Ozawa’s Top Aide Under Arrest

I know I have other things to do, but I just had to bring this to your attention. Replies to comments on this and other threads to come later.

The Tokyo Public Prosecutors’ Office arrested Ichiro Ozawa’s top aide (第一公設秘書) today (Festival of Peach Blossoms) on a charge of violating the Political Finance Regulation Act. According to the mainstream media Nishimatsu Kensetsu, a mid-tier construction firm, has been accused (among other things) of funneling 21 million yen in corporate funds to Ozawa’s political finance entity. Sankei—unsurprisingly?—gives 200 million yen as the likely amount of money that flowed from Nishimatsu Kensetsu to Ozawa. If past experience is anything to go by, this is a charge that will stick. If Ozawa’s old-school background as the rightful heir to construction king Kakuei Tanaka as well as persistent charges of money issues including most recently one from a DPJ colleague is not enough, remember that the authorities will never make such a public arrest unless they are confident that they will have the closest thing to an air-tight case. Mike Nifong the Japanese Prosecutors’ Agency is not.

Nishimatsu had been under investigation for political contribution irregularities for some time, but this arrest appears to have come as a surprise to the media as well as the general public. No doubt there will be charges of political motivation, and, who knows, it could be true (or not) for all I know. But it will be highly difficult for Ozawa and his supporters to weather this one.

So the DPJ has two alternatives: a) have Ozawa claim his innocence but make it an Ozawa-, not DPJ-issue, by stepping down as party leader; or b) let Ozawa stay on, damaging, perhaps fatally, the DPJ’s chances for taking over through the next Lower House election. The first option, of course, works better for the DPJ. The second will change the whole complexion on the ongoing political battle in favor of the LDP-New Kōmeitō coalition. Let’s see what Ozawa does.

In the meantime, a brief rundown of the legal issue at stake:

Under the Political Finance Regulation Act (政治資金規正法), individual politicians may receive political funds from individuals only. They may not receive political funds from legal entities. According to the allegations, Nishimatsu circumvented this proscription by disguising the political money (to Ozawa among others) as individual, not corporate, contributions from former Nishimatsu executives. The money went to Ozawa’s political finance management entity (資金管理団体), but that’s a technicality.

Some Ozawa Issues Regarding National Security

The hardcopy Yomiuri has been carrying summaries of Ichiro Ozawa’s comments to reporters regarding the Japan-U.S. security relationship. I’ve translated them here:

(Feb. 24)
Q. The bill to authorize the agreement for the transfer of the U.S. troops in Okinawa to Guam is about to be submitted to the Diet…
A. Concerning the realignment of U.S. troops, we should not submissively follow the U.S. by doing as they say, but instead should have our own global strategy; and at least with regard to matters concerning Japan, Japan itself should take on more of a role. If we do that, the U.S. role will diminish. In these days, there is no need for the U.S. to maintain forces on the frontlines. From a military strategy point of view, the Seventh Fleet is here, so that’s enough of a U.S. presence in the Far East. Beyond that, we can deal with matters by Japan playing a solid role in the Far East.

(Feb. 25)
Q. Does that mean that we don’t need the U.S. Air Force in Japan?
A. I’m not saying that we don’t need it; I meant that Japan should first talk to the U.S. regarding global strategies, assume its role, and fulfill its responsibilities even more than it does now. (February 25)

(Feb. 27)
There is no possibility of (the Self-Defense Force) participating in another country’s emergency (response). If there are parts of the role of the U.S. troops in Japan that concern the defense of Japan, if Japan comes to fulfill those roles, the burden on the U.S. troops will decrease. Then, the United States will also be able to lighten the burden of spreading its troops in distant places.
I am not (a member) of the government, so I won’t know until we take the reins of the government and ask (the United States) in detail, but can’t we just do the things that the Self-Defense Force is capable of doing? If the burden on the U.S. is lightened, won’t it be okay if there are fewer U.S. troops in Japan?

Say what you will, Ichiro Ozawa has been remarkably consistent throughout his political career about his emphasis on self-reliance as far as Japan’s national security is concerned. He supports the Japan-U.S. alliance, but he resents the presence of what he sees as an overweening protector and is consequently willing to see Japan’s military take on a greater role in Japan’s defense. In that respect, he is closer to LDP nationalist-conservatives than to Mizuho Fukushima and her socialist minions or even the increasingly pacifist Shizuka Kamei and his PNP kinfolk. But he also insists on a purely defensive role for Japan’s military, refusing to lift a finger to defend Japan’s most important ally the United States. That does not endear him to national security conservatives, be they LDP or DPJ. He also supports the overseas projection of Japanese troops—so far, so good as far as nationalist-conservatives are concerned—but only under the UN flag—not so good. I’ll wager that this also happens to be a position that has something to dissatisfy most people in the DPJ at both ends of its ideological spectrum.

The real problem with Ozawa’s position is that, as the February 25 question from a reporter implied, the day that the Air Self-Defense Force can make do without its U.S. counterparts is a long way off. There is no assurance either that the United States will agree to maintain its nuclear umbrella over Japan in exchange for berthing rights at Yokosuka alone. There’s a plausible argument to be made without having to go to SDP extremes that Japan doesn’t need either, but we aren’t quite there with China, and certainly not with North Korea, as far as the Japanese public is concerned.

This should blow over in the very near future as far as the upcoming Lower House election is concerned though. (Sankei and to a lesser extent Yomiuri will milk it for what it’s worth.) It is unlikely that national security will be a major concern in the upcoming Lower House election. Besides, Ozawa’s opening bid to the United States is essentially let’s talk, so there is no cause for immediate alarm. Nevertheless, staking out a position that is unlikely to gain much traction with the Japanese public—expanding the JSDF—while annoying the Obama administration—on top of likely conflict over U.S. troop realignment—is not a good way to prepare for a takeover.

Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational

I finished Dan Ariely’s book on behavioral economics Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions in three days, it’s that easy to read. The subject and style remind me of Freakonomics. I like this one better though, partly because all the chapters revolve around experiments that Ariely took part in himself, but mostly for his engaging and reflective personal touch.

The book leaves me with the impression that behavioral economics is more psychology and sociology than economics, more engineering than science. In any case, Ariely’s insights are certainly eye-opening for this novice, and each useful. But the most memorable moment for me was when Ariely moved away from his experiments and drew on his experience and hopes as an empathic, apparently apolitical Israeli Jew*:

So what about our football fans and the game-winning pass? Although both friends were watching the same game, they were doing so through markedly different lenses. One saw the pass as in bounds. The other saw it as out. In sports, such arguments are not particularly damaging—in fact, they can be fun. The problem is that these same biased processes can influence how we experience other aspects of our world. These biased processes are in fact a major source of escalation in almost every conflict, whether Israeli-Palestinian, American-Iraqi, Serbian-Croatian, or Indian-Pakistani.
In all these conflicts, individuals, from both sides can read similar history books and even have the same facts taught to them, yet it is very unusual to find individuals who would agree about who started the conflict, who is to blame, who should make the next concession, etc…We like to think that sitting at the same table together will help us hammer out our differences and that concessions will soon follow. But history has shown us that this is an unlikely outcome…

Ariely’s prescription is to find a neutral third party “who has not been tainted with our expectations”—useful advice when such a third party is available. In the meantime, setting aside the past and focusing on the present and future may be useful. Just look at East Asia now, giving the lie to the claims of so many experts who placed their bets on the history issues during the Koizumi administration.

* Incidentally, I wonder how often we see the word Israeli being used without an implicit assumption that it actually means Jewish Israeli? For that matter, how often do we see something similar in other ethnic, religious, and cultural contexts? And how does that affect public discourse? It’s probably worth looking into.

Christianists Love Porn? Sure, but…

The following is a good example of how information is simplified and consequently misinterpreted as it is passed along even by the most reputable of sources. It shows the importance of going to the source, and looking at the broader context.

Andrew Sullivan says that “[t]here's a significant correlation between consumption of online porn and Christianism.” To back up that claim, he gives us the following excerpt from the New Scientist article:

Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama. Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don't explicitly restrict gay marriage...

States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behaviour."

But the study by Professor Benjamin Edelman that the New Scientist goes a little deeper than that. Specifically, Edelman controls the data set for income, age, education, and marital status and comes up with a slightly altered ranking according to each state’s “difference in subscribers per thousand home broadband users relative to subscription rates predicted based on demographics”. In this new list, McCain’s lead over Obama among top online-porn prescribing states decreases to seven to three, while the two are tied at five each. In short, take out the effects of demographics, and the political significance of online-porn subscription becomes less evident.

But what about the positive correlation between online subscription and Christianist views? After all, “[s]tates where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed”, didn’t they? Not quite. It is obvious that this figure from Edelman’s study is merely a statistical hypothesis (albeit a highly robust one), that is, the “difference, in subscriptions per thousand broadband households, between a hypothetical state where all residents disagree with the quote versus one where all residents agree with the statement.” There’s definitely a positive correlation, but its dimensions are exaggerated by the simplification in the New Scientist article.

More important, there is more to porn than online websites. A table in Edelman’s study shows that in 2006 “adult entertainment” on the Internet brought in 2,841 million in “adult entertainment” retail sales. That’s a lot of money, but it was still only one-fifth of the 12,815 million for all “adult entertainment” retail sales. If stores and clubs that provide adult entertainment as well as porn-friendly shelf space in otherwise respectable establishments are, as I suspect, harder to come by in conservative states, then it stands to reason that some of that business is going to flow to online providers. Without more information, there is no way on knowing whether Christianists are more lustful than their less literal-minded bretheren, heathens, and, to quote Barack Hussein Obama, “non-believers.”

Christianists like porn. Now it’s reassuring to know that they are human, just like the rest of us. But does that make them hypocrites? Not necessarily. It certainly makes them sinners (in their own eyes—I could give a hoot), but that’s what they have churches for, I suppose.

DPJAnnounces New Candidate and PNP Is Furious

In a terse thirteen-line report, the hardcopy Yomiuri reports that Ichiro Ozawa held a press conference yesterday to announce that the DPJ had chosen an assistant college professor as the party candidate for Kanagawa First District in the upcoming Lower House election. According to the report, the People’s New Party, which intends to field its own candidate there, is furious and is threatening to dissolve its Upper House alliance with the DPJ. Add this to the deliberate insult that I talked about yesterday, and you have to wonder what kind of game the DPJ is playing.

The last thing that the DPJ wants to do is run an administration where the Social Democratic Party and the PNP each has a de facto Upper House veto. A far more appealing alternative would be a stable coalition with a sizeable, likeminded—whatever that means—bloc of LDP defectors. Ozawa’s actions—the Thursday insult could not have come without his approval—seem to be pointing in that direction. This bears watching.

War of Words within the Opposition a Harbinger of Things to Come?

Today, a reliable source told me that I would soon be proven wrong on the DPJ response (or lack thereof) to the economic crisis. Let’s hope he’s right, and I’m wrong.

On Thursday, the People’s New Party threatened to boycott opposition consultations over a DPJ slight. According to media reports, Masaaki Itokawa, the PNP Upper House whip, sought to introduce an Upper House censure motion against the Prime Minister. The DPJ is understandably reluctant to do that since it doesn’t want to push Aso so hard that he resigns, opening the way for an electorally more attractive face (Kaoru Yosano?) to lead the LDP-New Komeito coalition into the Lower House election that must be called no later than September. Jun Azumi, the DPJ deputy whip, could have tried to mollify his PNP colleague, but instead went on the attack, pointing to the PNP’s reluctance—more specifically Shizuka Kamei’s—to go along with an earlier, DPJ push for a censure motion against the troubled then-Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa. Azumi further insulted Itokawa by telling him:

“go tell that to your party.”

He did, and Kamei talked to the press, saying:

“Even if the DPJ wins the next Lower House election, it won’t be able to maintain power if the PNP and the Social Democratic Party say no because it won’t have a majority in the Upper House). They’re being full of themselves, not understanding how scary that is.”

The DPJ-PNP-Shin-Ryokufūkai-New Party Nippon bloc holds 118 seats. Add to that the four seats that the SDP holds, and the DPJ and its allies have 122, or a razor-thin majority, of the 242-seat Upper House.

The rhetoric notwithstanding, this is a minor dustup. The DPJ needs the PNP’s votes in the Upper House, but the PNP needs the DPJ’s electoral help if it intends to keep its place in the Diet. (Three-way battles with both the LDP and the DPJ could spell disaster for all but the strongest PNP candidates.) So the two sides will kiss and make up. But it gives you a preview of how the two small tails, one of them old-school conservative, the other pro-labor paleo-pacifist, will wag the new dog on the block if it manages to catch the meat truck. We’ve seen the wagging happen in more important matters, as in the DPJ’s acceptance of PNP desires to turn back the clock on Post Office privatization. And there may be something personal about Ichiro Ozawa’s newly-evident stance against the U.S. military presence in Japan, but it certainly helps to keep the SDP satisfied.

The problem, as we’ve seen before, is not limited to the DPJ’s relations with its prospective coalition partners. To reprise the point, the DPJ itself is just as motley a crew of everyone from SDP defectors to fiscal and national security hawks, who are united only in the desire to finally topple the LDP-centric 1955 regime for good. The divisions, many latent, have led most conspicuously to the DPJ’s inability to address the growing financial/economic crisis head on despite its formidable cadre of in-party policy wonks and academic suporters.

In the here and now, the DPJ is being gifted by a Prime Minister that the mass media and the Japanese public have almost completely tuned out, as well as an LDP that has come up with duds three in a row with little relief in sight. (Which must be why new Finance Minister and septuagenarian Kaoru Yosano is gaining credibility just for being coherent, affable, and at peace with himself.) But in the long-run, the fault lines are likely to become evident under a DPJ-led regime, as the consequences of its policies become manifest in the face of the realities and the coalition members and the DPJ’s own factions begin making new demands. That has also been true, of course, with the LDP-New Komeito axis and the LDP itself, which have most recently suffered from their own dissonances, most recently under the wobbling, lurching Aso administration. They have set the bar pretty low, so to speak. Still, the media and the public will expect more than just more of the same. A DPJ honeymoon, particularly under an Ozawa administration, in an economically challenging climate is likely to be short, and filled with unpleasant surprises.

Aso Meets Obama, Medvedev. What Gives?

There’s little that can be settled between someone with a four-year lease on power with a one-off extension option for the landlord and another guy who faces near-certain eviction in less than seven months. No to worry though; there are no purely bilateral issues of major concern, and the global financial/economic crisis is…well, global. At the regional level, Futenma, Guam, and the rest of the U.S. troop realignment issues are what they are (where Ozawa’s latest statements are far more interesting and somewhat alarming, given the political winds), and North Korea is…North Korea, the pending Taepodon 2 “satellite” launch notwithstanding. So Prime Minister Aso took the twelve-hour flight to Washington, had a one-hour get-together (half that, really, if you consider the interpretation) with President Obama—no lunch, no press conference—and took the flight back home; the clock started running again on the embattled Prime Minister as if nothing had happened.

The only effect seems to have been to give the President of the United States a four-year pass against charges of Japan passing NTTIAWWT. Think of it as a follow-up to Hillary Clinton’s visit and talk with family members of abductees. Speaking of whom, it may only have been a scheduling glitch, but I think it was a clever idea to insert Indonesia between Japan and China and South Korea in her itinerary. By breaking the sequence with a country of clearly less political consequence, the U.S. government minimized the political significance of the order of the visits.

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Russian President Medvedev made an offer his Japanese counterpart couldn’t refuse when he invited Aso to Sakhalin Island for the Wednesday launch of the LNG plant that will send 65% of its 9.8 million-ton annual production to Japan*. It should be good publicity, foreign and domestic, for the Kremlin in the face of issues with Ukraine and serious knock-on effects on Western European customers, all of it unfolding within a broader, alarming context of plummeting energy prices. Aso’s visit also provides political closure to an obscure but not insignificant legal issue regarding the final status of Sakhalin Island. The USSR never signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty, under which Japan gave up sovereignty over what was then a strategically significant but barely habitable piece of real estate, along with the Kurile Islands. So Sakhalin (and the Kurile Islands) must be part of the final bilateral treaty that will settle all issues including the four islands most commonly referred to as the Northern Territories. It was a bargaining chip, albeit very minor. Aso’s visit laid that issue to rest.

In return, Aso got a promise of a May visit by Prime Minister Putin and a pledge to settle the issue within “our generation”, which the Japanese side is spinning as “during the current administrations.” The last point should be alarming to Japanese nationalists; Russia has never shown any hint of any intention to give up anything more than the two near-most (from the Japanese perspective) and smallest islands except in President Yeltsin’s weakest moments—only a hint at that, mind you—and Putin’s Russia has gone some ways in reverting to its old empirical ways since then. Meanwhile, Aso as Foreign Minister all but gave away his own game plan when he talked about splitting the islands in half by area—giving Japan the three smaller islands and a significant portion of the fourth—before there was any inkling that negotiation were going to start any time soon. At bottom, actually, is Aso’s moderate pragmatism—something most Western observers miss because of his sometimes nationalistic pronouncements—but it certainly won’t help him with a significant portion of his support from the LDP right.

* The rest goes to South Korea and the U.S.

I Interrupt My Work to Solicit Your Views on Yoshiko Sakurai and JINF

A respected international relations expert solicited my views on Yoshiko Sakurai and her Japan Institute for National Fundamentals . Mindful of his specific purpose, I tried to give as nonjudgmental an assessment as possible of her place in Japanese politics. My answer was necessarily brief (free samples always are), rendering it appropriate in size and subject for this blog, so I’ve left out the irrelevant bits and lightly edited the remainder and posted is below. If anyone has any opinions of their own, feel free to comment. I’ll answer them to my own satisfaction and ask the expert to look in.

Yoshiko Sakurai is the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals as far as I see it. In my view, she is a prominent member of the nationalist-conservative wing of mainstream Japan, as are the JINF board members whose names I recognize. As such, the graceful, unflappable award-winning investigative journalist and pioneer female newscaster espouses views on history issues that are deeply inimical to Western liberals, as well as embarrassing to their conservative counterparts who agree with her views on, say, dealing with North Korea's nuclear weapons and other security issues. But she is not a fringe figure, nor a demagogue. Among the dailies, the Sankei editorial board likely supports her, and the Yomiuri board would give her a respectable hearing. The Asahi board probably thinks she's nuts, while the Mainichi board lies somewhere between Yomiuri and Asahi. Many of her views on history issues are shared—I use the word in a broad sense; history is never either-or, never black-and-white—and given respectful hearing by mainstream conservative politicians, including some recent prime ministers.

You may not agree with her on history issues, in fact may think little of her views in that respect. But think about it this way: Would you dismiss as irrelevant Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara (who is on the JINF board)? Or Kyoto University Professor Terumasa Nakanishi? Ex-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe? Ambassador Hisahiko Okazaki?

One thing: If you want to debate her, you'd better come to the table with a full brief. She has a most impressive command of the facts, like an evangelical preacher with the Bible. Also like a preacher, indeed most advocates, she tends to ignore or make light of inconvenient evidence and facts, but you still have to be prepared to match her chapter for chapter, verse for verse.

Death Brings Relief in the Worst of Economic Downturns (and Other Ramblings)

It is only in the last week that the enormity of the fourth quarter decimation of the Japanese economy became clear and sent economic prognosticators running to their computer terminals to revise their 2009 forecasts downward; the Japanese economy is now going to fall three percent instead of two—if the average crystal ball is any indication. Of course most households, companies, governments can individually absorb a three-percent hit on their incomes with ease; the catch is that the blows will fall unevenly, with some folks going into negative-income territory, especially in the case of businesses. Thus, the stimulus bill/bills and the FY2009 budget will be at best a most clumsy means of easing the collective pain. And I don’t think we’re getting out of this until global consumption patterns re-coalesce.

Beyond that, I have little or nothing to say about the big picture; I’m not even an economist. However…

A look at the details will show us that some are less worse off than others, in fact, may be doing just fine. Take death. We all know that death can bring relief to the most miserable of lives, but did you know that it is uplifting an entire industry? In fact, the funeral industry was one of the few bright spots on Japan’s 2008 economic scene.

More broadly, during downturns, services as a whole tend to hold up better in Japan and it’s no different this time around according to METI statistics . Of the six business services for which 2008 data is available on a year-on-year basis, four actually increased sales in 2008. (Up: rentals; information services; credit card services; engineering. Down: leasing; advertising.) Of the thirteen personal services with year-on-year data, seven increased sales (Up: theaters, performances and theatrical companies; golf driving ranges; amusement and theme parks; funeral services; wedding ceremony halls; fitness clubs; supplementary tutorial schools. Down: movie theaters; golf courses; bowling alleys; pachinko parlors; foreign language schools; culture centers.), with funeral services among the winners. After all, if there’s one purchase that’s hard to put off until better times…. And more people are dying anyway, as Japanese society ages and the baby boomers begin taking leave. In fact, this is one industry where they can predict the size of your long-term, year-to-year market within a fairly narrow margin of error.

Looking beyond the funerals industry, there are several interesting inverse symmetries. One is between the decline in golf club revenue and the rise in driving range revenues. Japanese golfers are plaything less, but practicing more. It’s not hard to connect the dots here; I don’t think that Ryo Ishikawa has touched off a desire among golf dads to raise their own versions of the next Tiger Woods (or the less fortunate next Michelle Wie).

Another requires a look into the fine print. The METI table shows that the “credit card industry” as whole increased year-on-year business volume in 2008. However, most of this came in the dominant “sales credit” sector, while the “consumer credit” business (read: reformed loan sharks) continued a year-on-year decline. Cash-strapped consumers in Japan must be stretching out payments, instead of paying cash on the barrel as is the Japanese custom. Meanwhile, the shakeout appears to be continuing in the consumer credit business in the wake of the long-running judicial and legislative crackdown on usury.

Finally, rentals increased, but that did little to offset the much larger drop in leasing. It’s no surprise that businesses are more reluctant to take on long-term financial obligations.

On a different note, movies, bowling alleys and pachinko parlors continued their downward trend. I wonder if this noticeable drop in the cheaper amusement categories is an indication of the hit that the lower-income brackets are taking, or merely a point in the long-term timelines of entertainment industries whose best days are behind them.

No Mention in KCNA of Hillary Clinton’s Visits

The Korean Central News Agency is studiously ignoring Secretary of State Clinton’s trip to Japan, South Korea and China. It’s also ignoring her trip to Indonesia, although it did acknowledge (February 18) a visit to the site of the 13th Kinjongilia Festival by the third secretary from the Indonesian embassy in Pyongyang.

Seriously, were the third secretary and the Cuban first secretary the only foreign dignitaries to take an interest in the event(February 20)? You wonder what they won’t give to have the current U.S. Secretary of State attend one of their mass games.

Why Not Help the South Korean Navy?

I’m usually far more interested in figuring out what the Japanese authorities are up to than in trying to tell them what to do. It’s better for business; besides, the authorities don’t listen to me. But I’m making an exception here. The online Asahi carries a February 22 report headlined South Korea Sounds Maritime Self-Defense Force on Refueling in Offshore Somalia; Japan Refuses(韓国、海自に給油を打診　ソマリア沖で　日本は拒否) telling us that the Japanese government rejected refueling Munmu the Great DDH-976 (the destroyer that the ROK Navy will be dispatching to escort South Korean ship in the Somali neighborhood) under the Japanese Counterterrorism Act—these are pirates, not terrorists, so that’s understandable. However, the Aso administration reportedly is also reluctant to include the necessary provisions for this in the legislative bill to upgrade authorization for the two JMSDF that will be dispatched next month under the current, more restrictive laws on the books, fearing potential trouble in the Diet.

If true, it looks like the Aso administration will be making a big, big mistake. On the domestic side, prospective counter-piracy activities enjoy the support of a healthy majority of the Japanese public—in contrast, the majority of the Japanese public consistently opposed sending troops to Iraq, while the public has always been divided over the counterterrorism refueling activities in the Indiana Ocean. With 2000-3000 ships of immediate Japanese interest passing through the dangerous waters each year and an actual seizure in recent headlines, this is a cause that will have the public and, just as important, the media behind it. This will put the DPJ on the spot: its collective instincts probably tell it to support helping the South Koreans. But it is constrained by the need to appease the “no troops” Socialists, whose votes the DPJ needs for an Upper House majority in the case of a Lower House victory in the next election. The Socialists in turn are likely to blackmail the DPJ on this issue to appease its own ever-more-narrow constituency on the diehard left-wing of the Japanese political spectrum. In other words, this is a chance to force the DPJ to make up its mind and take a difficult stand on a publicly popular issue. It’s a chance to make the DPJ look weak and waffling, a welcome, unusual switch for the LDP.

It would also be an excellent piece of diplomacy. It not only would be great payback for the Lee Myung-bak administration, which has moved much closer to the Japanese position on North Korea, but also a great show of solidarity between the two militaries that would help put local issues into proper perspective, first and foremost the Takeshima/Dok-to so that the South Korean public doesn’t go flying off the handle every time the Japanese authorities issue a reminder that there are conflicting claims over the islets, but also history issues so that the South Korean public won’t see every dislikable comment from a Japanese politician as a national affront. If this is the only thing that the two JMSDF destroyer squadrons achieve, I’d say it will be money well spent.

So I don’t see what they’re worried about. Maybe I’ve missed something.

Is It a Good Thing That These Indian Moslems Will Not Bury Their Dead?

There are nine bodies — all of them young men — that have been lying in a Mumbai hospital morgue since Nov. 29. They may be stranded there for a while because no local Muslim charity is willing to bury them in its cemetery. This is good news.

The fact that Indian Muslims have stood up in this way is surely due, in part, to the fact that they live in, are the product of and feel empowered by a democratic and pluralistic society. They are not intimidated by extremist religious leaders and are not afraid to speak out against religious extremism in their midst.

That’s what Tom Friedman says. But there is another explanation that seems equally plausible:

There are nine bodies — all of them young men — that have been lying in a Mumbai hospital morgue since Nov. 29. They may be stranded there for a while because no local Muslim charity is willing to bury them in its cemetery. This is bad news.

The fact that Indian Moslems have stood back in this way is surely due, in part, to the fact that they live in, are the product of and feel cowered by a majority-rule society dominated by Hindus. They are intimidated by extremist religious Hindu leaders who have conducted multiple pogroms against Moslems in times of religious conflict and are afraid to bury their dead, let alone speak out against religious persecution from on the other side.

Never mind the unseemly glee and presumptuousness with which Friedman purports to pass judgment on the propriety (or lack thereof) of the religious rites of another faith, never mind that the denial of a Moslem burial mirrors the extreme intimacy between the religious and the secular that empowers Moslem radicals–would Friedman similarly rejoice if Baruch Goldman’s grave were reopened and his remains returned to the Hebron morgue?—never mind that Friedman has a tendency to craft his quotes and anecdotes. I make no claim for the truthfulness of my alternative version and I know nothing of the theologies surrounding Moslem or Jewish burials, but I do say with some confidence that it would be deemed most uncharitable for the Christian church to deny a decent burial to the most heinous of condemned criminals among its flock.

If my words are not enough, read Edward Luce’s highly regarded “In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India” and you will see that Friedman’s version of the truth, interpretation of the facts, cannot be accepted unquestioningly. But it was his most uncharitable thoughts that touched off my tirade.

The Perils of the Shakedown Process

The three most recent administrations have been plagued by Cabinet appointments gone bad. In fact, the Abe administration arguably lost control of the political game and the 2007 Upper House election because of botched assignments and poor damage control. Now, the Aso administration just had another one, and it has been a doozey.

But before you accuse the LDP of institutional fatigue—which I have done quite recently, actually—you have to remember that the great Junichiro Koizumi, whose passing into the political afterlife continues to be mourned by his diehard supporters, invited his own appointment fiasco in the first year of his administration when he rewarded Makiko Tanaka, the charismatic but ill-disciplined daughter of the late former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, with the Foreign Affairs portfolio for her indispensable help in his LDP campaign. It is to be remembered that Koizumi failed to show any leadership skills in managing the ensuing crisis at MOFA and her ultimate resignation. In fact, the Tanaka incident was so damaging that (according to Wikipedia) the Koizumi Cabinet’s poll numbers fell 30%. Nor is this a purely Japanese phenomenon. Barack Obama has been President of the United States for exactly one month (three if you count, which in all fairness we should, his two months as President-elect) and he’s already lost three Cabinet nominees and one White House appointment (two if you double-count Tom Daschle) requiring Senate approval.

What we’re seeing, then, is the initial shakedown process. At some point, the Obama administration is going to reach full operational capability, just like the Koizumi Cabinet did. Prime Minister Abe cracked before he made a real attempt to regain his footing, but Prime Minister Fukuda had been making a slow but steady improvement in the polls before his nerves gave out at the thought of contesting a Lower House general election. So it is not inconceivable that Prime Minister Aso could, over time, make the necessary adjustments to engineer a comeback.

Of course there is an institutional constraint to that rosy scenario. Aso always had at most only a year to reach full stride, since he had to call a Lower House election before the current four-year term expires this September. That gave the newly-appointed Prime Minister very little time to recover from any shortcomings detected during the initial shakedown.

As a second constraint, there is the cumulative effect of the two previous failures. This meant that each successive administration has begun with progressively less political capital and consequently narrower margins of error. Prime Minister Aso, among other calculations, gambled that he could add to it and deferred the snap election that his predecessor had expected him to carry out. He has squandered most of the depleted store of chips that he inherited.

Which brings me to the third and most painful constraint for the Aso administration: In the eyes of the public, the Prime Minister has arguably been his own most disastrous Cabinet appointment. And that’s a mighty difficult flaw to remedy.


That’s it for now, folks.

DPJ Wants to Keep Aso Alive?

Coming from Sankei, this report supports another contention of mine (the other was that the LDP doesn’t want to push him out until April comes around): the DPJ doesn’t want to push Prime Minister too hard (and the other opposition parties are upset about that). The Sankei report clearly sees the best-case DPJ scenario as a mortally wounded Prime Minister Aso calling a snap election, which he is allowed to do under the Japanese Constitution regardless of the LDP’s wishes. Which means of course that the LDP will not allow that to happen which means that the DPJ…

Stepping away from that cloud of conjectures, I expect things to quiet down over the coming weeks (unless another shoe drops), in which case Aso’s poll numbers will begin edging up again over the coming months. But that’s a slow process, Aso’s starting from single-digit numbers, and he only has seven months.

Odds and Ends from the Nakagawa Resignation

Yomiuri was the most favored of all.

I’ve noted that Yomiuri was kindest to the Finance Minister when the story about the press briefing meltdown first broke. It turns out that Yomiuri reporter was the only journalist at the preceding lunch with the MOF Minister and his bureaucrats. One bureaucrat testifying today in the Lower House Budget Committee said that the Minister asked for the wine himself but barely touched the stuff. The MOF bureaucrat further testified that there was a similar dinner the previous night that included four journalists, one of them being the same(?) Yomiuri reporter, while two of the others asked that their identities not be revealed and the fourth did not respond. Asahi is the only online source that is reporting on that dinner. With these clues, you have four guesses to name the other three. Don’t worry, you’ll find the answer in one of the tabloids. In the meantime, if you really need to know what I think, look here* where I’ve written them down in size”0” font, backward.

The LDP isn’t pushing Aso out until April at the earliest.

At least that’s what the mainstream media is telling us. Party faithfuls want the Aso administration to preside over late-April, supermajority overrides for FY2009-budget-related bills. After that, they want him to leave the stage or stay on to preside over yet another stimulus package, depending on whether or not they are diehard Aso supporters and/or speaking on the record. It’s not really a bad game plan, actually, considering the DPJ has nothing but the same old four-year schedule for its 2007 manifesto rev.2 in response to the economic collapse. However, there’s no one ready in the LDP to step up—帯に短し、襷に短し, if you will—and frankly, after the last three offerings, the Japanese public will be excused if it decides to kick the tires some, then goes to the other used car dealer’s lot down the street.

Everybody is talking about Nakagawa’s alcohol issues.

It’s one thing for a DPJ member to talk about how he’d seen Nakagawa held up on both sides as he left the local airport twice, it’s totally another for LDP cohorts to give eyewitness accounts on the record about his numerous public meltdowns and chronic late-shows. Never mind the usual backstabbing friends; these colleagues are shooting him in the face. Casper the Friendly Ghost he is not.

* ieknaS dna ,ihciniaM ,iekkiN

North Korea Mum on Hillary Clinton’s Visit to Japan

Recently, North Korea has been making noises about U.S. plans for all-out war and throwing verbal stink bombs at South Korea’s Lee Myung-bak regime, all the while going through the motions of preparing for a Taepodon launch. However, it has been relatively quiet with regard to Japan and, unless I’ve missed something, has studiously ignored Hillary Clinton’s visit to Japan and her meeting with family members of the abductees—as well as her comments regarding its nuclear program. Instead, the Korean Central News Agency has chosen to focus on more groundbreaking news such as a third secretary from the Indonesian embassy and a first secretary from the Cuban embassy “visit[ing] the venue of the 13th Kimjongilia Festival on Feb. 18 on the occasion of the February holiday.” (February 18, folks. The site does not have direct links to individual articles.)

Nothing surprising here if you conceive all of North Korea’s actions and words as tactical moves in the service of a strategy that is intended to maximize economic returns without giving up and when possible enhancing its two bargaining chips. And what are they? One, we will pee on you (conventional and nuclear military power); and two, we will throw up on you (internal meltdown). Yes, North Korea is Bizarro baby. It does need a U.S. interlocutor, though, and likely figures that, with her Billary Albright associations, the Secretary of State is better than most.

The Nakagawa Outtakes

Yes, the Aso administration has been further wounded, but so what, “deader” and “deadest” are not real words. Having said that, I think that the Aso administration will linger into April. Aso is the first Prime Minister since Koizumi with a real hunger for the job and he knows that he has only one crack at it. The LDP party elders do not have the stomach to push him out and diehard reformists do not have the numbers. The DPJ would be foolish to actually push him over the edge (assuming it could); why help the LDP do a makeover? So, if I’m wrong, I’m wrong. But in the meantime, even the lousiest movies have some watchable outtakes…

Shoichi Nakagawa is one sick puppy.

Take a guy who by reliable accounts—much of which is surfacing in the mainstream media, as usual, post facto—drinks heavily under stress and does not hold his liquor well, is a regular user of painkillers, and has a tendency for self-overmedication. He took over the family business when his father committed suicide in the prime of his career. His own promising career is now in tatters, as he has disgraced himself in full view of the mainstream media; the video clip holds a spot in cyberspace somewhere between those of Chris Crocker and Paris Hilton’s performances.

The guy needs help.

Shoichi Nakagawa is the first Japanese politician to be brought down by the Internet.

Kidding. But the Internet did play a significant, if far from decisive, role in the story. Let me explain.

None of the initial dispatches from the embedded reporters in Rome probed the real cause and broader background of Finance Minister Nakagawa’s meltdown. There were several reasons for this. The MOF kisha club folks who accompanied him there are economic reporters whose backgrounds are in the business and financial worlds and the related bureaucracies and public banking institutions. They have not cultivated the experience or temperament for the battle and the hurly-burly of the political and the crime-and-grime “society” scenes. Moreover, as MOF regulars, they are inclined to go along to get along, since it is the day-to-day economic news that allow them to earn their keep in the form of bylines. The correspondents gathering from Rome and elsewhere in Europe also appeared to have had understandable difficulties in grasping the political delectability of the spectacle that was unfolding before their eyes. (The kisha club crowd had no incentive to alert their overseas counterparts/competitors to the possibilities even if they had been aware of them.) It must, then, have been a godsend to the Sankei writer at home/in Washington to have come upon the ABC News blog item, for here was a factual hook to file a report to trump their MOF kisha club counterparts, fleshing it out with the familiar, meatier allegations of substance abuse.

That was step one. Step two came when Japanese broadcasts of Nakagawa’s media fiasco debuted on YouTube. Nakagawa must have been viewed by more people outside of Japan than any other Japanese since Ken Watanabe stole the show from Tom Cruise in Last Samurai after being simul-linked by Matt Drudge and the Daily Dish metablog. Needless to say, the overseas attention was duly reflected in the Japanese media, adding to Nakagawa’s woes.

Would the Japanese media have eventually turned their attention to Nakagawa’s substance issues in the absence of the overseas reports? Of course. Was Nakagawa a goner without the ridicule from the overseas media? Surely the Japanese TV wide shows would have been more than enough to elevate the story above tabloids levels. And would the overseas media have turned their attention to the spectacle without YouTube assistance anyway? No doubt. But subordinate though their roles may have been, there is no doubt that the blogosphere and YouTube became highly useful props in the made-for-docudrama script that took down Nakagawa. There’s always a next time, and the time will come for the Internet to star.

Shoichi Nakagawa Starring in Groundhog Day

Step 1. Embarrassing details emerge in the political life of an LDP Cabinet Minister, Minister issues denial.
Step 2. Prime Minister expresses confidence in Cabinet Minister.
Step 3. More embarrassing details emerge, Minister repeats denial.
Step 4. Prime Minister expresses confidence in Cabinet Minister.
Step 5. More embarrassing details emerge, Minister backtracks.
Step 6. Prime Minister expresses confidence in Cabinet Minister.
Step 7. More embarrassing details emerge, Minister backtracks.
Step 8. Prime Minister is silent.
Step 9. Minister resigns and/or kills himself.
Step 10. Return to step 1…
Note: Steps 3&4, 5&6 and 7&8 may be repeated, in tandem at each juncture.

This has been the story of the three most recent administrations, including the current one. Two observations: First, the LDP seems to have lost all semblance of an institutional memory. (Paging Oliver Sachs...) Second, each successive administration begins with lower health levels and shorter ATB gauges, like some Bizarroworld computer game.

No East Asia Miracle for Finance Minister

The proprietor of Shisaku sends his friends a Reuters link that Shoichi Nakagawa just announced his intent to resign after the Lower House passes the budget and budget-related legislative bills. End of story. A few percentage points in the opinion polls this way or that don’ t matter anymore for the Aso administration.

Out of Sight, Out the Door? The Media on Finance Minister’s Last? Gaffe

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.

The DPJ Response to the Economic Crisis or Lack Thereof

Briefly:

The DPJ is taking the Aso administration to task for talking about yet another multi-trillion-yen budget well before the second stimulus package and the FY2009 budget have been enacted by the Diet. This lack of foresight on the part of the Aso administration may not be unique from a global perspective and given the rarity of the economic situation, but it’s still fair game politics-wise.

What makes me uneasy, given the increasing likelihood that the DPJ will take over in the next Lower House election, is the fact that the DPJ is even less reluctant to address the current, escalating economic problems. It came out last year with a plausible plan to deal with the financial crisis, but it never went on to push it with the Japanese public. More significantly, it is sticking to its four-year rollout plan for the 2007 DPJ manifesto plus a few big-ticket items that it subsequently promised, such as the discontinuation of the “temporary” gasoline surtax.

If the Aso administration suffers from a case of making-it-up-as-you-go-along frivolity, the DPJ is welded to a partly-sound, part political-expediency set of measures that may have been superseded by the dramatically altered economic landscape, in Japan and globally.