Sunday Funnies: I Am Not a Feminist , But…

Anecdotes and selective data to reinforce the prevailing conventional wisdom…it’s what I’ve always railed against when I see it in the mass media. Here’s Kate Harding writing in a similar vein in Salon, on an AP report that claims to have identified “a disturbing trend: Women in the U.S. are drinking more, and drunken-driving arrests among women are rising rapidly while falling among men.” The second part cannot be denied; the first part is… I’d say the jury is out—which is actually Harding’s point.

Which somehow brings me to this NYT report on the new, hybrid jury-judge panel system that has been brought in for criminal trials here. I have a problem with this:

”…opinion polls have shown the Japanese public to be highly skeptical of the jury system, primarily because of deep cultural aversions, including a reluctance to express opinions in public, to argue with colleagues and to question authority.”

Now I know the first part is true, and I’m ready to go along to some extent with the thrust of the assertions in the second part. But are the two, in fact, linked? It sounds vaguely plausible. But do the opinion polls show the linkage? I’d like to see how they do that, because I don’t see a line of questions that tease it out.

Going back to feminism, the same friend who sent me the last article also has been passing around another NYT report, this one about the growing social acceptability of “lavishing adoring (albeit nonsexual) attention on men for a hefty fee” as an occupation for young women. The report goes on to claim:

“[W]ith that line of work, called hostessing, among the most lucrative jobs available to women and with the country neck-deep in a recession, hostess positions are increasingly coveted, and hostesses themselves are gaining respectability and even acclaim. Japan’s worst recession since World War II is changing mores.

Members of the middle-class resorting to the overt use of their sexuality to earn a living in these hard times is not a uniquely Japanese phenomenon, as this Salon report shows, nor is it absolutely gender-specific, as least in the world of TV dramas. But are the increased “respectability” and “acclaim” linked to the current recession? They appears to have far more to do with the more gradual, more enduring emergence of everyman—and woman—as a media force. Some of this new breed of celebrities—such as the tetujinchefs—have seen their fame last much longer than their allotment of 15 minutes. From this perspective, Eri Momoka, the “single mother who became a hostess and worked her way out of penury to start a TV career and her own line of clothing and accessories” is merely the water trade’s variation of the dokusha models, the amateurs who have taken over some of the traditional trendsetting role of entertainers and professional supermodels.

And speaking of the water trade, the report does not explore the world of the celebrity hostess’s cultural ancestors, the geisha, and even the high-class prostitute oiran, European courtesans, and the Classic Greek hetaeras, professionals whose cultural, social and even political influence has been obscured by the multiple filters of Victorian and contemporary sensibilities. Then there are the economics. Do the $100,000 hostesses receive healthcare benefits? Not likely. Pension plans? And who pays for their clothes? Like the geisha, these things add up. And like the professional athlete or the futures trader, old hostesses tend to fade away. Which is where the sugar daddy—again as in the case of the geisha—comes in.

Not that NYT is obliged to explore these avenues. But the stories are there for those who are willing to make the effort. For those who aren’t, there’s always the Case of the Earwax-Cleaning Murder to turn to.

Notes on Tomorrow’s Tokyo Prefectural Assembly Election

The Aso camp has been insistent that it will treat a LDP-Komeito combined majority in tomorrow’s (12 July) Tokyo Prefectural Assembly election as a victory. It has also been downplaying the importance of the election, claiming that it is not a referendum on the Aso administration. Let’s take a look at the first point.

Currently, the LDP and Komeito hold 48 and 22 seats respectively for a total of 70 seats; they must keep 64 seats (out of the 127 seats) to maintain a joint majority. Let’s assume that Komeito with its bedrock Sokagakkai support keeps 22 seats. This means that the LDP takes the whole 6-seat hit, which leaves it with 42 seats. Now, assume that the DPJ keeps its 33 seats while capturing the 3 seats the national coalition partners lose, as well as the 2 currently vacant seats. This means that everyone else holds on to what it has—Communists 13, Tokyo Consumers’ Network 4, Social Democrats 0, others 1, and independents 3—and the DPJ winds up with 127 – 64 – (13 + 4 + 1 + 3) = 52, a 10-seat advantage over the LDP, with 42. Now, the Komeito may win or lose a few seats of its own, and the Communists may grab a few more on their own, God knows from whom. Still, the message remains clear: in any scenario where the smaller parties maintain their ground—a narrow LDP-Komeito victory over the DPJ is highly likely to leave the LDP badly outdistanced by the DPJ on a one-on-one basis*.

This has serious implications in a national election. Note that the 127-seat Tokyo Prefectural Assembly electoral districts consist of 2 eight-seat districts, 3 six-seaters, 3 five-seaters, 6 four-seaters, 5 three-seaters, 16 two-seaters and 7 one-seaters. This means that less than 7% of the seats are contested in first-past-the-stile elections in contrast to the national Lower House election, where the 25 single-seat districts, or almost 60% of the 42 Tokyo seats, will be subject to winner-take-all contests. In short, even a relative modest popular-vote victory can mean a landslide victory for the winner, while votes for smaller parties will be of much less significance in the outcome.

But can the LDP achieve even this modest goal?

The 4-5 July Yomiuri public opinion poll gives the following percentage breakdown of the Tokyo residents’ voting intentions for the 12 July election (2005 poll in parentheses):

DPJ……..29.4 (14.3)
LDP………: 16.9 (25.9)
Komeito….: 5.1 ( 6.7)
JCP……….: 4.5 ( 4.8)
SDP……….: 0.8
No answer : 42.7%

The DPJ beats the LDP and Komeito combined 29.4% to 22.0. This means that even if Komeito successfully throws all the Sokagakkai votes to the LDP in the 23 single- and two-seat districts and the LDP does a better job of splitting its votes between its multiple contenders in the 3-seat and up districts, the LDP has a huge a uphill battle to gain enough seats to maintain a LDP-Komeito joint majority. It looks likely that the LDP and the Komeito will hang together**.

Note also that he DPJ does even better on a question regarding the national Lower House election, at 39.8% to 25.4% (LDP 20.8%, Komeito 4.6%). This is Tokyo, where the voters are fickle, and progressive. But it’s hard to believe that the Aso administration can withstand yet another loss—which, unlike gubernatorial and mayoral elections, cannot be blamed on the candidate—and lead the LDP into the Lower House election.

* There’s also the Tokyo Seikatsusha Nettowaaku, or Tokyo Consumers’ Network. The Network is a political offshoot of the consumers’ cooperative movement consisting mostly of women. It now holds four seats in the Tokyo Prefectural Assembly and—most important for the purposes of this post—supports the DPJ in the national election. It’s not exactly Komeito, but it’s not zero-seat JSDP either, even though it has very low name recognition. If it does well in the Tokyo election, like the vote for the Communists, the results must be seen as yet another sign of dissatisfaction with the status quo, including the DPJ.

** Since nothing notable happened between the weekend Yomiuri poll and my Monday stroll at the train station, I must admit that, unless some Communist supporters are hiding their intent from the pollsters, which is always a possibility, the Communist surge so far exists only in my imagination—and perhaps my hometown, a traditional Communist stronghold. So it’s likely that the support for the DPJ that has been extended to local elections of late is holding firm in Tokyo as well. In the same context, I think that it is significant that 42.7% of the responders showed no preference for any party.

Ozawa Digs in, Complicating the DPJ’s Road to Victory

I had believed for some time that it was more likely than not that Ichiro Ozawa would bow out gracefully before the Lower House election. After all, the only DPJ Diet members speaking up for him were his diehard followers. Even faithful sidekick Yukio Hatoyama had been talking more like a captain going down with his ship than one who intended to bring it back to harbor. But I had forgotten what a contrarian Ozawa had always been; he’s the little boy who’ll do exactly the opposite of what you tell him to do. Now, the odds are surely better than even that he’ll do his damndest to stay the course. And what’s the reason for changing my mind? Because the DPJ put off the public opinion poll that the media had led the public to believe would—channeling Jason Todd—determine Ozawa’s fate.

The poll had already been postponed before in the wake of the indictment of Ozawa’s political aide in the Nishimatsu scandal—reasonable under the circumstances. Ozawa’s explanation this time around was essentially that all the media attention made a reliable poll all but impossible. Unfortunately for him, this all but guarantees that the media’s focus will pounce on the poll with increased fervor once the DPJ actually gets around to doing it. Trust me, someone in the DPJ is going to once again leak the event. Most important for the political game, it will help the LDP cast the Lower House election as a referendum on Ozawa.

Great Giin Senkyo Website

I’ve had too many things going on to post the last couple of days, or even to respond to comments. (Sorry). And I might not surface till the weekend. So instead, I’ll do something far more useful (if you can read Japanese) than inflict my thoughts on you and show you what I came across. It’s a no-frills website that has all sorts of useful data on Japanese politics. Sorry, it’s only in Japanese.

That’s all for now, folks.

The Ideal Boss: from the Meiji Yasuda Poll

Each year, Meiji Yasuda Life polls newly graduating corporate recruits and publishes the results on their web site. The main feature—from the media’s point of view at least—is the list of choice for the ideal boss, male and female. This year’s top ten:

Male:
1.Ichiro, professional baseball player
2.Shinsuke Shimada (comedian, actor, TV/radio show host)
3.Tsutomu Sekine (comedian, actor, TV/radio show host)
4.Tamori (comedian, actor, TV/radio show host)
5.George Tokoro (comedian, entertainer, TV/radio show host)
6.President Obama (has great comedic timing, host of greatest talk show on earth)
7.Tomomitsu Yamaguchi (comedian, actor, TV/radio show host)
8.Shinichi Tsutsumi (actor)
9.Atsuya Furuta (former baseball player, manager, and current commentator)
10.Toru Hashimoto (lawyer, current Osaka Governor).

Female:
1.Miki Maya (actress)
2.Miho Kanno (actress)
3.Ryoko Shinohara (actress)
4.Masami Hisamoto (comedian, actress, TV/radio show host)
5.Makiko Esumi (actress)
6.Hitomi Kuroki (actress)
7.Yuko Ando (TV newscaster)
8.Yuki Amami (actress)
9.Yukie Nakama (actress)
10.Harumi Edo (comedian, actress)

Note that they are almost all media-generated personalities. Even Governor Hashimoto, one of the two politicians on the list, first became famous as a gabby conservative lawyer-talking head on TV before he ran for governor. President Obama’s popularity is also very much that of a media sensation, though it is bound to wane as reality catches up with it: The global and US economies as well as Iran, North Korea and an assortment of international woes will quickly erode his prominence in Japan as well.

Within the parameters of media visibility that determines public taste, there is a clear gender gap. Five of the top ten male bosses are vaudevillians who parlayed their comedic skills into a successful acting—mostly though not exclusively limited to comedic roles but rarely authoritative—and hosting careers. They are of course media creations but, within that world are almost exclusively genuine authority figures, sort of on-stage directors. Even active ballplayer Ichiro’s popularity can be attributed to some extent to the real-world virtual captainship of the national team that the media ascribed to him in the Japanese victories in both of the two World Baseball Classics tournaments.

Not so the women. Except for the one comedian who can credibly list show host among her credentials and the one newscaster, they are all actresses—albeit many of them highly accomplished in other performing arts—who have in recent years portrayed lawyers, doctors, cops, businesswomen and other professional roles on TV and film. It is not their public personae but the sum of the fictitious roles that each persona assumes that the new corporate recruits in the survey see as the “ideal female boss”. Their “leadership” is twice removed from reality.

I suspect that this gender gap is more a reflection of the realities of Japanese TV—the subsidiary role of women there—than the actual mindset of the new recruits who were polled. The presence on the list of one of the few prominent females among the large number of show hosting comedians and the one female newscaster, as well as the preponderance of professional roles reflected in the choice of actresses is likely telling us that young people at least are willing to accept women in leadership roles. After all, when I was growing up, these people, these roles barely existed if any. But I’ll never have any measure of certainty until there is a poll that allows only a single, gender-free choice.

On another, related track, a five-nation world youth survey just released by the Cabinet Office (yet to appear on the CAO web site) shows that of the five nations surveyed (Japan, France, South Korea, U.K., U.S.), Japanese youths scored highest in terms of their interest in politics. Given such interest, it is a sign of the times that the only two politicians who made the top 20 in the Meiji Yasuda poll were two governors (the other being Miyazaki Governor Hideo Higashikokubaru, the comedian(!) turned politician, who placed 12th) and a foreign president. (Ten more actresses rounded out the top 20 for women.) Few things better symbolize the state of Japanese politics today, don’t you think?

What Asahi Readers Tell Us Random-Digit-Dialing Poll Has to Say about Aso et al (and What to Make of It All)

Today’s Asahi (online) has the results of its Second Consecutive Public Opinion Poll (telephone) taken on October 11-12. Here are some numbers:

Aso Cabinet: support 42% (41%) not support 38% (42%)
Lower House proportional voting intent: LDP 32% (33%), DPJ 32% (34%)

October 4-5 poll numbers in parentheses

These numbers predictably are not as good for Aso/LDP as the Yomiuri ones. Still, an Asahi poll that actually gives a positive rating to the Aso Cabinet and has the LDP in a dead heat with the DPJ is a reminder not to bet against the LDP-New Komeito coalition maintaining a majority in the upcoming Lower House election.

The financial crisis and the damage it is doing to the real economy has not hurt the LDP. Instead, it has turned public attention away from the nation’s future—the DPJ manifesto’s main subject—and its past—the wear and tear from 53 years of LDP in power—and instead is highlighting the here-and-now, where the administration has the advantage of being able to take the initiative by marshalling government resources to shore up the economy.

What about foreign policy? The Japanese public is very much focused on the domestic front. The Asahi poll did ask the respondents about the JMSDA refueling operations in the Indian Ocean—a point of contention that Ichiro Ozawa used to good effect against the Fukuda administration. The results were 42% in favor of an extension, 42% against—another dead heat. If this and the Yomiuri numbers are anything to go by, public opinion has softened, if only a shade, towards the operations. And the DPJ does not have a workable alternative. I do not think that North Korea—nuclear program, abductees—is going to be a major political issue either, once the disappointment over the U.S. action to delist North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism blows over. Unless something big happens in the Six-Party talks that puts Japan on the spot, but that’s a big if.

The Aso administration, with a little help from U.S. financial institutions, has stanched the bleeding for now. Nobody is ready to put a sell call on the DPJ yet, but it’s time to play some offense (or grab an LDP fumble or two, which is another thing that you should never bet against) if it is to deny the LDP-New-Komeito coalition and fellow-traveler independents a majority in the upcoming Lower House election—a modest goal for the LDP Secretary-General to be shooting for to be sure, and a measure of how far the DPJ has come..

On a related matter, the Asahi, alone among the major dailies, continues to focus on DPJ ties to the maruchi shoho industry. Today, it named names, including Kenji Yamaoka’s. (By comparison, yesterday’s evening Yomiuri tucked the story away on the antepenultimate page, where lesser scandals go to die (unless they’re spillover from the penultimate page). And that seems to the end of it for now as far as the Yomiuri is concerned.) There is no clear evidence of illegal activities; the DPJ should be able to put this behind it without serious harm. But it’s obviously an unwanted distraction going into the election. More immediately, it gives them something to think about when it decides what to do or not to do with the Yano-Sokagakkai-Komeito sideshow in the remaining days of the current Diet session.

What Yomiuri Readers Tell Us Random-Digit-Dialing Poll Has to Say about Aso et al

Today’s Yomiuri has the results of its monthly RDD poll taken between October 10-12. Here are some numbers:

Aso Cabinet: support 45.6% (49.5%) not support 38.2% (33.4%)
Lower House proportional voting intent: LDP 38.9% (37%), DPJ 31.4% (30%)
For Prime Minister: Taro Aso 55.9%, Ichiro Ozawa 23.4%

September 24-25 poll numbers in parentheses

So Prime Minister Aso’s inauguration bump was in the 4-5% range? Given the MLIT Minister’s resignation, the Yamato Life bankruptcy, the freefalling stock market, and ever-growing economic fears, it could be worse. In fact, if it were up to Yomiuri nation, the LDP-New Komeito coalition would win going away. Unfortunately for the Aso administration, there’s also Asahi nation and Mainichi nation; and Sankei and TV nations can be quirky. Still, I think the DPJ and its allies have their work cut out for them if they want to win a working majority without the Communists. For that, I think that Yukio Hatoyama snapping at the LDP at every turn just isn’t enough; Ichiro Ozawa needs to show face. Mr. Ozawa is the DPJ’s biggest asset, and biggest liability.

Regarding the timing of the election, 70.3% want economic stimulus before the election while only 24.5% say they want to have an election first. These must be more or less the same people—24.9%—who want an election immediately. 12.3% want it somewhere around the turn of the calendar year, 23.4% want a spring election, and 33.8% say they can wait all the way up to next September, when the Lower House term expires. The supplementary budget for the stimulus package that the Fukuda administration had prepared should pass the Upper House (with DPJ support no less) this week. The second tranche that Mr. Aso has promised should be ready by early next week. The going could be harder this time; the DPJ has more legal leverage on the second package, since providing tax relief and dipping into Special Account reserves(or just possibly issuing deficit bonds) both each need legislative bills, which unlike budget bills can be held up in the Upper House for up to 60 days before the Lower House can hold a revote. It’s highly unlikely that the public and the media will let that happen. In the unlikely event that the DPJ tries, Prime Minister Aso will surely call a snap election, casting Mr. Ozawa’s people as the villains putting politics first. Either way, the election will happen sooner rather than later. There has been talk in the LDP about delaying the election, given dismal returns on a private poll, but I don’t think that’s a real option. Once the second tranche is in the bag (or the DPJ can be blamed for a delay), there’s little else that help them and a lot more that can go wrong; the economic downturn, political scandals, more bad news about the public pension system—the list goes on.

Yomiuri also asked the respondents about the JMSDA refueling operations in the Indian Ocean. The results were 46.6% to 39.9% in favor of an extension. Again, the DPJ is willing to let it come to a quick Upper House vote (setting the stage for the Lower House override) if the LDP is willing to agree to an early election. In any case, the outcome will change the minds of few voters either way.

Given the timing of the poll, it does little to reflect the U.S. weekend decision to delist North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism despite Japanese pleas regarding the abduction issue. The action has been seen across the board here as a slap in the face for the Aso administration and the DPJ has been quick to seize on this point. Moreover, the nuclear deal itself is widely seen as incomplete and unsatisfactory. However, though I’m probably biased because of my own strong pessimism regarding the fate of the remaining abductees, I don’t think that a significant part of the Japanese public still believes that Japanese authorities have significant leverage over the U.S. administration where the Six-Party Talks are concerned. Thus, the issue should not have much of a bearing on the outcome of the upcoming election. Besides, the election is going to be very much about our economic worries; that is what both sides are going to try to capitalize on.

Nakayama Update

The media were full of reports about LDP and New Komeito members, including cabinet members Seiko Noda, Takeo Kawamura, Shigeru Ishiba, Takeo Kawamura, and OMGWTF (pardon my French) Kunio Hatoyama, dumping on the ex-Minister Nariaki Nakayama. Meanwhile, Mr. Nakayama remained unrepentant in his animosity towards the Teachers’ Union of Japan, appearing live on national TV the morning after—his resignation had been accepted at an emergency Cabinet meeting on Sunday—to once again vent his rage. He is clearly going to keep talking, and he intends to keep his Lower House seat in the upcoming election, so I expect him to pop up from time to time to the embarrassment of the LDP as the opposition uses him as a club to keep bludgeoning the Aso administration with throughout the election campaign.

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Sorry. The Fuji TV poll that I had been waiting for turned out to have been taken on September 25, the very day that Mr. Nakayama made those assertions. Thus, the effects of the uproar will only be reflected in the following week’s poll. I should have taken note of the usual three day delay.

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”.

Mr. Fukuda’s Rising Popularity before His Resignation

As an answer to my plea, Ross has sent me a NIKKEI graph-and-table that shows Prime Minster Fukuda’s poll numbers making a steady climb after April except for the precipitous drop after the post-Cabinet reshuffle. (Longtime readers with long memories will remember that this was something that I had predicted for 2008. It came months later than I had expected; I plead extenuating circumstances.) But bump itself was anomalous and very much out of line with other media polls. If you take that unscheduled poll out of the equation, Mr. Fukuda’s numbers were improving up until the very end. Ross believes that this disproves any theory that links Mr. Fukuda’s resignation to deteriorating poll numbers. I agree with this, and I don’t have a better answer than his assessment that “it was the uselessness of pushing ahead in the legislative arena that drove his decision.”


Ross poses a couple of interesting questions here: Why did the media miss this? And why didn’t the Prime Minister’s handlers identify the improvement and play it up? I have no answer to the first question, having missed it myself. As for the second one, an insider close to Junichiro Koizumi expressed strong dissatisfaction with the current Prime Minister’s office. So maybe incompetence? Mr. Fukuda’s aversion to self-promotion—I saw it once, up close, while he was out of office—couldn't have helped either.

Polls Show Reshuffle Bump Almost Gone; Public Wants Action Now

According to a couple of recent polls, the Fuji TV poll (Greater Metropolitan Tokyo, weekly, telephone) and the Yomiuri poll (national, monthly, interview), show that the modest bump from Prime Minister Fukuda’s cabinet-LDP leadership reshuffle is mostly gone but hints that the effect of Taro Aso’s return as party Secretary-General has been more substantial. This may be the first time in LDP history that a party-leadership switch turned out to be the most effective public relations move in the reshuffle. That is bad news for the Prime Minister.

The August 7 Fuji TV poll shows both the Fukuda Cabinet and the LDP (candidates in next Lower House election) dead even with their most recent pre-reshuffles selves in the July 17 poll at 27.2% and 21.4% support respectively. The “do not support” figure for the Fukuda Cabinet went up slightly, from 66.6% to 68.4%. Support for DPJ candidates was down slightly from 29.6% to 28.0%. All this should be within any meaningful margin of error.

The August 9-10 Yomiuri poll has support for the Fukuda Cabinet at 28.3%, up slightly from 26.6% in the July 12-13 poll and the “do not support” figure down slightly to 59.7% from 61.3%. More interesting are the Yomiuri figures for the LDP, whose public support has gone up 3.3 percentage points to 30.5%, while the DPJ stood almost unchanged at 18.7% (down 0.1 pp). Moreover, when the responders were asked which party they intended to vote for in the Lower House proportional districts, the LDP scored 31.3% (up 6pp), putting it ahead of the DPJ, which scored 25.1% (down 2pp), for the first time since May.

Only two week-after polls so far, so I’ll keep my eyes open, but it looks like the LDP is doing better that the Fukuda Cabinet and I can think of only one reason for this: Mr. Aso’s appointment. This must be giving both LDP Diet members and the rank-and-file ideas.

As I’ve told you before, procedurally, it’s not easy to depose a sitting President of the LDP. Besides, Mr. Fukuda is pretty stubborn once he makes his mind up, and he gives the impression of a guy that is determined to stay around for a while at least. However, RS and I have been tossing scenarios—more like plotlines—back and forth, and we (mostly he) came up with the idea that the Prime Minister Fukuda might do the delinking of the gasoline tax money from road development and maintenance—fundamental reform of the tax system, i.e. making the decision to raise the consumption tax rate looks increasingly doomed—and the re-extension of the Indian Ocean refueling operations and toss the scepter of power to the person-in-waiting, who’ll take the LDP-Komeito coalition into the next Lower House election.

This actually follows an oft-scripted Japanese narrative. The tragic hero that fulfills his duty against all odds then falls on his sword—or spills his guts, since this is Japan—is a familiar figure in Japanese folklore and popular drama. The cause he espouses matters only tangentially; the important thing is the self-sacrifice. Then all is forgiven. On a slightly different plane, the LDP rode Prime Minister Ohira’s untimely death during the campaign for the 1980 Upper-House-Lower House double election to an otherwise inexplicable landslide victory. Mr. Fukuda can only die a metaphorical death; not quite the real thing, but it’s better than nothing. For Mr. Fukuda, it beats leading the LDP into a bloodbath, then resigning, and it gives him the satisfaction of becoming a party martyr of sorts.

All this has everything to do with the political game and not much to do with statecraft. For that, we turn again to one of the questions in the Yomiuri poll, which asks:

If there are issues that you want the Fukuda Cabinet to take up on a priority basis, please give as many as you like.

The Yomiuri gave responders 17 examples to choose from. The numbers were down on 15, with the environment taking the biggest hit (22.9%←30.6%; note that the Fukuda Cabinet with the complicity of the media was touting its role in pushing the global warming agenda at the Hokkaido Summit), with North Korea (20.6%←27.5%) and food safety (32.0%←37.9%) also taking a tumble in the electorate’s priorities. Self-defense/national security showed a statistically insignificant 0.3 percentage-point rise (9.2%←8.9%). The only real gainer? “Economic and employment countermeasures”, at 63.2%, up 5.6 percentage points from 57.6%. We want economic stimulus, and more jobs. “Reform of the social security system including pensions and medical care” clocks in at 60.2% down 2.8 percentage points. Nothing else comes close.

The economy has even overtaken all the scandals over the social safety net and its long-term solvency worries in the minds of the Japanese public. This doesn't mean that the LDP can take its eyes off them; they have their own constituencies. But I do believe that most long-term, structural issues will be taking a backseat to more immediate concerns over the economy in the mass media. That is where the main thrust of what passes for statecraft is going to be directed for the time being.

Nazis, Yasukuni, the Aso Bump

Maybe BBC exists in a parallel universe and the Japanese media in its world say that Taro Aso did make the “Nazi” comments in a meeting yesterday “with his opposition counterpart in parliament”. But every Japanese report on my planet says that Mr. Aso went to pay his respects as the new Secretary-General of the LDP to the President of the Upper House, Satsuki Eda, who, following custom, left the DPJ when he assumed the post. Mr. Aso’s main opposition counterpart is DPJ’s Yukio Hatoyama, who has appropriately taken this opportunity to wax indignant, but that’s not what the BBC story is talking about.

Anyway, Mr. Aso’s comments, such as has been reported, can be interpreted in two ways:

1. The opposition neglects the public interest by refusing to engage in deliberations in the Upper House. The public could get sick and tired of the resultant inaction and put a party like the Nazis in power.
2. The opposition neglects the public interest by refusing to engage in deliberations in the Upper House. The public might still elect them to power—after all, the Germans did elect the Nazis. They remind me in more than one way of the Nazis.

I think that the first one, which appears to be close to Mr. Aso’s version, makes more sense. It hews more closely to what the media reports reported as Mr. Aso’s words—unsourced, but from the context apparently coming from the DPJ side. To reach the second interpretation, you must add stuff and interpret liberally. It is funnier though.

Of course even the first interpretation contains an outrageous assertion, that things are so bad overall, or a pitiful admission, that the existing political parties—including the LDP—are so awful that the Japanese public might turn to a Nazi clone. It’s also the kind of hyperbole that can only invite anger regardless of the context.

Given what we know of Mr. Aso, there must be more of this where it came from. Stay tuned.

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Today, the Justice Minister and the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister said that they would go to Yasukuni Shrine on August 15, the day Japan announced its unconditional surrender. Last year, one State Minister decided to go at the last minute. The names are not important. The core of the unwritten deal with China is that the Prime Minister, the Chief Cabinet Secretary, the Foreign Minister and the Defense Minister stay away.

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If there could be anything more galling to casual-Japan-Watcher liberals than seeing Sankei (correctly) attributing the 7.6 percentage-point leap (21.6%→29.3%) to Mr. Aso’s selection as Secretary-General and heir presumptive to the Prime Minister Fukuda, it’s the report that the pacifist coalition partner Komeito could hardly contain its glee at the return of Aso. In fact, according to the hardcopy Yomiuri (August 4), “the gleeful Akihiro Ota, Komeito party chief, clowned in front of the press corps, aping the [comedienne]-tarento Edo Harumi [with her stock phrase] “Guu, guu, guu (good, good, good)”.

The head of the pacifist Komeito is not just happy because Mr. Aso is a good campaigner. (Though there’s that.) Mr. Aso has been on good terms with the Komeito for some time now. It’s hard to reconcile this with the following BBC description:

Known for his conservative views, [Mr. Aso] has advocated a tough line towards North Korea and rejects changing the law to allow women to ascend the throne.

But then, the Western media rarely get it right with Mr. Aso…. and Junichiro Koizumi.

The New Fukuda Cabinet and the Reshuffle Bounce

The Big Four general-purpose mainstream dailies all took telephone polls (August 1-2) on the new Fukuda Cabinet. I’ve put the support/do-not-support percentage-point numbers in the following table in ideological order from the bleeding-heart liberal Asahi to the Japaneocon Sankei. The results of the previous polls are given in parentheses. The new Fukuda Cabinet receives zero lift in the Asahi poll, a modest 3pp from the more moderate Mainichi, a whopping 14.7pp leap from the establishment-populist Yomiuri, and above-the-statistical-noise 4.7pp from Sankei.

Yomiuri does warn against a straight comparison with its previous poll, which as a regular monthly poll used the face-to-face interview method (unlike the other three, which always use telephone polls). Still, it’s hard not to conclude that the results from the Big Four have lined up exactly asin the order you would expect them to. Note that Yomiuri has been far more supportive of the China-friendly, traditionally conservative Yasuo Fukuda than Sankei, which has made no secret of its displeasure with the namby-pamby Prime Minister. I suspect that the Prime Minister owes much of the bounce to Taro Aso, whose appointment as Secretary-General, the number two role in the LDP, has been received favorably across the board.

You know what? All in all, I think it is a modest bounce, no momentum changer.

	support	change	not support
Asahi	24(24)	-	55(58)
Mainichi	25(22)	+3	52(54)
Yomiuri	41.3(26.6)	+14.7	47.0(61.3)
Sankei	31.5(26.8)	+4.7	48.1(53.5)

Koizumi Favored in Metropolitan Tokyo

…for your amusement…

Last month, the Fuji TV network inexplicably dropped Junichiro Koizumi from its list of potential successors to Prime Minister Fukuda in its telephone poll of 500 adults in Metropolitan Tokyo. This month, Mr. Koizumi is back in the July 17 poll, barely nipping Taro Aso 17.8% to 17.4%. Ichiro Ozawa is a distant third at 11.3%. Overall, 52.2% opted for LDP Prime Ministers while 20.8% chose the opposition. The tabloid-favored candidate Yuriko Koike came in seventh (at 2.6%) among the 14 listed names.

In the July 10 poll, 14.7% preferred an LDP-led administration, 26.8% a DPJ-led administration, and 33.7% an LDP-DPJ Grand Coalition. 19.5% wanted a third-force administration (pox on both houses?), while 5.3% did not indicate any preferences.

Going back to the July 17 poll, the 500 broke 29.6% for the DPJ, 21.4% LDP, 3.6% Communist Party, 3.0% Komeito (giving the current coalition 25%), 0.8% for the Social Democrats, and 0.4% for independents and others, while 1.0% said that they would not vote. That left 40.2% undecided. This is how it’s looked for months.

Meandering from Opinion Polls to the State of the Economy

The latest Yomiuri poll (May 17-18) has come out, as the excitement whipped up by the Late-Term Elderly Medical Care Insurance rollout and the gasoline tax reinstatement has worn off and talk has turned to trimming some of its rougher edges or reverting to the old insurance system (the opposition); [ and divvying the gas money between roads and other objectives or simply getting rid of the surcharge and making up the difference for local governments from the national budget (the opposition)]. The results show a slow but steady slide in public esteem for the Fukuda administration and the LDP-Komeito coalition. The changes appear to be within or near the margin of error. But when all the numbers trend in the same direction, they’re harder to explain away.

If you really want to get a good view of the Fukuda/coalition dip-DPJ lift right after the gasoline tax surcharge reinstatement and the subsequent fallback, there’s no better place to go than the weekly Fuji TV polls and compare the numbers for the past four weeks. I hope you’re not a coalition fan though, because the DPJ has consistently been beating the LDP-DPJ numbers for some time. The silver lining if you are is that your trend-lines appear to have steadied since February despite taking more major hits in the form of the insurance rollout and the gasoline tax surcharge reinstatement.

Where diplomacy is concerned, the poll also confirms that Hu Jintao’s visit had little effect on the Japanese public—no surprise, what with no visible breakthrough on the East China Sea gas fields and the 2millon-dollar price tag on the giant panda “gifts (according to unofficial reports—neither side has actually mentioned it). Looking ahead, beyond the polls, there’s no downside for the Prime Minister in the July G-8 Summit in Hokkaido. On the other hand, there’s not much upside to what has become over the years something of a giant photo-op. (Are they going to dress up in kimonos? Better than the clown suits that Jiang Zeming gave his colleagues. ) The Fukuda administration and the ruling coalition should not expect anything more than a small, momentary blip in popularity. Be thankful, instead, that botching the LTEMCI rollout and reinstating the unpopular gas tax surcharge have done limited damage.

Which brings us to the real political issue—the fiscal reform package, coming to us this autumn. You know that I have grave doubts on this about both sides. Now Ross approaches this from a different angle. He believes that an LDP loss, any LDP loss, will break the stranglehold that vested interests have on policy making, and that Ichiro Ozawa knows this and is willing to do anything to make it happen. The trillion-yen price tags on the DPJ promises are worth it.

I dunno, Ross, here’s hoping: You’re right, I’m wrong.

PS: And yes, there is the economy. There’s precious little that the Fukuda administration can do on its own in the event of a serious economic downturn. And if it’s really serious about fiscal reform , it will come up with a big tax bill. But I don’t think that the Japanese public trusts the DPJ with economic management either.

Prefectural Chapters Don’t Want to Fight Next Election under Fukuda

Prime Minister Fukuda’s poll numbers continue to slip. Now, the LDP party faithful are also turning against its leader.

Asahi asked the prefectural chapters of the LDP and DPJ to see if they wanted to go into the next House of Representatives election under Yasuo Fukuda and Ichiro Ozawa respectively. In the LDP, only 12 chapters were willing to go with Mr. Fukuda, while 22 chapters wanted a replacement. By contrast, Mr. Ozawa had the support of 44 DPJ chapters.

And it looks even worse for Mr. Fukuda when you go into more detail. Of the ten prefectures with the largest populations, seven* want to go with someone new, while only two** want Mr. Fukuda to stay. (Tokyo, the most populous prefecture, chose neither of the two options.) Between No.11-20, it was six to two against him. Smaller, more rural prefectures are showing loyalty.

A Prime Minister used to have the choice between picking up his marbles and calling it a day, or dissolving the HR and calling a general election. But Mr. Fukuda is not a faction chief, so he has nothing to pick up. His options are limited.

* Osaka, Kanagawa, Aichi, Saitama, Hyogo, Fukuoka, Shizuoka
** Hokkaido, Chiba

Which Numbers Will The Public Ride? The FNN Poll Revisited

FNN is notable among Japanese polls because it takes a survey every week, unlike other media outlets, which only take polls once a month and after any major political event that may turn out to be a tipping point. So, no daily tracking polls. Anyway…

Would you believe that the Japanese electorate intends to vote 32.6% to 20.2% in favor of the DPJ over the LDP-Komeito coalition in the next House of Representatives general election? Actually, you already knew that if you have been reading this blog; I reminded you, here. I also told you that None of the Above (actually, Undecided, a big difference—my bad) reigned supreme at 42.6%.

Or…

Would you believe that the LDP-Komeito coalition beats the DOJ and the rest of the opposition 57.2% to 26.2% (16.6% undecided) among the Japanese electorate when it comes to the choice of Prime Minister Fukuda’s successor?

So who are you going to believe? FNN, or… FNN? That’s right. I got the second set of numbers by adding up the percentages in support of coalition Diet members or any coalition figure and did the same for the opposition.

The Japanese electorate is clearly disillusioned with the institutional status quo. It yearns for leadership, but nobody even talks the talk. So the grass is bone-dry, begging for a Napoleon, a Lincoln, a Hitler, to set it on fire. And yet we get… a bunch of sixty-something LDP and DPJ demi-leaders, waiting for Yasuo Fukuda or Ichiro Ozawa to trip up?

What’s become of the children?

If I Still Had Any Doubts that the Fukuda Administration Was a Goner…

The May 8 Fuji TV weekly poll says it all: support for the Fukuda Cabinet further fell (if only within the margin of error) to 20.2% (from 22.2% in the May 1, post-gasoline tax hike poll). The same poll said that only 17.8% (15.4%) wanted to vote for an LDP candidate in the next House of Representatives election, while 32.6% (33.0%) chose the DPJ. None of the Above has slipped slightly, but is still clear of its two major rivals at 42.6% (45.4%).

The polls show that Hu Jintao’s visit did little to improve the Mr. Fukuda’s political fortunes. No wonder, since not-positives outnumbered positives by 59.8% to 26.0% on the Prime Minister’s policies toward China. Images of China’s harsh response to the demonstrations in Tibet and along the Olympics torch relay certainly did not help, nor did the inability to come up with something beyond still more words on the East China gas fields and the sputtering investigation into the source of the poisoned Chinese dumpling. It’s hard to see any major gains to be had from the largely ceremonial G-8 get-together in Hokkaido two months from now, nor any other foreign policy coups for that matter. If anything, the expiration of the law that authorizes JSDF operations in Iraq—opposed by a healthy majority of the Japanese public throughout its lifetime—in 2009 July will throw the next regular Diet into a frenzy if John McCain wins the U.S. Presidential race.

On the two touchstone issues, there is no doubt that the reinstated gasoline tax surcharge remains as unpopular as ever, though no new polling was done on the subject this time. But only 20.4% want the Late-Term Elderly Medical Care Insurance system be abolished; a full 71.0% seek improvements in its operation or its outright revision. Couple this with the persistent gap between the highly negative response to the reinstatement of the surcharge and the positive response when it is coupled with the turnover of the revenue to the general budget, and add the inability of the DPJ to pull in the great undecided to its side: I cannot escape the feeling that it is the sense of incompetence and indifference, as opposed to the policies themselves, that is the main cause of the precipitous fall in the support for the Fukuda administration and the LDP.

To gain a healthy majority, if not to maintain a supermajority, in the next HR general elections, the ruling coalition must regain the trust of the public on this front. It must play to win, not, mind you, not to lose. With no dramatic diplomatic coups in sight, the only viable candidate for that hallmark achievement appears to be a credible reform package of the entire fiscal profile, expenditures as well as taxes and debt, come fall. Mr. Fukuda, however, does not appear to have the intellectual breadth, his own or borrowed; support within the LDP to override all the entrenched vested interests; or the outreach to the public to go over the heads of fifth columns. Even now, his piecemeal approach to administrative and fiscal reform does not give the lie to this rather dismal evaluation.

In this negative phase of the political game, the deck is stacked in favored fo eh opposition, more specifically, the DPJ. Barring unforeseen circumstances, it is difficult for the DPJ to slip seriously—all it has to do is support popular causes and oppose unpopular ones. At this point, “Don’t play to win, play not to lose” seems to be highly viable election strategy for it.

Given this situation, it must be tempting to the LDP to string the public along with the Fukuda administration along as far as it can go, then dump it and go on to the next HR general election under the next “Most Popular” LDP Representative, full steam ahead, before the charm wears off the new Prime Minister.

The other option, of course, is the political Big Bang. There is any number of intra- and cross-party power breakfast, lunches, and dinners going on, which gives an air of credibility to rumors of a major realignment. But beyond sheer inertia, the main obstacle to such an outcome is the lack of political incentive on the part of the DPJ. The DPJ has healthy plurality in the House of Councilors. With a relatively small number of other opposition members on its side there, it will not need an HR supermajority to get its way, policy-wise. Thus, whatever the outcome of the next HR general election, I can understand some splintering but no obviously serious cracks, as a few Representatives here and there, from the major parties as well as micros and the covey of the unaligned court and are courted from the two major players.

All this will lead to an outcome that will leave an inconclusive, even more fluid political situation in place and, more troubling, the major policy issues unresolved. Let’s hope that I’m proven wrong, in a good way.

Opinion Polls—Missing in Action

There’s an article in today’s hardcopy Yomiuri, page four, on the response from the Prime Minister regarding the most recent drop in the opinion polls. It’s very, very brief, so I’m going to translate it in its entirety.

Sudden Drop in Support “[I Accept It] with Great Seriousness”

On the night of [May] 2nd, Prime Minister stated regarding the sudden drop in support for the Fukuda Cabinet in all the media opinion polls, “I am accepting them with great seriousness.” He responded to a question from reporters at the Prime Minister’s Office. According to the Kyodo News survey (taken on May 1-2), support dropped into the teens, at 19.8%; with the Asahi Shinbun survey (taken on April 30-May 1) at 20% and the Nikkei, Inc. survey (same), they fell between 5-8% from their previous surveys.

So you tell me what’s wrong with this picture. Need a hint? Mainichi also took a May 1-2 poll, putting the Fukuda Cabinet at 18%.