This post is dedicated to Drs. YH and PS and the letters C, O, and H.
Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa’s latest spacewalk at the G7 meeting in Rome—his previous one came at the January 28 Lower House plenary session, where he made 26 acknowledged errors while reading the fiscal statement for the administration—when he fell asleep during the closed meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors and later slobbered through a subsequent press briefing. Widely reputed to have a drinking problem, credible reports have had him in previous administrations showing up late and hung over for the twice-weekly morning Cabinet sessions. In this case in point most likely the consequences of a combination of jet lag, cold medication and, yes, alcohol, his latest travails have forced him to take the day off today (February 17) to seek medical help, while the Lower House shut down work on the budget and budget-related legislation for the day. Regardless of the medical prognosis, only a political miracle will allow the near-terminal Aso administration—the only administration other than the Mori Cabinet to fall to single-digit approval figures in public polls—to keep him on as Finance Minister. I drafted a fairly long post last night on this affair, but it looks trivial and already dated in the light of day—Mr. Nakagawa, detox helps!—so I’ll merely give you a brief rundown of how the story broke in the media.
Two different stories initially came out, one in Japan, the other in the English-language media. The Japanese media wrote up the post-meeting briefing for the Japanese media, some of whom were embedded members of the MOF kisha club while others were correspondents dispatched to Rome or possibly other places in Europe. Although the Finance Minister acted as drunk as a skunk and the Japanese journalist who is not aware of his alleged substance issues is rarer than a dodo-passenger pigeon mix-breed, the Japanese media tiptoed around the matter at first, speculating about things like fatigue and jet lag, while using question marks (Asahi) or a code phrase ろれつが回らない(unable to articulate properly) (Nikkei) or both (Mainichi) to drop a hint to the political cognoscenti (i.e. tabloid readers, bloggers, and chatroom denizens) that there might be more to the story. (Yomiuri kindly decided to be nonjudgmental.) The post-meeting late-afternoon press briefing for the Japanese media by the Finance Minister and the BOJ Governor was preceded by a lunch with the Japanese media and a hour-or-so-long break.
An ABC News blog broke the story overseas with a riff on close-up shots by APTN / AP of Nakagawa nodding off at the meeting. The blogging White House correspondent for ABC News only mentions jet lag, but Sankei brought the two strands together in a story that raised the “drunk” question in conjunction with the “nodding off” issues. Then it was open season as ex-Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori—yes, Mr. Single-Digits— went on national TV on one of those morning wide shows ahead and noted, “I was surprised. (Mr. Nakagawa) is a person who likes alcohol very much, so I’ve often told him to be careful with his alcohol”, intimating in the bargain that he had disagreed with Taro Aso when the latter decided to nominate Nakagawa as Finance Minister.
I do not think that it was a coincidence that none of the postprandial reports from Rome explicitly used the A-word, nor that the Yomiuri was the most reluctant to hint at the issue. Likewise that the Sankei was the first to pop the question and that it bundled it with overseas reports—the shame of it! Although I watch little regular TV programming, I believe that the morning wide shows have helped drive the print media along the narrative.
That’s all for now.
Showing posts with label Yoshirō Mori. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yoshirō Mori. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Monday, December 31, 2007
Yoshirō Mori Prime Minister: Mission Incomplete
You’ve heard about these people at their children’s games, haven’t you, pleading with the coaches, haranguing the referees, fighting other parents, embarrassing themselves and their kids? And you’ve wondered, haven’t you: what makes them do that?
If news reports are to be believed, ex-Prime Minister Yoshirō Mori has been at it again, pushing a Cabinet remake. Most recently, he had served as the middleman for Tsuneo Watanabe’s efforts to craft a Grand Coalition by engineering a meeting between Yasuo Fukuda, Prime Minister, and Ichirō Ozawa, DPJ leader and political mastermind. A few months before that, he had made sure that LDP faction leaders, as well as his own faction, would be united behind Mr. Fukuda as successor to the failed Shinzō Abe. This in turn was redemption of a rain check of sorts, for he had failed to convince Mr. Abe, who went on to take the Premiership by near-acclaim, to bide his time and let Mr. Fukuda follow Junichirō Koizumi. These and other lesser things Mr. Mori has been able to do through as their big brother in the Seiwakai/Seiwa Seisaku Kenkai, the faction that he once headed and has produced the last four Prime Ministers, beginning with Mr. Mori himself.
Mr. Mori is a very successful man by most accounts. Inheriting his faction from Hiroshi Mitsuzuka (who stepped in as faction leader after the untimely death of Shintarō Abe (Shinzō’s dad), who had received the nod from Fukuda Takeo (Yasuo’s dad), who in turn… but you get the idea) in 1998, he became Prime Minister in 2000. Although his highly unpopular reign lasted little more than a year, he was followed by his faction surrogate Mr. Koizumi, who rode a successful grassroots campaign to an upset victory in 2001. He then retook control of the faction and successfully grew it, until it is now the largest in the LDP.
So here we have an ex-Prime Minister whose brief reign was cut short, not by death or illness or election disaster, but by sheer unpopularity, a miasma of a thousand gaffes and mishaps that seemed to settle on him whenever the media turned their eyes and ears on the bumbling public figure; a still healthy 70 year old, whose entire life had demonstrated a consumptive love of the political game that appeared to be matched only by his disinterest in, or inaptitude for, statecraft. It is no wonder, then, given the lack of finality to his own turn at the pinnacle and no longer allowed to play for himself, that he continues to seek to mold the game to his liking.
There is no way for an outsider to determine the extent of influence that Mr. Mori retains within his faction, but Mr. Koizumi has been enjoying his semiretirement, Mr. Abe is in no position to claim the faction for his own any time soon (it never was his), and the brief leadership of Nobutaka Machimura, seen by many as a stop-gap compromise choice, has been interrupted by his current tenure as Chief Cabinet Secretary. Thus, his power base secure for the foreseeable future, expect more of the same from Mr. Mori. So stay tuned.
If news reports are to be believed, ex-Prime Minister Yoshirō Mori has been at it again, pushing a Cabinet remake. Most recently, he had served as the middleman for Tsuneo Watanabe’s efforts to craft a Grand Coalition by engineering a meeting between Yasuo Fukuda, Prime Minister, and Ichirō Ozawa, DPJ leader and political mastermind. A few months before that, he had made sure that LDP faction leaders, as well as his own faction, would be united behind Mr. Fukuda as successor to the failed Shinzō Abe. This in turn was redemption of a rain check of sorts, for he had failed to convince Mr. Abe, who went on to take the Premiership by near-acclaim, to bide his time and let Mr. Fukuda follow Junichirō Koizumi. These and other lesser things Mr. Mori has been able to do through as their big brother in the Seiwakai/Seiwa Seisaku Kenkai, the faction that he once headed and has produced the last four Prime Ministers, beginning with Mr. Mori himself.
Mr. Mori is a very successful man by most accounts. Inheriting his faction from Hiroshi Mitsuzuka (who stepped in as faction leader after the untimely death of Shintarō Abe (Shinzō’s dad), who had received the nod from Fukuda Takeo (Yasuo’s dad), who in turn… but you get the idea) in 1998, he became Prime Minister in 2000. Although his highly unpopular reign lasted little more than a year, he was followed by his faction surrogate Mr. Koizumi, who rode a successful grassroots campaign to an upset victory in 2001. He then retook control of the faction and successfully grew it, until it is now the largest in the LDP.
So here we have an ex-Prime Minister whose brief reign was cut short, not by death or illness or election disaster, but by sheer unpopularity, a miasma of a thousand gaffes and mishaps that seemed to settle on him whenever the media turned their eyes and ears on the bumbling public figure; a still healthy 70 year old, whose entire life had demonstrated a consumptive love of the political game that appeared to be matched only by his disinterest in, or inaptitude for, statecraft. It is no wonder, then, given the lack of finality to his own turn at the pinnacle and no longer allowed to play for himself, that he continues to seek to mold the game to his liking.
There is no way for an outsider to determine the extent of influence that Mr. Mori retains within his faction, but Mr. Koizumi has been enjoying his semiretirement, Mr. Abe is in no position to claim the faction for his own any time soon (it never was his), and the brief leadership of Nobutaka Machimura, seen by many as a stop-gap compromise choice, has been interrupted by his current tenure as Chief Cabinet Secretary. Thus, his power base secure for the foreseeable future, expect more of the same from Mr. Mori. So stay tuned.
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