Japan’s bureaucrats bite back

NO GROUP ANYWHERE has been on the receiving end of as many brickbats in recent years as the Japanese national civil service. Reformers nationwide are calling for the gutting of Kasumigaseki, the generic term for the bureaucracy taken from the Tokyo district where many of their offices are located. The platform of firebrand Watanabe Yoshimi’s newly formed Your Party has a plank that would cut civil service personnel expenditures by 30% and eliminate 100,000 positions altogether. The opposition Democratic Party of Japan, on the verge of taking power and forming a new government, has vowed to separate Kasumigaseki from the political process.

While most of the opinions of the bureaucrats themselves about this trend are likely to be unprintable, the weekly magazine Shukan Asahi sent Yokota Yumiko to conduct a roundtable discussion with a group of them and find out what the civil servants were willing to say with a civil tongue. The discussion with Ms. Yokota, a journalist who often covers the Japanese bureaucracy, appeared in the magazine’s 24 July issue. The bureaucrats are privy to a lot of information, and they are sharp observers, so it’s worth reading in English. I translated most of it here, though I omitted some sections where there was a bit too much inside baseball. Those participating in the discussion were identified as follows:

Assistants to division heads in the following ministries

Ministry of Finance (MOF)
Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI)
Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (MHLW)
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA)
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT)
Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport (MLIT)

We’ll start with the discussion already in progress:

*****

MOF: The LDP really should hold a presidential election and change their leadership. Since they’re going to lose the lower house election, they could position themselves for the next one by putting such structural reformers as Ishihara Nobuteru and Koike Yuriko (both former Cabinet ministers) in prominent positions. At this rate, they’ll be in the opposition forever.

METI: On 10 July, the prime minister’s closest aides (from the bureaucracy) stayed at the official residence to attend a party given in appreciation for their services. They used the opportunity to begin developing a scenario for dealing with the DPJ, enabling them to deal with the transfer of power whenever it occurred. They didn’t go into much detail, however. It mostly involved creating in each department an A team of bureaucrats for the ruling party and a B team of bureaucrats for the opposition party.

MOFA: Come to think of it, one LDP Diet member lamented that the frequency of attendance of bureaucrats at briefings had fallen to 70%. Are 30% of the human resources now being devoted to the DPJ?

METI: There might have been an increase in the percentage assigned to the DPJ. Many of the party’s younger MPs are ex-METI employees, so they’re often sent to METI offices to call on former colleagues and subordinates.

MOF: There’ve been some rumors the MOFA has frantically been destroying important documents in anticipation of a change in government. A former high-ranking MOFA official recently testified about the existence of documents related to a secret agreement about American nuclear weapons on Japanese territory when the security treaty was revised in 1960, and that officials destroyed those documents.

MOFA: That’s because the DPJ says they’ll look into the problems with those treaties. It’s true that some politicians were told about this, including prime ministers and foreign ministers, such as Hashimoto Ryutaro and Obuchi Keizo. They were selected for their reliability.

MLIT: I’ve heard that the Foreign Ministry submits documents with slight differences to the ruling party and to the opposition party.

MOFA: There are two types of documents created, and some that were checked by superiors and had language changed or omitted have been submitted to the DPJ. They contain less information than those submitted to the (ruling) Liberal Democratic Party. Still, this is great progress, considering that the ministry never used to respond to DPJ requests for information.

MOF: Documents are being saved thanks to requests for the disclosure of information. There’s been a considerable decline in the ability of government offices to gather information. In the past, they would take notes on what was discussed with politicians in informal situations as if they were reporters, and share it with people in their bureau. Now, however, if they make poor judgments about what to keep, they’ll have to destroy the information. It would create serious problems if the information became public.

- Before the summit, it was unfortunate that Prime Minister Aso didn’t make any important personnel changes in LDP party officials, nor did he have a major Cabinet reshuffle.

MHLW: We’ve calculated that the DPJ will win an outright majority. It’s not another case of the “10 lost years”, but it certainly has been “several lost years”. It would have been better to name Masuzoe Yoichi (HLW Minister) party secretary-general and Higashikokubaru Hideo (Miyazaki governor) as the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications. Mr. Masuzoe is a good minister, though he has a poor reputation in the department responsible for handling policy for those suffering from illnesses due to the atomic bombing.

MOF: He is a good minister. He worked with former MHLW Minister Otsuji on the Robust Policy 2009 to eliminate the gap caused by the ceiling of annual growth in social welfare expenditures to 220 billion yen (about $US 2.23 billion) as set forth in the 2006 policy. That caused a lot of trouble for the MOF.

METI: To be honest, the bureaucracy has it the easiest during an election period. Everyone wants the election to come so they can take a break. Even if the DPJ forms a government, we’ll be worried about the Cabinet they put together. It’s possible that Hatoyama Yukio’s problem with campaign contributions will prevent him from sliding into the prime minister’s job so easily. Each of the ministries has had to rework their initial forecasts for the ministers to be selected. That’s caused us a lot of trouble.

MOFA worried about Makiko and Muneo

MOF: And here we thought (DPJ Secretary-General) Okada Katsuya was going to be Finance Minister. If something happens to Mr. Hatoyama, he’ll probably become prime minister. The person holding the finance ministry portfolio in the DPJ shadow cabinet is Nakagawa Masaharu, and he’s incompetent, so the best he can hope for is Vice-Minister. The economist Sakakibara Eisuke would really like the job, but his personality makes that difficult. A lot of his ex-colleagues in the Finance Ministry dislike him.

MOFA: Some people have suggested (former party head and current Vice-President) Maehara Seiji as Foreign Minister, but that would complicate things with China, so he’d probably be better off as the Defense Minister. The worst-case scenario is the rumor of Tanaka Makiko as Foreign Minister, Suzuki Muneo as Vice-Minister, and Sato Masaru as parliamentary aide. Muneo has already asked Mr. Ozawa to put him in a Foreign Ministry post. There are also rumors that a non-politician will be appointed.

(Other rumors about more obscure people omitted)

- The DPJ has a policy of Kasumigaseki reform, including statements that they’ll have everyone at the bureau chief-level and above resign.

MLIT: The senior officials certainly seem to be fretting over it.

MHLW: There’s been a lot of higher-ranked officials drowning their sorrows in Shinbashi bars and grumbling, “What the heck, I’m going to get fired, too.” They’re working hard to get all the information they can, and they say things like, “I hope the LDP government lasts as long as it can,” or “I hope the political realignment hurries up and gets here.”

MOFA: But the DPJ lacks the personnel, so they can’t very well fire some 130 senior officials all at once. They’ll probably wind up keeping about 70%-80% of them.

(A discussion of which bureaucrats in the various ministries would be asked to go follows. One name mentioned was that of Tango Yasutake in the MOF, a former aide to Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro. Mr. Tango was a key person in implementing structural reform and stepped on a lot of toes in the bureaucracy. The MOF representative says that for the DPJ, he is “a Class A war criminal”.)

- Do your ministries have any key people for dealing with the DPJ?

MOF: We have Kagawa Shunsuke…who’s handling that by himself. It’s unusual to have a person like him (a former aide to Ozawa Ichiro).

MLIT: Mr. Kagawa wrote the rough draft for Mr. Ozawa’s 1993 book, Blueprint for a New Japan. I’ve heard that Mr. Ozawa praised him for being “the most accomplished civil servant”. We’re jealous, considering that we have so few connections with the DPJ.

(Further discussion of personnel omitted.)

- Are you making any progress in your response to the DPJ platform?

METI: That platform underwent some editing, and now it’s a lot more realistic. The younger (bureaucrats) are optimistic. They’re relieved, thinking, “At any rate, they won’t be able to achieve any reforms.” There’ll be more people coming over from the new government, but when so many Diet members and private sector personnel who don’t know anything about Kasumigaseki suddenly show up, they won’t know what to do or how to do it. A Cabinet minister can’t handle policy by himself. The vice-ministers and parliamentary aides Mr. Ozawa will bring over won’t be doing any work.

MHLW: Realistically, it will be too late to deal with one measure after the platform is finalized. That’s the idea of merging the Social Insurance Agency with the National Tax Agency. If they’re serious, the shortest amount of time in which it can be accomplished is six months. The DPJ wants to eliminate the citizen payment of insurance premiums and switch to a tax-based system, but there just aren’t any funding sources. Until now, the funding source has been half from taxes and the other half from the insurance premiums paid by citizens. In the end, raising the consumption tax is the only choice.

MEXT: At any rate, the Social Insurance Agency is supposed to be transferred to a new organization next year.

- The DPJ is seen has having a close relationship with labor unions.

MOF: The biggest concern about a change of government is in fact the problem of labor unions. Many of the DPJ Diet members are backed by the Japan Teachers’ Union, the Federation of Electric Power-Related Industry Workers’ Unions of Japan, and the All-Japan Prefectural and Municipal Workers’ Union. If the power of the unions increases, there’ll also be an increase in featherbedding, civil servants who don’t do any work. Forget about Kasumigaseki reform. Their slogan of Separation from the Bureaucracy and the facts on the ground don’t match.

MEXT: If Koshi’ishi Azuma becomes the next Minister of Education, that will probably make the JTU more powerful.

MLIT: Government offices won’t be broken up, and you won’t be able to fire civil servants; the problem will just persist.

MOFA: Every organization (in the bureaucracy) has civil servants from labor unions who are really just professional agitators that don’t do any work. That’s particularly true for the non-career types. They can’t be fired, so some departments have even created “lucky charm” positions for them. If you’re looking for wasted money, there’s a good place to find it. I think they should eliminate amakudari (the practice of giving senior bureaucrats important jobs in government-affiliated organizations and private companies when they retire) and institute a system in which at least 10% of the senior positions are replaced. They should demote those in management who are incapable of working. I wonder if the DPJ is capable of that.

MLIT: With the amakudari problem, the biggest issue is how to deal with the non-career types. That’s how the public interest corporations and the government-affiliated corporations got created. The problem of watari with high-level civil servants got out of hand, but then again, how are we supposed to make ends meet with our career salaries? (Watari is the name for the ministries’ arrangement of finding successive jobs for retired bureaucrats at government-affiliated corporations, with the former civil servants receiving a pension each time.)

MEXT: Then there’s the campaign promise about changing the way the budget is formulated. Most agencies are fooling themselves by thinking it will go no further than the DPJ submitting its requests to each ministry.

MOF: The DPJ says they want to examine those budget practices that haven’t been looked at before. We can do that if they round up the best and the brightest from each ministry and increase the number of personnel at the Budget Bureau five-fold. And if they separate the Budget Bureau from the Finance Ministry and put it under the direct jurisdiction of the Prime Minister’s Office, it won’t diminish the Finance Ministry’s power. Rather, it will create a new foothold for us.

METI: Our budget is only about one trillion yen (about $US 104 billion), and our biggest worry in the special account is that the expenditures for small businesses are so great. In this economic downturn, some sectors can’t be touched, so we’re optimistic. Meanwhile, there are many sectors such as agriculture, where the ruling party and the opposition party are competing to see how much money they can throw at them. Just what does the DPJ think it’s going to do?

MHLW: Look at it from different angles and it doesn’t seem as if a DPJ government will last that long. Nowadays, the public’s expectations are too great. They can put together a terrific campaign platform, but with a lot of those planks, they’ll wind up saying, “We can’t do that,” or “We’ll put that off.” I wonder if political realignment will come sooner than we think.

MOF: At any rate, they’re only going to be able to find the funding sources for about one year’s worth of programs. There is nothing at all to fear from a DPJ government. No matter what government is in power, we just go quietly about our business. That’s the duty of the civil servant.

MHLW: There was the line in the recent drama, Summer of the Bureaucrats, that went, “We’re not rewarded for our work.” When I saw that, I cried in spite of myself.

Afterwords:

* Note that one minister refers to Nakagawa Masaharu as incompetent. This May, Mr. Nakagawa told the BBC the government lost a lot of money from exchange rates after buying U.S. treasuries. He suggested that the American government issue yen-denominated bonds (so-called samurai bonds). His comments ignited a selloff of the dollar against the yen, resulting in a higher yen.

* Maehara Seiji is the former DPJ president who is in the party’s strong national defense wing. He and his allies were bitterly opposed to Ozawa Ichiro as party president, and by extension to Hatoyama Yukio replacing him. During the party election to replace Mr. Ozawa after he resigned, there were reports that he would make it his personal mission to ensure that those who wanted him to quit would never get a high-ranking party or government position in the future. It will be interesting to see where Mr. Maehara winds up.

* A Tanaka/Suzuki/Sato triumvirate at the Foreign Ministry sounds as if it is a nightmare rather than a rumor. Ms. Tanaka briefly served as Foreign Minister in Prime Minister Koizumi’s first cabinet, and the bureaucrats detested her. Their internecine warfare became great soba opera fodder for the daytime TV and current affairs discussion programs until she resigned. Mr. Suzuki had carved out a small fiefdom for himself in the Foreign Ministry until he was discovered carving out too much of a financial share for himself, and wound up doing a record amount of jail time for a Diet member. He’s now back in the Diet heading a vanity party and allied with the DPJ. Sato Masaru was a diplomat and Suzuki Muneo ally, praised by the latter as being the “Rasputin of the Foreign Ministry”. He was found guilty of malfeasance of office and his appeal was dismissed at the end of June, so he resigned his position and is now unlikely to be named to a position in government.

* A look at the English website for the Japanese Teacher’s Union has this on the top page:

Mr. Yuzuru Nakamura, President of JTU, referred first in his address to the issue of “poverty of children”, urging the participants that child-raising is not exclusively an “individual” issue. He said JTU should encourage the society to share the responsibility of child-raising among the “society” and the importance of returning the fruit of this effort to the “society”; and to shift the paradigm of educational philosophy (the value of coexistence and mutual assistance).
He also stated that the union should take every opportunity to have social dialogues with the communities, PTAs (parents’ and teachers’ associations), parents, children, educational and other administrations, and the government in order to exercise its social influence, and that it should issue easy-to-understand messages to the citizens.

One can imagine what sort of “social dialogue” they’d have with parents who insisted that child-rearing was an individual matter and that the union should butt out.

Combine that with Mr. Koshi’ishi’s recent statements that politics cannot be separated from education and it becomes apparent why the MOF official was concerned about labor unions. The JTU hobbled Japanese education with its “yutori education” policies of the 90s, some of which the Abe administration managed to roll back. Education and the schools are likely to become a political battleground in a DPJ administration.

Does the rubber meet the road with the DPJ platform?

ONE SALUTARY EFFECT emerging from the real possibility that the opposition will take control of the Japanese government after next month’s election is the greater scrutiny given to the parties’ political platforms than has been the case in the past. That is particularly true for the platform of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, which critics claim involves some serious book cooking.

Attention so far has been focused on the party’s child-rearing subsidy, but some are also looking at their plan to eliminate the tolls on the nation’s expressways and make their use free of charge.

Here are some recent comments:

First, Kaneko Kazuyoshi, the Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, and a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, at a press conference after a recent Cabinet meeting:

“(If they make the expressways toll-free), it will require that we triple our budget for roads. The party says they will reduce wasteful spending on public works projects, but how are they going to do that by tripling the amount spent on roads?”

From the vernacular edition of the Asahi Shimbun:

“(The party) intends to implement two “eye-catching policies” next fiscal year: eliminating the tolls on expressways and the surcharge for gasoline taxes. These are expected to cost about JPY 7 trillion (about $US 736 million) a year. It is not clear at present whether they will really be able to obtain the funds (to make up for this loss) for the overall budget.”

From a press conference with Miyazaki Gov. Higashikokubaru Hideo:

The plank about eliminating the tolls on expressways was placed under the category of regional sovereignty, but I don’t understand the connection.

From an interview with Tokyo Metro Vice-Mayor Inose Naoki, a fierce critic of the national bureaucracy:

Q: There were immense traffic jams this year during Golden Week (the holidays at the end of April and the beginning of May). Wasn’t it strange for the government to allow people unlimited access to the expressways during the holidays for JPY 1,000 (about $US 10.50)? These tolls are for a company that’s been privatized.

A: I can understand it as a temporary economic stimulus measure. The Nippon Expressway Companies (collectively known as NEXCO, which pre-privatization were the Japan Highway Public Corp.) maintain a framework in which they repay JPY 1.6 trillion in debt every year. The tax funds invested will be only for the discounted amount. The DPJ’s idea of eliminating (highway) tolls, however, is more of a problem than (temporarily) reducing the tolls to JPY 1,000.

Q: But the users will be more grateful for not having to pay any tolls at all.

A: That way of thinking is a mistake. If the tolls are eliminated, they’ll have to sink in tax funds forever. Only one vehicle (in Japan) in 10 uses the expressways, so the people who don’t use them will also bear the burden. The citizens who are happy that the expressways will be free should be aware that it allows the current dominance of the bureaucracy (to continue).

***

Will the party resolve these contradictions with stealth taxes down the road, or will the DPJ follow the precepts of former head Ozawa Ichiro and “replaster” their campaign promises once they’re in power? Time will tell.

Afterwords:

A friend in England occasionally rants about the steps taken in that country to cut back on rail service over the years. He insists that rail travel better suits the country than expressway travel, and the cutbacks have caused economic hardship for some local areas.

I’ve never been to England, so I can’t vouch for that claim, but it does make me wonder if the same is true of Japan. (Not that they’re cutting back rail service here, but that trains are generally a better way to get around than the expressways.)

I also can’t vouch for the figures of either Mr. Kaneko or Mr. Inose, but if the latter is correct, forcing everyone to pay for something that only 10% of the people use does seem like a cheap ploy to win votes in the near term that will wind up being quite expensive further down the road.

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.

Here, take this cash, I don’t need it

WHEN SOMEONE wants to give you something, goes the Japanese proverb, you should take it, even if it’s a warm jacket in summer. (That’s Itadaku mono nara natsu demo kosode in the original. The jacket they’re talking about is a kosode, shown in the photo, which is the last thing anyone would want to wear during Japan’s sultry summer months.)

The sentiment seems to be universal, considering the English-language warning against looking in the mouths of gift horses (to check their age by inspecting their teeth).

Meanwhile, the wildly popular Miyazaki Gov. Higashikokubaru Hideo (click the tag for more stories) is surfing on public approval ratings northward of 80% after more than two years in office for his strong stands on devolution and responsible local government. Are his ratings about to climb even higher now that he wants to turn down a taxpayer-funded kosode in June?

Yesterday the governor said he wants to halve the 40 million yen in retirement benefits he’s entitled to receive for serving a four-year term. (That’s about $US 415,000.) He plans to introduce a bill cutting his own benefits at the next session of the legislature this month.

One of the governor’s campaign pledges in January 2007 was the introduction of an accomplishment-based evaluation system that included returning retirement benefits if the Miyazakians weren’t happy with his performance. He cited that pledge as the reason for his decision.

Mr. Higashikokubaru’s popularity is so high that the citizens might be tempted to increase his pension rather than cut it, if given the chance. Nevertheless, that’s nearly a quarter of a million dollars the prefectural treasury doesn’t have to spend. You’d think the legislature would be delighted.

Nah. They’d rather pry open the horse’s mouth instead. One delegate said, “I don’t understand the justification for a 50% cut.” Another suggested it was rash for the governor to cut his pension only halfway through his term.

Mr. Higashikokubaru then allowed as how it would be difficult to establish objective standards to judge his accomplishments to date. Instead, he said, he would use the difficult financial situation of the prefecture and the harsh economic climate to justify the reduction.

Of course everyone knows—and he knows we know—the real reason for his Gandhi-like self-abnegation is that he’s thinking of running for a Diet seat in the upcoming election. It’s just another way for the governor to remind the voters he’s always been their pal. An additional benefit is that he can use that reminder as a trump card any time he wants in the future, regardless of the office he’s seeking or the voters he’s trying to woo.

But why should any legislator want to question his motives? Why try to prevent him from saving the taxpayers money? Do the delegates want to explain to the public and the media why they’re encouraging him to dip deep into the public till? Even if all of them are thinking: You don’t want free money, you crazy boy?

Their thought process doesn’t end there, of course. Everyone knows—and they know we know—the real question they’re asking is this: What are you trying to do, kill this job? If the popular governor does it, they might be forced to do the same. Politicians can get very sulky when someone downsizes the public trough.

Here’s another question: Why can’t they figure out it’s in their best interests to jump on the bandwagon with a smile, even if they have to fake it? The political winds in Japan have been blowing so strongly for so long that it shouldn’t take a weatherman to know from which direction it’s coming. Voters throughout the country have long made it plain what they’re looking for, so one would think the basic political survival instinct should have kicked in by now. To paraphrase another proverb, half a pension is better than none at all.

Politicians buying votes by giving money back to the people–what a novel concept! With any luck it’ll become a fad.

Japan’s political kaleidoscope

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

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

Kato and Takenaka: Off with the gloves!

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

Mr. Kato’s first punch:

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

Countered Prof. Takenaka:

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

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

“All of society is now irritated!”

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

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

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

Going backwards

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

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

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

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

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

All politics is local, #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All politics is local, #2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question:

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

Answer:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile, last November Prime Minister Aso said:

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

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

Answer the phone, Yukio!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Replied senior DPJ poobah Okada Katsuya at a press conference:

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

Above his pay grade, eh?

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

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

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

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

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

Kasumigaseki reform

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

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

Ishihara Nobuteru speaks

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

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

In your heart, you know he’s right.

A Kan junket?

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

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

They say London is nice this time of year.

More fad Diets

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

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

They discussed three plans:

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

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

Just an oversight, I guess.

Padding the bill

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chips off the old block

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

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

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

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

Let’s call a spade a spade, shall we?

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

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

You know–the 19th century.

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

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

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

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

Afterwords:

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

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

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

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

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.

“This time for sure” for Sonomanma?

WE’VE HAD SEVERAL POSTS about the political career of former comedian Higashikokubaru Hideo, who performed under the name of Sonomanma Higashi as an associate of Kitano Takeshi (film director and comedian Beat Takeshi). He was elected governor of largely rural Miyazaki in January 2007 in a runoff to replace a man who resigned over bid-rigging scandals (and who was found guilty just last week).

Mr. Higashikokubaru is wildly popular among his constituents and has also become a nationally-known spokesman promoting devolution to strengthen local government in Japan. (There’s a long interview with him in the current edition of the monthly magazine Ushio.) His frequent appearances on network television programs that have nothing to do with politics have fueled speculation that he would love to maintain his national audience. The best way to do that and stay in politics is to run for a seat in the lower house election that must be held by September at the latest.

In fact, our last post on Sonomanma described discussions he supposedly had with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party about running in an election that was expected to be held in the autumn. He was prevailed upon by local supporters to finish at least one term in the statehouse before making a national move. Or so the story goes.

Others claim he refrained because it looked very much like the LDP would be beaten badly in that election, and he didn’t want to be allied with the losing side. (One of his supporters used the Japanese equivalent of the expression, “draw a short straw”.) But he might have recalcuated his chances in the wake of the scandal currently engulfing Ozawa Ichiro, the head of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan. That has given the LDP something resembling a second wind, at least for the time being.

Speculation ramped up even further after Mr. Higashikokubaru held a fund-raising party at a Tokyo hotel last Saturday attended by about 700 people. Since taking office in January 2007, the governor has held 17 of these parties, but this was his first in the capital. Prefectural governors very seldom hold fund raisers in Tokyo, so this one raised more than a few eyebrows.

To allay concerns of the event being overtly political in an environment in which fund raising has become controversial, the only politicians invited were Diet members from Miyazaki. The reports did not include word on how much money the party brought in.

While he is being courted by the LDP, the governor ran as an independent in the gubernatorial election, saying that the only party a local politician needs is the citizens. But he is known to be philosophically closer to the devolution/reform wing of the LDP than to the opposition.

Then again, perhaps he thinks that siding with the DPJ, which is little more than an unwieldy anti-LDP coaltion held together by the Ozawan Iron Fist, would be the equivalent of drawing an even shorter straw.

Nothing is ever sonomama with Sonomanma

FIRST HE MIGHT. Then he won’t. Now, he just might after all.

The plans of the former comedian, current reform-minded governor of Miyazaki, and eternal publicity hound Higashikokubaru Hideo are once again the subject of speculation in regional newspapers. The governor asserts that his motivation is to reform government in his home prefecture and spread those reforms nationwide, but most people assume that national politics has always been his goal.

His political career began after his predecessor in Miyazaki resigned and was arrested for bid-rigging. The failure of another politician, lower house member Nakayama Nariaki of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, seemed set to launch Mr. Higashikokubaru’s Diet career. Mr. Nakayama lasted only five days as the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport in the Aso Taro cabinet after he offended the teachers’ union. He then announced he would not run for reelection to the Diet in Miyazaki #1 in early October, when an election was expected imminently.

The Miyazaki governor openly flirted with the possibility of running for Mr. Nakayama’s seat, only to give up the idea when his supporters in the prefecture said they would rather have him complete his first term instead of leaving before it reached the halfway point.

This weekend, the Nishinippon Shimbun ran an article claiming that the governor was much closer to declaring for the Diet seat than previously thought, and that he is again weighing the pros and cons of running in an election expected to come early next year.

The newspaper cites sources familiar with the conversation that the governor and Mr. Nakayama met in secret in Miyazaki City on 2 October and discussed the former’s candidacy. Mr. Nakayama, who had just resigned from the Cabinet, told Mr. Higashikokubaru that he wouldn’t stand for reelection in his district in the next lower house election. He urged the governor to run in his place. The governor replied that he was very interested in a Diet seat and wanted to run as an independent (in keeping with his stated political philosophy), albeit with LDP support. He also expressed concerns about being viewed as Mr. Nakayama’s designated successor.

Then, during a meeting in Tokyo on 8 October that both attended, Mr. Nakayama said in his introductory remarks that “(They would) have a hard time of it unless you (Gov. Higashikokubaru) somehow decide to run.” (The Japanese language allows sentences without subjects, and sometimes it is not clear what is being referred to. This is a case in point. It wasn’t specified whether the speaker, the people of the district, the people of the prefecture, the LDP, or various combinations of those would have a hard time of it.)

Despite the encouragement, the governor finally said that he would submit to the popular will and stay in Miyazaki. But he might be reconsidering that decision, as suggested by some of his statements during a speech in front of a fund-raising party of 600 in the prefecture on the 20th. Then again, he was all over the map, so divining his intentions is not easy. Here’s a sampler of what he said:

(The) differentials (in regional prosperity) won’t be overcome until the country’s system is changed. All I’m saying is that I want to change the system.

And:

“There are 480 people in the lower house and 242 in the upper house. I don’t really want to become one of 722. If that’s the case, I won’t go, even with all this talk about running in my first term.”

But then:

“First election, first Cabinet appointment…I won’t go without a Cabinet-level appointment.”

Note that the governor will have completed only his second year in elective office in January 2009, but he’s already talking about a Cabinet post.

Then he closed with:

“Some of what I said here was a bit dicey.” (危うい、and what exactly he meant by that is a bit uncertain, too.)

The newspaper asked the Governor about his discussion with Mr. Nakayama, and he denied that it occurred. When they asked Mr. Nakayama, however, he replied:

“I can’t say now.”

Not very skillful at dissembling, is he?

A source in the LDP said that Prime Minister Aso Taro was enthusiastic about the idea of a Higashikokubaru candidacy. He added that some upper-level LDP officials chewed over the idea of appointing him the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications, or giving him a portfolio as a special tourism minister. The latter idea might be a good one; the governor is a tireless promoter of the prefecture and its products, and he does have a show business background.

The local branch of the LDP decided to back former upper house MP and member of the Hashimoto Cabinet Uesugi Mitsuhiro for the Miyazaki #1 seat, but the Nishinippon Shimbun passes on word from an unidentified local official who said the party wants Mr. Uesugi to talk to Mr. Nakayama and work something out. He suggests they are laying the groundwork for a Higashikokubaru candidacy using Mr. Nakayama as cover.

Here’s an opinion from one official in the Miyazaki prefectural government:

“The governor seems to be bored by his current job. He wants to perform his next role.”

Others, however, say that with the Cabinet approval rate dropping, he doesn’t want to get on board the LDP “mud boat”. (If you’re not familiar with that Japanese expression, think of how long a boat made of mud might float crossing a river with passengers.)

But the article concluded with this from another observer:

“Once you get the idea you want to run, that feeling never goes away.”

Exactly. And for a man who is now in the national limelight a second time, it is likely to grow only stronger.

Let’s hope that the entertainer/politician who still appears as a panel member on nationally broadcast quiz/entertainment programs is learning something as he passes through the governor’s mansion.

Afterwords: Hit the search engine on the left sidebar for more posts on Gov. Higashikokubaru.