Is Koizumi a “Nationalist”?

You may already be aware that I think that the conventional wisdom that puts former Prime Minister Koizumi in the same nationalist camp as Shinzo Abe and the deceased Shoichi Nakagawa is completely misguided. This led to an on-going exchange in the SSJ Forum which should appear by and by in its archives, and a Q&A with Steve Martin, a post-graduate student at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Steve is working on a dissertation concerning “Prime Minister Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, their effect on Sino-Japanese relations, as well as the motivation behind the visits.” Copied below with Steve’s consent is the Q&A.

Good luck, Steve, with your dissertation. And long live your blog on “Japanese politics to Asian cinema, book reviews, photography and (not least) the Hanshin Tigers.”

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You wrote that Koizumi did 'everything right' on the SSJ forum- endorsed the Murayama statement, condemned the war criminals, adopted guerilla tactics, and although he projected force this was more to do with political circumstances that a coherent 'nationalist vision' for Japan. Paul Midford replied that Koizumi was a "nationalist with guts", and Abe one without.

That is, "guerrilla tactics" regarding his visits to Yasukuni, doing the deed with minimum fanfare, avoiding 15 August and other symbolic dates. And if avoiding Yasukuni as prime minister were the measure of "guts," Hashimoto, and Aso would also be gutless, and Nakasone, who backed off after his first visit when the Chinese complained, would be a spineless wimp. But it was Abe who made an assault on post-war education and took a stab at constitutional reform including a revision of the government's interpretation regarding collective defense. I could have said all this and more with regard to Abe, but that was so obviously outrageous that I didn't feel the need to refute it and continued to focus on the conventional wisdom regarding Koizumi.

In my dissertation, which is partly about how bilateral ties were affected by the visits and partly about motives, I suggest that Koizumi was motivated by his own personal, intuitive logic in visiting the Shrine, and needing to affirm meaning to the lives lost in war.

I have no idea what went on in Koizumi’s mind as he visited Yasukuni, but my understanding is that he made a promise to the Izokukai (association of the families of the fallen soldiers) to do so during his successful LDP presidential campaign and was determined to keep it. And what could be more important than that? As far as I can gather, he was never associated with Yasukuni before his successful run.

At the same time, he recognised the political utility of the symbolism of the visits, and benefit from them, e.g. 2001 LDP presidential election, 2002 distraction from a number of financial scandals (Tanaka, Kato Koichi).

The connection between the 2001 election and Koizumi’s visits is obvious as I mentioned above. I'm not aware of any connection between that and any political financing scandals. I can't see a net upside for a prime minister in a Yasukuni visit and the inevitable rupture in relations with China and Japan as far as overall public support, which is where the scandals hit, is concerned. Yasukuni counts only with a specific constituency.

I thus argue they were not part of a larger articulation of a 'nationalist vision' in foreign policy, mainly because Koizumi wasn't interested in foreign policy. Similarly support in Iraq was more to do with what Uchiyama has described as a "Pavlovian response" to U.S. requests for aid, than a desire to remilitarise Japan. I was wondering what you think of this argument as to Koizumi's motivations.

I agree with what you say here; I’m not sure that he was interested in domestic policy either, at least not in a way that Nakasone or Hashimoto cared. Koizumi appears to have been as political an animal as Ozawa, which is saying a lot.

Secondly, I was wondering what, if anything changed in Koizumi's manner and/or S-J relations vis-a-vis Yasukuni visits when Hu Jintao took over from Jiang Zemin in 2003.

Hu appears to have decided to wait it out, likely reasoning that, as with all nightmares and democratic leaders, the head of Japanese government would not outlive the CCP leadership. It must have helped that Hu appears to have been prone to much less of a visceral response than Jiang. I can think of three reasons for this: one, Hu did not have Jiang's sense of personal betrayal at the hands of Koizumi; two, Hu's more phlegmatic personal makeup; and three, Hu’s upbringing as a member of the post-war generation that missed both the personal effects of the war and the 80s intensification of the use of Japan as a ready foil in the CCP’s founding fathers myth. (A similar phenomenon has also been reported in 80s Singapore).

Finally, I have mentioned the utility of the 2001 and 2002 visits, but I was wondering if you could see any (short-term?) utility of the 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 visits. I think I need to strengthen my argument here.

I think that it’s more a matter of the disutility of backing down. Koizumi couldn’t stop. He’d lose face, and face the scorn of the considerable conservative base. He must have seen a much larger domestic downside politically to that than anything he would have gained from appearing to be nice to China. That said, he did do his best to minimize the diplomatic fallout, so he definitely was aware of a domestic downside. But I do not see any short-term, in the sense of immediate political issues, utility in 2003-2006 as well as 2001 and 2002. And don't forget that the economic relationship remained on course, both day-to-day and for crisis management.

Let’s Hope No One Draws Parallels between the Abductees and the Two American Journalists…

Joe’s comment here gives me good chance to unleash yet again a couple of my pet peeves—regarding the abductees and Prime Minister Koizumi. No, those canards do not come up in Joe’s comment, but it’s clear that they lurk behind the media reports that go into forming the background of his take.

There are good reasons why nothing has been achieved with regard to the following Japanese demands:

1) Give a full and credible accounting of the fate of the remaining abductees;
2) Return remaining survivors; and
3) Punish the people responsible for the operation.

The North Korean authorities claim that they have already accounted for the remainder—they deny some of the Japanese claims—and that there are no more survivors. They also claim that the people responsible for the operation were punished. There is a gap here. No, there is nothing short of regime change that can bring the North Koreans to satisfy Japanese demands. I think that this is hard not to see. But then, why does MOFA persist in making these demands?

One line of persistent popular among Western liberals is that this is the result of a successful rightwing campaign, who use this issue for some inchoate but undoubtedly nefarious purposes. Not so. This, as I have never tired of explaining, is a misunderstanding, a misunderstanding based on a few undeniable facts regarding Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. To wit, Koizumi:

1) paid his respects at Yasukuni Shrine (to fulfill a campaign promise);
2) dispatched troop to Iraq (after the war was over); and
2) was succeeded by Shinzo Abe as Prime Minister.

In fact, the Japanese demands are supported in public by most politicians across the entire political spectrum from the nationalist-nativists to JCP spokesmen as well as just about every editorial writer in the mainstream media from Sankei to Asahi. The key phrase here is “in public.” For it is the Japanese public that was the driving force behind these demands; Koizumi would have lost his job if he had stayed the course after his first trip to Pyongyang, and Abe was the grateful recipient, not the instigator, of the popular outcry over the North Korean revelations that helped propel him into the Prime Minister’s office. Public sentiment regarding the issue has very much cooled, but no one in any position of responsibility is willing yet to touch this political third rail. And that’s things stand today. If you doubt me, read the election manifestos.

If you want to know more about thoughts regarding Koizumi and how he fits into the big picture on this, you are free to search my blog or, better, pay me to write an essay on this subject. If you don’t have the time or money to do so, then you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Now It’s the Ozawas’ Turn with the Family Jewels

Yesterday, I considered the implications on Junichiro Koizumi’s son of a idea brewing in the LDP to deny official candidate status to heirloom politicians beginning with the upcoming Lower House general election—the idea clearly being to upstage the DPJ, which won’t implement a ban on heirloom candidates during this election, claiming that it’s too late to find replacements. My take was that such a turn of events would actually benefit Mini-K. There is a very good chance that the Ozawa family will face a similar situation in the general election after that. Ozawa is 66, and has health problems and three sons (to Koizumi’s two). What is he supposed to do?

It is important to remember that there are a number of single-seat districts where the DPJ has yet to put up candidates. It is supporting candidates from the New People’s Party and the Social Democratic Party in some of them, while it has not found viable candidates in others. The exceptions to these are Ozawa’s own Iwate 4th District and a few other districts that have been purposely left open to Ozawa’s choice as part of campaign tactics. Most notably, stage whispers let on that he might challenge Akira Ota, the New Komeito leader, in the latter’s Tokyo 11th District. The New Komeito would likely have to divert campaign resources that could have been expended more usefully elsewhere, just so its leader can avoid the embarrassment of its leader losing and having to slip in through the regional proportionate district backdoor.

Of course such a turn of events would leave the Iwate 4th District without an official DPJ candidate and with little time left for a novice to step in, declare him/herself, go through the vetting process and campaign successfully…unless, of course, one of Ozawa’s three sons steps in with the Ozawa kaban (money), kanban (name recognition), and jiban (readymade constituency and political machine) . There’s the heirloom stigma, but the favorite, favored son could make a big show of foregoing official DPJ support. It won’t fool anybody, but it can serve as a fig leaf. Ozawa himself will run the risk of losing to Ota and not winning enough votes relative to Ota to return to the Lower House as a proportional-district Representative, but that danger should be small if not insignificant.

All this sounds fine and dandy, but there’s a catch. As I said, this won’t fool anybody even if Mini-Ozawa runs as an “independent” and the media will feast on the double rake-off. I’m not sure that it will be a significant story throughout the campaign, but it is sure to harm the DPJ more than the LDP. Koizumi is a spent force, whereas Ozawa is the mind, if not the face, of the DPJ. Just as significantly, the DPJ can’t win by being “no worse than the LDP”.

There’s really no way of knowing what Ozawa will do or, if he decides to take to, how Yukio Hatoyama, the new party leader will respond. Thus, the uneasy slumber of the catfish under the Diet Building has yet to reach its conclusion.

Less Than Meets the Eye to LDP (Almost) Proposal to Deny Official Candidate Status to Heirloom TurkeysCandidates

Going one better on the DPJ, the LDP is moving to deny official candidate status to sons and daughters of retiring Diet members this Lower House general election. This measure, if enacted—it’s not yet a done deal—will affect two candidates, Hideo Usui and Shinjiro Koizumi, son of Junichiro “I will destroy the LDP” Kiozumi, the “reformist” Prime Minister. Now, I know nothing about the Usuis, but I am sure that this will enhance Mini-K’s chances of getting elected on the Kanagawa 11th District ballot.

Mini-K is a twenty-something about whom little is known except his parentage, his good looks, and a brief stay at CSIS, a Washington think tank. He is facing a challenge from a DPJ candidate that is about as far from him as is humanly possible. His “challenger” rose from modest upbringings—he is the son of a truck driver—to become a successful lawyer (note that becoming a lawyer in Japan requires a considerable amount of intelligence and an inhuman degree of time and effort) and has now decided to turn his gifts to making the world a better place for his fellow man. (And if I may say so, the photo on his official web site looks very different from other photos of him taken under less staged circumstances. To put it another way, the official photo looks about as natural as…well, if you’re interested in this subject, I suggest you read this.) Add to this the anti-LDP winds blowing through the nation, and it was no sure thing that Mini-K would be the first past the stile on his first try. Thus, the underdog sales pitch that the denial of official recognition will give him should be a welcome blast of tailwind.

To be sure, there are a couple of downsides to the loss of the LDP seal of approval. First, he won’t have access to LDP campaign funds. But he’ll still be much better off with his dad’s leftover money (yes, the Koizumis can pass it on, tax-free I believe, though I’ll have to check if you insist) and political machine.

…which brings me to my final point. Political allegiance at the local level is more personal than institutional, especially where it involves long-serving Diet Members. It is for nothing that the LDP is sometimes called the 自分党 (Me Party), not the 自民党 (LDP). If anything, the denial of official status will only make the Koizumi political machine work harder for the favorite son. And when he is elected, all will be forgiven as far as the LDP is concerned.

Mini-K does run another, more significant risk. If he loses to the DPJ candidate, he cannot sneak back in by way of a parallel, regional proportional candidacy. But let’s face it; if this guy has long-term political ambitions, he is much better off losing this election to fight another day (when an official LDP candidacy will be all but assured) than sneaking in through the back door. At least that’s how I see it.

One Last Point on Ozawa Before I Go

We still don’t know where Ichiro Ozawa is going to stand for election. It’s amazing; it’s hurting DPJ chances in the single-seat electoral districts that are being kept open for Ozawa in case he decides to transfer out of Iwate Fourth District. It doesn’t help the DPJ’s chances in the proportional districts that include those single-seat districts either. So what’s going on? Two indisputable facts:

There is a strong movement within the DPJ to ban heirloom candidates from standing for election in the electoral districts of their decedents.

Ozawa has three sons.

It is also to be remembered that there was some grumbling among the locals when Junichiro Koizumi’s late, unexpected decision not to seek election left too little time for any option other than to turn to his second son for what was then expected to be an early election. Add to that the assets amassed in his political organizations estimated to be a billion yen or more, and it becomes tempting to connect the dots.

This is trivial, though, and the LDP is obviously not throwing stones here; if this is a glass house, then the LDP lives in a glass tower. Still, I’m not sure that even the tabloids are picking it up yet, so I thought I’d just take note here, for your amusement.

Koizumi Reams Aso

I don’t know what—carelessness? fearlessness? mindlessness?—that was driving Prime Minister Aso when he wandered all over the map expressing his dissatisfaction—assuming there was—over the cornerstone of Junichiro Koizumi’s legacy as Prime Minister, that is, Post Office privatization, only to further diminish himself in the eyes of public opinion. No matter. He roused the lion from his stupor—half-hearted support for “reformist” candidate Yuriko Koike, bequeathal to his nondescript second son and all—who dismissed the hapless Prime Minister on a phone call, then strapped on his guns and unleashed a full-bore attack in a talk to a raggle-taggle, eighteen-member clutch of diehard reformists gathered around Hidenao Nakagawa, his trusty second-in-command during the glory years. The Prime Minister’s chances of leading the LDP into the next Lower House general election have obviously been further diminished. I would also bet against, though I would still bet on the legislative bill authorizing the funding of the 2-trillion-yen handout in the supplementary budget obtaining a Lower House supermajority in a revote*. (The magic number is between 16 and 3247*, depending on the number of defectors and mere abstainers in the voting.) Beyond that, I hesitate to guess what the fallout will be.

The full transcript of Koizumi’s talk is here. As a public service, I offer the following translation of the Yomiuri summary:

With regard to the Prime Minister’s recent statements, it’s as if I am more, like, laughing instead of being angry; I am truly stupefied. A couple of days ago, the Prime Minister “want[ed]to talk”, so I talked to him on the phone, and I told him, “I’ll fax texts from Jiro Ono, Lower House member, and Hironari Seko, Upper House member (criticizing the Prime Minister on their blogs[!]), so please read them carefully.”

When young LDP Diet members express opinions critical of the Prime Minister and party executives, the executives try to suppress them, saying, “No backstabbing”, but isn’t the recent situation such that the Prime Minister is shooting people in the face who are trying to contest [the election]? I told him, “Be careful what you say.”

He seems to be saying about me, “You can’t reason with the guy,” or, “Weirdo, an eccentric,” but I think that I’m a normal person, who has common sense. We have to fight the election by September. We’re all worried what’s going to become of the LDP. I may do some irrational things at times, but it’s necessary to really talk it over in order to come to a rational outcome.

The twisted Diet [LDP-New Komeito has a Lower House (super)majority, but is an Upper House minority] is not a bad thing at all. Currently, the Japanese public is making powerful demands that policy should take priority over politics. If there is a (policy) difference between the two Houses, then it wouldn’t be a bad thing to discuss a plan that the public can be satisfied with, would it?

Regarding the [2-trilllion-yen] handout, the Prime Minister says that it is sordid [for the wealthy] to accept it. He’s been saying a variety of things, such as, “I’m not going to accept it,” and, “No, I didn’t say such a thing.” I don’t think that this legislative bill is one that must be passed if we must resort to the 2/3rds majority (in the Lower House). I don’t want to say later, “I supported it then, but I really hadn’t.” I want them to reach an appropriate conclusion after more consultations with the Upper House.

We must seek the confidence of the public by September. The most important thing in politics is trust. In particular, if the there is no trust in the words of the Prime Minister, we won’t be able to fight the election.

* ADD 14 Feberuary: Bad arithmetic. I always get it wrong unless I do it on paper. I found a way to visualize it, so it won’t happen again. In any case, 47 abstentions? That’s a pretty big number. More importantly, the media have talked to LDP Diet members including first-term Koizumi kids and close associates of Koizumi and are drawing the conclusion that there will be relatively little dissent when the legislative bills come to a Lower-House revote.

More on Aso Polls, Koizumi Addendum

A follow-up to the previous post:

Taro Aso does no better in the Yomiuri poll, where the numbers are 49.5-for, 33.4-against. The Koizumi-Abe-Fukuda-Aso drop-off is slightly more pronounced than in the Asahi poll, at 87.1-70.3-57.4-. The LDP does somewhat better over the DPJ at 37.4 to 22.8. He does even worse in the Sankei poll and Mainichi poll, at 44.4% and 45% support respectively.

It’s hard to draw any hard conclusions for the upcoming election from the major media polls since the numbers for party preferences and voting intentions are all over the place. But the support figures for the Aso Cabinet are clustered in a remarkably narrow range; expectations are low across the ideological spectrum. Moreover, the steady decline in the initial support for the three administrations following Junichiro Koizumi’s looks suspiciously like a series of dead cat’s bounces. The DPJ must be hoping, All we need is yet another series of misstatements—Hello, Land, Infrastructure and Transport Minister Nariaki Nakayama; here’s looking at you, Kunio Hatoyama and Shoichi Nakagawa and maybe even Taro Aso himself—and unseemly revelations—thank you, Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura—and we are set.

Prime Minister Koizumi’s decision to cede his seat to his 27-year old son is widely seen as a slap in the face for Prime Minister Aso. Perhaps. But I think that the immediate damage will accrue to the reformists and particularly the vulnerable first-term Koizumi Kids. Mr. Koizumi is likely to campaign hard to make sure that his offspring is the first through the stile, leaving him less time to stomp the sewer covers and wade through the rice paddies on behalf of his erstwhile supporters.

If Anything Says Now to Fran Aso, It’s This Asahi Poll; Plus, Yet Another Generational Change in the LDP

An Asahi poll, of all things, puts the Aso Cabinet’s favored/unfavored numbers on the net plus side at 48-to-36. True, 48% is nothing to write home about, considering that Prime Ministers Koizumi, Abe and Fukuda began their terms in office at 78%, 63% and 53% respectively. That’s right, the numbers have gone down for four consecutive regimes. Mr. Aso can console himself by the fact that LDP is outpolling the DPJ 36-32, and he himself trounces LDP-New Komeito nemesis Ichiro Ozawa by a Dream Team-like margin of 54-26. But he also remembers what happened to his two immediate predecessors afterward. So it’s still a snap election, now now.

And on a sad note for Japan bloggers and Western media folk, Junichiro Koizumi has decided to hang up his white campaign gloves for good. And guess what, he’s bequeathing his seat to his 27-year old son. Well, what did you think, he is an LDP politician, isn’t he? Great sense of timing, though, stealing the scene from his most recent successor. Let just say that he did a perfect “Clinton”.

Koizumi Bump for Yuriko Koike Looking Smaller

Junichiro Koizumi has not surfaced since his endorsement of Yuriko Koike in the LDP presidential election splashed its way on to the tabloids. The tabloids were still carrying Mr. Koizumi today, but with nothing more than speculation to go on, it looks like it is fast becoming yesterday’s story in the mainstream media.

Mr. Koizumi’s endorsement was never going to change the immediate outcome. But with the now reclusive ex-Prime Minister, Ms. Koike’s appeal will be limited to diehard reform purists.

Koizumi Endorses Yuriko Koike, with Long-Term Implications

Yes, it will be far more exciting for political junkies like me if I turn out to be wrong and Yuriko Koike wins. But that’s the stuff of political fiction, I’m afraid.

We thought the LDP presidential race was all but over with ten days to go, with nearly half the Diet members and the majority of local leaders lining up behind Taro Aso, the Man Who’s Time Had Come. The restless media would be free to turn its attention to other matters during the run-up to the actual vote on the 22nd, such as DPJ efforts to slam the LDP with MAFF’s involvement in the diversion of tainted rice and yet another sordid set of revelations regarding SIA falsification of public pension records. This morning, Junichiro Koizumi changed all that, endorsing Yuriko Koike in response to a plea from a group of Yuriko Koike’s supporters including Seishiro Eto, Ms. Koike’s election chief and Tsutomu Takebe, head of New Wind and diehard Koizumian. This brings instant credibility to Ms. Koike as a Prime Minister candidate, and the media is all over the story.

The endorsement became public in a typically unorthodox fashion, by way of a report by Mr. Eto to a meeting of Ms. Koike’s supporters. According to Mr. Eto, Ex-Prime Minister Koizumi said, “I’m supporting Ms. Koike. I’ll vote for Ms. Koike. If Ms. Koike becomes [LDP] President, we can fight on an equal footing with the Ozawa DPJ.” Another Diet member attending the meeting with Mr. Koizumi added that he told them that they could make his endorsement public and that Diet members should consider whom they could win the election with.

However, this will not change the immediate outcome of the election, and Mr. Koizumi should be the first to realize that. Mr. Kozumi for all his weirdness had been a major figure in party politics—enough to be entrusted with the leadership of the Mori faction while its eponymous leader served an unhappy term as Prime Minister—while the well-traveled Ms. Koike is an upstart outsider. Moreover, the narrative has changed; none of the candidates are giving up reform, but there’s a time for soothing and healing the aches and bruises of the Koizumi reform years and that time is now. Besides, the public is worried about the economy. There may be no gain without pain, but even tightwad Kaoru Yosano is pitching a two-, three-year timeout. The pure Koizumi message, such as it was, will not play well in the provinces.

Having said that, Mr. Koizumi’s endorsement will reverberate through the post-election days, and here we are really talking about the Lower House election. For the LDP-New Komeito coalition, retaining a Lower House majority still leaves the Upper House in opposition hands with almost certain veto power—the coalition is sure to lose its Lower House supermajority. If the DPJ defeats the coalition, it may very well fall short of an outright majority and end up cobbling together a coalition with a motley crew of old-school socialists (Social Democrats) and vested-interests politics (New People’s Party). Even if it does win an outright majority in the Lower House election, it will still need the cooperation of other parties to pass a bill in the Upper House, where it falls short of a majority. In other words, no matter who wins the Lower House election, it is likely that the new administration will have a rough go of it. The public will quickly tire of the kind of political game that has driven the last two sessions in a bisected Diet. One possibility is stepped-up across-the-aisle cooperation, possibly even a Grand Coalition of the kind that Mr. Ozawa envisaged. Another is a dynamic realignment of the political parties.

As recently as last January, Ms. Koike talked openly and enthusiastically about a possible realignment revolving around Mr. Koizumi and Mr. Ozawa. The endorsement of Ms. Koike by Mr. Koizumi—his third reform, the political, as aimed at “destroying the LDP”—in the face of overwhelming establishment support for Mr. Aso, brings that possibility closer to reality.

Nobody Outpolls Asō (Outpolls Koizumi Outpolls Ozawa)

Today the hardcopy Yomiuri printed more results from its 15-16 March poll*. What might be of interest to you: the response to the following question:

Who among the current Diet members do you think is most appropriate as the next Prime Minister? Name just one from the following. (The names are given in Japanese alphabetical order.)

For your convenience, I’ve rearranged the results in order of popularity.

1. nobody 24.9%, 2. Tarō Asō (LDP) 21.7%, 3. Junichirō Koizumi (LDP) 16.1%, 4. no answer 9.5%, 5. Ichirō Ozawa (DPJ) 5.3%, 6. Yasuo Fukuda (LDP) 4.0%, 7. Naoto Kan (DPJ) 3.4%, 8. Yōichi Masuzoe (LDP) 3.2%, 9. Katsuya Okada (DPJ) 2.1%, 10. Nobuteru Ishihara (LDP) 1.8%, 11. Sadakazu Tanigaki (LDP) 1.7%, 12. Yuriko Koike (LDP) 1.3%, 13. Shinzō Abe (LDP) 1.2%, 14. Yukio Hatoyama (DPJ) and Nobutaka Machimura (LDP) tied at 0.9%, 16. Seiji Maehara (DPJ) 0.8%, 17. others and Akihiro Ōta (New Kōmeitō) tied at 0.5%, 19. Kaoru Yosano (LDP) and Shōichi Nakagawa (LDP) tied at 0.3%, 21. Fukushirō Nukaga (LDP) 0.2%.

(correction: I found a couple of errors that I have corrected, most importantly the omission of Health, Welfare and Labor Minister Masuzoe, who incidentally has a whopping 51.4% positive evaluation from responders as a Fukuda Cabinet member. Defense Minister Ishiba is a distant third at 13.5%. “No one/no answer” places second with a respectable 35.8%.)

Nobody leads Mr. Asō by a comfortable margin. You also have the feeling that if it were up to the public, Mr. Koizumi could walk in any time and claim the prize for own. As for the DPJ, Mr. Ozawa fares better than Mr. Fukuda, but overall, he is only part of the problem in a DPJ leadership that cannot capitalize on the continuing errors and omissions under the Fukuda administration and the public’s growing dissatisfaction. The finger-in-the-wind decision-making under reclusive Mr. Ozawa is taking its toll. The only thing that can save the DPJ is a… an Asahi poll?

* 1,786 people out of 3,000 randomly chosen eligible voters responded to the poll by face-to-face interview. A brief online report can be found here.

Briefly: Defense Minister Looks Doomed

Before I go back to the rest of my life: Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba appears to be near the end of the line after irregular conduct in information gathering as well as public communications delays have been exposed with regard to the February 19 collision between the Aegis destroyer Atago and the fishing boat that left the two-man crew of the smaller vessel missing in the winter waters off Tokyo Bay.

The accident, together with the subsequent missteps in crisis management, has strengthened an already well-entrenched public perception of an incompetent, even corrupt, defense establishment. Although the English-language media has focused on the rape cases with US military personnel in Okinawa as suspects, the accident has totally dominated the headlines in the Japanese media. Resignation of the straight-talking, well-respected, national security wonk Mr. Ishiba will be particularly damaging, since people had expected that he if anyone would be able to clean up the mess. Now, he has become part of the problem.

Losing Mr. Ishiba will be particularly damaging to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, since he was one of only two replacements that Mr. Fukuda made when he inherited near-intact a one-month old Cabinet from his predecessor Shinzō Abe.

Discussions of a general, permanent replacement for the current law authorizing JSDF operations in Iraq (set to expire in 2009 January) are already being put on hold. Work on the realignment of US and Japanese forces will be further delayed (though to be sure, it’s already been more than a ten-year wait and so far it’s been mostly plans but little physical movement).

The opposition is with good reason using this in the political game. A resignation gives them further ammunition in their use of the accident to use up the clock so that the budget (as well as the budget-related legislation) does not make it out of the Lower House by the end of this month. That would virtually guarantee that the budget will not go into effect by the beginning of the next fiscal year, on April 1. This is not nearly as inconvenient as some people might think (it’s happened before and there are laws that ensure that the business of government does not come to a stop). However, the delay in the deliberation of budget-related bills including the all-important gasoline tax surcharge extension will have real-world implications that will certainly be distressful to the ruling coalition, as well as the Fukuda administration specifically. The less time that there is, the more inclined the LDP will be to make concessions and the less willing the DPJ will be to oblige.

The Fukuda administration will not fall because of this entire affair, but I doubt that it can survive another blow of a similar magnitude. At that point, I believe that the LDP will trot out the next horse so that the coalition can survive the next Lower House election.

Recently, there has been some talk by Junichirō Koizumi on some major issues. I suspect that Mr. Koizumi himself will be a major issue fairly soon, if that isn’t happening already.

On this last point, Mr. Koizumi’s two sequels have been definitely underwhelming, and maybe it’s just me, but I think that the affable and entertaining Tarō Asō has a lightweight feel that makes him a miscast. But Mr. Koizumi won’t want to do Superman 4; it would have to be a Spiderman. Could saving his gasoline tax/road construction reform be enough of an incentive to lure him back? After all, putting the money into the general budget and shrinking public works was his idea in the first place. It’s really anyone’s guess, and perhaps he doesn’t know himself.

I Called It the Meta-habatsu Game, Grandmaster Koizumi Says It's Factions Writ Large

Here, I characterized the bi-party jockeying for supremacy between the two, broadly similar, main contestants, with smaller groups flitting around seeking to maximize their advantages, as a game of meta-habatsu (faction). Here, Asahi shows ex-Prime Minister Koizumi going one step further, with:

"DPJ Is Counter-mainstream LDP", Prime Minister Koizumi Urges Policy Dialogue

…
"We were the counter-mainstream [when Ichiro Ozawa and Yukio Hatoyama belonged to the Takeshita faction], and Mr. Ozawa's group was the mainstream. … (The Machimura) faction has produced four Prime Ministers in a row and has become the mainstream. Wouldn't it be okay if we considered the DPJ as the counter-mainstream (LDP of today)?"
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… Mr. Koizumi urged policy dialogue, saying, "There is an aspect of opposing though they have similar policies. We should think of them as a cooperative party when we debate policy in the Diet."

Of course this is yet another case of the soft-sell, respectful embrace that the LDP has been putting on around the Fukuda administration, and the DPJ knows better than to get on this boat made of mud.

(note) The factions aligned with the Prime Minister are called shuryu-ha=mainstream groups, while the factions that went for his opponents are called han-shuryu-ha=counter-mainstream groups. More neutral forces are considered to be hi-shuryu-ha=non-mainstream groups. These terms are fast becoming obsolete, as factional discipline withers.