From the Indian Ocean to Offshore Somalia?

I’ve been telling people that taking the JSMDF escort ship/destroyer that has been accompanying the refueling vessel for the counter-terrorism operations on the Indian and redirecting it to the counter-piracy operations off the Somali coast would be a low cost way to square the circle. It appears that MOD and now the Hatoyama administration are also taking a serious look at this option. Let me put it this way: It certainly beats throwing even more money at the Afghan police than the Japanese authorities are doing right now—for which I’m not sure that the Afghan public in general would be grateful to Japan.

So Mr. Ozawa Skips the Anti-Terrorism Bill Revote. Do You Think the Good People of Osaka Mind?

According to an entry in an official record of criminal cases in the early Edo Era, an itinerant professional storyteller was caught in Osaka praising Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the warlord who unified Japan after the turbulent Warring States period and made Osaka his capital, and badmouthing Tokugawa Ieyasu, the Shogun who eliminated the Toyotomi clan and and inaugurated the three and a half century Tokugawa regime. Dissing the Tokugawas apparently went down well with the people of Naniwa. After all, as the old commercial and financial center of Japan whose glory days stretch back at least one and a half millennia, Osaka had even more reason to hold a grudge against the upstart samurai who lorded over them from the new capital in Edo.

This was eased only in part as Osaka caught up to and passed the pre-WW II city of Tokyo during the heady years of economic expansion. But the postwar years saw a steady draining of its economic might, as banks and trading companies transferred their headquarters to Tokyo. Now, Osaka ranks behind Yokohama in population, and a resurgent Nagoya is hard on its heels. The prefecture of Osaka has shared the city’s fate; the prefectural government has resorted to creative, if legal, accounting to balance its books while Tokyo is wallowing in so much cash that the national government has dipped its hands into Tokyo coffers to subsidize less fortunate prefectures. All this, needless to say, only exacerbates the four-century Osaka resentment of the Kantō upstarts…

The entire Japanese media was up in arms because Ichirō Ozawa dared to skip Friday’s Lower House revote on the new anti-terrorism bill. The reason? A prior commitment to campaign in Osaka for the DPJ gubernatorial candidate. Mr. Ozawa, as is often his wont, refused to explain the act of disrespect. Even his faithful deputy Yukio Hatoyama was at a loss for words over this snub.

At this point, it is important to remember that Mr. Ozawa has always emphasized the importance of the campaign, never missing a chance to tell his people that the battle is won in the trenches. So it would not have been an easy thing in the first place to lose the entire afternoon of pressing flesh in what promised to be a hard-fought campaign to cast a vote where the opposition was certain to lose anyway.

As for flipping the bird at Tokyo? Do you think that the good people of Osaka mind that Mr. Ozawa cares more about them than what Tokyo and its talking heads think about him?

The following day, Mr. Ozawa attended the funeral of Takashi Yamamoto, elected to the Upper House last July from the DPJ while terminally ill with cancer, the funeral being an event prominently featured in the national news. Imagine how widely it played in Osaka.

Whatever the Tokyo-centric media says, Mr. Ozawa has been spending a productive weekend so far, in Osaka.

The itinerant storyteller was banished from Osaka and suffered other punishment which I no longer can recall after reading about it so many years ago.

Norimitsu Onishi Reports on the Anti-Terror Bill Override

In forcing through the legislation, Mr. Fukuda, who took over the leadership from former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in September, risks a backlash from a public that is divided over the mission. The public remains much more concerned about the economy and other issues.

“Mr. Fukuda’s approval ratings have fallen into the 30s because he has been unable to pass other legislation in Parliament since taking over as prime minister.”

“Mr. Fukuda does not have to call a general election until the fall of 2009. But with the impasse in Parliament, he will probably be forced to do so and seek a popular mandate later this year.”

－ from “Japan Approves Bill on Afghan War”, 2008 January 12, Norimitsu Onishi

For a mainstream daily, Mr. Onishi’s articles are usually well-sourced and well-informed. I also have a sneaking admiration for his understated style. But what to make of the three paragraphs excerpted in order above, which, strung together, appear to be the essence of the guidance that he has to offer?

In my view, the first paragraph should be rewritten as follows:

”In forcing through the legislation, Mr. Fukuda, who took over the leadership from former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in September, risks relatively little backlash from a public that is divided over the mission but remains much more concerned about the economy and other issues.

Now I may be wrong about the magnitude of backlash, but it’s hard to discern the logic behind Mr. Onishi’s connection of the potential backlash to the public’s concern about other issues. That is, it’s hard until you read the second excerpted paragraph, which basically says that Mr. Fukuda has lost public support because he has been ineffective in addressing them. Maybe, maybe not. But the drop had at least as much to do with how as with what he did or didn’t do. Besides, if Mr. Onishi had been reading my blog, he would have known that getting legislation enacted had not figured as much of a problem as a casual glance at the Japanese media would have led you to believe.

Still, since just about everybody seems to feel that a snap election could be called any time after the Hokkaidō Summit in July, nobody will call Mr. Onishi out if it doesn’t happen*. Thus, the last paragraph is the safe call to make. But if the article is not backed by the basic facts behind the assertion, this article has about as much value as a broken clock that gets it right twice a day.

* Give me resonable odds, say 3 to 1, and I’ll be happy to bet against it happening within the calendar year.

So the question is: What happened here? First of all the NYT Tokyo bureau must be understaffed. Simply put, he doesn’t have a fact-checker. But second, and I think this is more important, he’s just not interested in straight, boring, just-the-facts reporting. His work so often consists of human interest stories, about the weak, the old, the loners in out-of-the-way places, the common man (or woman) in a ceaseless and ultimately futile struggle to maintain themselves and their dignity. His subject is humanity, in the lower case.

Upper House to Demand that Lower House Show Respect. Caveat: It Is a Sankei Scoop

I posted on the DPJ gyrations over the new anti-terrorism bill here in the expectation that the matter would finally die a merciful death. However, this article claims that the DPJ now wants to introduce an Upper House resolution that criticizes the Lower House in the event of a supermajority override vote. According to the Sankei, the DPJ wants the Upper House to demand a little respect from its more glamorous sibling.

One possibility is that some mucky-muck in the People’s New Party leaked it, just to spite the faithless DPJ. Remember, the People’s New Party is the DPJ’s main squeeze in the Upper House*, so it would be the first to know. Another is that somebody not named Ichirō Ozawa in the DPJ leaked it before the idea got out of hand.

* But not in the Lower House; such are the arcana that swirl about the hallowed grounds of the Japanese Diet.

ADD: Resquiat in pace. Please.

The Anti-Terrorism Bill Was More of a Distraction than Anything Else

The latest DPJ idea of proposing to continue the deliberation of the new anti-terror bill aimed at resuming refueling operation in the next Diet session had been at best a symbolic gesture, since the LDP-New Kōmeitō coalition would be using the Lower House supermajority override during this Diet session regardless of what course the Upper House did (vote it down, extend or let it die*). The idea was that the ruling coalition would look more unreasonable in exercising the override in the face of an offer to continue Upper House deliberations rather than a no-vote or outright vote-down**. However, this distinction seemed to be lost on all but the DPJ’s leadership, giving rise to speculation in the media that the real reason for its latest maneuver stemmed from its fear that some of its Upper House members would actually vote for the bill. In any case, the other opposition parties in the Upper House, who had become increasingly annoyed at the DPJ since Ichirō Ozawa’s ill-fated attempt at a Grand Coalition, mercifully put it down.

In gauging the significance of this latest in the twist and turns that the DPJ has taken on the Japanese response to the War on Terror***, it is worth noting that most of the changes in direction except Mr. Ozawa’s initial opposition have had everything to do with poll-driven tactics and nothing to do with statecraft. In fact, some DPJ leaders such as Yukio Hatoyama were quite frank about this, routinely admitting that the DPJ would decide whether to do this (say, introduce a bill of its own) or that (say, hold an vote on the bill before the 60-day deadline) depending on the dictates of public opinion. This dithering and drifting on the part of the DPJ leadership is, of course, a reflection of deep fissures within the party on defense policy and more broadly on Article 9, a part of which can be traced to its varied origins. Luckily, the Japanese public had long decided that there were other, more compelling issues on the table****, so it appears to be doing little lasting damage to its credibility.

And with that out of the way, everybody should be ready for the popularity contest － will they bribe us with our (and your gaijin) money? － in the regular Diet session to begin. With the budget-related laws on deck － passing the budget itself will be a snap, since it is the de facto prerogative of the Lower House － the twisted Diet goes into truly uncharted waters. Keep in mind that it’s the measures that expire on April 1 that will be at the center of attention. If you have to keep an eye on one key item in that group, the gasoline tax, for mainly technical reasons but partly because of dissent within the LDP and DPJ, is the one. The unfolding Moriya et al scandal will serve as an unpredictable Greek chorus*****.

* A bit of parliamentary arcana: At the end of a Diet session, the two Houses must each make a decision on any bill (or any other issue that requires the decision of the Diet) that remains outstanding in that House. It can do nothing, which causes the bill to die, or decide by the usual simple majority vote to continue deliberation in the next Diet session. In the first case, the bill, if desired, must be introduced and go through the full legislative process all over again. In the latter, deliberations resume where it went off, and all previous decisions (such as the adoption of the bill by the other House) remain valid.

** Even more arcane arcana: The extension traditionally is given at the end of the Diet session in a single vote covering all the outstanding bills that the House has agreed to extend deliberations for; the DPJ wanted to vote for the extension of the anti-terror billbefore the 60-day limit expired and the Lower House could hold the override vote.

*** Which, I repeat is a policing action, not a war in the legal sense. The term itself is a mixed-up metaphor that the Bush administration used to its advantage

**** Mystifying to me is why the DPJ isn’t hitting the LDP harder on the Moriya et al scandal. Granted, this is still national security, but potential exposure of corruption has a visceral appeal that is lacking in the image of JSDF boats going back to the Indian Ocean.
.
***** I think that the chances of Fumio Kyūma being thrown under the bus has increased substantially.

Why I Know that the DPJ Is Not Serious about the War on Terror

You can be for it, or against it, but what if you ignore it completely? Can you still claim the public’s mandate?

Foreign policy and self-defense was the DPJ’s next-to-last item in its policy manifest. There’s nothing wrong with that, except it has 21 lines on Iraq but absolutely nothing on the War on Terror or Afghanistan itself, when it knew that the counterterrorism bill would be up for renewal.

Public mandate, or slavishly tracking the public polls? I report, you decide.

The DPJ Underwhelms Nation by Producing Its Own Anti Terrorism Bill

DPJ policy wonks are decent people and as such lack a quality essential to a successful political career － the ability to believe your own lies. So one of the most painful things to watch had been a DPJ representative trying to pretend that the DPJ was serious about helping out in Afghanistan and was working on a bill but that didn’t matter either way because the DPJ had definitely put forth a firm proposal of its own and besides everything was the LDP’s fault anyway without giving the impression that the DPJ was hopelessly divided on the issue and was reduced to using it purely as a tool in the political game. The introduction of its bill, at this late point in the game under the instigation of party leader Ichirō Ozawa, merely reinforces that impression.

I’m not surprised. After all, Mr. Hatoyama had even referred to prospective shifts in public opinion as the determinant of DPJ decisions on this issue*.

I might have something more to say about the bill when it goes up on the DPJ website. But in the meantime, it looks highly unlikely to me that the bill will have solved any of the objections that were raised against the ideas floated by the DPJ.

Incidentally, all this should have little effect on the Fukuda-Ozawa debate when they face off next month**. The only change will be the addition of a DPJ text, not much of a talking point when you think about it.

* Another demonstration of the DPJ’s lack of dissembling skills.
** The two leaders do not thrive in a public debate format. They are like basketball teams without a good half-court game. Mr. Fukuda collects baskets on putbacks and stolen inbound passes, while Mr. Ozawa relies on two-hand set shots and free throws.

Parallels between Mr. Fukuda and Mr. Abe in the Polls; Stargazing; and Lots of Footnotes on North Korea, Refueling Resumption Bill, Etc.

The Abe Cabinet’s public poll numbers* had slipped steadily since its inauguration in 2006 September until opposition outnumbered support for the first time in 2007 February. However, as the political financing scandal epidemic more or less subsided** and the ruling coalition managed to pass the budget and enact much of its legislative agenda, the Abe Cabinet’s numbers recovered in April and appeared to stabilize there. But then, the DPJ finally broke through with the 50 Million mislaid public pension accounts. The Abe Cabinet’s numbers took a huge hit, from which they never recovered. True, the DPJ’s numbers did not rise in similarly dramatic fashion, but the LDP’s numbers fell, and that’s what mattered. The pension accounts scandal devastated the ruling coalition in the July Upper House election and mortally wounded the Abe Cabinet (on life support, then clinically dead, for the last two months of its existence). Does the story sound familiar?

Some of the 15-16 December poll numbers in the latest Kyōdō Tsūshin wire service report can only be interpreted in light of the initial rage at the cavalier way in which the Prime Minister and his Chief Cabinet Secretary (charged jointly with the Health, Labor and Welfare Minister to clean up the management mess at the Social Insurance Agency) tried to brush off the latest revelations***. As the anger subsides and if nothing more occurs to further erode trust, the Fukuda Cabinet will recover a good portion of the support it dropped. But a sense of betrayal will linger in the public’s mind, bringing a new fragility to the Fukuda Cabinet. All innocence has been lost; with it, much of Mr. Fukuda’s margin of error.

What, then, are the factors that will have a major effect on the Fukuda administration’s fate?

You can forget about his 27-2829 December trip to China. There will be no surprises; the dispute over the East China Sea gas fields will be resolved, if ever, on the occasion of President Hu Jintao’s visit to Japan next spring****. If there is no solution available on that occasion, then Mr. Fukuda should be polite, but firm in rejecting Chinese claims.

ADD: On the other hand, if they do decide to settle it, there's no reason why they can't do it on this occasion. If they do, it will certainly be a nice feather in the Prime Minister's cap. Chinese leaders tend to gift tributaries... (20 December)

On North Korea, no meaningful progress will be made on the abductees, in the sense that no new information will surface from the North Korean side*****. This is unlikely to be a problem for Mr. Fukuda unless the Bush administration decides to take North Korea off the list of state sponsors of terrorism, which in turn is unlikely to happen unless North Korea comes clean on its uranium enrichment program and its plutonium and plutonium bomb stockpiles******.

You can forget about the refueling resumption bill, too, which will be adopted by a supermajority override on 12 January or thereabouts. What the Kyōdō Tsūshin poll says is that the public is angry at the Prime Minister and his Ministers’ handling of the pension accounts revelations and is taking it out on the refueling bill*******. It’s not about the bill itself. In fact, pushing the bill to its ultimate conclusion will not damage Mr. Fukuda in the public eye; to the contrary, it will be somewhat helpful, as a show of decisiveness.

National security brings me to the uglier face of the defense controversy: the Moriya and Co. scandals. I’ve said before that the coalition can weather the scandal if it is limited to Yamada Yōkō but that all bets are off if indictments spread to other businesses. I should have qualified that by saying that criminal proceedings against LDP members would cause problems commensurate with the number and statuses of such politicians. I think that the Fukuda administration can even weather the singular implication of Fukushirō Nukaga, his Finance Minister. But for that, he needs to act decisively in the face of a variety of contingencies. ********.

I had thought that the tax bill would be a major theater of contention on the chess board. Now, I am not quite so sure. There is open dissent in the DPJ on the most important and problematic item among the time-limited tax measures: the ten-year old “temporary” supercharge on the gasoline tax. Specifically, it has been revealed that some road-construction-happy DPJ Diet members are circulating an open letter opposing the DPJ pledge to eliminate the supercharge and to put the remainder in the general budget, and threatening to vote against a DPJ bill to that effect. But even if the threats prove hollow and the wayward DPJ road tribe toes the party line, it is my belief that the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of both sides coming to a compromise. It is important for the Fukuda administration not to lose its nerve as the deadline approaches.

So, as far as the major issues that come to my mind are concerned, Mr. Fukuda should be able to make his way to the Hokkaidō Summit. That alone should firm up support for his Cabinet. But this will more likely than not require a certain firmness and decisiveness － a ruthlessness, actually － that his predecessor Mr. Abe was not able to muster. Can he? That is essentially the point that Tobias raises here. So, will he or won’t he? Only God knows. And if another good friend (of mine, not Mr. Fukuda) Shisaku is God, then Mr. Fukuda is as good as dead.

* AKyōdō Tsūshin report is recovered here. The graph can be compared with the one in this report on the Fukuda Cabinet. The blue and red lines trace support and opposition respectively.

** It helped that some of the negative press spilled over to the DPJ side, most notably on party leader Ichirō Ozawa and his less-than transparent real estate transactions and other political financing mysteries.

*** I posted on it here, in case anyone needs a reminder. No? Oh well.

**** My best guess is a joint development agreement that covers areas beyond both edges of the disputed waters. That way, neither side compromises its position on the dispute, while allowing development of resources that should be commercially viable only for the Chinese market. If it happens, you read it here first.

***** The Japanese side is demanding the following:

1) Account for all the abductees.
2) Return remaining survivors.
3) Punish the people responsible.

Barring regime change, it is hard to imagine these demands being fulfilled. If the North Korean claims are true, then the Japanese side is demanding that the other side prove a negative. To do so to with any measure of satisfaction, the North Korean side would have to offer a degree of transparency and access that the North Korean regime cannot provide. If, as is likely, they are lying, they still face the accounting issue. Besides, there is no way that they can admit the truth now, since they would then have to proceed to the third Japanese demand, which in turn would raise the transparency and access issue all over again.

These are non-negotiable. Agreeing to anything that does not hold out hope for fulfillment of these demands means that you are grabbing the third rail with your bare hands. So you can see why the American authorities can’t get a coherent answer when they ask the Japanese administration to tell them what it means by “progress” with regard to the prospective delisting of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism.

****** In the unlikely event that North Korean side does declare its nuclear stockpile, I’m sure that the Bush administration will move to delist North Korea. The Japanese authorities will acknowledge the matter gracefully; they have no choice. It will be useful to remind the Japanese public that Japanese sanctions against North Korea were first linked to the abductees issue (to the best of my knowledge) in 2006 October, when restrictions were tightened in response to the North Korean nuclear test. Thus, if there is meaningful progress toward actual destruction of the stockpile (as opposed to mere declaration), Japan will be rightfully expected to begin rolling back those sanctions. But that is a bridge that will not be reached in the foreseeable future.

******* It is instructive that the Yomiuri poll, taken only a week before the Kyōdō Tsūshin poll, showed only a slight decline in support numbers for the refueling resumption bill. Some of the support must be casual and more a vote of overall confidence than an expression of a preference for that particular policy objective. I would rephrase this accordingly if I were to write it now.

******** Specifically, Mr. Fukuda needs a　color-coded contingency plan with a clear red line beyond which he will dismiss Mr. Nukaga.

With This, Let's Hope I Stop Talking about the Refueling Bill for a Couple of Months

The latest Yomiuri poll (8-9 December) shows little change on the refueling resumption bill. Support dropped from the last Yomiuri poll’s 51% to 47.5% while opposition edged up from 40% to 41.1%*. This, after all the bad press that the Ministry of Defense and the defense establishment have been receiving, reaffirms my long-standing belief: the frontlines hardened a long time ago and resumption enjoys a strong plurality or a modest majority in an electorate that does not see this as a defining issue. The New Komeitō has been assured that Prime Minister Fukuda will not call a snap vote in the case of a censure vote － after all, Prime Minister sent troops to Iraq against the wishes of the majority of the Japanese public and the DPJH did squat; compared to that, this one is a cakewalk － and Taku Yamazaki has predictably eaten his words calling for a 2/3rds majority public support as a prerequisite.**

It is also important to realize that support for the Fukuda Cabinet (52.2% to 52.5%) and the LDP (34.3% to 35.3%) has held steady***. So the coast is clear for a ho-hum supermajority override. In the meantime, the coalition will keep reminding the public why we need to do it, just so support won’t slip further. Because, let’s face it, it’s so easy to forget.

Some LDP members may dread the thought of facing the same situation a year from now. If you want to play the guessing game though, first deal with what you know. And what you know is that there is going to be a presidential election on 4 November 2004, the resumption act will lapse, barring new legislation, on 15 January 2009 or thereabouts****, and Inauguration Day falls on 20 January 2009. The Japanese administration***** will have ample to time go over the issue with a rather junior level transition team member to determine what to do.

It is that kind of issue.

What then, are the real defining issues in the regular Diet session, which should be summoned in the bottom half of January? Will you let me pick two? Why, the time-limited tax measures (where the two sides will play yet another chicken game, this time for real money) and the public pension system (both the emotive 50 million missing records, of which more than 10 million will not be identifiable, and the chronic but ultimately more serious solvency issue), of course.

* Support for the DPJ has slipped from 22.5% to 17.1%. Did I overestimate core support for the DPJ? In any case, the DPJ must create an aura of competence. Otherwise, barring a macroeconomic catastrophe, it will never crack the force shield. By the way, I’ve been fascinated by the twist between the clear support for the operations, the much smaller plurality support for the bill (44.7% for, 42.6% against) and what is now a very slight plurality against an override (42.5% for, 43.9% against). The one group of people that this does not give aid and comfort to are the advocates of a censure vote.

** Mr. Yamazaki keeps making these preposterous statements that he has no way of backing up (remember ex-Prime Minister Koizumi Gearing up for a third trip to China?) Seriously, what does he put in the tea that he serves his faction members?

*** Unless the DPJ loses nerve and cuts a deal on the refueling bill that let’s everyone pull down the shutters and go home for the New Year’s Holidays; hey, stranger things have happened.

**** You’d have to be a huge risk-lover to bet against a Prime Minister Fukuda.

In Mr. Ozawa’s Defense: The DPJ’s China Ties Have a History

[DPJ] President Kan and Others Meet Hu Jintao, Chinese Vice President

Chinese Vice President Hu Jintao, who is visiting Japan, met President Kan, Secretary-General Hata and other leaders of the new Democratic Party on the 22nd. Vice President Hu proposed that “in line with the inter-party exchange with the Democratic Party up till now, [we] would like to have an official inter-party exchange with the new Democratic Party as well,” and President Kan agreed with enthusiasm, saying that “we have received a very welcome present five days before the new merger conference*.” (22 April 1998)

The history of the DPJ’s relationship with China is chronicled here, an attention that no other country receives**. What the first item shows, more than anything, is that official ties with the Chinese Communist Party go back to the beginning of the DPJ in its current reincarnation and beyond. In fact, the second item in the China archives, a report on the inaugural conference of the new DPJ, made into the China archives only because the people handling public communications believed that CCP Vice President Hu and Italian Prime Minister Prodi’s messages (Mr. Prodi, a head of government, sent a videotaped message, while Mr. Hu merely sent the customary telegram) were the only overseas messages worthy of mention.

The most recent December visit by 44 DPJ Diet members led by party leader Ichirō Ozawa had been in the works for months itself*** as the second meeting of the Japan-China (DPJ/CCP) "Exchange and Discussion Mechanism", which had held its inaugural session on 16 January of this year in Tokyo. The Mechanism, or the concept behind it, had been proposed originally in December 2005 by Seiji Maehara as DPJ President, and officially agreed to on 4 July 2006 between a DPJ delegation led by Mr. Ozawa and President Hu****. The visit, in other words, was one more significant step in the development of public diplomacy efforts by the DPJ that stretches back more than a decade. The timing may have been unfortunate, and the DPJ could have cut back some more on the size of the delegation, but it could claim to have planned out the itinerary long before the LDP made clear its intention of extending the current Diet session, perhaps even before the hiatus arising from Prime Minister Abe’s tragic-comedic demise had unexpectedly forced the Diet to continue meeting so late in the year.

The substance of the DPJ’s approach to China has been similarly consistent. The DPJ sees strong relationships with China and the U.S. as being equally important to Japan. Its views on China are broadly similar to the most liberal elements of the LDP. It is sympathetic to China’s position on history issues, to the point where it has implicitly blamed Japanese authorities when popular enmity spilled over into violence during the 2004 Asia Cup Soccer Finals in China*****. It will respond strongly when China trespasses on Japanese sovereignty, as in the case of the 2002 police intrusion into the Japanese Consulate-General in Shenyang, or the clandestine trespassing of a Chinese submarine in Japanese territorial waters******. This respect for sovereignty cuts both ways. The DPJ respects China’s position on Tibet and has responded to a Chinese complaint over JDP relationships with the Dalai Lama by dismissing them as “the private activities of a small number of Diet members”*******. On the other hand, although the DPJ also adheres to the One-China policy, it has supported the issuing of a visa to China nemisis Lee Teng-Hui on humanitarian grounds. All in all, the DPJ has been consistent on humanitarian concerns, as can be seen in the broader response to the treatment of North Korean refugees in China.

Although the DPJ has expressed mild concern about the Chinese military buildup and has sought greater (mutual) transparency, overall, it sees broadly consonant interests between the two countries in most areas, from protecting the environment to maintaining the security of the sea lanes. It is obvious that it is this mutually beneficial relationship that it seeks to enhance through the Mechanism. Many of the harsher words from the DPJ came while Mr. Maehara, who has stronger national security concerns than most, was Minister of Defense in the DPJ shadow cabinet and later President, but it is notable that he was the one who put forth the proposal for a formalized dialogue that came to fruition after Mr. Ozawa took over. Besides, those were the times of much difficulty between Japan and China, and some of it was clearly China’s fault. The past couple of years have seen major efforts on the Chinese side as well to ease and eliminate sources of tension********. That in itself is enough to justify the benignity of the agenda for the most recent trip********.

So, mea culpa for calling it a photo-op. In my defense, the media itself has been quite vague about the purpose of the visit, not to mention the broader and deeper background. Here, I am tempted, as I have done here, to blame a media that resents an unsympathetic Mr. Ozawa. But it is as likely, and I suspect more so, to be the result of poor public communications that allowed the issue to framed as the appropriateness of the DPJ flying off en masse to China in the midst of the struggle in the Diet, as well as the public domain, over the refueling resumption bill, Japan’s role in the regional conflicts, and more broadly Japan’s security needs*********. And the unwillingness, or inability, of the DPJ to put forth a viable alternative to standing government policy had surely added to the doubts.

* The 1998 merger formalized the relationship that had brought together the old DPJ and three other center, left-center parties at the beginning of the same year. Ichirō Ozawa’s New Frontier Party merged into the DPJ in 2003.

** The US (米国) gets 1008 hits on the DPJ news file, almost twice as much as China (中国) does. But news on the US does not have a dedicated server file that allows browsers to access the “Best Hits” directly from a China page linked to a China icon on every DPJ webpage.

*** As late as October, Mr. Ozawa was still talking about a 1000-strong delegation, according to this item.

**** See this and this.

***** See here

****** See this and this on the Shenyang intrusion, and this on the Chinese submarine.

******* See this.

******** I believe that this became official policy after the 2005 flare-up against Japan. The violent and out-of-control demonstrations showed the potential dangers to domestic stability of the combination of their perception of Koizumi’s response to history issues and their own anti-Japanese inoculation. See this for the DPJ response of a careful calibration of sovereignty concerns and its own take on history issues. I do believe that Mr. Ozawa should have brought it up during the meetings, if he didn’t. In any case, a full rendering of the discussions should be laid out for the Japanese public. That is the least that the DPJ could do to justify the absence of the oft-absent Mr. Ozawa and his entourage during what appears to be a crucial turning point in the political battle over the refueling resumption bill.

********* The LDP did not work this angle too heavily because it had to consider the possibility of Prime Minister Fukuda also going to Beijing during the Diet session. This should have made it easier for the DPJ to have framed the issue more to its liking. I suspect that the failure had to do as much with the lack of internal communication as the result of Mr. Ozawa’s imperious incommunicativeness as incompetence in the party machinery.

---

My thanks to Tobias for alerting me to the potential of the DPJ website.

Are Mssrs. Watanuki and Maehara Abandoning the Peace Boat Because They Read My Blog?

Fat chance. In fact, strains in the opposition’s support for Ichirō Ozawa’s extreme hard-line on the refueling resumption bill had already begun to surface when Yukio Hatoyama, ex-DPJ leader and Mr. Ozawa’s co-deputy, indicated* that he could support putting the bill to a vote in the Upper House (instead of (make-believe) running out the clock and facing down Prime Minister Fukuda). Now, a couple of more serious cracks have emerged as two opposition leaders aired their dissatisfaction yesterday (5 December).

Opposition micro-party leader Tamisuke Watanuki** gave a press conference and according to the Asahi said, “Unless we reach a conclusion [on the refueling resumption bill], we will be ignoring the people. [The DPJ] says that [the Upper House, where the bill has been forwarded,] will only hold sessions on the regularly scheduled days, but think how much we waste if we extend the Diet session for a single day?”

Now Mr. Watanuki may have an extra axe to grind, because according to this report, his People’s New Party are mad at the DPJ because the latter is not forthcoming in coordinating support for the next election. Besides, he hasn’t quite come out in favor of the bill itself. But the same day, the pro-defense Seiji Maehara, another Ozawa co-deputy and DPJ ex-leader, revealed his dilemma in a talk he gave in the Diet building, saying, in report from the Asahi, “If we gave up and didn’t extend the extraordinary Diet session, the activities in the Indian Ocean will face a long interruption. Our party will be in trouble if we are criticized for this. (They’ll ask) if we are considering the national interest? I don’t know how I will be able to make election campaign speeches.”***

Whatever their real views are, these men have gauged the public sentiment, as has Mr. Fukuda in making up his mind to re-extend the Diet session and exercise the supermajority override in the Lower House if necessary (if this report is to be believed). Now I’m pretty sure that the Prime Minister had intended all along to do that. But it’s significant that he (or his handlers) is now informing the public. It is even more extraordinary that Mssrs. Watanuki and Maehara are going public as well; it’s their way of saying, Ozawa isn’t listening.

Today, Mr. Ozawa and his entourage leave for the Beijing photo-op. So I guess my question is, did the emperor pack any clothes?

* Reported here, and commented briefly in the third footnote of this post

** Mr. Watanuki’s heart, if not his soul, still belongs to the LDP. It is important to remember that Mr. Watanuki never believed that Prime Minister Koizumi would call a snap election in 2005 after the Upper House voted down his Post Office privatization bill. If Mr. Watanuki had known how things would turn out, he － or Shizuka Kamei for that matter － would never have forced a showdown.

*** Mr. Maehara also stated, “It’s important to enhance the status of the UN, but we should not take the position that Japan will not act if there is no UN resolution whatever the case may be.”

Ichirō Ozawa’s Photo-Op in China Displays His Weaknesses

Befitting a top disciple of Kakuei Tanaka, who as Prime Minister reestablished diplomatic relationships with China, Ichirō Ozawa has long been known as a Sinophile*. So it is no surprise for him to be seen hopping on a plane every once in a while to visit his Old Friends there. Now 44 Diet members and a gaggle of lesser lights as an entourage seem a little too much, but it is hard to begrudge his first real victory procession since the July Upper House election. Besides, this was supposed to be the off-season between the post-election extraordinary Diet session, when housekeeping matters as well as the expiration of the counter-terrorism act and other pressing needs would be taken care of in a matter of weeks, and the January commencement of the regular session where the FY 2008 budget, taxes, and other weightier matters would be taken up through the early summer. Besides, the DPJ claimed, the LDP had already given the green light.

But that was then. The extraordinary session, if the DPJ hardliners have their way, will drag on all the way into mid-January. At that point, if the ruling coalition exercises its Lower House supermajority to extend the refueling extension bill and the DPJ implausibly manages to force a snap election, (or slightly more plausibly, the LDP believes and can convince junior Coalition partner New Kōmeitō to believe that the DPJ has committed so many blunders that their polls show them that there will be few if any better opportunities to call one,) it will be another month before the Diet can be summoned for its annual regular session and the new Lower House is up and running again. This means that there will only one-and-a-half months instead of the customary two-and-a-half to pass the budget (a delay would be inconvenient, but there are rules in place to deal with it) and extend time-limited legislation (most importantly special tax measures, which typically lapse as of the fiscal year (1 April-31 March)’s end), and if possible pass all the budget-related bills**. And to do all this with a split Diet at that. The electorate, regardless of individual positions on the refueling extension, is not going to like that***.

In short, the opposition must demonstrate its sense of urgency, while dragging its feet as surreptitiously as possible. Any action that runs counter to this imperative must have a huge upside if it is to be undertaken. And taking Thursday and Friday off to go to Beijing for a three-day photo-op is not****.

Seriously, what is Mr. Ozawa’s entourage going to achieve in those three days? Joint development agreement on the East China gas fields? Get the Chinese to turn the screw on North Korea on behalf of the abductees and their families? As if the Chinese authorities would do something to piss off the Fukuda administration so that Tarō Asō could take a crack at offing the Prime Minister?) Friday is a relatively slow day in the Diet (although committees, even the plenary, have held Friday sessions), but a lot of work gets done/committees hold lots of meetings on Thursdays.

The LDP will not make too much of this; Mr. Fukuda must make his own trip with his own team (fewer Diet members, but a good number of Cabinet Ministers and their subordinates) in January, so they don’t want to say anything now that will be thrown back at them. They don’t need to; in politics, own goals have a way of repeating themselves, as the LDP painfully learned with Shinzō Abe at the helm.

Finally, this incident highlights three of Mr. Ozawa’s most serious weaknesses. For one thing, he is not a good debater. He does not have the patient wonkishness of a Kaoru Yosano, the acidulous wits of a Naoto Kan, or the sound-bite sensibilities of a Junichirō Koizumi. He is at his best, if you can call it that, when he can simply intimidate and hold forth; bluster his way through. He is Shintarō Ishihara without his intelligence.

How much of this personal flaw is due to a second weakness, his asocial personality (anecdotes from Kōzō Watanabe and other associates of his reinforce this impression from his public appearances or lack thereof), or the other way around is open to debate. What is obvious is that he does his best to avoid all public forums, except set pieces, where his lack of command over policy details as well as the give and take of political discourse does not show.

These two explain the origins of his disdain, conscious and unconscious, for the visible political process in the Diet, the give-and-take, which in turn explains why he did not see the need to rethink his victory procession to Beijing.

And the third? His inability to take counsel, also related to the first two, that kept his acolytes and his DPJ rivals from forcing him to rethink, at a minimum, his itinerary and retinue.

* The latest MS Word believes that there is no such word as Sinophile It thoughtfully suggests as an alternative Sinophobe, in my view not the best way to convince the Chinese authorities to help Microsoft deal with its intellectual property issues.

** The last item is less inconvenient than the tax measures and other legislation that, like Cinderella’s entourage, expire automatically. The execution of individual budget items can be delayed, many for months, if need be.

*** Yukio Hatoyama, who makes up for his lack of charm with a healthy load of common sense, the yin to his brother’s yang, has indicated that he might be willing to support an Upper House vote on the refueling resumption act instead of just waiting for the 60-day limit to lapse. It remains to be seen how many of his DPJ colleagues realize that if there is going to be a snap election being fought on account of an override vote, it is better that the DPJ not be blamed for an extra month of delay that forces a delay of the more urgent, annual business that must be taken care of before the end of FY 2007, i.e. 31 March 2008.

**** They are coming back on Saturday. When I wrote this, I had mistakenly thought the 6th was Friday.

Weird Poll Numbers on Refueling Bill from Asahi

On the latest Asahi “random sample” telephone poll (Dec.1-2; numbers in parenthesis from previous Nov.3-4 poll):

The online article provides the following numbers:

1. Resuming the refueling operations: necessary 44(43)%, unnecessary 44(41)%
2. Refueling resumption bill: support 36(35)%, oppose 43(43)%
3. Using the supermajority override in case the bill is voted down in the Upper House: appropriate 46%, inappropriate 37% (appears to be new question)

Hard to make sense out of the relationship between points 1 and 2. However, the battlefront appears to have moved only slightly in the face of all the stench emanating from Takemasa Moriya and defense dealer Yamada Yōkō and their environs. The article reports that 25% of those opposed to the bill found the override “appropriate”. This should give Ichiro Ozawa and his 50-strong entourage something to think about on their TGIF, weekend photo-op in Beijing (a reminder, by the way, from Chinese authorities that the Fukuda administration － the Prime Minister is due for a newly routine*, confirmative visit in January － is not the only game in town).

The headline of the article reads:

LDP, DPJ Neck-and-Neck at 32% If Lower House Proportional Seats Voting Now

Asked their preference for the go-to party for the next administration, 37% opted for the LDP while 36% chose the DPJ. But in the regular questions, support for the Fukuda administration (support 44%, not support 36%) as well as for the LDP (31%) and DPJ (23%) remained unchanged**. In any case, only 36% want an early snap election, while 55% oppose it.

The collective message from the Asahi-poll-responsive public***:

We’ve already made up our minds and we think passing the refueling bill by any means is sort of okay. In any case, it’s not that a big deal so we don’t want you guys going to the mattresses over it. (from here on, I am sort of speculating)In fact, if you have any time left after you - yes, you Mr.. Ozawa, you, Mr. Kōmura, and yes, of course you, Mr. Fukuda - pay your respects to Chinese leaders while our Diet is in session, we want you to look at more important stuff like all the time-limited tax measures that expire as of the end of this fiscal year (31 March), and for the long-term, to start talking seriously about the financial viability of the public pension and health systems and more broadly the public finances. We could go on, but you know the laundry list. A little statecraft, please; we are watching you.

* Prime Minister Abe flying to Beijing (and stopping over at Seoul) was a novelty. Prime Minister Fukuda’s trip is merely the continuation of a routine resumed, like the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. The only cloud on the horizon seems to be the disagreement over the East China Sea gas fields. I’m beginning to think that a deal can be struck, and that an agreement that keeps Chinese and Japanese nativists at bay is at least plausible. I’ll post it if I can put more focus into the particulars of a possible deal. But otherwise, don't put much meaning into the visit. Or Mr. Ozawa's.

** These numbers do support my contention that the LDP and DPJ own a third and one-fourth/fifth respectively and are fighting it out for the floater one-third.The New Kōmeitō, the Japan Communist Party and the micros account for the remainder of the committed electorate.

*** Don’t you wish that all the media polls asked the same questions so that we could compare them? That could make way for a whole slew of controlled test.

The DPJ Is Not Going to Summon Naoki Akiyama

Sunday Project, the Old Faithful of political talk shows, produced the Diet affairs committee chairmen from each of the parties*. Most of the talk revolved around the botched attempt at summoning Finance Minister Fukushirō Nukaga to testify under oath. The DPJ chairman gave the following reasons for giving up:

1) Takemasa Moriya, the disgraced MOD ex-Administrative Vice-Minister**, was arrested, making a joint appearance of the two in front of the Upper House Financial Affairs Committee impossible. The DPJ Chairman strongly and repeatedly suggested that the arrest was a plot to avoid the summons.

2) The Japan Communist Party changed its mind***, the People’s New Party also insisted on unanimity, and the DPJ wanted to avoid the public impression that it was conducting a one-party vendetta.****

All the opposition parties claimed that they still wanted the two to testify once Mr. Moriya got out, though short of corroborating evidence, it was hard to see how they would be able to justify this inconsequential “poking at the corners of the multi-tiered meal box” at the tax payers’ expense. It appeared that they intended to blame the second blow-off on the LDP and New Kōmeitō.

The Communist Party chairman managed to throw in some fresh meat by way of allegations of mass corruption, which it hoped to verify by going after Naoki Akiyama, the obscure but reputedly powerful executive director of the Japan-U.S. Center for Peace and Cultural Exchange*****, an institution that brings together on its board of directors many defense tribe Diet members, mainly LDP, but also a couple of independents (thrown out of the LDP for playing Post Office), and one each from the New Kōmeitō, the DPJ, and the People’s New Party. The Communist Party chairman raised allegations in the Asahi and Yomiuri of a 60 million yen slush fund transfer****** from Yamada Yōkō’s U.S. subsidiary******* to the U.S.-Japan Center. The DPJ chairman bravely criticized the Center, but curtly dismissed any prospects for summoning Mr. Akiyama for questioning, given presumed LDP intransigence. He also stated his view that the fix was in and that this whole affair would end with Mr. Moriya and Mr. Moriya only taking a fall********.

I’m not yet sure what to make of all this; all I can say is that the shakaibu(society********* section) reporters are still giving the politics section reporters a good run for the money, which I think means that the public prosecutors are feeding this constituency of theirs. However, I still don’t see a convincing reason to change my call on the refueling bill and its aftereffects, given the DPJ’s apparent reluctance to go after the angle taken up by the Communist Party.

* New Party Nippon was missing, but it only has one Diet seat (in the Upper House) and has formed an official party group jointly with the DPJ and one other nano-party. The individual chairmen’s names have been omitted on this blog because they are irrelevant.

** Allow me to take note of the unintended pun in “vice-minister”.

*** Party HQ reminded its field officers that the Communist Party had been on the short end of this stick before.

**** The Social Democrats, now reduced to near-micro party status, are not represented on the Financial Affairs Committee; and the New Party Nippon is a one-seat nano-party that is part of an official Upper House party grouping.

***** The information on the website is almost exclusively in Japanese only. My guess is that the web site is there mainly to satisfy disclosure requirements as a recipient of public funds.

****** 100 million according to the Yomiuri. The Asahi report, which has 40 million going to Mr. Miyazaki, the ex-Yamada Yōkō executive who broke off in a business dispute to set up Nihon Mirise, appears to be more reliable.

******* This allegation brings the case under the reach of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, without prejudice to the ultimate outcome. According to the Yomiuri report, Mr. Akiyama denied receiving such funds.

******** At this point, the oldest host of a Japanese news show Sōichirō Tawara was not seen to put his chin in his hands, smile winsomely and say, “Do tell”.

********* No, not that kind of “society”.

Finance Minister Nukaga Seems to Be in the Clear and the Refueling Bill Continues on Course for a Supermajority Override

When even the Asahi says (English translation available tomorrow) that forcing Fukushirō Nukaga, the LDP “defense tribe” member and current Finance Minister, to testify under oath in the Upper House is a bad idea, well then, it is a bad idea. The lack of a plausible motive for dissembling about a dinner in honor of James Auer should have set off warning signs in the minds of DPJ leaders. Now, Mr. Nukaga has provided a relatively secure alibi for his presence elsewhere during the said dinner, as well as five of the eight people (not including a hypothetical Mr. Nukaga) corroborating his absence. As if that were not enough, Takemasa Moriya, who gave two extraordinary Yomiuri interviews for a total of seven hours on the 14th and 24th, stated:

“I kept saying, ‘(My memories) may be wrong,’ ‘I don’t want to cause inconvenience.’ But since they insisted, ‘Talk’… (Finance Minister Nukaga, etc. [ed. Akio Kyūma])) said, ‘I didn’t go’, I then became worried that I could have been mistaken.

The public had been led to believe that the DPJ had corroborating testimony on its side. Now, it turns out that what it had all along was a seating diagram and other bits of information coaxed out of Mr. Moriya himself, whose memory appears to be a few megabytes short of my PC. This is not on the order of the fake email that took down then DPJ leader Seiji Maehara, but it will be an embarrassment at best for the DPJ.

One plausible explanation for the DPJ’s continued insistence that Mr. Nukaga be called to testify on 3 December (it claims to want to question Mr. Moriya separately as part of the UH committee proceedings, in jail after he is arrested later today) is that they want to delay deliberations on the refueling bill as much as possible, partly to force the LDP to extend the current Diet session for another 30 days or so, partly because they want as much time as possible to get their own act together on their own ineffectual proposal. I have been surprised that the DPJ does not appear to be going after the allegations of potential influence peddling by Mr. Nukaga coming from Nobumasa Ōta. Perhaps it has good reasons to avoid its 2004 UH candidate Mr. Ōta, whom they pointedly did not endorse for a second try this year. I am also mystified as to why they are not throwing all their resources at attacking the overall procurement process, given the spread of corruption charges beyond the Defense Facilities Administration Agency scandals (2006) that left the MOD itself relatively untouched. Perhaps the DPJ does have something up its sleeve to spring on the unsuspecting LDP － say give names of LDP politicians who were on the take list at Yamada Yōkō and could be shown to have reciprocated with pressure on the bureaucracy － in which case they’re doing a very good job of hiding it*. Barring such surprises though, insisting on questioning Mr. Nukaga is a losing proposition, from which only LDP intransigence that would allow the DPJ to claim they are being forced to give it up so that the business of statecraft can go on can give them a face-saving out.

But so far, this is a mere sideshow blown up to unwarranted proportions. The broader issue of military procurement reform is in the capable hands of Nobutaka Machimura Chief Cabinet Secretary, though the formidable defense otaku and Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba will surely play a major role in the process. The DPJ needs to play a critical, but constructive, role here if it is to be seen as the reasonable, responsible party capable of taking the reins from the ruling coalition.

As for the main event politically, that is, the refueling bill, my assessment here remains unchanged, that a supermajority override and a motion of some kind, more specifically a censure vote, is a done deal; unless, of course, the opposition loses its nerve and forgoes the motion. After all, there will be few, if any, better occasions for the Fukuda administration to test the waters of supermajority override than a measure that has a modest majority or a sizable plurality (depending on which poll you believe) of support among a relatively informed and also relatively indifferent public. That way, you can avoid any risk of setting off an unforeseen catastrophe that would － admittedly in the most implausible of circumstances － force the Prime Minister to call a snap election** that the ruling coalition is sure to lose. And pulled off successfully, like most things, it will be easier the second time around and beyond.

*There’s potential blowback at Ichiro Ozawa, who received from Yamada Yōkō (and has now returned) almost three times as much political funds than Mr. Nukaga did. This is reminiscent of the political financing reporting controversy, which, among other things, revealed a string Mr. Ozawa’s real estate acquisitions with political funds, as well as a resurrection of the mysterious transfer of funds to Mr. Ozawa’s political coffers just before his Liberal Party was merged into the DPJ (2003), as I posted here. Having someone who embodies the old-school LDP at the helm has a downside.

**There is some talk from the LDP, some of them in positions of responsibility, about an early snap election following a censure motion. I have no access to those people, but I think that they are blowing smoke. The public will not like being asked for a new four-year mandate on the basis of a difference of opinion on a matter as esoteric and other-worldly as “right thing to do” around the Afghan war zone, so the chances of losing the two-thirds majority will be even higher. Mr. Ozawa would exit the scene, since there is little chance of the DPJ winning more seats than the LDP (the new, lower bar of success for the DPJ), but that would be a mixed blessing, and far from the clear upside that the LDP needs to justify taking a plunge.

Then what is the purpose of all the talk? Some of it could be genuine fear that public opinion might turn against them if they exercise the supermajority. But I doubt it, given the peripheral nature of the issue to the real concerns of the public. More importantly, I believe that there are at least a couple of matters motivating the party leadership to do it:

1) Keep the coalition members, most notably New Kōmeitō, in line. There is nothing an incumbent likes less than an early election, and the NK is particularly wary of going to the Sōkagakkai so soon after the September Upper House election, moreover after an override vote on an issue that does not have the full-hearted support of its rank-and-file.

2) Keep the DPJ on its toes. That helps in several ways, like tempting the DPJ to overplay its hand, which it is doing on the Auer-dinner, he-said, he-said trivia.

DPJ Hopes Finance Minister Nukaga Comes Through for Them

Prime Minister wannabe Fukushirō Nukaga is a former Defense Minister (when MOD was still the Self-Defense Agency) and member in good standing of the Japanese defense community. He is now Minister of Finance, a diminished but still powerful portfolio, in the Fukuda Cabinet. He also plays golf, and eats out. All this has brought him – merely allegedly in one case – into the company of Yamada Yōkō and the people embroiled in the MOD scandals. The thinking of the DPJ is that if they can bring this Cabinet member down, they will be able to sink the refueling bill, the Fukuda Cabinet, and the LDP in a snap election forced by an Upper House censure vote.

Mr. Nukaga entered the picture when Takemasa Moriya, the now-disgraced former MOD Administrative Vice-Minister, testified in the Diet under oath that he went to a dinner held for James Auer, a former military intelligence officer, Pentagon official and prominent Japan hand, and that Mr. Nukaga (and the hospitalized ex-MOD Minister Fumio Kyuma) was there as well as Motonobu Miyazaki (CEO of Yamada Yōkō split-off Nihon Mirise), the main character of this saga and now criminal suspect. Mr. Nukaga, Mr. Miyazaki, and, most importantly, Mr. Auer have all denied attending the said dinner*. By his own account, Mr. Nukaga has known Mr. Miyazaki for several years, once received him in his Diet office, and once played golf with him (and paid 20,000 yen out of his own pocket) at a golf club affiliated with Yamada Yōkō.

Between 2002 and 2007, Mr. Nukaga sold 2.2 million yen worth of fund raising party tickets to Yamada Yōkō, all of which he returned after the scandals broke. He has denied receiving any political funds in the form of donations. He also received 200,000 yen as part of the invitation to the wedding of the daughter of the Yamada Yōkō owner – he has not been personally implicated in the scandal – and sent in his stead his wife, who gave the same amount as a wedding gift.

These Yamada Yōkō/Miyazaki related revelations have created considerable embarrassment for Mr. Nukaga. However, all of them, to the extent admitted by Mr. Nukaga, as well as the alleged dinner honoring Mr. Auer, are par for the course for a politician of Mr. Nukaga’s background. It is only with hindsight that they have become a matter of interest for the DPJ and the media. Likewise his links to the Japan-U.S. Center for Peace and Cultural Exchange and its executive director Naoki Akiyama (again, golf). So far, the DPJ has turned up more smoke and mirrors than smoking gun.

More troublesome for the Finance Minister is the latest allegation, this time coming from Nobumasa Ōta, a former JSDA fast-track official. According to Mr. Ōta, in 2003, when he was the head of the Sendai branch of the Defense Facilities Administration Agency, Mr. Nukaga applied pressure through Mr. Moriya to include a Sendai construction company in the list of eligible bidders at the branch. Mr. Ōta’s background lends a measure of instant credibility to his charge. Even if his allegations are true, they would still likely fall short of a criminal indictment** of a sitting Cabinet Minister and defense establishment member, a turn of events that would be as good or better than what I believed to be the minimum necessary for stopping the OEF-MIO refueling resumption bill. However, it will not require a criminal indictment to force Mr. Nukaga’s resignation and discredit the LDP and the Fukuda administration, which, for electoral and internal reasons, is vastly more beneficial to the DPJ than taking down the refueling bill. Influence peddling is something that anyone can understand and rally against.

But what are the chances of Mr. Ōta’s charges sticking? In my view slim, not least because everybody, including the official who allegedly told Mr. Ōta of the pressure through Mr. Moriya, are denying that it ever happened. So, unless Mr. Ōta or the DPJ comes up with independent corroborating information, the matter will remain a case of he hearsays/they say. In which case, Mr. Nukaga and the Fukuda administration will weather this attack – if not without being a little diminished, since there is no way that Mr. Ōta will retract his allegations.***. Still, the issue bears watching, because the DPJ may just have something up its sleeve.

*It is somewhat mystifying to me that the DPJ continues to bark up this particular tree. I see no plausible reason for these people to need to lie about this particular allegation. Is someone leading the DPJ, once again, on a wild goose chase? What does Seji Maehara think?

** You are warned that I’m writing this down without doing the usual fact-checking. Specifically, I’d have to hit the casebooks to be sure that Mr. Nukaga’s alleged action does not constitute an exercise of his authority as Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary at the time. There are also statute of limitation considerations that turn on the existence of specific quid pro quo for the alleged action, which in turn entails questions of fact that I can only speculate about.

*** Mr. Ōta does have some substantial downside, including, most importantly in the eyes of the public, the fact that he ran for an Upper House seat in 2004 (but not 2007) as a DPJ candidate. The LDP will play on that and other matters around Mr. Ōta. A smear campaign? The pox-on-all-houses tabloid media will do that for them. But this will definitely not hurt Mr. Ōta’s career as a freewheeling talking head and blogger extraordinaire and indefatigable chatroom operator.

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

A note on Prime Minister Fukuda’s redeye shuttle to the U.S.

On the surface, it looks like a return to the good old days, where the first item on the new Prime Minister’s diplomatic agenda would be the tributary visit to the President of the United States. Shinzo Abe famously bucked tradition (with President Bush’s blessing, no doubt) with his junket through Beijing and Seoul for what turned out to be the apogee of his short, elliptical reign, but Mr. Fukuda has managed to choose the most awkward of political times domestically, in the midst of a raging Defense Ministry scandal that has caused serious (though by no means fatal) damage to efforts to extent MIO refueling operations, to revive the time-honored tradition. And to what specific end beyond the customary assurance?

For one, the ruling coalition has used the visit as a not insignificant prop in flipping the refueling bill to the Upper House. A saving of a few days, only to be lost as the Diet dawdles in his absence? Perhaps. Still, it helped to remind the Japanese public that the issue continues to be an important item in the political quid pro quo of the asymmetrical military alliance. It would also reinforce the resolve of any members of the ruling coalition flinching at the blowback from the MOD scandal. (At a minimum, Mssrs. Moriya and Miyazaki will be found guilty, Yamada Yoko and Nihon Mirise will both lose the business, and, hopefully, the procurement system will be reformed, with potential problems for U.S. firms under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.)

But what happens when the night meets the morning sun, when President Bush must consider the de-listing of North Korea from the roster of state supporters of terrorism? De-listing without meaningful progress on the abductees would be a huge political embarrassment for Mr. Fukuda. But the Bush administration cannot keep playing a good-cop, bad-cop routine with the Japan forever. And a modus vivendi between the Bush administration and Kim Jong Il including the de facto recognition of the not-quite-ready-for-primetime germs of a nuclear arsenal in suspended animation for North Korea (a regime underwritten - it is becoming increasingly obvious - financially and economically by South Korea and China) looks at least as likely to me as when I first began thinking about outcomes that would have North Korea keeping the fruits of its nuclear weapons program, though not the program itself. And de-listing without full normalization should be an integral part of such an understanding.

This will be papered over during the meeting, but will come back to haunt as North Korea inches forward with a view to maximizing returns on minimal efforts. The never-ending delay of Japanese action on the necessities of U.S. troops realignment will also be given perfunctory attention, and will not matter much in the next year or so. Economic issues will hardly figure at all, with U.S. beef, perhaps, a visible but minor sideshow.

ADD: “[T] he good old days, where the first item on the new Prime Minister’s diplomatic agenda would be the tributary visit to the President of the United States.”

Really? Maybe I’ve embarrassed myself here. But it sure seemed that way, so I wrote it without the usual fact checking.

---

I’m not quite sure why this original version of Carole King’s early work haunts me so. What is it about the artless, awkward, faintly off-key Shirelles, lumpy look and all, that draws me in? I know that it began fairly late in my life, and it gets worse as the years go by. Perhaps it reminds me of my own artless, awkward, faintly off-key adolescence, and how far I have come, or gone. Was I alone, though, as much as I had believed then? Who was I unknowingly united with in our bumbling solitudes? Do I know you now?

Sōkagakkai Members Lie and Other Odds and Ends from the Latest Public Opinion Polls

Yomiuri releases its latest public opinion poll (taken 10-11 November) and the headline is: Majority favor refueling mission for first time(English version); 給油継続「賛成」５１％、の過半数…読売調査Japanese version. I’ll get to that later, but what caught my eye was this:

Q. Which party do you support now? Name one.

A. … New Kōmeitō: 2.7% …

Now the NK regularly pulls in 8 million votes, give or take a few hundred thousand. That’s about 8% of the adult population, and there can’t be that many non-Sōkagakkai members who vote for the NK and vice versa. (Why vote NK when you can vote for the real thing?) So there must be a lot of Sōkagakkaimembers lying about their choices or disproportionately refusing to respond. For the poll, as usual, 3,000 randomly sampled eligible voters (60.33% response rate; par for the course) were interviewed directly. It appears that many people still do not want to reveal their affiliation with that lay Nichiren sect.

Turning to the big picture, the support numbers for the LDP (34.3%, down from 37.8%), DPJ (22.5%, up from 18.0%), and No Preference (36.0%) (as well as the 60.3% response rate) reaffirm the basic electoral framework: support base among active voters for the LDP hovering around the mid-thirties and the DPJ around the low twenties, with the swing vote in the mid-thirties. Put the real NK supporters on top of the LDP base, and you can see that the DPJ has a huge task ahead if it is to topple the ruling coalition in any Lower House election. Since the DPJ party platform is more a matter of not being the LDP than the result of any meaningful ideological distinctions (which is why it manages to swing wildly on, for example, national security issues without falling apart), another massive leadership failure of Abe administration proportions is needed to pull off it off. It is no wonder that Ichiro Ozawa has scaled back DPJ ambitions for the next Lower House election to what he calls the “third best strategy”, i.e. winning more seats than the LDP.

Support for the Fukuda Cabinet has dropped from 59.1% to 52.2%. This is in marked contrast to the FNN-Sankei poll (10,11 November; headlined内閣支持率４１・１％に急落　世論調査 Cabinet Support Rate Suddenly Drops to 41.1% - note the contrast with the Yomiuri headline), where it registered an even more precipitous fall from 55.3% to 41.1%. I have no way of proving it, but I think that this difference has everything to do with Yomiuri’s strong support for the Grand Coalition (though it could not thoroughly convince the public that it was a good thing) and Sankei’s more skeptical approach to the issue and its generally more hawkish views (in contrast to those of Prime Minister Fukuda himself). Sampling may be random, but the response definitely is not, and the media doing the polling is responsible for that.

On the OEF-MIO refueling resumption bill, despite the controversy over allegations that the fuel oil was diverted to the Iraqi War, not to mention the ongoing scandal at the Ministry of Defense over bribery/procurement suspicions, both polls recorded small gains for the ruling coalition, giving majority support (Yomiuri 50.6%, Sankei 51.8%) for resumption, though substantial opposition remained (Yomiuri 40.3%, Sankei 38.1%). I believe that this confirms my earlier assumptions that the electorate has more or less collectively made up its mind on the issue, and that talk from the LDP for a 60%/two-thirds majority for a supermajority override vote and the DPJ that a Lower House override vote plus an upper House censure motion equals snap election is just that: talk.

Media Talk about a Snap Election Should Die Down Any Minute… If It Hasn’t Already

And, like the also-ran Kyojingun/Giants in the off-season (the best free agents can look to the majors for more money, as well as added perks to ease the transition), there's little more that the Yomiuri can do to flog that half-dead horse of a Grand Coalition. The time for the big-time political game has passed, and both sides are nursing a variety of hurts; they will now play the statecraft game with the political financing (reporting) reform and other items of lesser import.

I believe even more strongly now that the refueling extension bill supermajority override and a subsequent Upper House motion of some kind are a done deal. The JASDF will continue to provide logistic support in Iraq. That is that, and the Japanese public will move on. Prime Minister Fukuda will walk through the next Summit in July, and possibly well beyond, barring catastrophic events - stuff happens, eventually; the DPJ needs to be patient.

What are the prospects for a sh**-fan collision though? For one, the Ministry of Defense needs a serious makeover; the MOD must bring closure to the scandals that revolve around the procurement system. That’s not an easy thing to do, but the good news for the Fukuda Cabinet (and for Japan) is that Defense Minister Ishiba has personally wanted to do it for years. A further silver lining for the administration is that everybody, including people at the dreaded Special Investigation Department at the Public Prosecutors Agency, seems to be talking their heads off, so there’s not likely to be much more in the way of surprise revelations to further deepen the crisis. (If criminal charges are brought against businesses other than the Yamada Yōkō group and Nihon Mirise, all bets are off.)

There’s also what looks at first glance like a delectable target of a Justice Minister who appears to suffer from serious self-awareness deficiencies. Unfortunately for the DPJ, expectations for a Japanese Justice Minister are low. In Japan, the Justice Ministry is where you park a long-serving, nondescript backbencher, the representative of a very junior coalition partner, or someone you need to do a favor on behalf of, and forget about him/her until the next Cabinet reshuffle. The Public Prosecutors Agency, nominally under the Justice Minister’s control, is actually a semi-autonomous institution that will quickly help you lose your Cabinet job if you intervene to exercise your political prerogatives. Instead, my guess is that any decision of serious import that require political determination is run quietly through the Chief Cabinet Secretary and the administrative Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary. Authoritative legal opinions are issued by the highest Japanese bureaucrat, the Director-General of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau. So the U.S. SecretaryAttorney-General the Justice Minister is not. I don’t know what more Kunio Hatoyama can do before he loses his job. But it will be an implosion, not an explosion.

Yōichi Masuzoe, the Health, Labor and Welfare Minister, looks like a better target. Mr. Masuzoe, for all his media-attracting eloquence and formidable intelligence, does not have the executive experience nor appear to have a predilection for high-profile turnaround jobs, and is showing this. He may yet grow into the role; he still seems to be gyrating between belligerent arrogance and abject humility. Still, he - as well as the ruling coalition - will take some serious hits in March when the promissory notes that then Prime Minister Abe guaranteed on the 50,000,000 misfiled public pension accounts come due.

But I don't expect the real fireworks to start until well past St. Valentine’s Day, when the Diet must also deal with taxes and major tax-related issues such as the funding of the public pension system, as well as a myriad of major legislative initiatives.

ADD: Thank you, MTC, for the correction.

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This post looks in essence like an earlier one of mine. Perhaps it is an unconscious excuse to write about the tragic-comic Justice Minister(s). For Mr. Hatoyama is a fascinating case of a legacy Diet member, possibly the most blue-blooded and glitteriest of all at that, going astray.

How Many People Would Notice if No Laws Are Passed During This Diet Session?

If the current extraordinary Diet session, instead of being extended for 35 days, had lapsed today, the amendment to the law that expands assistance to victims of disasters would have been the only piece of legislation achieved, and yet another of my predictions, that the ruling coalition would wind up exercising the supermajority override vote on the new OEF-MIO refueling bill, would have failed to come true. But otherwise, would the Japanese national well-being be measurably affected for better or worse?

Yes, the media would be greatly concerned and would trot out an endless array of political commentators and other public figures to condemn the waste of public money and neglect of the public good and propose all manners of remedies, and intersperse them with interviews of the common folk dutifully expressing their displeasure at the political tomfoolery. But who other than the special interests involved (here I am not passing judgment on the validity of the respective claims on legislative attention and the public coffers), as well as alliance minders, would not be able then to afford to forget the matter, at least until the Diet resumes in the next regular session, sometime in January? And how many of those special interests would actually be worse off as the result of neglect? After all, there are many shades of desirability and necessity.

In fact, there appear to be few legislative needs that must be taken care of now. If no other laws are passed in the now customary long autumn session, many will be disappointed, some will be elated, but the net impact on the national well-being will be negligible. The LDP and DPJ are dithering in no small part because they can afford to. They are like two stags circling each other hoping that the other will lose nerve and back off. On the other hand, they have been working out compromises on a number of issues minor and not so minor - here, I am thinking of the reform of the political financing reporting system – and several of them appear ensured to end up in actual legislation, while the refueling renewal bill is highly likely to be the subject of the first supermajority override in Japanese history.

Yet there had been a lot of noise about the Diet being in session for a whole month without passing a single law (till yesterday) - a noise so loud, in fact, that a couple of old men (whom every news outlet tabloid and non- except the Yomiuri group named as Yomiuri's power behind the throne Tsuneo Watanabe and former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori) convinced two other old men to get together to agree to a Grand Coalition or whatever they agreed to do but could not. And indeed there is nothing inherently wrong with the two majority parties uniting to form a single government, or a newspaper editorializing in favor of such an arrangement. (Japan got along quite comfortably for quite a while after the two conservative parties got together in 1955 to form an enduring absolute majority.)

However, when a newspaper not only advocates the political arrangement as such, but also uses its regular reporting to effect such an outcome, and more seriously actively works behind the scenes to push the agenda, then the newspaper itself becomes the news. And not to report such behind-the-scenes action is a form of self-censorship; not the way that the fourth estate is expected to function in a democracy.

Some would bring out a variation of the post-modern argument that there is no "objective viewpoint", while others would use examples such as anti-evolutionists and flat-earthers to endorse the media taking "a stand". And there is some plausibility to the statement that "once you know which way they're leaning it's easy to "tweak" the articles accordingly when reading them". However, these arguments cannot be conducted in the abstract; neither evolution theory nor creationism, for example, provides a valid analogy for a stand one way or other on the far-more debatable refueling operations. And the "tweaking" claim is hard to sustain when the media outlet in question is weeding out inconvenient facts and dressing up the remainder in the guise of straight reporting. Unless you follow the matter with particular attention or are blessed with omniscience, all too often, the best that you can do is to read the editorial, shrug, and say, "Well, Asahi/Yomiuri is saying that because…"

As Shisaku points out here, the bias becomes even more disguised (and selective) when it is filtered through the English-language media. But it is there at the source, which fact should be taken note of, particularly when the matter is of no little import. (Perhaps I should be writing this in Japanese.)

Going back to the mode of interaction between the two major parties, the real test awaits in the regular Diet session that will convene in January and run into the summer months. If nothing is done then, much time-limited legislation, including many temporary tax credits and deductions, will expire and the public will express its very real displeasure. The current extraordinary session is better regarded as the testing grounds for means of cooperation and competition, and even outright confrontation, and the gauging of the public response thereto.