Perverting the popular will

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

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

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

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

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

L-R: Hatoyama, Kumagai, Hirano

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This brought an immediate response from Mr. Haraguchi:

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s what Mr. Hashimoto said:

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

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

A sign of what’s to come?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The DPJ otsefinam

IT’S WORTH TAKING a close look at the photo accompanying this post even if you don’t read Japanese. The picture shows Hatoyama Yukio, the head of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, holding up a booklet with the party’s campaign slogan, Seiken Kotai, or Change of Government, as the title. Just below that the English word “manifesto” is visible. (The Japanese have imported that British term directly into their language to describe what Americans would call a party platform.) At the bottom right of the booklet is the party symbol and the name of the party.

Who are you going to believe--me or your lying eyes?

The photo was taken at a Tokyo press conference on 27 July attended by roughly 500 members of the media when Mr. Hatoyama presented the party manifesto for the upcoming lower house election just one month away. As the vernacular edition of the Asahi Shimbun reported, it specifies the schedule for implementing the party’s primary policies if they wind up forming a government. The Asahi adds, “The DPJ positions this manifesto as its basic policy for budget formulation.” The event itself was surely the best-attended press conference in Japanese history for the presentation of an opposition party’s political platform, and that’s just how the DPJ wanted it. It was a prime opportunity to demonstrate to the nation that they are indeed capable of governing.

This time, however, the picture is not worth quite a thousand words–it helps to have some supplementation from the following three short videos of television news reports. The first video is a report of the press conference. It starts off with Mr. Hatoyama saying, “We will fight our campaign for a change in government based on the manifesto.” At the 1:25 mark, the news reader reveals that the DPJ says it will continue for the time being Japan’s UN-approved Indian Ocean refueling mission in support of the NATO effort in Afghanistan. Trying to stop that mission was the first ploy the party used to try to bring down the LDP government in the fall of 2007 after it took control of the upper house of the Diet. (It didn’t work.) Then, at about the 1:30 mark, there’s a close-up of the booklet with a clear shot of the word “manifesto”.

The news reader continues by noting that critics charge the DPJ’s spending proposals are unrealistic and will have problems finding the money. A DPJ official appears at about the 2:00 mark to say, “It’s not possible that there aren’t any funding sources.”

The second video also offers coverage of Mr. Hatoyama’s press conference. It shows the banner above and behind the podium that describes the event as the “announcement of the manifesto”.

Further, it shows Mr. Hatoyama saying that if he becomes prime minister and is unable to achieve the promises in the manifesto, “I will accept responsibility as a politician”.

It concludes with a brief clip of Prime Minister Aso Taro: “The funding sources are irresponsible. It’s extremely vague. That’s the biggest problem.”

Finally, here’s a third video of a television report with a male and female news reader. It was broadcast on Wednesday, 29 July, just two days after the DPJ presented its manifesto.

The male news reader leads off with Mr. Hatoyama’s claim that what he presented as the party “manifesto” isn’t the “official manifesto”. The female news reader adds that people think his about-face stems from Osaka Gov. Hashimoto Toru’s criticism of the platform, and that the DPJ is going to make some additions.

This video is worth watching if only to see the facial expression and demeanor of Mr. Hatoyama from 20-40 seconds in when he lies to the reporters realizing that every last one of them knows he’s lying as he stands there talking. What’s he saying?

“What I presented before was a “Collection of Government Policies”. It wasn’t the official manifesto. I have given instructions that language be inserted regarding a deliberative council for the nation(al government) and the region(al governments).”

The female reporter then explains Gov. Hashimoto slammed the party’s failure to include a plank in the platform calling for the creation of that body to discuss devolution.

She adds that Mr. Hatoyama now says the party won’t extend the Indian Ocean refueling mission after it expires on January 15, despite what he said two days before.

The Osaka governor has good reason to be upset. For starters, devolution is his pet policy–it’s the foundation of his political career, and it’s kept his public approval rating at the 80% level. That rating is why the DPJ is courting his support. Not long ago, they sent party bigwig Okada Katsuya to Osaka to sorta kinda promise that the DPJ would back the creation of a state/province system, which Mr. Hatoyama strongly supports.

The party’s pas de deux with the Osaka governor is made more complicated by the fact that they backed his opponent in the last election.

Then, as you can see from this English-language page on the DPJ website, four other DPJ officials paid a call on Mr. Hashimoto on 8 July. The DPJ’s report on the meeting contains this sentence:

“…in order for decentralization to take place, he wanted the DPJ to include a reference to it as a governing mechanism that would fundamentally change the relationship between the central government and the regions in the party manifesto.”

That’s not the best translation, but it’s understandable. In other words, the governor asked the party to create a deliberative council for devolution, and fewer than three weeks later, they blew him off. Were they so busy scouting around for funding sources for their other platform planks that it just plumb slipped their mind, or was their hot interest in devolution just so much hot air to attract votes?

My, but aren’t the DPJ a piece of work? They play kissy face with one of the country’s most popular politicians and then forget completely about him before the month is out. On a Monday, they hold a press conference to unveil their long-awaited party platform. Mr. Hatoyama calls it a manifesto, the banner in the hall calls it a manifesto, it says manifesto on the cover, and the mass media calls it a manifesto.

On a Tuesday, Mr. Hashimoto wonders what happened with all those sweet nothings the party fed him earlier this month. On a Wednesday, Party President Hatoyama Yukio, looking for all the world like a teenager talking to a store manager while desperately hoping the shoplifted merchandise he’s stuffed under his shirt isn’t showing, says, oh, that, that was no official manifesto, that was just a “Collection of Government Policies”.

Oops! Too bad he forget to tell the rest of the party. Clicking on the link to the Democratic Party of Japan on the right sidebar will take you to their English site. That in turn has a link to a 47-page PDF file in English that has Manifesto written all over it. It’s even there in English on the Japanese version. Hey, maybe that’s it! The word “manifesto” is written in English and not in Japanese, so maybe it really doesn’t count!

Then again, at the bottom of the last page of the English version, it says:

Date ***, *** 2009

Now you know why the percentage of undecided voters for the upcoming election is still hovering between 35-40%, even though the LDP is so clapped out as a political force they probably couldn’t muster the energy to rig the election if their lives depended on it.

The DPJ has been trying to convince everyone for two years that they’re finally ready to take over the reins of government. Yet two days after rolling out their party platform, they come up with a dog-ate-my-homework excuse to deny it was the platform to buy time for rewriting it and include a plank to placate an important, non-DPJ governor they were flirting with earlier this month.

During the same two-day period, Mr. Hatoyama did another 180-degree spin on his statement about the Indian Ocean refueling mission.

Here’s the funniest part: If the DPJ wins the election and forms a government, pundits and talking heads around the world will try to fill newspaper space, airtime, and websites with predictions on what the party will do while in office. But every last column inch, broadcast second, and pixel will be a waste of time for the news consumer.

The DPJ itself doesn’t have a clue what it’s going to do from day to day. How is anyone else supposed to know?

The party and its supporters like to claim it’s full of policy wanks. Maybe they’re right–who else would have so little experience with retail politics and actual government to think that the most important document in the party’s history is a cut-and-paste collage subject to change at a moment’s notice?

Manifestly, it’s no exaggeration to say that if the party’s not ready for prime time now, it never really will be.

Afterwords:

Reading the entire DPJ platform is mildly interesting if you have some time to kill. As with most documents of this sort, it’s a combination of some good ideas and some arrant nonsense.

It was a bit of a surprise to see that they stuck with their old plan to eliminate 80 proportional representational seats from the lower house. The Social Democrats threatened to withhold any cooperation with the DPJ in government if they included that plank. Perhaps the DPJ has calculated that they don’t need their help after all.

On the other hand, they claim they have to freeze postal privatization because the LDP decided to take the step without “public engagement”. Before you ask yourself if they expect anyone to believe that bologna, remember that the party also expects people to believe that Monday’s Manifesto was really only Wednesday’s “Collection of Government Policies”.

Those who remember the lower house election of 2005 don’t need to be reminded that then-Prime Minister Koizumi dissolved the Diet and fought the campaign entirely over the issue of postal privatization. That’s the most “public engagement” a politician or party has ever offered the Japanese public in the last quarter of a century, and it electrified the country.

Then again, maybe the DPJ forgot about that, too. Okada Katsuya was party president at the time, and he does often seem as if he’s sleepwalking during broad daylight.

It’s also worth noting that the “Collection of Government Policies” does not include a call for providing voting rights in local elections to non-citizens; i.e., the people born in Japan who choose to retain Korean citizenship. All the top DPJ brass support that measure, but a reported 51 of the party’s Diet members are so strongly opposed that it created concerns of a rupture. (The constitutionality of that measure is also on the iffy side.)

And one wonders what Mr. Hatoyama means by “taking responsibility as a politician” if he’s unable as prime minister to implement the policies in the platform. The last time he said he would take responsibility, it was in the context of resigning from his party leadership position if former president Ozawa Ichiro resigned over a fund-raising scandal.

On a Monday, Mr. Ozawa did resign. On the following Saturday, Mr. Hatoyama “took responsibility” by taking Mr. Ozawa’s place.

UPDATES:

Mr. Okada has since chimed in by saying he thinks having flexible policies is A-OK:

“We shouldn’t be reluctant to amend (the manifesto) if it’s necessary.”

In fact, the DPJ had one of its local Osaka party members visit Mr. Hashimoto for an explantion.

But everyone had to wait for the man who some think still calls the shots for the DPJ behind the scenes: disgraced former party president Ozawa Ichiro. You betcha he had an opinion, too.

“It wouldn’t be (a) bad (idea) to include (the plank about the deliberative council), but we’re saying that we will make a fundamental change to the current government mechanisms. It isn’t necessary to conduct a debate on the premise of the current mechanisms.”

In other words, he thinks the manifesto doesn’t have to be changed.

Now there are reports (which I haven’t seen first-hand), that the party has pirouetted once again and is saying their first manifesto is official after all.

If true, it would seem as if they had to go ask daddy to straighten up their most recent fine mess. It brings yet another dimension to the phrase, in loco parentis.

FURTHER UPDATE: How interesting that YouTube pulled the third video for the lack of proper authorization, but the two initial reports remain available.

Somebody somewhere obviously doesn’t want you to see something. I think we can all draw our own conclusions.

Japan’s Political Kaleidoscope (3): DPJ edition

THE MOST RECENT JPK focused on the two sides of Aso Taro before “no side” is called for him, which might be sooner than we think. Turnabout being fair play, it’s time to cross the aisle for a look at recent developments with the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, a worthy subject for examination if only because they always seem to be on the verge of losing the elastic in their political trousers.

How I spent my summer vacation

The last time we checked in with Kan Naoto, the veteran of nearly 30 years in the Japanese Diet was off to England for a three-day field trip to study the workings of Parliament.

Mr. Kan held a press conference in London to tell the class what he had learned. He said he discovered that the opposition party in Great Britain has a formal meeting with the national bureaucracy before an election to prepare for a smooth handover of power. He asked the Japanese government to permit a meeting of the same type.

“I intend to ask the government to recognize formal contact between the bureaucratic organizations and the party before the next election.”

That’s a good idea, but finding that out required a three-day junket in Westminster? It’s something a junior staffer from the British Embassy in Tokyo could have told him over a two-hour lunch, saving everybody a lot of time and money. Then again, he would have missed seeing the changing of the guards and hearing the chimes of Big Ben. Perhaps he prefers to study using the full immersion technique.

Tails wagging the dog

Awarding seats in the legislature to parties that haven’t won elections using a formula based on the proportion of votes received amplifies their power beyond justification. There are people in every country who believe all sorts of things, but the right to free speech and free thought does not include the right to be taken seriously, much less the right to have a voice in government. The general plot in a democracy is to fashion a rough consensus based on majorities and move in that direction. The only effect fringe elements have on society at large is to cause paralysis or work at cross-purposes with the majority. What else would anyone expect to happen in the world of politics?

As part of its strategy to take control of government, the DPJ formed an alliance with the Social Democratic Party, who represent the flannel-headed death spiral left, as well as the semi-fossilized People’s New Party, who are blocking privatization of unnecessary government ministries and bureaucratic reform.

Many Japanese politicians also realize there’s a problem, and moves are afoot to reduce the number of MPs in both houses of the Diet. (Proportional representation is not the only issue; there are just too many legislators in Japan at all levels of government, period.) Proposals are floating around that call for cuts ranging from 50 to 180 of the lower house legislators. That 180 is an important figure because it’s the number of proportional representation seats in the House of Representatives.

The DPJ adopted a platform plank during the last national election to reduce those seats from 180 to 100, nearly halving the number of proportional representation delegates. But they could afford to be honest since the voters weren’t ready to take them seriously as the head of a national government yet. It’s funny how that changes the closer one gets to power.

The SDP is taking them very seriously, however. They have seven seats in the lower house, only one of which they won outright. The rest are all filled by proportional representation delegates. Eliminating those seats eliminates their voice, such as it is.

So it’s no surprise that their participation in a DPJ-led coalition government is conditioned on maintaining the status quo on proportional representation. Said party head Fukushima Mizuho:

“An electoral system based on one delegate in a winner-take-all district will lead to a two-party system. The Diet requires a multidimensional value system, including small parties.”

Defending this idea inevitably means that one has to defend minority control of the majority, which is anathema to the idea of a democratic government.

Incidentally, it’s worth remembering that the last non-LDP government in Japan fell apart when the Socialists, the previous incarnation of the SDP, bolted the coalition.

Yukio steps in it again

The subject of proportional representation intersected with DPJ party head Hatoyama Yukio’s tendency to babble, particularly where the PNP is concerned.

Said Mr. Hatoyama during an FM radio broadcast:

“Our preference is a coalition with the SDP and PNP until we can take an absolute majority in the upper house election next July.”

The PNP was not amused, and who could blame them? Asked party chief Kamei Shizuka:

“Would anyone get married knowing they’ll divorce in a year?”

From that you can tell pre-nuptial agreements aren’t yet commonplace in Japan.

But Mr. Kamei is more old-fashioned. If you want us to hop into bed in bed with you, he suggested, give us a real kiss instead of a kiss-off.

To show their displeasure, the party postponed a decision on offering their support to 50 candidates in the lower house election proposed by the DPJ.

Mr. Hatoyama offered an excuse:

“My true intent was not conveyed.”

That’s the best he can come up with after 40 years of marriage? Then again, maybe he’s never had to do better. In 1996 it was revealed that he had a mistress in Hokkaido for 10 years, but his wife blamed herself and took him back.

Considering the mood of electorates world-wide and the odds a DPJ administration will belly flop, it might not be such a good idea for them to start counting any badger skins from an upper house election. (The Japanese proverbially warn against counting those pelts rather than unhatched chickens.)

Not all the DPJ Diet reform plans are meeting with opposition from their small-party allies, however. Some are meeting with opposition from DPJ members themselves.

For example, some want to include a measure in the platform reducing the number of upper house seats. Naturally those DPJ members with upper house seats aren’t ready to get on board that train. They say the party is being “too hasty”.

So, what will the party’s latest edition of its “true intent” turn out to be?

Yukio tries to wipe it off

Those who have been following the DPJ hymnbook know that Mr. Hatoyama’s plan for reforming the Japanese bureaucracy is to have everyone at the level of department head or above resign when the party forms a government. They’d be rehired on the condition of signing a loyalty oath pledging to support DPJ policies. Acting Party President Kan Naoto has already begun backing off that one, and now Mr. Hatoyama is sidling away too, though he hasn’t conveyed his true intent yet. He said:

“(When the) current law is unraveled, (we find) it’s difficult from a legal perspective to demote civil service personnel. (So) it’s my understanding this will not necessarily take the form of a written resignation.”

Unraveling that statement leads to the question of what form it could possibly take. Let’s assume they won’t be lined up against the wall, given a last cigarette and blindfold, and shot.

Here’s an idea: Make a phone call to Nakagawa Hidenao of the LDP and tell him you’ll support his bill to make it easier to demote civil servants as well as outlaw the revolving employment door for retired bureaucrats. He’s got more than 100 signatures on the bill, and he said he wrote it specifically to get DPJ backing. If you worked together, it would easily pass both houses.

That’s assuming you’re serious, of course.

Manifestly devolving

The DPJ has formulated the outline for a new platform a plank on devolution. It’s seen as a nod to the ideas (and more importantly, the popularity) of Osaka Gov. Hashimoto Toru, surely with the intent of capturing his support in the election. The party claims it will promote a great shift of authority to local government by 2013, their fourth year in office, if they’re still there.

They plan on eliminating the prefectural government liability for local agencies of central government enterprises, which is near the top of Mr. Hashimoto’s wish list. Also included for elimination are grants with strings attached to specific agencies.

The party hopes this will neutralize the authority of the central bureaucracy and the influence of the zokugi-in, those legislators sitting in the Diet who serve as the handmaidens of the individual ministries by acting as their de facto in-house lobbyists.

They’ve also ditched Ozawa Ichiro’s idea to reorganize local government around 300 units, which Mr. Hashimoto and the National Association of Towns and Villages opposed. In its place they’ve offered up a vague program for basic local governmental units (usually municipalities in most countries) with authority equal to that of prefectures. They promised to “think about” the state/province system, an LDP idea that is already halfway down the runway, and which Mr. Hashimoto likes.

In fact, DPJ bigwig Okada Katsuya visited the Osaka governor and played up to him by suggesting a state could be created in the Kinki region. Mr. Hashimoto says he will “cheer on”, rather than endorse, a party in the upcoming election, so perhaps Mr. Okada thinks that flattery will get him everywhere.

Never underestimate the power of a local politician from a populous region with poll ratings north of 80%!

Political indoctrination of children Public school education

Koshi’ishi Azuma, one of the troika of DPJ acting presidents with Ozawa Ichiro and Kan Naoto, addressed the Supreme Soviet general meeting of the Japan Teachers’ Union, held at Social Democratic Party headquarters in Tokyo. Mr. Koshi’ishi is one of seven DPJ legislators to have a Socialist Party background, and he formerly headed the JTU-affiliated Yamanashi teachers’ union. Once a Red, always a Red, eh?

You think I exaggerate? Last month Mr. Koshi’ishi said at a press conference:

“Rather than inspecting North Korean ships, we should inspect the Aso Cabinet.”

As he frequently does, Mr. Koshi’ishi spoke about the relationship between politics and education:

“There is no such thing as education without politics.”

Well, that clears that up. The JTU criticism of the use of innocuous patriotic gestures in the schools, such as singing the national anthem, is so habitual as to be knee-jerk. Now we know it’s not because it injects politics into education, but rather because it injects the politics they dislike into education—i.e., they’d rather sing the Internationale.

Koshi'ishi Azuma

But there was no mystery about what he thought to begin with. The Yamanashi union got caught a few years ago squeezing contributions from primary and junior high school teachers for his election campaign, and they even had teachers working the phone banks to bug voters at home. The teachers themselves admitted the money went into a dummy bank account for Mr. Koshi’ishi, who wound up with JPY 3 million.

At another JTU meeting in Tokyo in January, he said:

“It is not possible to be politically neutral in education…We will change education through politics.”

Statements such as these skate close to the edge of violating the Japanese laws regarding politics and education, and–let’s face it–are a de facto pledge to indoctrinate students.

The Japanese electorate might be desperate for a change of government, but it’s unlikely this is what they have in mind. Most of the DPJ rank and file probably don’t care for it either, but that’s the price they pay for trying to paste together unwieldy coalitions.

As an example of how far the DPJ is willing to follow the JTU party line, they said they would abolish the JTU-opposed supplementary reader on morality, Kokoro no Noto (Notebook of the Heart), of which several editions are used in primary and junior high schools. It would save JPY 300 million ($US 3.24 million), which admittedly is a bit steep.

Developed by a psychologist, the book is very easy to read, is written in a soft and fuzzy tone, and talks about the importance of working for a living, raising a family, and becoming a responsible citizen. In other words, it’s as controversial as vanilla ice cream.

But here are the objections raised at one website:

“For example, about working, the reader includes such sentences as, ‘When do you get the feeling that you have worked? Is it when you’ve studied? Is it when you’ve come home from school?’, and ‘Working is not only for your own sake, but also for contributing to society.’

“We think that tries to whitewash the idea of working. Considering the reality of employment in Japan today, some children are not able to have a satisfying life at school because of the burden they feel from their parents (having lost their jobs) due to restructuring.”

No, I did not make that up.

Their real beef, however, is probably to be found on the page about patriotism (the only one) that appears later in the book. Here’s the complete and unexpurgated version of how one reader treats the subject:

“If you extend the feeling of loving your hometown outward
It will connect with the feeling of loving Japan.
The feeling of loving this country where we live
And wishing for its development is perfectly natural.
But, how much about this country do we know?
We should have a thorough knowledge of Japan now and renew our awareness of its splendid traditions and culture.
When seeing the excellence of this country, and passing on its merits to the future,
Loving Japan as a member of international society, and as one of the people on the Earth,
Must not be the narrow and exclusionary glorification of one’s country.
Loving this country will connect with loving the world.”

Mark my words! If they force Japanese junior high school kids to read this propaganda, before you know it they’ll want to start marching into the Korean Peninsula again!

Is it any surprise that people who think Aso Taro is a criminal and Kim Jong-il should skate would respond to the sentiments in the above excerpt like Dracula to a cross?

Look for a lot of Ministry of Education news to be generated in the event of a DPJ victory.

Grave robbers

Now that we’re on the subject of people who sleep in coffins, what is it with necrophilia and Democratic Parties? The Democratic Party of the Daley machine in Chicago (where Barack Obama learned whatever it is he knows about politics) has long been the butt of jokes for having perfected the technique of counting the graveyard vote. It’s part of the American political folklore that the Illinois ballots cinching the White House for Richard Nixon in 1960 are in a cement-weighted chest at the bottom of Lake Michigan.)

Now it turns out that the Democratic Party of the Hatoyama machine in Hokkaido modified the grave robbing technique by having the dearly departed donate money to DPJ President Hatoyama Yukio rather than rise up and vote for him.

Good idea. The write-in ballot is used in Japan, and that could get messy.

The Asahi Shimbun reported on 16 June that from 2003 to 2007, at least five very still people contributed an aggregate of 1.2 million yen on 10 occasions to Mr. Hatoyama’s personal political fund raising group. When contacted, relatives of four of the five said WTF? and the fifth said he wasn’t sure. Perhaps he needs to conduct a séance.

When asked about it at a press conference, Mr. Hatoyama said he would look into it right away. He also said:

“I’m surprised, because it was completely unexpected.”

What was unexpected? Getting caught, or getting money from dead people?

Then a curious thing occurred—several other media outlets, including the Yomiuri Shimbun, the Kyodo news agency, and weekly magazines, started matching up obituary columns with Mr. Hatoyama’s list of donors. The original list swelled to 90 corpses (or the urns containing their ashes) who donated up to JPY 21.77 million (about $US 235,000) in 193 instances.

And here we thought all the zombies were in the LDP!

The DPJ boss asked his attorney to investigate. The lawyer came back to report that the donations were derived from JPY 10 million which Mr. Hatoyama had entrusted to an aide if political funds ran short. The aide was embarrassed that he wasn’t able to shake down enough people, so he used those funds to cover for it. The report quotes the aide:

“I should have asked for donations in person but I neglected to do so. So I repeatedly made false accounts (in the political fund reports).”

Said Mr. Hatoyama:

“I assume that since there was so few donations from individuals for me, (the aide) thought it would be embarrassing if the fact came into light.”

The DPJ wants everyone to think that settles it.

The party—which submitted a bill to the Diet for amending the political campaign law to prohibit corporate donations after their former chief Ozawa Ichiro’s fund-raising group got caught taking illegal contributions from a construction company—refuses to cooperate with a Diet investigation of the matter. Said Okada Katsuya:

“(Hatoyama Yukio) has fulfilled his responsibility to explain.”

But wait!

There’s a lot that hasn’t been explained. For starters, if Mr. Hatoyama gave all that money to his aide to cover expenses, which the aide diverted to graveyard donations, why didn’t he ask the aide for a yearend accounting of the money provided? You know–follow normal business practices. If he’s that cavalier with his own money, how will he be with the national treasury?

“There’s something wrong here someplace.”
- Bo Diddley, Ooh Baby

But another question remained unanswered: What shortfall in donations? Mr. Hatoyama said the aide was embarrassed over the lack of money collected, but that wouldn’t be the appropriate word for the amount of individual donations the DPJ leader received, unless it was used in the context of an embarrassment of riches.

According to Mr. Hatoyama’s political fund reports between 2003 and 2007, he received from 50 million yen to 110 million yen annually in individual donations.

Further, the Mainichi Shimbun reported that during the 10 years from 1998 to 2007, Mr. Hatoyama received JPY 590 million yen (about $US 6.37 million) in political largesse. (Remember that he represents just a single legislative district.) Rather than having a shortage of fund raising, his committee brought forward money at the end of every fiscal year.

But wait!

Even subtracting the JPY 21.78 million in dead man money from the total, Mr. Hatoyama scraped up far more that of other DPJ and LDP leaders in recent years, including former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Ozawa Ichiro himself. And Mr. Ozawa was getting money from construction companies.

The annual political contributions to other LDP and DPJ party presidents averaged JPY 1.40 million during that same time period, a paltry amount in comparison.

And of those donations to Mr. Hatoyama less than JPY 50,000 ($US 540), which is the level at which tax deductions kick in, 60% were from anonymous contributors. In 2003, at least 1,500 of the quick rather than the dead made these small donations without stating their names or addresses.

A useful contrast is the individual contributions given to blueblood Aso Taro, whose family is so fabulously wealthy he pretends to read comic books to acquire the common touch. They exceeded JPY 10 million only once, and anonymous donations accounted for less than 10% of the total.

Mr. Hatoyama is on the record as calling for greater use of tax-exempt contributions to encourage individuals to give money to candidates, yet he is the undisputed champ for pulling in small anonymous contributions that aren’t eligible for tax deductions.

The law states that individuals can contribute a maximum of 10 million a year. Did Mr. Hatoyama and his supporters employ anonymous donations that wouldn’t show up on tax statements to get around the law?

But wait!

In addition to dead people, it also turns out that the DPJ president also hauls in a substantial amount of swag from local legislators at the prefectural and municipal level. He’s the official representative of a DPJ district level group in Hokkaido that receives hundreds of thousands of yen annually from local pols, and an aggregate of JPY 16.50 million over five years.

What’s so unusual about that? One Diet member from the LDP–you know, the money politics party–said that he had never heard of local politicians donating to the campaigns of national politicians before.

But wait!

The local politicians have a tendency to give their money to Mr. Hatoyama on 25 December. That’s not a public holiday in Japan, but it’s still an unusual coincidence. Christmas in 2005 fell on a Sunday, yet that’s the day the fund-raising group reported receiving the cash-stuffed envelopes in its stocking. Ho ho ho!

Is the group visiting the homes of local politicians in Santa suits picking up individual donations on Christmas Sundays?

Or, in addition to their mobilization of the deceased, does the DPJ share with their American counterparts a puerile sense of humor? What will the party try next, a dead flower hanami?

But wait!

There were 26 local legislators who gave money to the group in 2007—Christmas Day again—and all of them received the documents issued by the government permitting their donations to be deducted from their income tax. The local DPJ explained that the donations were a substitute means for offseting party expenditures. But party expenditures are not eligible for income tax deductions, so if they received deductions, they broke the law.

The contributions ranged from JPY 18,000 to JPY 264,000.

There’s even more!

Another political support group for Mr. Hatoyama based in Muroran, Hokkaido, reported JPY 0 ($US 0.00) in operating expenses on their financial statements for the three-year period starting in 2005. The DPJ explained that their president’s main group paid the office’s rent and phone bill. They said the other group was just a volunteer body created to organize and hold events, that it had no employees, and that it didn’t use the offices every day.

It turns out, however, that the volunteer group’s offices are in a building owned by Mr. Hatoyama’s mother. Of course the LDP pointed out that the recording of zero expenditures is eccentric bookkeeping, and that if his mother let them use the offices rent-free, it should be considered a political donation.

Ooh, baby. Bo knows. There’s something wrong here someplace.

Haven’t these people learned how to deal with revelations of unpleasant facts yet?

It doesn’t matter if the media is discovering this on its own, or if sources within the Kasumigaseki bureaucracy are feeding them the information now to derail any civil service reform before it leaves the station.

It’s all going to come out now. Trying to stall in the Diet by saying it’s already been explained isn’t convincing anybody.

Just hold your nose while we hold ours, take the medicine, and get it over with.

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!

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.

The Hashimoto – Inose dialogue

A CIVIL WAR is raging within Japan’s political class pitting the insurgency of reformers at the national and local level against the entrenched interests and stranglehold on policy of the bureaucracies, known collectively as Kasumigaseki for the Tokyo district where many of their offices are located, and their allies in the Diet and the executive branch of government.

It is no exaggeration to call this conflict—perhaps the domestic political issue most closely followed by the Japanese public—a war. The reformers use that word themselves and assert that those are the tactics they need to adopt. For its part, Kasumigaseki has already adopted them. They hammered the final nail into the coffin of the Abe Administration when the Social Insurance Agency, which Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party intended to privatize, fought back by revealing the massive mishandling of pension accounts dating back a decade that they had kept hidden until then. Mr. Abe was unable to deal with the severe political fallout from the revelation.

Hashimoto Toru

Indeed, the election platform of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan also called for elimination of the agency, but party leader Ozawa Ichiro, perhaps sensing that discretion was the better part of valor, said that he favored merging the agency with other government entities. (In other words, the name would disappear, but the bureaucrats wouldn’t.)

Not that Mr. Ozawa was able to escape their machinations. Several Japanese political observers think Kasumigaseki was behind the revelations that led to the arrest of Mr. Ozawa’s aide in a political contribution scandal and placed the DPJ leader in a pot of boiling water up to his neck.

There are many theaters in this war, and one of them is the division of of the obligations and responsibilities of the central and local governments. The call for the devolution of power and transfer of tax collection authority to local governments is part of the effort by reformers to limit the authority of Kasumigaseki.

The February issue of Chuo Koron featured a dialogue between Hashimoto Toru, the controversial and outspoken reformer and governor of Osaka Prefecture, and Inose Naoki. Mr. Inose is an award-winning non-fiction author who served on the Committee for Promoting the Privatization of the Four Public Corporations for Highways. He is also the Vice-Governor of the Tokyo Metropolitan District. His most recent book is Kasumigaseki Kaitai Senso (The War to Break Up Kasumgaseki).

Their discussion centered on efforts to reform the system governing the local agencies of central government ministries. These agencies are under the direct control of the ministries at the national level and have the sole authority to initiate and conduct operations in their area of jurisdiction. Yet local governments—specifically, prefectures and specially designated cities—are financially liable for one-third of the construction costs and 45% of the maintenance and management expenses for those operations, including public works related to national highways and Class One rivers. The agencies submit financial statements to the local governments showing the amount of money that must be remitted to the central government. Even though these are de facto bills, none of the expenses are itemized.

The two men also discuss those local governments that are part of the problem rather than the solution.

I’ve translated and abridged the interview here. Please note that in some cases I paraphrased to facilitate reading.

Regional oversight of the central government’s local agencies

Hashimoto: The Decentralization Reform Committee, of which you are a member, compiled its second report whose centerpiece is the elimination or merger of the central government’s local agencies and submitted it to Prime Minister Aso on 8 December last year. I followed this process with close attention and think this is a good direction to take. That’s the reorganization of six agencies in regional areas through elimination or merger, including the Regional Development Bureaus of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport, their Hokkaido Development Bureau, and the Regional Agricultural Administration Offices of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries. They would be combined into either Regional Promotion Bureaus or Regional Engineering Bureaus. And–this is very important–it also included a proposal to establish councils composed of prefectural governors and others as a mechanism for the reconciliation of policy with local government. The latter would then have some degree of oversight for the work these agencies perform.

Even though these bureaus established offices in local areas, they are not subject to (local) oversight because they are central government agencies. These operations aren’t even subject to debate in the Diet. They are an immense black box. It would be a ground-breaking step if the regions were able to take an active hand in their operation.

Inose: Even though they’re called local agencies, they are very large. The central government has 330,000 civil servants, and the local agencies employ 210,000 of them. One matter that recently came up at the Decentralization Reform Committee was the plan to build a combined-use 20-story building in Sendai, the primary city of the Tohoku region. It would be right across the street from the 18-story office building for Miyaki Prefecture. It’s a waste of 100 billion yen (US$ 1.101 billion) annually to build boxes for these 210,000 people.

The most recent subject of debate was the 100,000 employees of 15 agencies. There is 10 trillion yen budgeted for them alone.

The councils we proposed would not be mere oversight organizations. They would also discuss the planned operations of those local agencies for the following year and their budget proposals. The councils and their members would be able to submit opinions on those subjects. In other words, even if you (Gov. Hashimoto) lost all your support (laughs), you could submit an opinion in the council on matters you thought were important. We inserted a clause in our report that the local agencies would respect those opinions. The local governors and others would not be forced to obey just because the national government made a statement.

Inose Naoki

Hashimoto: I like the idea of the councils, because I agree that local agencies should be put under the control of the chief executives of local government. They’ll also form ties with other prefectures, so they also can be used as a platform for integrated discussions on a broader scale. I think our involvement, backed by public support, will enable us to eliminate needless public works projects.

There was a serious reversal in the committee just before the recommendation was submitted to Prime Minister Aso, wasn’t there?

Inose: That’s right. The transfer for the authority for Class One rivers and national highways from those local agencies will naturally eliminate the jobs of many employees, because there won’t be work for them. We suggested that about 35,000 out of 100,000 employees be eliminated.

There was a real danger our proposal would be crushed unless we handled it carefully, because the related ministries were strongly opposed. That’s why we held a committee meeting a few hours after submitting the report to the prime minister and incorporated this idea as a proposal by the committee chair. The Kasumigaseki bureaucrats said that an accurate estimate (for the elimination of employees) was impossible, but I successfully urged that a proper estimate be made.

Even with this report, we were unable to completely reevaluate all of the work that the local agencies conduct. If the transfer of authority to local governments is stalled, then the danger remains that the Regional Promotion Bureaus and Regional Engineering Bureaus could grow too large and become the same sort of problem as their predecessors. That’s why we included the reduction of 35,000 positions as a numerical target. That will force authority to be transferred.

Hashimoto: The newspapers have been reporting there’s no downsizing of the work of these local agencies and you’d be merely changing one sign on the building for another, but there’s no way all these agencies will disappear all at once. I’d be thankful for councils that will enable organizational oversight. It’s the first wave for the initial breakup, so I think it’s a welcome step.

Inose: The report has also been thrashed by the zokugiin within the LDP. (Note: Zokugiin are Diet members affiliated with specific ministries.) After we submitted the report, the chairman was called before the LDP’s Special Committee for Promoting Regional Devolution and Reform to provide an explanation. There were plenty of complaints. Some objected there is no overlap in administration when the roles of the central and local governments are clearly divided. Others said our committee should be abolished, that they should act after repudiating our report, and that Mr. Inose should spend his time focusing on his primary job as vice governor of Tokyo. (laughs)

You can’t skip any steps if you want to change how government operates. It has to be done step by step.

The local governments that don’t support the committee

Hashimoto: I was really shocked to see that some people in local governments did not support the committee’s work. While the report proposed the transfer of authority to local governments and the downsizing of the local agencies, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport designated a mere 110 highways for the transfer of authority to local governments, with a total length of just 3,800 kilometers (2,361 miles). That’s only 18% of all the national highways directly managed by the national government.

Inose: It’s the same with rivers. In our first report, the committee sought to have the authority transferred for 65 of the 109 Class One river systems. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport designated only 20, however. That accounts for only 7% of the area for Class One rivers directly managed by the government. The reason for the small numbers is because they got no responses from other local government offices asking for recommendations.

Hashimoto: When these are being aggregated, the Ministry consults individually with each prefecture and counts only those answers in which the prefecture says they’ll accept the management of the river. If the prefecture refuses, of course they won’t be added to the total. We in Osaka had our own negotiations with the Ministry, and I thought they did something rather clever for their part. Most local government officials will object that they lack financial resources or personnel, so they’d be hard pressed to handle the work if the responsibility were transferred. Therefore, they can’t accept it.

It’s important to attract public opinion through a political message, so in the end I have them say they will accept it. If the personnel or the money doesn’t come later, then I can raise a big fuss. I asked other governors in the Kinki region to go along with me in accepting responsibility, but…

Inose: I think that’s leadership. The bureaucrats always start by talking about the personnel or the money. Only a few of the prefectures said they’d accept responsibility for operations other than those designated by the Ministry, Tokyo and Osaka among them.
Kasumigaseki is really amazing. The reality is that most of the department heads for construction and civil engineering that manage the roads and rivers in the prefectures have been sent there by the Ministry.

Hashimoto: The reason the aggregate number was 18% was because it was determined within the Ministry through discussions between superiors and subordinates. There was just a discussion between the central government and the prefectural governments. No wonder the numbers were so small.

Inose: Yes, that’s right. The Ministry doesn’t intend to transfer much authority, and even the prefectural governors say they can’t accept responsibility. That’s because they’re given advice inside their bureaucracy from bureaucrats most familiar with the Civil Engineering Division, who say it will be next to impossible for the prefecture to accept.

Hashimoto: What was missing from those individual conferences to aggregate the totals was that none of the prefectures asking to be relieved of responsibility said they’d therefore ask the central government to handle the work. Even if the individual prefectures don’t accept responsibility, several local governments working together should be able to accept it.

But the central government reports that the prefectures say they won’t accept responsibility. They say they’ll handle it at the national level, and that’s how the national government contrives to keep the local agencies alive.

Local governments obstructing the battle with the central government

Inose: Sometimes the local bureaucrats just have to bend to the opinions of the central government. If they’ve been able to survive by doing that and receive subsidies, they’ve managed to get by without any major slipups…We’ve made it a requirement for a Ministry’s Regional Development Bureau to listen to the opinions of prefectural governors when they draw up plans, but there’s no legal binding force. But if all the governors involved join together and firmly reject those plans, it should be impossible for the central government to ignore them.

…I’d really like to see local governments band together to do battle with the ever-expanding Kasumigaseki. That would result in the steady progression of regional authority. I am convinced these councils would enable them to do quite a bit.

The dark side of the financial liability toward the national government

Inose: For some time now, I’ve pointed out the problem of the funds that local governments are required to pay to the national government—one-third of the expenses for building national highways or riparian works. Specifically, the central government does not itemize what it does with the tens of billions of yen it requires in payments….You’ve said that you won’t pay money that doesn’t need to be paid.

Mr. Hashimoto goes to Tokyo

Hashimoto: To begin with, there are 84 independent administrative agencies under the authority of the central government in my prefecture, and we pay about 21.7 billion yen in subsidies and other liabilities to them. We have indicated that, as a rule, we will not include this money in the budget starting in FY 2009. Also, the liabilities that we owe to agencies directly operated by the national government is expected to skyrocket to 42.5 billion yen in FY 2009. We’ve decided not to budget low-priority items.

Of course, agreement was reached for many of these projects conducted by the local agencies in discussions between the Regional Development Bureaus and Osaka Prefecture. There are more than a few cases in which we say that roads are needed in a specific place, and the government will build them. But the prefectural government does not have the financial resources to pay for all these projects.

Osaka Prefecture has a severe budget deficit. Our forecasts show that even if the citizens work together to improve the balance of payments by 110 billion yen, the savings from the cutbacks in expenditures will be negated by declining tax revenue. That’s why we also have to cut prefectural employee salaries, including those of the police officers who put their lives on the line. We were also the first prefecture in the country to reduce retirement benefits, and we’ve reduced aid to private schools. We’re even going to have to reduce subsidies for medical expenses. But when we’re being pressed to reduce services to the citizens, it’s abnormal that the only items we can’t touch are the fixed expenses for payment to these government agencies. It’s also unnatural that only the national highways look great and they keep building new ones non-stop.

Inose: If this were the private sector, there would be very heated discussions between the large companies and their subcontractors.

Hashimoto: The department heads tell me that’s a legal requirement and ask what we’re supposed to do, but you can’t spend money you don’t have. Our upper level people turn pale when negotiating with the central government, but I’m ready to negotiate directly if something can’t be worked out.

Inose: It’s important to send the clear message that Osaka has restructured its finances and it doesn’t have the money.

The small business mentality is a weapon

Hashimoto: It takes a lot of energy to get a government office to move. There’s an incredible vertical compartmentalization even in the Osaka Prefecture government, not to mention Kasumigaseki. Each bureau thinks only of its own circumstances. They demand a budget that is simply not feasible from the perspective of the overall financial condition of the prefecture. In other words, very few people have the big picture view. That’s why I go over the entire budget myself.

Inose: The larger an organization grows, the more likely that governance of that sort becomes impossible. The other day, I was told that it would cost 15 billion yen to renovate the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, which was built in 1933. If the incredibly beautiful National Art Center in Roppongi cost 30 billion yen to build new, why does a renovation cost 15 billion? I went to see for myself, and the facility didn’t need much work. All that’s needed is to replace some tiles and pipes and make it accessible to the disabled, which would cost only 10% of the amount requested. That’s what happens.

Hashimoto: But (going to see it yourself) is like some old guy who’s the president of a small company. That’s not the work of a governor or vice governor.

Inose: But it’s just the instincts of a person running a microenterprise that are needed in government offices now…they’ve had to survive by being exposed to the market, so their instincts are different from those of a bureaucrat. They’re more vigilant. Even an employee at a very large, private-sector company is not that different from a bureaucrat. Only small businesses and microenterprises are exposed to the market.

Hashimoto: When will the councils in your committee’s proposal be created?

Inose: This is also related to the rate of support for the Aso administration. Regional devolution is one of Prime Minister Aso’s major initiatives, so if he can pull that off, his support should rise…

Hashimoto: If the prime minister shows the way to devolution, I will give him my full support. I can only think that the series of news reports that his support has fallen because the LDP and Kasumigaseki are unable to reach a consensus is due to skillful leaks by bureaucrats. The people will not be happy if the prime minister is hobbled—only Kasumigaseki will be happy. They’ll also be the only ones left.

Inose: Tokyo and Osaka are major metropolitan areas, so they’re better positioned than regional areas to send a clear message to the country. That’s why I say to you that we should use that resolve to send a message, even if it’s only the two of us. That’s how we can attack Kasumigaseki from both flanks, and if we do that, there is no question that the country will gradually begin to change.

(End translation of dialogue)

Bonus Update #1: Mr. Hashimoto Goes to Tokyo

Osaka Gov. Hashimoto recently debuted at the Diet when he was asked with two other governors to testify at a lower house committee discussing the system of local government payments to central government operations.

Mr. Hashimoto was the first to speak, and he argued for a policy of transferring tax resources to local government. He said elections were the way to change the system, and that the only method was to select MPs who would promote devolution. He added:

“I get thoroughly disgusted when I wonder if Kasumigaseki will continue to run every part of the country. Japan will have no future.”

The Diet members were quick to point out some of the contradictions in the governors’ arguments. Legislators from the Liberal Democratic Party, New Komeito, the Communist Party, and the Social Democratic Party let loose a series of volleys chiding the prefecture governors for their slowness to take action. One asked, “Why haven’t you done anything about this until now?”

Yamaguchi Gov. Nii Sekinari, who also testified, admitted that the governors as a group needed to do some soul-searching about their own behavior.

Some of the MPs grew irritated, saying that the governors were the ones who wanted these projects to begin with. LDP lower house member Noda Takeshi (Yamasaki faction) said at a special LDP committee meeting on the same day:

Quite a few of these projects under central government control were specifically requested to be handled that way by local governments. Maybe we should eliminate the ones in Osaka.

Mr. Hashimoto, who has been in office slightly more than a year, is well aware of the problem. He noted that the national governors’ conference had raised the problem 50 years ago.

“It’s unbelievable that they would pay tens of billions of yen based on those sort of (non-itemized statements). I’m surprised they let (the government) get away with it.”

He also reminded the legislators:

“Diet members are supposed to audit the statements for the liability amounts submitted by the Regional Development Bureaus.”

Bonus Update #2: A Hashimoto-Inose disagreement

The Asahi Shimbun, a frequent Hashimoto antagonist, reported that a day before his Diet appearance, Gov. Hashimoto asked Chief Cabinet Secretary Kawamura Takeo and Minister of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport Kaneko Kazuyoshi to expedite construction of the new Meishin Expressway (Meishin Expressway #2). He even visited the Prime Minister’s office and the Ministry offices to press his case.

The highway would link Nagoya and Kobe. The construction of 36 kilometers of the highway was shelved in 2006.

Hashimoto comrade Inose Naoki has opposed the construction of the highway since the Koizumi Administration. Mr. Inose said: “I have the feeling that Gov. Hashimoto is not familiar with the circumstances surrounding the issue in those days.”

Inose says the highway is unnecessary because it will run parallel to existing highways.

“It was my understanding at the time that the Keiji Bypass was the de facto Meishin Expressway #2 and that it wasn’t necessary to build a Meishin Expressway #3.”

Gov. Hashimoto said that he would try to convince both his reformer ally and a Diet committee of the need for the highway.

I know nothing about the region’s highways at all, but I suspect Mr. Inose is probably right. That project sounds like just the sort of thing local business interests would boost, and Osaka is a hotbed of regional boosterism.

Bonus update #3: The DPJ sticks its toe into the water

The Democratic Party of Japan, the country’s primary opposition group, finally came up with a proposal for reorganizing these same local agencies with the intent of incorporating the proposal in their election platform. One significant hurdle, however, is that party sources say the entire devolution issue in combination with government reorganization at the sub-national level is the single most divisive issue within the party. DPJ Secretary-General Hatoyama Yukio, for example, favors the LDP proposal to create larger state/provinces that would eventually eliminate the prefectures.

Though the DPJ and its acolytes consider it to be a haven for policy wanks, they can’t make the recommendation part of the platform until party boss Ozawa Ichiro makes a decision. Mr. Ozawa’s decision-making on this and other matters has slowed to a crawl, however, as he tries to deal with the fallout from his aide’s arrest.

Bonus update #4: Everbody’s getting into the act

Just yesterday Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Hatoyama Kunio, Yukio’s younger brother, says he wants to eliminate from next year’s budget the requirement that local governments shoulder 45% of the expenditures for maintenance and management of local agency operations. He plans to discuss the issue with MLIT Minister Kaneko.

Ears to the ground

SOMEONE CAME UP WITH A GREAT IDEA for the latest Shinhodo 2001 public opinion survey.

Shinhodo 2001 (New Reports 2001) is a Sunday political blabathon broadcast from 7:30 to 8:55 a.m. on the Fuji Television Network. They regularly conduct political polls, and the results of their great idea are incorporated in their survey for 16 April.

One of the questions asked in the poll is: “What (kind of) Administration are you looking for after the next general election?” The pollsters’ inspiration was to add a new choice to the list of possible answers. The new possibility immediately caught the attention of those surveyed, who liked it so much it vaulted to the top of the list. Here’s how the respondents answered the question:

• An administration centered on a person with experience as the chief executive officer in local government, such as a prefectural governor, and who understands local conditions in Japan: 27.6%

• A grand coalition consisting of the Liberal Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Japan: 25.4%

• An administration led by the Democratic Party of Japan: 19.2%

• An administration led by the Liberal Democratic Party: 15.0%

• An administration led by a new third force other than the LDP or DPJ: 7.8%

• Don’t know: 5.0%

Japan’s Constitution requires the prime minister to be a member of the Diet, which means he or she must be a sitting member of the legislature. Many of the MPs (but by no means all) have had no executive experience in government. That might be one reason the late Tanaka Kakuei, the former cock of the walk in the LDP roost, decreed his politicos had to serve as the head of important party organizations and Cabinet ministries to be considered for the post of prime minister.

This new survey result suggests that the voters are now anxious to see people with the experience of solving problems in an executive capacity, and who will focus on the problems facing the country, rather than gamesmanship to gain a political edge in partisan battles in Nagata-cho after strategy sessions in the back rooms of exclusive Tokyo ryotei. And it is most interesting that the total seeking executive experience in local government, combined with the figures for those seeking a third force, outnumber the combined total of those who prefer either the LDP or DPJ singly–not to mention the number of those who hope to see a grand coalition.

It would also suggest that many of the 39.8% of the electorate undecided about which party they support (according to this poll) want to see regional devolution, and by implication a reform of the civil service system that vitiates the abnormal control of the Kasumigaseki bureaucrats in the central government.

But neither of the two major parties as presently led is likely to give the voters what they want. Therefore, they’ll have to turn to people who have had executive experience before serving in the Diet, or people serving as chief executive officers now and who may run for the Diet in the future.

Hashi and Higashi

Who might they be? Well, two of the most prominent prefectural governors who have chosen not to affiliate with a party and who champion the devolution of authority to local governments are frequently mentioned on this site: Miyazaki Gov. Higashikokubaru Hideo and Osaka Gov. Hashimoto Toru. It is surely no coincidence that both have approval ratings among their constituents northward of 80%.

Through a serendipitous coincidence (for this article), Gov. Hashimoto paid a well-publicized visit to Kyushu to have dinner with Gov. Higashikokubaru on the 12th and have private discussions with him on the 13th, as you can see from the photo. He also made a point of mentioning that he paid for the visit by cutting his own belly (in other words, out of his own pocket.)

The two men did not offer a lot of details about their discussions, but Gov. Higashikokubaru made this comment:

“He came to talk about his problems. We discussed what was going to happen to this country. I gave him my ideas.”

They also discussed the Osaka Prefectural Assembly’s recent rebuff of Gov. Hashimoto when they voted down a plan to move the prefectural government’s offices to the local World Trade Center. Mr. Higashikokubaru said he gave his Kansai counterpart some advice on dealing with the assembly. Mr. Hashimoto gushed about his host to the Asahi Shimbun:

“Higashi-san really is terrific! I learned a lot”

Unfortunately, the Asahi has been conducting a vendetta against Gov. Hashimoto (to no avail, evidently), so they neglected to mention that other topics were discussed. That was left to the Sankei Shimbun.

Said Mr. Hashimoto:

“Gov. Higashikokubaru talked about how he deals with organizations. Both the public employees and the citizens in Miyazaki are working very hard. Everyone says that the governor has made Miyazaki a more dynamic place.”

They also talked about a subject of great interest to them both, as well as to many people with an interest in the nuts and bolts of Japanese government:

“We discussed the ideal method of financial subsidies and the fundamentals of tax revenue resources once our financial liability for enterprises operated directly by the national government is ended. We want to be able to handle the work of local regions locally.”

Not only did the Asahi leave out that information while running a quote that made Mr. Hashimoto sound like a gushing schoolgirl, they headlined their article this way:

橋下知事、東国原知事と会談　「悩み相談ですよ」
Talks between Gov. Hashimoto and Gov. Higashikokubaru: “I gave him advice for his problems”

Make that a gushing schoolgirl who needs a shoulder to cry on.

And mainstream journalists wonder why people don’t take them seriously anymore.

*****

There are few earthquakes where I live in Saga, but there were a series of moderately intense temblors two or three years ago that occurred in conjunction with larger earthquakes in next-door Fukuoka. It was fascinating to discover that the approach of those earthquakes was clearly audible a few seconds before the motion of the earth began.

Are the results of this Shinhodo 2001 poll the political equivalent of the audible signs of an earthquake’s approach? The next few years in Japanese politics promise to be very interesting indeed.

Afterwords:

For the psephology folk, here are some other results from the same public opinion poll:

• Support the Cabinet: 30.0%, down 0.2 points
• Don’t support the Cabinet: 61.4%, down 3.8 points
• Don’t know: 8.6%, up 3.6 points

Which party’s candidates do you plan to vote for in the next general election?

• LDP: 24.4%, down 3.8 points
• DPJ: 27.6%, up 4.4 points
• Komeito: 3.2%, down 1.6 points
• Communists: 1.8%, down 0.4 points
• Social Democrats: 1.0%, up one point
• People’s New Party: 0.2%, down 0.2 points…
• Undecided 39.8%, up 1.8 points.

Which of the following two people do you think would make the best prime minister?

• Aso Taro: 40.0%
• Ozawa Ichiro: 25.8%
• Others/Don’t know: 34.2%

Who would be suitable as the next prime minister?

1. Koizumi Jun’ichiro: 10.0%
2. Aso Taro: 8.2%
3. Ishihara Shintaro: 6.8%
4. Masuzoe Yoichi: 6.8%
5. Yosano Kaoru: 6.6%
6. Ozawa Ichiro: 6.0%
7. Higashikokubaru Hideo: 4.8%
8. Okada Katsuya: 4.6%
9. Ishihara Nobuteru: 4.4%
10. Ishiba Shigeru: 3.8%
11. Hashimoto Toru: 3.4%
12. Koike Yuriko: 3.2%
13. Watanabe Yoshimi: 3.0%
14. Kan Naoto: 3.0%
15. Maehara Seiji: 2.2%
16. Hatoyama Yukio: 2.0%
17. Hatoyama Kunio: 1.6%
18. Nakagawa Hidenao: 0.6%
19. Noda Seiko: 0.4%
20. Other ruling coalition MPs: 1.6%
21. Other opposition MPs: 3.8%
22. Don’t know: 12.6%

This might be a fruitful line of inquiry for politicians: Combine the large percentages of undecided respondents, the immense local popularity of reformers (that isn’t reflected here), the miserable support for Messrs. Aso and Ozawa, Mr. Ozawa’s inability to convert his party’s poll advantage to his personal advantage (14 points down head-to-head against Mr. Aso), an extreme state of flux implied by a rate of undecideds near 40%, and the fact that former Prime Minister Koizumi still sits atop the table about 30 months after his departure, to devise a winning electoral strategy.

The aggregate figures only for those committed to reform (which does not include those who have sold their soul to Ozawa Ichiro in the hope of taking power) total 38.4% by my calculations. (It would be higher if the DPJ eunuchs were included.) There’s no telling how far a serious reformer could go if he or she were to use that base as bedrock support and then put the pedal to the metal in a real campaign offensive.

The big problem? None of the current parties is a trustworthy vehicle.

Update: Note that the Shinhodo poll has the Communist Party losing 0.4 percentage points of support, and that only 1.8% of those surveyed said they planned on voting for them.

Now take a look at this article by (sigh) Eric Talmadge of the AP who thinks the Reds are surging in Japan. The article is very short on actual numbers, but the author backs up his assertion by interviewing a single 22-year-old college student (I know, I know) and offering blanket statements without any corroboration. The student later admits that the type of Communism he prefers isn’t the scary type, which makes one wonder whether the undergrad knows as little about Japanese politics as Mr. Talmadge, but that gets tacked on at the end of the article for the 5% of the readers who stuck it out that far. Do BMOC and ET even know that the JCP just sided with China by refusing to censure the recent North Korean missile launch? And Mr. Talmadge also thinks Shii Kazuo is “something of a media star”, which would be hilarious if it weren’t so willfully stupid.

The Communist Party in Japan has always been a receptacle for voter dissatisfaction, and voter dissatisfaction everywhere is high now. (It also started before the economic crisis.) People read Akahata because reporters feed them stories they’re unable to run themselves under Japan’s press club system. Shii Kazuo gets invited on the occasional TV show to speak bluntly because he knows that with a 1.8% support rate, he has nothing to lose.

Mr. Talmadge does not seem to follow actual Japanese politics very closely. He apparently is unaware of the existence of any of the numbers above, much less their meaning.

The Communist Party is not “surging” in Japan. As this poll shows, it’s below 2% and going backwards. A more recent Asahi poll has them at 2.0% on the nose and trending downward. Capitalism is not going to fall from any country’s tree like a ripe persimmon. Shii Kazuo is not “something of a media star”, any more than Eric Talmadge is “something of a knowledgeable journalist on Japanese issues”.

Indeed, one might think that either Mr. Talmadge has a political agenda of his own, or that he’s simply looking to write a Japanese-man-bites-Japanese-dog story. In either case, he’s wasting our time.

If all you know about Japan is what you read in the Western media, then everything you know is wrong.

An interview with Watanabe Yoshimi

AS THE MINISTER in charge of governmental reform during the Abe and Fukuda administrations, Watanabe Yoshimi almost single-handedly pushed through a bill outlawing amakudari. That’s a practice in which former senior employees of the national governmental bureaucracy are hired by public or private sector corporations either connected with or under the supervision of their former ministries. That in turn enables their new employers to receive favorable treatment from the ministries that are supposed to oversee them. It is perhaps the most pernicious of the many misdeeds committed by Japan’s public sector, and one of the ways the bureaucracy, known as Kasumigaseki, maintains its control over governmental policy.

Watanabe Yoshimi

The Aso administration found a way to skirt the law through a Cabinet order, which enraged those in Japan pushing for reform. Mr. Watanabe was so upset he bolted the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to pursue reform through other channels, thereby becoming a national sensation. His departure was widely covered by the Japanese news media, who are as anxious as anyone to see real change instead of the farce presented by the tired hacks who run the LDP and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan.

I wanted to do a profile of Mr. Watanabe at the time, but I had other pressing matters to attend to and events moved on. Luckily, however, the weekly magazine Shukan Gendai published a lengthy interview with the man in their 31 January issue, and here you have it straight from the horse’s mouth. It’s well worth reading, so I’ve rendered it in English.

*****
When did you finally decide to leave the Liberal-Democratic Party?

I decided at the end of last year. With that resolve, I supported the proposal of the (opposition) Democratic Party of Japan to dissolve the lower house on 24 December. I was prepared for the party to expel me, but they chose to issue only a warning instead. Then my departure got put off until now (laughs).

How did your supporters respond to your decision to be the only one to leave the LDP?

The response was completely different from the chilly reaction at Nagata-cho. There was a flood of telephone calls to my office on the day of the press conference (announcing the decision). I was told that other politicians got calls from their constituents telling them not to take down under any circumstances the campaign posters on which our photographs appeared together.

This is the voice of the people. Some Diet members were concerned about the party’s reaction and canceled speeches they asked me to give (on their behalf), but I have to wonder how the voters will respond in the election that will eventually come. (laughs)

In fact, I’ve gotten several encouraging e-mails from people inside the LDP, but I’m not going to mention any names.

Some people say that he (Watanabe) was able to bolt the party because he’s a big vote-getter, but it’s not that simple. When you leave the party, they’ll send “assassins” (to run against you in elections), you no longer get campaign funds from the party, and you can’t put up party posters or distribute party flyers. Fighting an election without a party affiliation is a hard road.

When you appeared on television news programs right after leaving the party, many of the newscasters seemed to be somewhat malicious by suggesting that you’ll be crushed because you took this step by yourself.

That’s because those people are the so-called political “pros”. They’ve evaluated a politician’s behavior using such scales as the dynamics of party factions or how many other Diet members are lined up in support. The people who view events from the perspective of Nagata-cho, including politicians, are incapable of understanding my actions. As far as I’m concerned, they can go ahead and criticize me all they like.

A People’s Movement

You’ve said that in the future, you’d like to rally other people with the same ambitions, including the chief executives of local government, people in business and financial circles, and academics, to create a people’s movement. Specifically, what sort of activities will you conduct?

The image I have in mind is close to that of Sentaku, the group formed by former Mie Governor Kitakawa Masayasu from the perspective of eradicating the influence of the bureaucracy and Kasumigaseki. Unfortunately, while the Sentaku concept is superb, the group seems to have temporarily suspended its activities. That’s because they added too many Diet members. More than 100 members from all parties joined their association for Diet members. Their joint representative is the current Chief Cabinet Secretary, Kawamura Takeo, and more than half the members are MPs from the ruling party. It’s not possible for them to escape the clutches of the current administration. It turned out to be anticlimactic.

That’s why I intend to limit the membership to the most capable people I can find. There’s no merit at all in an assembly consisting only of Diet members.

What are the main slogans for your activities?

We will work under the banner of the slogan, “Smash the System of Bureaucracy-Led Cabinets”. Prime Minister Aso has said the bureaucracy is not the enemy, but he has completely relinquished public policy to the bureaucrats, and as a quid pro quo, he has restored amakudari, which had been prohibited. The bureaucracy has the Aso administration wrapped around its little finger. My mission is to move forward by creating a great change and smashing the current system, replacing it with one in which the cabinets are led by the prime minister.

Other Supporters

Your belief in eliminating bureaucratic domination and promoting regional autonomy is very close to that of Osaka Gov. Hashimoto Toru, or at least to the ideas of his principal political advisor, Sakaiya Taichi, former Director-General of the Economic Planning Agency. There are also rumors of your association with Miyazaki Gov. Higashikokubaru Hideo. Will they also become members of your people’s movement?

I can’t give you any names yet. It’s not only a question of my decision—it’s also the decision of the core members who will work with me.

The names of MPs Mizuno Ken’ichi (LDP, no faction) and Shibayama Masahiko (LDP, Machimura faction) also have been linked to you.

I can’t say anything about the members yet.

Who will the core members be?

Eda Kenji (Independent) is one, and in the future, the number of kindred spirits will grow and expand beyond the confines of Nagata-cho.

There’s a story that Gov. Hashimoto met with you for four hours but turned down an offer to join you.

It wasn’t a question of turning me down, but of him saying ‘Let me think about it’. I think he was concerned about his dealings with the Diet. He’s very anxious to move the Osaka Prefecture offices to the Osaka World Trade Center, which is losing a lot of money. That will require the cooperation of Diet members in both the LDP and New Komeito. If he were to join my movement, his relationship with both of those parties would deteriorate. I think that’s the judgment he made.

A Non-Political Movement

Will the ‘People’s Movement’ try to bring down the Aso administration?

This will not be a movement that becomes involved with politics. It will be a pure citizen’s movement.

Will the ‘People’s Movement’ put forth any candidates in the next general election?

That’s different from any movement. People might say that if you’re going to put up candidates, you should form a party. Even if we gathered the five MPs required for creating a new party, the movement wouldn’t spread to the people. A party would be centered on the Diet members.

It’s important to destroy bureaucracy-led politics, but the economy is an urgent priority today.

Mr. Aso has said that his individual stimulus payments will boost consumption, but at 12,000 yen (about US$ 120.43) per person, that’s one digit short. It would be better if the government were to issue bank notes instead of the Bank of Japan, and distribute 20 trillion yen, 10 times Mr. Aso’s two trillion yen, to the people. If this is supposed to be a “once in a hundred years” crisis, you have to show that sort of resolve.

If it’s not possible to implement that sort of bold policy, we should discuss a forward-looking compromise on the two trillion yen stimulus measure with the opposition and allocate it to the regional areas plagued by unemployment. Mr. Aso can’t even do that.

What sort of conversations have you had with former LDP Secretary-General Takebe Tsutomu?

I wouldn’t call them consultations, but detailed reports. Mr. Takebe himself often says that he wants to work with me, but that his priority is the New Wind policy group that consists primarily of the Koizumi Children, the Diet members elected to their first term when he was secretary-general. He has to look out for them, so it’s not possible for him to work with a smaller group now.

My father (former Finance Minister Watanabe Michio) was asked by Ozawa Ichiro, then head of the Renewal Party, to take over as prime minister in 1994 when Hosokawa Morihiro stepped down. His condition was that my father leave the LDP. My father ultimately could not leave the party because he was a faction head. The reason is the same (as in Mr. Takebe’s case). I’m not part of a faction, so I was free.

Did you visit your father’s grave to tell him about your decision?

Yes, I did on 12 January, before the executives of my local support group gave their approval. When he was alive, my father often said, “The party comes before faction, and the country and the people come before party.” If you return to that starting point, I think my father also worked in politics for the country and the people, not party interests. That’s why I said at the press conference after I left the party that I probably had my father’s DNA.

His Political Future

An FNN poll about people who would make suitable prime ministers shows you coming in third behind Koizumi Jun’ichiro and Ozawa Ichiro. Are you interested in becoming prime minister?

It was the same situation with my father–it’s not possible to become prime minister through actual ability alone. Luck is a big factor.

Ozawa Ichiro of the DPJ said when you left the LDP that your political stance and way of thinking are the same as his. What ties do you have with the DPJ?

The DPJ says they’re interested in “alternating governments”. I’m interested in reorganizing government. There’s a big difference between the two. We agree on an early Diet dissolution and getting the bureaucrats out of government, but there are people in the LDP who believe the same thing. That’s why I think reorganizing government is the proper course.

Will you take any steps for governmental reorganization before the election?

It’s important to be established before the election. Then we can have a political realignment after the election based on the people’s judgment. I think that’s how affairs are trending.

Anyway, people are calling me a Don Quixote. I decided to jump out in front and sacrifice myself for governmental reorganization. I might be killed once politically because of it, but if so, I will most certainly come back to life.

Afterwords
The Osaka prefectural assembly rejected the initiative to move the prefecture offices to the World Trade Center. That may make it possible for Mr. Hashimoto to work more openly with Mr. Watanabe.

There are actually two parts to the Sentaku group, and Mr. Watanabe is referring to the liaison group with the national Diet. The original group was formed with the chief executives of local governments.

Now that his chief aide has been arrested in a political contribution scandal, Mr. Ozawa is no longer likely to be at the top of any lists of potential prime ministers. A Mainichi Shimbun poll in the past week shows that 39% of the respondents think he should step down as party boss immediately, and 33% say he should quit before the next election. In other words, almost three-quarters of the people think it’s time for him to take a hike.

The new breed of Japanese politician

“I think the people of Japan and the prefecture seek a method of politics different from that based on political parties. We must change politics at the local level to win the approval of the people of Japan and the prefecture.”
- Osaka Gov. Hashimoto Toru

THOSE WHO RELY ON the overseas press to keep abreast of Japanese politics would get the impression that the country’s politicians are a faceless, duplicitous lot of hacks with bad suits and bad teeth barely able to conceal a belief that Imperial Japan is destined to rise again. In that version, the one exception was Koizumi Jun’ichro, the “maverick” who represented a “refreshing change”.

But that distorted view is a false impression. That’s what comes from looking through the wrong end of an obsolete telescope.

While it might have contained a measure of truth at one time, the characterization was never wholly accurate to begin with. And now, failing to play attention to current trends means observers are missing one of the most important aspects of contemporary Japan, as well as one of its most compelling political stories.

Mr. Koizumi was not an outlier: rather, he was the first of a new breed of politicians whose dynamism could further transform the face of an already transformed society.

Hashimoto Toru

As with all social trends, it is not possible to separate the chicken from the egg. It was inevitable that the dramatic changes that have occurred in Japanese society since the 1980s would produce a dramatically different type of Japanese citizen. What few people outside Japan have realized is that they also produced a dramatically different type of politician that is earning the enthusiastic support of those citizens.

Regardless of what one thinks about their policies, politics, and personalities, the old labels no longer apply to people such as lower house members Watanabe Yoshimi or Eda Kenji, briefly profiled in a post down the page. Nor do they apply to Miyazaki Gov. Higashikokubaru Hideo, the subject of many posts here and the one immediately below this.

After two years in office, Mr. Higashikokubaru has an approval rating of 88% as measured by his local newspaper. Politicians do not achieve that level of support by accident, no matter how long they spent in show business first, so it would behoove the rest of the political class and those who write about it to examine the reasons for his success.

In an interview in the April issue of Ushio, the first reason the governor cites for his popularity is a conscious effort to act naturally and not behave in the manner of government officials in the past. He also cites a willingness to listen to everyone without making an immediate judgment on their opinions or demands.

These traits have prompted one Japanese Internet news source to dub him “the cooperative type” of new, local politician. While that has worked for the Miyazaki governor, others are using different techniques.

Hashimoto Toru

One of those other types is a youthful firebrand who has made the devolution of authority to local government his calling card–the former attorney and television celebrity Hashimoto Toru, governor of Osaka Prefecture.

As the quote at the top of this post makes clear, the 39-year-old Mr. Hashimoto shares with Mr. Higashikokubaru the belief that the days of party-centered politics in Japan has to end. The Miyazaki governor, an independent, often says that the only party a local politician needs is the citizens.

This is an indirect corroboration of the changes in Japanese society, which traditionally was centered on group activity rather than individual behavior. One political consequence of this social structure was that all the political parties demanded Soviet-style obedience within the party once a consensus was reached, regardless of the individual views of the members.

But the younger generations no longer feel constrained to sacrifice their views on the altar of consensus, and their independent behavior is increasingly influencing that of their elders.

While Gov. Higashikokubaru is considered “the cooperative type”, Mr. Hashimoto, who has been in office only one year, is unabashedly the confrontational type. He seems to have taken a page out of the book of economist John Maynard Keynes, who once remarked that when all else failed “ruthless truth-telling” is the only answer.

This ruthless truth-telling has become such a phenomenon among the public that two newspapers, the Asahi and the Sankei, file daily features on his continuing adventures. The Sankei, being non-leftist and a supporter of devolution, is generally sympathetic to the governor. Just today they quoted him as calling the national bureaucracy “tyrannical” for their plans to erect a new building in Osaka for one of their local branches. A Japanese politician will never go far wrong with his constituents by attacking the bureaucracy in the harshest manner possible.

The Sankei also approvingly noted the stir he caused when he declared that “The regions are the slaves of the nation(al government).” The governor was specifically addressing the financial liability borne by local governments to support enterprises or institutions directly operated by the national government.

This certainly got Tokyo’s attention. Mr. Hashimoto has been invited to debate the issues with the Cabinet Office’s Committee for Promoting Regional Devolution and Reform. (You might keep this in mind if you ever read in English the tired old proverb that the nail that sticks out in Japan gets hammered down. Whoever dares repeat that these days is looking through the rearview mirror.)

Indeed, Mr. Hashimoto seems determined to be the first to do the hammering. He has been so outspoken on occasion that he has been charged, sometimes not unfairly, with intemperance, as this previous post describes.

North Korean schools

This week still more of the governor’s ruthless truth-telling stirred up a minor controversy in some quarters. This report came from the Asahi, which as a newspaper of the left has a vested interest in the character assassination of non-leftist politicians with significant popular appeal.

One of the governor’s primary initiatives has been to move the prefecture offices from the present building, which is more than 80 years old, to the Osaka City-run World Trade Center. The move was backed by local business leaders long before Mr. Hashimoto took office. Most are aligned with the Liberal Democratic Party, the dominant party of the national ruling coalition, but some from the opposition Democratic Party of Japan also supported the move. (Business leaders claimed it would spark greater regional development, and it would also solve the problem of the red ink the facility has been bleeding since it was built in the 90s.) Meanwhile, New Komeito, the Japanese Communist Party, and a significant amount of the population were opposed.

The Osaka Prefectural Assembly this week rejected the proposal to move the government offices, which required a two-thirds majority to pass. When asked about his defeat, Gov. Hashimoto said:

“Japan isn’t North Korea, after all. If I got my way in everything all the time, I’d become a dictator.”

More temperate public officials, hesitant to say something that could cause offense, might have considered blandness to be the better part of valor. They might have said that the people had spoken through their elected legislative representatives and the defeat demonstrates the health and soundness of the democratic process. In other words, the same boring old crap that goes in one ear and out the other.

But the Japanese public is fed up with mush-mouthed politicians, and Mr. Hashimoto was not elected because of an ability to sponge on the soft soap. He is in office because he calls a spade a spade.

The Asahi found (or was approached by) an association of the mothers in the prefecture who send their children to North Korean schools. The newspaper ran an article that reported the association’s demands that the governor withdraw the statement, apologize, and take measures to ensure the safety of the children at the schools.

Their demand says that his statement referring to North Korea in regard to a purely local issue while “North Korea bashing” is occurring due to that country’s upcoming launch of a missile is inappropriate. “We are concerned that the statement could encourage unjustified harassment of the children at the schools,” the mothers said.

The insolence of the North Koreans and their local lackeys is by no means a new phenomenon, but the moral repugnance of this particular complaint is breathtaking. Those of North Korean ancestry in Japan who are allowed to operate schools for the primary purpose of indoctrinating students in the propaganda of an enemy state should be grateful that they have the opportunity to exist at all, much less complain about democratically elected leaders in public. That opportunity certainly wouldn’t be available to them in Pyeongyang, and they know it.

Meanwhile, the North Koreans, who have threatened to turn Japan into a sea of flame, fired missiles in its direction several times, and regularly sent operatives into the country to kidnap private citizens—an infringement of national sovereignty that could also be argued to be a casus belli, is now preparing to launch a three-stage ballistic missile over Japan in violation of a United Nations ban (I know, I know) as soon as this weekend.

The schools themselves are operated by Chongryon, the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, whose chairman and five other senior officials are members of the North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly. If anyone by chance did harass the North Korean students—who are made to wear uniforms based on traditional Korean designs—it would be the blame of their schoolmasters, their parents, and the country to which they owe allegiance.

One might make the case that the Asahi is performing a service for the large ethnic Korean population in the Kansai district by reporting the news. But that would not be a credible excuse for a newspaper that has had its knives out for Mr. Hashimoto for most of his term trying to discredit him.

The Asahi seems to think that Mr. Hashimoto is irresponsible and intemperate. Some would agree, but many in Japan are thrilled to see a politician unafraid to say what he thinks and ruthlessly tells the truth as he sees it. I do not use the word “many” lightly. In January the support rate among his constituents was 82%.

Morita Kensaku

It is also worth mentioning in this context Morita Kensaku, who handily won the gubernatorial election in Chiba Prefecture in a race closely watched to see if the Ozawa fund-raising scandals would have an impact on the local DPJ candidate. (Apparently they did, to an extent.)

Morita Kensaku

As a former actor, Mr. Morita already had the advantage of name recognition. But other Japanese observers suggest that one reason for his victory is that he presented himself as the face of the prefectural citizens and a man who transcended party. Despite endorsements by about half of the LDP members of the prefectural assembly, he avoided using those endorsements in the campaign.

His primary opponent, Yoshida Taira, was backed by the opposition DPJ. While that seems to have been a handicap this time around, the same observers note that Mr. Yoshida tried to nationalize the election by campaigning on a platform of throwing the bums of the LDP out of office and replacing them with the DPJ. In short, they say, Mr. Morita’s success may have been due to an approach identical to that of the Miyazaki and Osaka governors. All three have pledged their loyalty to the voters’ interests rather than to those of a political party.

It’s worth noting that Japan is a parliamentary democracy, and that prime ministers must be members of the Diet. That means they are legislators, a group notorious for a lack of executive skills. (That’s likely one reason the LDP usually has its prime ministerial candidates serve in several executive positions in the Cabinet and in party posts first.)

Mr. Higashikokubaru already seems intent on moving from the governor’s office to the Diet, and perhaps he thinks he looks upon the visage of a future prime minister when he faces the mirror in the morning. It remains to be seen if people such as Mr. Hashimoto and Mr. Morita follow his example, or turn to individual initiatives such as Sentaku, the group organized by former Mie Governor Kitagawa Masayasu.

Whatever happens in the future, it must be emphasized that the presence of such men in Japanese politics is a lagging indicator rather than a leading indicator. That they exist is a corroboration of changes that already have occurred in Japanese society, not of changes that might happen in the future. Besides, there is now so much dynamism in political circles in Japan, particularly at the regional level, that further drastic change must be taken as a given.

But don’t expect to see much discussion of this in English anywhere, much less the media. They still think the LDP and DPJ mudboats of Aso Taro and Ozawa Ichiro are the norm.

They still think Japanese politicians are faceless.

Afterwords: Nothing about politics, but here’s an observation of a different sort. Mr. Morita is giving the banzai salute in celebration of his victory in the photo above. Notice that everyone’s hands are facing toward the front.

That wasn’t always the case. Older people with a prewar education invariably raise their hands with their palms facing each other, resembling an NFL official in American football signaling a touchdown. A few sticklers even talk about it.

Time brings about all sorts of changes, does it not?

School cell phone bans gaining momentum in Japan

“I didn’t realize there were so many things in the world I don’t need.
- Socrates, describing his impressions on visiting the marketplace

GROWING NUMBERS of Japanese officials are concluding that one of the things children don’t need is cell phones in their book bags. The trend among local governments is to either slap an outright ban on students bringing cell phones to primary and junior high schools, or to allow only those with severely limited functions.

Osaka Metropolitan District Governor Hashimoto Toru, an attorney and television personality known for his outspoken views on government waste and the malignancy of Kasumigaseki, the catch-all term for the national governmental bureaucracy, is also supporter of back-to-basics education. He’s had some well-publicized run-ins with teachers’ unions in Osaka, starting with his call for a performance-based wage system for teachers. (Speaking of these unions in the U.S. Jonah Goldberg remarked, “No group is more committed to putting ideological blather and self-interest before the public good.” He might as well have been speaking of Japan.)

Gov. Hashimoto’s willingness to take a public stand, no matter how outrageous, means his every word and deed are now automatically national news. Thus, his announcement earlier this month of a general ban on cell phones for the metropolitan district’s primary and junior high schools focused national attention on an issue that had been percolating at the local level. Even in the governor’s jurisdiction, 88% of primary schools and 94% of junior high schools had already banned them. These are not casual decisions–Osaka surveys show that 32% of grade 6 pupils, 68% of grade 9 pupils, and 91% of grade 12 have the devices.

The governor said the high-tech toys are a distraction for students and the prohibition will be conducive to concentrating on studies. He also moved to reassure parents the prefecture will be examining ways to provide a guarantee that their children are actually attending school or to confirm their location. One way to do this would be to allow phones capable only of telephonic communication or with a GPS function.

This drew the attention of Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Hatoyama Kunio. His ministry is responsible for regulating cell phone use in the country. Said Mr. Hatoyama:

“Banishing cell phones from educational institutions is truly correct…While cell phones are convenient, it is an undoubted fact that cell phones have aspects that are dehumanizing. (For one thing), people lose conversational ability.

Other reasons cited for the ban were the increase in bullying and crimes caused by the use of some cell phone sites, and the decline of scholastic achievement resulting from an inability to concentrate exacerbated by too much time spent using cell phones.

Now this week, a national government council on rebuilding education launched during the Abe Administration and reorganized during the Fukuda Administration created a subcommittee to study cell phone use in schools. The council is also recommending a de facto ban that limits devices to talk-only phones with GPS functions

The council emphasizes the role that families and the community must play in regulating cell phone use among the young. They urge that parents use filtering services for their children’s devices. They also suggest that more public phones be installed in train stations and schools to allay parental concerns about communicating with their children. They plan to submit a full policy recommendation in three years.

Finding ways to enable working parents to keep tabs on their kids is the key, of course. If it weren’t for that, cell phones would have no more business being in a classroom than comic books.

A quarter of a century ago, the Japanese public swallowed the line from Japanese educators that the school system needed to become more like that in America. Many Japanese now regret that their schools succeeded in following that model all too well, considering the subsequent deterioration in academic accomplishments and personal discipline in public schools since then. Over the past few years, the movement to reclaim quality education in Japan has been picking up steam. A cell phone ban is another step forward in that movement.

Afterwords: Note that high schools are exempt from Governor Hashimoto’s ban. There’s a reason for that: the Japanese have a clearer awareness than Americans (for example) that compulsory education ends at age 15. The decision to continue their classroom education is optional and in their own hands. Teenagers who want to attend a good college and enter one of the professions must take entrance exams for admission to a good academic high school. As a consequence, the average Japanese high school student has a more proactive approach to his education than his counterpart in the United States. That in turn seems to lead to an earlier formation of a sense of purpose in life. Very broadly speaking, Japanese high school students tend to behave with more self-assurance than those in America.

Of course Americans that age get to operate motor vehicles, work regularly at part-time jobs, and have the chance to enjoy a full schedule of social activities both at school (sponsored dance parties on the premises, for example) and on their own outside of school. I’m not convinced that the head start of a few years in these activities constitutes an advantage in life, however.