairs Noda Seiko swung by to campaign for him. Intraparty vote-splitting is the royal road to an election loss.

Then again, Mr. Aikawa ran a mudboat campaign of his own. After winning the primary, he played up his LDP ties and had Hatoyama Kunio, the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications (and Yukio’s brother) campaign for him. Mr. Shimizu figured he had the election cinched at that point, because his strategy was to highlight party identification, and he knew he was running against a split opposition.

The LDP nameplate has negative cachet regardless of who’s running where, but it must take a brick wall to fall on some people before they get it. Just last month, Morita Kensaku was elected Governor of Chiba despite his LDP ties because he pretended they didn’t exist. But the law of natural selection is valid for politics too.

All politics is local, #2

When Hatoyama Yukio claims to be the champion of regional devolution, that has to mean it’s an idea whose time has come at last in Japan. Since his selection as DPJ head, he has proclaimed:

“What I want to do most after I become prime minister is to change the country into one of regional sovereignty.”

He also lifted a line from former Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro:

“Leave to the regions what the regions can do.”

(Substitute “private sector” for “regions” and you have the Koizumi mantra. Combine the two and you’re cooking with gas.)

People knew this was a good idea a long time ago. From Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859):

“Municipal institutions are for liberty what primary schools are for science; they place it within reach of the people.”

But how does that translate into practical policy? And just how serious is Mr. Hatoyama? Here he is answering a reporter’s question:

Question:

“The DPJ claims in its party platform that it will reduce personnel costs for the central government’s civil service by 20%. But establishing regional authority and transferring that authority to local governments will require that (same) amount of personnel, and the national civil servants will probably become local civil servants. So, as for the reduction of personnel costs for local civil service…”

Answer:

“I probably haven’t given any answer. I understand of course that (required) personnel are part of the central government’s public employees. I also think that with the emergence of regional sovereignty, the people working in the regional areas will be necessary. Therefore, I hope that many of the central government’s civil servants employees will become local civil servants and do that work.

“But, it’s natural that when local sovereignty emerges, it will be quite difficult to entrust a large amount of authority and funding resources to such places as small villages. That will have to be decided by the people in the regions, but it is inevitable, you know, that authority, if you devolve a great deal of authority, then municipalities will discuss mergers spontaneously on their own. That is a forward looking discussion. That’s not because they don’t have enough money; they’ll discuss it to perform their work.

“Of course the municipalities that exist will discuss mergers to become ‘basic local governments’. And if that happens, you see, they’ll be able to decrease the total number of public employees. That’s what I think. The national government’s role will decline. Therefore, we will be able to drastically cut the number of national civil servants. On the other hand, there will be an increase in the number of national civil servants becoming local civil servants. But it’s entirely possible that the total of local civil servants will decrease rather than increase.”

I read that three times and agree with Mr. Hatoyama. He probably hasn’t given any answer.

(Mr. Hatoyama’s use of “basic local government” here is confusing; municipalities already are the basic local government unit in Japan, even if they are technically classified as villages.)

To be fair to the nominal DPJ chief, the party policy wanks still haven’t been able to clear their ideas with Ozawa Ichiro, whom many suspect is still pulling the strings behind the scenes. The New Boss publicly supports the LDP state/province system of devolution and sub-national rearrangement, but heaven forbid that an opposition party would officially agree with one of the golden planks in the ruling party platform. The Old Boss favors a different plan, fortunately. The DPJ’s decision, whenever they get around to it, will provide some hints on the identity of The Real Boss.

Meanwhile, last November Prime Minister Aso said:

“Our ultimate objective is a state/province system based on regional sovereignty in which national government offices are transferred to the regions.”

Whether he means it or not–and many in his party do–at least it has the advantage of being short, clear, and to the point.

Answer the phone, Yukio!

Constitutional reform in Japan means more than rewriting Article 9, the so-called peace clause. Some want to remove any obstacles to the innocent use of Shinto rituals in government-related activities, while others want to shift to a unicameral legislature. But since the Japanese have never amended the Constitution, they’re still working out how to go about it.

Both houses of the Diet have a Deliberative Council on the Constitution, but it lacks internal regulations on the number of members and its procedures due to opposition party foot dragging, including the DPJ.

Notable for his silence is new DPJ President Hatoyama Yukio, though he was once so hot for constitutional reform he published his own ideas on the subject in 2005 called A Proposal for A New Constitution (PHP). Given his interest in the issue, the LDP thought his election might signal a change in DPJ policy.

They should know better than to take a politician at his word. He isn’t returning their calls. Both the LDP and junior partner New Komeito have repeatedly asked the opposition to help to formulate regulations, and even submitted a proposal for their consideration. No answer.

Some LDP members are now irritated enough to consider passing their own regulations in the second half of the current Diet session while the party still has a supermajority in the lower house and can override a rejection from the DPJ-controlled upper house.

After pointedly mentioning Mr. Hatoyama’s interest in the issue, LDP Diet Affairs Committee Chair Oshima Tadamori said:

“We really want to reach a settlement (on these regulations) during this session because (the issue involves) the sovereignty of the people. Of course we should determine procedures for Constitutional amendments.”

Replied senior DPJ poobah Okada Katsuya at a press conference:

“This should be thoroughly discussed first. I’ve talked to Naoshima Masayuki (chair of the party’s Policy Research Council, member of the Hatoyama group, and the Chief Cabinet Secretary in the shadow cabinet), and I want to use the council first. It’s not something I should talk about over my head.”

Above his pay grade, eh?

The DPJ can’t use their own committee for constitutional research because they’ve left the chairmanship vacant since the upper house election in 2007.

The reason the party is covering its ears and pretending it can’t hear is because the plethora of tails wagging the dog is making too much noise. With the DPJ so close to taking power, that means there’ll be a whole lot of shaking going on. They’re still holding hands with the pacifist/green/anti-free market–nuclear power—automobile—common sense Social Democrats, who are just fine with the Constitution the way it is except for the positive references to the emperor.

More or less within the party is the notorious Japan Teacher’s Union (see right sidebar), which backs the DPJ in the same way that teachers’ unions everywhere back political parties on the left. In the past, they’ve been caught squeezing members to donate to the political campaigns of DPJ Acting President Koshi’ishi Azuma in Yamanashi and harassed a Hiroshima school principal to suicide. They think competitive tests are bad for education and singing the national anthem is bad for any reason at all.

While serving as Foreign Minister in 2005, the LDP’s largest faction leader Machimura Nobutaka claimed the reason the government did not want Japanese schools to focus more intensively on the country’s behavior in the early part of the 20th century was that too many JTU members were Marxist-Leninists. An excuse? Maybe, but he has a point.

Another favorite JTU technique is to mail razor blades to the people that displease them. Mr. Hatoyama apparently prefers to buy his at the store for the time being.

Kasumigaseki reform

Executives of the self-proclaimed reform kings DPJ and the anti-reform People’s New Party agreed to coordinate policy proposals in their respective platforms in the upcoming lower house election, particularly for postal privatization. In other words, they promise to stand athwart the course of reform and yell Stop! The two parties also called on the SPD to join them for some coordination-a-trois, and confirmed they would work together during the election.

One wonders how many words Hatoyama Yukio can use to avoid answering a question about this contradiction while folding back his forked tongue at the same time.

Ishihara Nobuteru speaks

LDP official Ishihara Nobuteru spoke truth to power regarding the DPJ and Ozawa Ichiro during a recent television interview:

“If he were a member of the LDP, he would have resigned his Diet seat…Mr. Ozawa did not resign his Diet seat, he resigned the party presidency and became acting president without reflecting on his errors and without an explanation. This reveals the nature of the Democratic Party of Japan today.”

In your heart, you know he’s right.

A Kan junket?

DPJ Acting President and former leader Kan Naoto will be jetting to England for a four-day stay starting on the 6th. He says he wants to observe how the country’s Cabinet operates because both Great Britain and Japan have a parliamentary cabinet system.

Mr. Kan has been sitting in the Diet since 1980 and was in the Cabinet as Health and Welfare Minister in 1996. And he needs to go to England for four days to see how Cabinets and Parliaments work?

They say London is nice this time of year.

More fad Diets

The Asahi Shimbun enjoyed running an article describing how the LDP is trying to work out its preference among various internal plans to downsize the lower house of the Diet—ranging from cuts of 50-180 seats—while pacifying junior coalition partner New Komeito. If they cut only proportional representation districts, New Komeito would lose 23 of its 31 MPs. That party, widely seen as the political arm of the lay Buddhist group Soka Gakkai, provides the campaign foot soldiers for the LDP in the same way the unions back the DPJ.

A recent meeting of a parliamentarian’s group formed to slash 180 of the seats and bring the total to 300 drew LDP Election Strategy Council Chair Koga Makoto, the keeper of the Koizumian flame Nakagawa Hidenao, and Sato Yukari and some other Koizumi children (figurative, not literal).

They discussed three plans:

1. 300 winner-take-all districts
2. 200 winner-take-all districts and 100 proportional representation districts
3. A 50-50 split.

But the Asahi, the print wing of Japan’s leftist media voice, didn’t mention that the DPJ, their horse in the race, faces the same problem. Party boss Hatoyama Yukio wants to shed 80 seats, but the survival of the DPJ’s small party allies depends on proportional representation too.

Just an oversight, I guess.

Padding the bill

Governments at the prefectural level are mad as hell about the money they’re forced to fork over to maintain the local agencies of central government ministries, and they’re not going to take it anymore. (See this post for plenty of details.) Every year the national government just hands them a bill and tells them to pay up. The local governors demanded the bills be itemized, and the government finally complied. Now it probably wishes it hadn’t.

Saga Prefecture discovered that personnel costs, including pensions and the operating costs for agency buildings and employee dormitories, accounted for 10% of their financial liability to the central government. In addition to being seriously displeased at the discovery, they claimed the standards for determining payment were vague and demanded further disclosure.

This is a critical issue for some prefectures. Saga Governor Furukawa Yasushi has warned the prefectural government will be bankrupt by 2011 unless present conditions change.

In fact, prefectural governments are being billed for the mutual aid association liabilities of national civil servants for their retirement benefits and annuity reserves. The national government’s justification was that the local regions are the ones to benefit from the work of the national bureaucracy, so they should be the ones to pay.

The governors didn’t buy that for a second. Wondered noted devolutionist Gov. Higashikokubaru Hideo of Miyazaki:

I’m having a hard time understanding why these benefits are included in the bill.

But here’s some good news for those who think you can’t fight the central government and win: Minister of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport Kaneko Kazuyoshi said the government will probably not bill local governments this year for those retirement benefits.

Here I go again: devolution could be a reform whose time has come.

Chips off the old block

The DPJ successfully created a new wrinkle in the political numbers game by claiming they will nail into their election platform a plank denying official party support to new candidates with family members who’ve served in the Diet in the past three generations. They insist this has something to do with “reform”.

What it really has to do with is making the retiring Koizumi Jun’ichiro look bad for trying to pass his Kanagawa Diet seat off to his number two son. Former Justice Minister Usui Hideo planned on handing over the family business to his son in Chiba this year, too.

Some LDP members realized the media would froth it up to make them look even worse, so they called for the institution of a similar rule. But local party officials in Mr. Koizumi’s district objected because they had settled on Jun’s boy last November, and there isn’t enough time to find a new candidate. So the party said they would apply a hereditary seat restriction rule for the election after next. They also said they wouldn’t back the two lads as independents and have them sign up for the party after the election. That would be cheating.

Aha, shouted the DPJ, you’re not reformers after all! Asahi TV helped whip up the media froth with some predictable tut-tutting and cluck-clucking on their morning roundtable discussion program.

Let’s call a spade a spade, shall we?

If the DPJ were serious about real reform that served the people, they would knock off the political otaku games and spend more of their time involved with the real affairs of government.

If they thought inherited seats were such a bad idea, they could apply the rule to everyone TODAY instead of making it a grandfather clause. But that would erase from the rolls the party’s standard bearer, Hatoyama Yukio, whose patriarchal line of Diet members stretches back to great-grandfather Kazuo. He started the family business during the Meiji period.

You know–the 19th century.

It would also have disqualified in his time Koizumi Jun’ichiro, who managed to accomplish or initiate more reforms in his five years as prime minister than are dreamt of in the DPJ philosophy.

Instead of running numbers in a numbers game and pandering to those who think politics is a spectator sport for the public rather than the means for the public to directly participate in self-rule, the DPJ policy wanks—as well as the LDP mudboaters—should give the power to the people and let them decide who is best qualified to serve in a district through a primary system. If the well-connected kids win, so be it.

You know–make yourselves accountable to the voters. Respect the popular will. Behave like bona fide reformers instead of the mandarins you really are.

Maybe someone will explain it to Kan Naoto during his London junket.

Afterwords:

I just ran across this in The Guardian, Britain’s premier newspaper of the Left:

Political reform can no longer be put aside as an abstract idea, of appeal to dreamers but not to voters who face the harder realities of life. The public is calling furiously for a better system. People want an honest parliament. They want leaders who are prepared to act. They loathe the old system, and many of the people who are part of it.

The subject is the British political crisis, but that same tune works with Japanese lyrics as well.

That’s a story well worth following, but it’s curious that people are overlooking the several intertwined stories in Japan, which in many ways are even more compelling.