Kaoto Kan, currently Japan’s prime minister, is not exactly my favorite politician, but surely he deserves some credit for what he is trying to do. He does have a policy agenda that is relatively coherent and more consonant with the pre-Ozawa manifesto as well as the post-3.11 realities. Moreover, the opposition parties as well as Ozawa’s allies in the DPJ are not well-positioned to force him out. That doesn’t mean that he’s in the clear until the DPJ leadership election in 2012, but I think that reports of his imminent demise are very much premature. If you’re interested, please read on.
He continues to push ahead on social safety network reform coupled to a consumption tax hike despite last year’s upper house election setback. This is a reversion to the DPJ’s pre-Ozawa manifesto. Scaling back the child allowance also brings it more in line with the pre-Ozawa manifesto. Add the reduction in scope for agricultural income subsidies—remember that the DPJ linked the money to trade liberalization—and it’s pretty clear that Kan is trying to pull the DPJ back toward the urban orientation of its pre-Ozawa/Hatoyama days. From this perspective, I see no reason to think that he won’t revive his TPP initiative, once the relief and recovery process is fully on track and the nuclear situation is stabilized so he won’t look like he’s kicking the Tohoku and Kanto farmers while they’re down. Toll-free highways—another big ticket item—had already been scaled back substantially by Seiji Maehara as Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism when he was forced to cough up gasoline tax revenue to finance Ozawa’s old-school politics road-building plans, but the majority of the Japanese public won’t be sorry to see that experiment die.
So Kan certainly does have a policy program, though it is poorly articulated. Perhaps that is by design; he doesn’t want to completely alienate the DPJ’s pro-Ozawa wing, which has pretty much been frozen out of the policymaking process and is using the manifesto as a rallying cry. There’s also the matter of his surprising—to me at least—lack of communication instincts judging from his performance as prime minister. Still, if you look beyond the headlines in the media and the criticism from his DPJ detractors, his policy agenda in my view is both more coherent and more consonant with the PDJ policy agenda before Ozawa altered it, likely for electoral purposes.
But what are his political prospects? A few things to keep in mind. First, the LDP calls for Kan’s resignation are not to be believed. The last thing that they want is to go into an election against a DPJ under rejuvenated leadership. Second, Komeito does not want to lean on the Sokagakkai troops again so soon after the “nationwide” local elections. Besides, it currently has enormous leverage over the DPJ now because of its ability to deliver an upper house majority by itself. Komeito can marginally increase its leverage through a lower house election if it results in a near-equal DPJ-LDP split, allowing Komeito to give a lower house majority to either of the two major parties. I say “marginally” because choosing the LDP would mean that the administration would have to work with an upper house minority. Why upset the political cart for a new lower house configuration that could trigger further political realignment? On this side of the aisle, the SDP has lost just about every general election since it sold its pacifist soul to buy the prime minister’s office for Tomiichi Murayama. There is no reason to believe that the next election will be any different. And the formal coalition partner PNP is what it is. The DPJ loses one seat and there goes the DPJ-PNP-SDP’s joint lower house supermajority, and with it what remains of the PNP’s (and SDP’s) leverage. As for Ozawa’s DPJ allies, if they manage to secure enough breakaways to pass a lower house vote of no confidence in the Kan cabinet, their lower house members will have to fight a three- or four-way battle against the DPJ, LDP, and Your Party. And many of them are first-termers, who will surely be at least as vulnerable as the Koizumi Kids. All this does not mean that
This does not mean that Kan’s path leading up to (but not including) the 2012 DPJ leadership election is clear. There is always the chance that the opposition parties and Ozawa’s allies will wind up pushing Kan too hard, with results that at least some of them do not want at all. Wars have been started that way. More plausibly, if Kan looks so bad that his DPJ supporters start abandoning him, that’s the end for him. He may be stubborn, he may have a massive ego, but he’s not so selfish that he’ll take the DPJ down with him by calling a snap election. He’ll step down, leaving it to someone more articulate and telegenic to lead that charge. Don’t even rule out Ozawa’s arch DPJ nemesis Yukio Edano in that case; politics makes strange bedfellows.
And beyond all the politics, there is the matter of genuine policy differences. Kan does have a policy agenda that is significantly at odds with what Ozawa and his DPJ allies profess, never mind their motives. This chasm also exists within the LDP as well. And reform is afoot in the upper house, although the next election there is not due until 2013. Feel free to make your own inferences here.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Kan’s Second Week Speech to the Nation and My Expectations for Media Coverage
Here’s my snap reaction to Prime Minister Kan’s 7:30PM speech to mark the passing of two weeks since the earthquake and tsunami.
Speech: Somber to the point of flat and boring, designed mostly to make sure that he touched on all the important points.
Q&A: Four questions from the media about the Fukushima end game, the escalation in the government evacuation recommendations, the discrepancy between the overseas reaction and the government’s own (20-39km vs. 80km), and four stock, non sequitur answers.
I think that the print media is going to pan it. Kan definitely does not have what it takes to front a band IYKWIAS.
Speech: Somber to the point of flat and boring, designed mostly to make sure that he touched on all the important points.
Q&A: Four questions from the media about the Fukushima end game, the escalation in the government evacuation recommendations, the discrepancy between the overseas reaction and the government’s own (20-39km vs. 80km), and four stock, non sequitur answers.
I think that the print media is going to pan it. Kan definitely does not have what it takes to front a band IYKWIAS.
Associate Companies, Pus the Twit of the Day
From my outbox, lightly edited, plus some supplemental, inappropriate material…
I’ve been telling people that not all the heroes at Fukushima I were TEPCO employees (or JSDF soldiers or Tokyo Metropolitan firefighters for that matter) but were actually employees—possibly even temps—of “associate companies.” Well yesterday (24th), radioactive material was detected on three men working the site, of whom two were hospitalized for treatment. None of them showed any “external damage.” (Some of you will have read that they suffered “radiation burns.” No one has confirmed that, but Japanese media outlets explicitly mention that there was no “external damage.” For another MSM case of adding heaps of sizzle to an already pretty juicy steak, see this report. No, I’m not really following the foreign media; it’s all I can do to keep an eye on what the Japanese media is reporting. But it seems like there’s a lot of that going on. That makes it all the more important that the Japanese government (and TEPCO) get the information out there in English quickly and clearly—which I know for a fact that they are working very hard to do. Many of the people covering the case know nothing about nuclear power or have been flown in or in some cases both. But that’s the government’s problem, not theirs.) They’d been wearing ankle-high shoes in a space whose floor was drenched in water, while the other workers had knee-high rubber boots on. Am I surprised that the three had been dispatched by an “associate company”?
And now for the Twit of the Day:
Seiji Matsumoto, one of Naoto Kan’s former political aides is an assemblyman in the city of Musashino. Japanese netizens mopped the virtual floor with Matsumoto’s name because he had issued a flyer report where he noted that TEPCO’s Musashino office had notified him that the urban areas of Musashino, hospitals, and Group 1 areas would be excluded the like and that “Seiji Matsumoto’s requests have been answered.” Matsumoto denied any malicious intent and stated on his Twitter account yesterday that he is “sorry if part of the text has been the cause of misunderstanding.”
Yes, we Japanese have also mastered the art of apologizing for the stupidity of the offended. But that’s not end of it, because this story is going to be out there in cyberspace to be plucked till time and times are done, like Paris Hilton’s sex tapes and Sarah Ferguson’s toe-sucking rendezvous and…well you get the idea. So, are we all going to become more careful when we put stuff out there? Somehow, I don’t think so. Instead, we will become more shameless. It’ll be like, “Yeah, that’s me and my boy/girl friend at the time. Yeah, I’ve put on a little weight since them.” “Hey, but I was only fifteen then. Wanna see me now?” And he/she points you to his/her Facebook account, by which time Facebook has long since become a misnomer IMHO IMHO. And everyone will say whatever they think and won’t even stop to say they’re sorry you don’t get it and every conversation will be straight out of Overheard in New York.
I’ve been telling people that not all the heroes at Fukushima I were TEPCO employees (or JSDF soldiers or Tokyo Metropolitan firefighters for that matter) but were actually employees—possibly even temps—of “associate companies.” Well yesterday (24th), radioactive material was detected on three men working the site, of whom two were hospitalized for treatment. None of them showed any “external damage.” (Some of you will have read that they suffered “radiation burns.” No one has confirmed that, but Japanese media outlets explicitly mention that there was no “external damage.” For another MSM case of adding heaps of sizzle to an already pretty juicy steak, see this report. No, I’m not really following the foreign media; it’s all I can do to keep an eye on what the Japanese media is reporting. But it seems like there’s a lot of that going on. That makes it all the more important that the Japanese government (and TEPCO) get the information out there in English quickly and clearly—which I know for a fact that they are working very hard to do. Many of the people covering the case know nothing about nuclear power or have been flown in or in some cases both. But that’s the government’s problem, not theirs.) They’d been wearing ankle-high shoes in a space whose floor was drenched in water, while the other workers had knee-high rubber boots on. Am I surprised that the three had been dispatched by an “associate company”?
And now for the Twit of the Day:
Seiji Matsumoto, one of Naoto Kan’s former political aides is an assemblyman in the city of Musashino. Japanese netizens mopped the virtual floor with Matsumoto’s name because he had issued a flyer report where he noted that TEPCO’s Musashino office had notified him that the urban areas of Musashino, hospitals, and Group 1 areas would be excluded the like and that “Seiji Matsumoto’s requests have been answered.” Matsumoto denied any malicious intent and stated on his Twitter account yesterday that he is “sorry if part of the text has been the cause of misunderstanding.”
Yes, we Japanese have also mastered the art of apologizing for the stupidity of the offended. But that’s not end of it, because this story is going to be out there in cyberspace to be plucked till time and times are done, like Paris Hilton’s sex tapes and Sarah Ferguson’s toe-sucking rendezvous and…well you get the idea. So, are we all going to become more careful when we put stuff out there? Somehow, I don’t think so. Instead, we will become more shameless. It’ll be like, “Yeah, that’s me and my boy/girl friend at the time. Yeah, I’ve put on a little weight since them.” “Hey, but I was only fifteen then. Wanna see me now?” And he/she points you to his/her Facebook account, by which time Facebook has long since become a misnomer IMHO IMHO. And everyone will say whatever they think and won’t even stop to say they’re sorry you don’t get it and every conversation will be straight out of Overheard in New York.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Mike Smitka and Earthquake/Tsunami Economics 101
Mike Smitka mentioned in passing that he had blogs so I went to take a look. This post must be about as good a summary of the scale of the problem and the issues as there is out there. Eurasia Group has a more policy- and politics-oriented Note, distributed to its clients, that happens to broadly share the same understanding.
TEPCO (and JSDF) Employees Not the Only Heroes at Fukushima 1; Plus Sidebar to Minami-Sanriku Tragedy
TEPCO has been catching most of the flak for allegedly mishandling the response to the nuclear crisis at its Fukushima 1 Nuclear Power Plant but its 50 or so employees who have been putting their lives at risk to contain the danger there have been rightly hailed as heroes. Now the Sunday papers remind us that they are not the only ones. According to this Yomiuri report, of the 160-man team who have been braving high-level radiation to connect the four at-risk generators to the grid in an attempt to revive their cooling systems, 50 have been dispatched by a kyōryoku kigyō, or “associate company.” If “associate company” sounds suspiciously like the “associates” in America—as far as I’m aware, business-speak to make employees feel more valued without having to pay them accordingly—you’re right. They’re the shitauke kigyō, or the subcontractors of old, who typically carried out the more kitsui, kitanai, and kiken—“Dirty, Dangerous and Demanding”—work at lower pay and with less job security. The report is not even clear whether all the operators dispatched by the associate company are its regular employees. There are several directions in which I could take this story—it’s actually of professional interest to me because the regular/irregular employee distinction is the most important part of the labor reform debate—but I have to break off for now.
Another Yomiuri report says that Minami-Sanrikuchō, the township where 8,000 out of 17,000 inhabitants remain unaccounted for one week into the crisis, appears to have had its entire family registry database wiped out by the tsunami. The backup files at the sub-regional offices of the Ministry of Justice were also lost in the deluge. So how are the survivors going to open bank accounts, obtain passports, and do all those other things that require a copy from the family registry? It’s a very small story within the national tragedy, and legacy systems yadyada but I can’t really find any excuse for a national system that’s still being siloed locally when storage is dirt-cheap and getting cheaper and e-government is now taking a hard look at cloud computing.
Another Yomiuri report says that Minami-Sanrikuchō, the township where 8,000 out of 17,000 inhabitants remain unaccounted for one week into the crisis, appears to have had its entire family registry database wiped out by the tsunami. The backup files at the sub-regional offices of the Ministry of Justice were also lost in the deluge. So how are the survivors going to open bank accounts, obtain passports, and do all those other things that require a copy from the family registry? It’s a very small story within the national tragedy, and legacy systems yadyada but I can’t really find any excuse for a national system that’s still being siloed locally when storage is dirt-cheap and getting cheaper and e-government is now taking a hard look at cloud computing.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
How Can TEPCO Be Able to Avoid Blackouts by the End of April?
A Vice President of TEPCO—Japanese corporate vice presidents are more important than the typical American VP—said that the blackouts could be over some time in April but would likely have to return in peak-demand summer. That did seem like a very quick turnaround, so I speculated about the reasons for this optimism. Essentially, I guessed that TEPCO had a pretty good idea of how quickly the fossil fuel power plants that had gone offline could be brought back but was limited by the resources available—and of course would likely be offering a conservative estimate just to be on the safe side. Professor Michael Smitka pointed out that there would be a spring dip in demand, between the need for winter heating and summer cooling. The following is essentially a copy of a follow-up email. It turns out, there’s more. I’m sure that the public would welcome anyone with the means to create credible scenarios as a first step to quantifying economic impact. If you do that or find anything out there on this, drop me a notice and I’ll be happy to kink to it, or otherwise take note here and elsewhere. Thanks.
And yes, I am conserving energy by not producing original material for the blog.
I've had this thing sitting on my PC most of the day, and I've run out of energy to do the subject justice. finish it. So I'm sending it out on the Earthquake list, to which I've added people who might be interested in following up on their own, as well as some people who have been kind enough to express their concern (who may find my earlier messages amusing. Or not).
Oh, and the ads on the trains have taken a huge dip, and the self-generated, space-eater ads have come back this week. And thanks again for the lunch, DS. OJ
**********
From media reports, a couple of pieces of information regarding the economic impact:
(Mar 18) Keidanren asked TEPCO on Mar.17 to reconsider the current arrangement because 1) factories could not know beforehand when it might have to shut down (note: Yesterday, I think, TEPCO posted a weekly schedule here http://www.tepco.co.jp/cc/press/betu11_j/images/110317g.pdf--although the most detailed publicly available information from my municipal government says only that my neighborhood is a Group 2-Group 4 mixed one); and b) factories that required lengthy adjustments could not cope with daily 3-hour shutdowns. Settling into a routine turns out not to be sufficient. So the question is: Can TEPCO prioritize and make individualized arrangements for specific businesses? Industrial customers can, if I remember correctly, cut specific deals regarding security of supply, but can they be accommodated within a rolling blackout? I suspect that it's easier to deny reduce supply to specific customers in an emergency than to maintain that supply during a general supply denial.
(Mar 18) TEPCO announced on March 17 that it would install multiple 30MW gas turbine power generators in time for the summertime surge in demand. (The Philippines also installed such generators under President Ramos and wound up surprising visitors who went there expecting blackouts and saw Xmas lighting everywhere.) TEPCO would also a) raise operation rates at existing fossil fuel power plants (but would not reactivate the idle reactors at Kashiwazaki); b) increase purchase from IPPs; c) reactivate Higashi Ogishma (2GW) and Kashima (4.4GW) by the first ten days of April (上旬 for those of you who can read Japanese)., and d) reactivate old idle fossil fuel generators. TEPCO is currently down to 34GW and had been expecting the Mar18 peak load (18:00-19:00) to reach 40GW but would now be only 37GW due to the weather, household self-restraint, and the most recent round of train schedule reductions (which hit JR Kanto, the Tokyo metro system, and some private railways. Anyway,
Now TEPCO's historical peak-load summer and winter highs are 64.3GW (24 July 2000) and 55.0GW (23 January 2008) winter (http://www.tepco.co.jp/company/corp-com/annai/shiryou/suuhyou/pdf/suh02-j.pdf) while its total pre-earthquake capacity was 78.1GW (TEPCO capacity 65.0GW; net purchased capacity 13.1GW http://www.tepco.co.jp/company/corp-com/annai/shiryou/suuhyou/pdf/suh03-j.pdf). Keep digging around for more detailed information, and an experienced analyst could probably come up with a range of scenarios for the Tokyo energy situation and its impact on the Japanese economy. Of course there's rest of Japan, most significantly EPCO and the Tohoku region. Long-term, many people must be working on the global energy situation, where the future of the nuclear buildout in the emerging economies will be crucial.
And yes, I am conserving energy by not producing original material for the blog.
I've had this thing sitting on my PC most of the day, and I've run out of energy to do the subject justice. finish it. So I'm sending it out on the Earthquake list, to which I've added people who might be interested in following up on their own, as well as some people who have been kind enough to express their concern (who may find my earlier messages amusing. Or not).
Oh, and the ads on the trains have taken a huge dip, and the self-generated, space-eater ads have come back this week. And thanks again for the lunch, DS. OJ
**********
From media reports, a couple of pieces of information regarding the economic impact:
(Mar 18) Keidanren asked TEPCO on Mar.17 to reconsider the current arrangement because 1) factories could not know beforehand when it might have to shut down (note: Yesterday, I think, TEPCO posted a weekly schedule here http://www.tepco.co.jp/cc/press/betu11_j/images/110317g.pdf--although the most detailed publicly available information from my municipal government says only that my neighborhood is a Group 2-Group 4 mixed one); and b) factories that required lengthy adjustments could not cope with daily 3-hour shutdowns. Settling into a routine turns out not to be sufficient. So the question is: Can TEPCO prioritize and make individualized arrangements for specific businesses? Industrial customers can, if I remember correctly, cut specific deals regarding security of supply, but can they be accommodated within a rolling blackout? I suspect that it's easier to deny reduce supply to specific customers in an emergency than to maintain that supply during a general supply denial.
(Mar 18) TEPCO announced on March 17 that it would install multiple 30MW gas turbine power generators in time for the summertime surge in demand. (The Philippines also installed such generators under President Ramos and wound up surprising visitors who went there expecting blackouts and saw Xmas lighting everywhere.) TEPCO would also a) raise operation rates at existing fossil fuel power plants (but would not reactivate the idle reactors at Kashiwazaki); b) increase purchase from IPPs; c) reactivate Higashi Ogishma (2GW) and Kashima (4.4GW) by the first ten days of April (上旬 for those of you who can read Japanese)., and d) reactivate old idle fossil fuel generators. TEPCO is currently down to 34GW and had been expecting the Mar18 peak load (18:00-19:00) to reach 40GW but would now be only 37GW due to the weather, household self-restraint, and the most recent round of train schedule reductions (which hit JR Kanto, the Tokyo metro system, and some private railways. Anyway,
Now TEPCO's historical peak-load summer and winter highs are 64.3GW (24 July 2000) and 55.0GW (23 January 2008) winter (http://www.tepco.co.jp/company/corp-com/annai/shiryou/suuhyou/pdf/suh02-j.pdf) while its total pre-earthquake capacity was 78.1GW (TEPCO capacity 65.0GW; net purchased capacity 13.1GW http://www.tepco.co.jp/company/corp-com/annai/shiryou/suuhyou/pdf/suh03-j.pdf). Keep digging around for more detailed information, and an experienced analyst could probably come up with a range of scenarios for the Tokyo energy situation and its impact on the Japanese economy. Of course there's rest of Japan, most significantly EPCO and the Tohoku region. Long-term, many people must be working on the global energy situation, where the future of the nuclear buildout in the emerging economies will be crucial.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Meanwhile, Life Goes on.
(Regular blogging to resume. But not now, sorry.)
TV programming has returned to normal. Cable never wavered from their regular fare—no choice, unless they went off the air completely—satellite TV I think depended on the channel and hour, but now, UHF and VHF are back to the usual evening fare. So now you on Tokyo MX you get Ranma 1/2 instead of Governor Ishihara ragging Renho—a la Magic/Michael/Ichiro IMHO—and the cub reporters who cover the Tokyo beat, the other local UHF channels are back to their own animes and teleshopping programs and the national channels feature what appears to be their usual 7PM slapstick variety shows and the like. NHK alone continues earthquake coverage, which is only sensible given their mandatory fee charging privilege.
This trend was evident yesterday, but some networks had held back then. Also expect earthquake/tsunami coverage to come back with a vengeance during cheap, daytime coverage. But the trend is clear.
There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s only human. I’m just taking note of this for the sake of posterity. And now, the Emperor has spoken. I think all this means that whatever happens in Fukushima, it’s our 8.15 and we have to move on.
And speaking of posterity, those of you living in Tokyo, have you noticed how the advertising in trains had changed the last month or so before 3.11? There were still artfully disguised gaps, but there is little the of self-generated advertisement—you know, the space-eating stuff from subsidiaries and sister companies within those railway-centric chaebols—covering the revenue shortage. That is something to keep an eye on going forward.
TV programming has returned to normal. Cable never wavered from their regular fare—no choice, unless they went off the air completely—satellite TV I think depended on the channel and hour, but now, UHF and VHF are back to the usual evening fare. So now you on Tokyo MX you get Ranma 1/2 instead of Governor Ishihara ragging Renho—a la Magic/Michael/Ichiro IMHO—and the cub reporters who cover the Tokyo beat, the other local UHF channels are back to their own animes and teleshopping programs and the national channels feature what appears to be their usual 7PM slapstick variety shows and the like. NHK alone continues earthquake coverage, which is only sensible given their mandatory fee charging privilege.
This trend was evident yesterday, but some networks had held back then. Also expect earthquake/tsunami coverage to come back with a vengeance during cheap, daytime coverage. But the trend is clear.
There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s only human. I’m just taking note of this for the sake of posterity. And now, the Emperor has spoken. I think all this means that whatever happens in Fukushima, it’s our 8.15 and we have to move on.
And speaking of posterity, those of you living in Tokyo, have you noticed how the advertising in trains had changed the last month or so before 3.11? There were still artfully disguised gaps, but there is little the of self-generated advertisement—you know, the space-eating stuff from subsidiaries and sister companies within those railway-centric chaebols—covering the revenue shortage. That is something to keep an eye on going forward.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
SOTU: I Don’t See England, I don’t see France
But I do see Europe.
Yesterday, Paul Sracic emailed me his quick response to President Obama’ State of Union address, which included the following take on Japan:Council of Foreign Affairs fellowship Fulbright Scholarship. The headlines say it all:
If this sounds familiar to you, you’re right. We went through this during the 2008 presidential primaries, when many people here gave John McCain the thumbs-up over Hillary Clinton in the Foreign Affairs essays contest because McCain issued a paean to the US-Japan relationship while Clinton mentioned China more often than Japan. Note, though, that Clinton’s essay was more about the foreign policy and security challenges that the United States faced, and how she would deal with them. Obama is naming names mainly as countries that are doing things that the United States should emulate at home. And no, as the Sankei count shows, England and France don’t show up either. But Europe does, as in: “Countries in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do.”
The silver lining for Japan is that this wakeup call is good news for people here who are pushing reform.
Yesterday, Paul Sracic emailed me his quick response to President Obama’ State of Union address, which included the following take on Japan:
No one in the U.S. will care about this, but Obama mentioned China, India, and South Korea several times -- but never Japan. Do you think that the Japanese people will care/notice this?Sure enough, the story showed up later that day on the Yomiuri and Sankei websites (and this morning in the Yomiuri and I sure Asahi hardcopy versions). Paul is an expert on US politics (he’s quoted on the SOTU itself in a Reuters wire), but he obviously figured out how the Japanese mind works while he was in Japan on his
Yomiuri: “Japan” Goes Unmentioned This Year Too: exhibits the strengths of South Korea, China (hardcopy version)Sankei does the whole SOTU BRICs count: China four times, India three times, Russia twice, and Brazil once. (Ian Bremmer believes that Russia isn’t a real BRIC, but that’s another story.)
Sankei: Country Names Mentioned in Obama Speech: South Korea Most Often, at Five; Japan Zero (online version)
If this sounds familiar to you, you’re right. We went through this during the 2008 presidential primaries, when many people here gave John McCain the thumbs-up over Hillary Clinton in the Foreign Affairs essays contest because McCain issued a paean to the US-Japan relationship while Clinton mentioned China more often than Japan. Note, though, that Clinton’s essay was more about the foreign policy and security challenges that the United States faced, and how she would deal with them. Obama is naming names mainly as countries that are doing things that the United States should emulate at home. And no, as the Sankei count shows, England and France don’t show up either. But Europe does, as in: “Countries in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do.”
The silver lining for Japan is that this wakeup call is good news for people here who are pushing reform.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Giving Kan Some Credit (though He Hasn’t Really Earned It)
Prime Minister Kan is trying to take the DPJ back to its reformist roots. His two most important policy initiatives:
I lay the blame squarely at the doorsteps of the prime minister’s office. Circumstances aside, it’s due to Kan’s inability to project a coherent political message and stick to it. In fact, if there’s one thing that the Founding Fathers of the ultimately successful anti-LDP movement—Ozawa, Kan, Hatoyama—it’s their inability to articulate what they stand for (something that has surprised me in Kan’s case) and give the appearance of staying on message. Another common thread that binds them, though, is their stubbornness. And that is what keeps their clocks ticking, even Hatoyama’s, who has decided that he is indispensable to Japanese politics after all. And keeps Kan plugging away, to turn the clock back to the future, the future that the DPJ saw, before it lent the eaves to Ozawa and almost lost the house.
Give Kan credit though; he isn’t giving up any time soon, like some beta version of the first-generation Terminator.
1) putting the social safety net on a sound footing by raising the consumption tax rate; andrevive the arguably two most important policy goals that Ichiro Ozawa threw under the bus when he beat Kan in the 2006 DPJ leadership election. His efforts to sideline Ozawa and his minions point to another key element of what the DPJ stood for until its fateful merger with the Ozawa forces—no more politics as usual. So why isn’t anyone giving Kan any credit for this? Or at least taking note? Could it be the reflection of an anti-DPJ bias in the MSM, which some political scientists (SR, JC, etc.) whom I know and respect claim exists?
2) pushing economic reform by re-linking agricultural subsidies to FTAs—I’m talking about his bid to have Japan join the US initiative on an expanded Trans-Pacific partnership
I lay the blame squarely at the doorsteps of the prime minister’s office. Circumstances aside, it’s due to Kan’s inability to project a coherent political message and stick to it. In fact, if there’s one thing that the Founding Fathers of the ultimately successful anti-LDP movement—Ozawa, Kan, Hatoyama—it’s their inability to articulate what they stand for (something that has surprised me in Kan’s case) and give the appearance of staying on message. Another common thread that binds them, though, is their stubbornness. And that is what keeps their clocks ticking, even Hatoyama’s, who has decided that he is indispensable to Japanese politics after all. And keeps Kan plugging away, to turn the clock back to the future, the future that the DPJ saw, before it lent the eaves to Ozawa and almost lost the house.
Give Kan credit though; he isn’t giving up any time soon, like some beta version of the first-generation Terminator.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
The Difference between the LDP and Komeito…Why It’s premature to Write Off the Kan Administration Just Yet…Plus My Pick for Kan’s Replacement
Opinion polls show the Kan cabinet dropping to near-last gasp Hatoyama lows and the DPJ falling behind the LDP for the first time in what seems like ages—when you are going through five prime ministers in four years, time seems to go by rather swiftly. So, is it time for a quick Kan write-off and a turn to a freshly recycled... Okay, not so great an idea, which may be one reason why nobody, not even an Ozawa surrogate, is willing to mount a leadership challenge. Still, with an opposition majority in the upper house, the April local elections (mayors, prefectural and municipal assemblies) looming, fragging from Ozawa and other discontents, and the media eager to promote major political upheaval, the Kan administration’s immediate prospects look dim. Or do they?
It is no secret that the DPJ is pining for Komeito, the one party—other than the LDP, which doesn’t count—that can ensure an upper house majority and erase the need for sucking up to the tiny SPD, former coalition member on the fringe-left, which can secure a lower house supermajority to force legislation past upper house opposition vetoes. (The problem with lower house overrides is that they will greatly increase the likelihood that the DPJ comes tumbling down in the next general election.) But conventional wisdom says that because of the April elections, the Ozawa smell test, and the sheer political inertia of the LDP-Komeito coalition years, Komeito is finding it difficult to provide assistance to the beleaguered DPJ, Kan or non-Kan, despite the shared urban, centrist leanings that would otherwise make the two parties natural allies. So it must be a relief to DPJ strategists to see that Komeito telegraphing its intent: We will fight the DPJ in the upcoming Diet session, but we will not push it over the brink and force a lower house snap election that the Soka-gakkai does not want.
For those of you who can’t read Japanese, Katsuya Okada, Kan’s second-in-command who runs the DPJ political operations, reiterated the Kan administration’s willingness to accommodate the opposition in order to avoid gridlock in the upcoming Diet session on the FY2011 budget, a turn of events that would doom the Kan administration and significantly raise the probability of a politically dangerous snap election. The opposition’s response?
Which begs the question: Which challenger? Good question, and the main reason, if some experts are to be believed, that the DPJ cannot afford to ditch Kan just yet. My pick: Goshi Hosono. He’s only 39, only in his fourth term as a lower house member in a society where seniority still matters, and has never served as a cabinet member. But neither did Shinji Tarudoko, who made a credible show of challenging Kan in the DPJ’s last leadership election despite similar shortcomings. Which brings me to what I think is the clincher. Hosono has something that none of the other telegenic, articulate policy wonks has: he’s on good terms with all the main actors, from Seiji Maehara to Ichiro Ozawa. That’s like playing for both national sides in the Japan-South Korea Asia Cup semi-finals. Go Blue Samurai!
My thanks go out to the people who have asked me why I haven’t been blogging recently.
It is no secret that the DPJ is pining for Komeito, the one party—other than the LDP, which doesn’t count—that can ensure an upper house majority and erase the need for sucking up to the tiny SPD, former coalition member on the fringe-left, which can secure a lower house supermajority to force legislation past upper house opposition vetoes. (The problem with lower house overrides is that they will greatly increase the likelihood that the DPJ comes tumbling down in the next general election.) But conventional wisdom says that because of the April elections, the Ozawa smell test, and the sheer political inertia of the LDP-Komeito coalition years, Komeito is finding it difficult to provide assistance to the beleaguered DPJ, Kan or non-Kan, despite the shared urban, centrist leanings that would otherwise make the two parties natural allies. So it must be a relief to DPJ strategists to see that Komeito telegraphing its intent: We will fight the DPJ in the upcoming Diet session, but we will not push it over the brink and force a lower house snap election that the Soka-gakkai does not want.
For those of you who can’t read Japanese, Katsuya Okada, Kan’s second-in-command who runs the DPJ political operations, reiterated the Kan administration’s willingness to accommodate the opposition in order to avoid gridlock in the upcoming Diet session on the FY2011 budget, a turn of events that would doom the Kan administration and significantly raise the probability of a politically dangerous snap election. The opposition’s response?
LDP whip: We must create a political situation at the fiscal year’s end [March 31] where [budget-]related legislative bills will be voted down in the upper house.In last year’s extraordinary Diet session, Kometio voted against the supplementary (stimulus) budget but voted for the budget-related bills. Barring political failure of catastrophic dimensions, this means that Kan will survive the upcoming Diet session, which makes him an odds-on favorite to survive until the 2012 DPJ leadership election, when my money will be on a run-off victory by the top challenger, who will then call a snap election and win a new mandate for the DPJ.
Komeito whip: (The budget bill) has an extremely large number of problems, and [we] oppose it.
Which begs the question: Which challenger? Good question, and the main reason, if some experts are to be believed, that the DPJ cannot afford to ditch Kan just yet. My pick: Goshi Hosono. He’s only 39, only in his fourth term as a lower house member in a society where seniority still matters, and has never served as a cabinet member. But neither did Shinji Tarudoko, who made a credible show of challenging Kan in the DPJ’s last leadership election despite similar shortcomings. Which brings me to what I think is the clincher. Hosono has something that none of the other telegenic, articulate policy wonks has: he’s on good terms with all the main actors, from Seiji Maehara to Ichiro Ozawa. That’s like playing for both national sides in the Japan-South Korea Asia Cup semi-finals. Go Blue Samurai!
My thanks go out to the people who have asked me why I haven’t been blogging recently.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Chinese Fishing Boat, Your Coast Guard; Welcome to the Club, ROK
Sorry I haven’t responded to comments on the Senkaku issue, but is this (highly unsuccessful) ramming of a South Korean Coast Guard vessel by a Chinese fishing boat Chinese government subterfuge, a copycat incident, gangster-like behavior by a historically rowdy occupational category, or a symptom of a larger Chinese breakdown in civility, most prominently evidenced in the tens of thousands of violent protests on the mainland?
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Case against Coast Guard Officer Not Air-Tight
More bad news for the Kan administration, according to the evening edition of the hardcopy Yomiuri. My translation, plus comments.
Katsuyuki Nishikawa, the Director-General of the Criminal Bureau of the Ministry of Justice testified in the Judiciary Committee of the House of Councilors regarding the leak of the video of the Chinese fishing boat collision*, “We are not treating [the leaked video] as documents or articles of evidence, but since we received it as material for investigation, it will obviously a document related to a trial as prescribed in (the Code of Criminal Procedure,) Article 47.”
The Code of Criminal Procedure, Article 47 stipulates, “No document relating to the trial shall be made public prior to the commencement of the trial” unless “it is necessary for the public interest or other reasons” [and this testimony] expresses the view that it is strongly suspected that the leak is a violation of the National Public Service Act (obligation to preserve secrecy).
This testimony exposes two problems. First, it could be argued that it is no longer a document related to a trial. The Chinese captain was released under reservation of disposition, which means that as a matter of pure logic, he could still be charged and brought to trial. However, because of the political considerations explicitly stated by the public prosecutors in Okinawa on his release to the Chinese authorities with the obvious understanding that he would be returned to China, where he would be placed beyond the long arm of Japanese law, there is good reason to believe that the Public Prosecutors Office has given up any possibility of prosecuting him at any point in the future. Hence, no trial for the document to be “relating to” pending “commencement of the trial.”
Second, the document can be made public without violating Article 47 “if it is necessary for the public interest or other reasons.” Now I’ve used the quasi-official translation here, but “necessary” does not extend to “other reasons” in the Japanese text. In other words, if there is a valid reason for the disclosure, or rather, a valid reason not to apply the Article 47 restriction to a case of disclosure, then it could be a “document relating to [a] trial” and still not be prosecutable. And what better “other reasons” could there be than the fact that there is no longer a real possibility of a trial?
Note also that a criminal prosecution is a serious encroachment by the state on the individual. There is also the public’s right to know. These are good reasons for the Public Prosecutors Office to exercise restraint in actually proceeding with the case, and the courts are likely to take them into consideration in taking up my two preceding points.
I don’t know if the courts will accept all of these arguments, but don’t you think they’re pretty sound? At a minimum, unless the Coast Guard officer is willing to do the Japanese version of nolo contendere, his lawyers will surely raise them, and his Coast Guard colleagues and retired officers as well as volunteer groups politically motivated or otherwise are sure to pitch in financially for the legal ordeal.
My point is that the Kan administration is looking at a prolonged legal battle that it has little control over but will become intimately tied to in part because of Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku’s intemperate and misguided statement equating it with the monstrosity of evidence tampering by a public prosecutor to buttress a weak case and subsequent alleged cover-up by his superiors. And that is bad. Ex-Prime Minister Hatoyama’s similarly bombastic and erroneous description of an administrative coup d’état hasn’t helped either.
Katsuyuki Nishikawa, the Director-General of the Criminal Bureau of the Ministry of Justice testified in the Judiciary Committee of the House of Councilors regarding the leak of the video of the Chinese fishing boat collision*, “We are not treating [the leaked video] as documents or articles of evidence, but since we received it as material for investigation, it will obviously a document related to a trial as prescribed in (the Code of Criminal Procedure,) Article 47.”
The Code of Criminal Procedure, Article 47 stipulates, “No document relating to the trial shall be made public prior to the commencement of the trial” unless “it is necessary for the public interest or other reasons” [and this testimony] expresses the view that it is strongly suspected that the leak is a violation of the National Public Service Act (obligation to preserve secrecy).
This testimony exposes two problems. First, it could be argued that it is no longer a document related to a trial. The Chinese captain was released under reservation of disposition, which means that as a matter of pure logic, he could still be charged and brought to trial. However, because of the political considerations explicitly stated by the public prosecutors in Okinawa on his release to the Chinese authorities with the obvious understanding that he would be returned to China, where he would be placed beyond the long arm of Japanese law, there is good reason to believe that the Public Prosecutors Office has given up any possibility of prosecuting him at any point in the future. Hence, no trial for the document to be “relating to” pending “commencement of the trial.”
Second, the document can be made public without violating Article 47 “if it is necessary for the public interest or other reasons.” Now I’ve used the quasi-official translation here, but “necessary” does not extend to “other reasons” in the Japanese text. In other words, if there is a valid reason for the disclosure, or rather, a valid reason not to apply the Article 47 restriction to a case of disclosure, then it could be a “document relating to [a] trial” and still not be prosecutable. And what better “other reasons” could there be than the fact that there is no longer a real possibility of a trial?
Note also that a criminal prosecution is a serious encroachment by the state on the individual. There is also the public’s right to know. These are good reasons for the Public Prosecutors Office to exercise restraint in actually proceeding with the case, and the courts are likely to take them into consideration in taking up my two preceding points.
I don’t know if the courts will accept all of these arguments, but don’t you think they’re pretty sound? At a minimum, unless the Coast Guard officer is willing to do the Japanese version of nolo contendere, his lawyers will surely raise them, and his Coast Guard colleagues and retired officers as well as volunteer groups politically motivated or otherwise are sure to pitch in financially for the legal ordeal.
My point is that the Kan administration is looking at a prolonged legal battle that it has little control over but will become intimately tied to in part because of Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku’s intemperate and misguided statement equating it with the monstrosity of evidence tampering by a public prosecutor to buttress a weak case and subsequent alleged cover-up by his superiors. And that is bad. Ex-Prime Minister Hatoyama’s similarly bombastic and erroneous description of an administrative coup d’état hasn’t helped either.
To Conspiracy Theorists: Need a House?
I’ve consistently maintained that there was no conspiracy and that it was a rogue Coast Guard officer, not anyone from the Public Prosecutors Office, and it looks increasingly like it. In fact, I'll bet the house that it’s not an institutional operation. At most, one accomplice, who slipped him the video. Of course the DPJ is trying to dump it all on the Coast Guard, and as an administrative issue, it's right, there's absolutely no way new MLIT Minister Mabuchi can be held responsible for it—or for that matter his predecessor and now Foreign Affairs Minister Seiji Maehara—unless his predecessors are willing to share the blame for decades of neglect that allowed the Coast Guard to operate with such carelessness that an officer in Kobe could get hold of an unauthorized copy.
You know, there’s something to be said for the complaint that I often hear from John Campbell, Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, who now resides in Tokyo, that the LDP continues to spit at the heavens (my words, not his) and the media is giving it a free ride. But is there an anti-DPJ bias? Stephen Reid at Chuo University also has something to say about that. I’m not so sure about that though. I’m inclined to look at all the other factors that go into the bad press for the incumbents and the neglect towards the opposition, though it’s certainly something that should be explored systematically—if someone isn’t already doing it.
You know, there’s something to be said for the complaint that I often hear from John Campbell, Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, who now resides in Tokyo, that the LDP continues to spit at the heavens (my words, not his) and the media is giving it a free ride. But is there an anti-DPJ bias? Stephen Reid at Chuo University also has something to say about that. I’m not so sure about that though. I’m inclined to look at all the other factors that go into the bad press for the incumbents and the neglect towards the opposition, though it’s certainly something that should be explored systematically—if someone isn’t already doing it.
Why the DPJ Claims about the Leak Are So Wrong and My Fears over a Weakened Kan Administration
Far less coherent than I’d thought when I wrote it as an email, so I’ve edited it extensively. Still not completely sound, but life is short, so here it is.
The video leak is a serious problem for the Kan administration, but there’s more than this and they are accumulating on Chief Cabinet Secretary (CCS) Yoshito Sengoku’s doorsteps. In this particular instant, making the legally unsound statement that equated it with a group of public prosecutors allegedly involved in the fabrication of evidence to buttress a weak criminal charge and the subsequent cover-up when the fabrication came to light in an attempt to put all the blame on the bureaucracy—which, ironically, it mostly should properly be placed—is going to backfire on him. He has a tendency to wing it in the spotlight—which is really not what the CCS should be doing, though I can't blame him much, given that Kan has turned out not to be a good communicator as prime minister, which fact has been a surprise to me—and have to walk it back, apologize, bluff his way though, whatever. That’s not good. Now let’s look at how his statement is ill-considered.
A) One is a criminal offense by an agent of the state against an individual, while the other is a piece of administrative malfeasance and only possibly a criminal offense by an agent of the state against the state. The latter can, yes, go all the way up to insurrection, but I'm sure that a leak that has little practical effect than to confirm the allegations of the Japanese government pales in comparison to an attempt to sustain an unsound indictment by tampering with the evidence (and entrap the defendant), casting a heavy pall on the entire prosecution process.
B) The evident contrast between the politically motivated release of the Chinese fisherman and the harsh treatment of the Japanese Coast Guard officer, assuming that the officer is indicted, will be all too painful, while the Kan administration will look utterly foolish if the official is not.
C) My guess is that the video was passed around among the officers like a Paris Hilton home movie, and the guy in Kobe got so mad that he went and posted his copy on YouTube. That, Mr. Hatoyama, is administrative failure, not a coup. (Yes, ex-Prime Minister called it a “coup d’état by members of the government.” And ex-MIAC Minister Kazuhiro Haraguchi used the word “insurrection against the state.”
Okay, C) is more of an aside, but my point is that bombastic misstatements from Hatoyama, Sengoku and the like indicate how seriously the DPJ is taking this as a threat to the long-term survival of the DPJ regime. This and Ozawa's lie-in—refusal to testify in the Diet—are playing havoc with the legislative schedule in this extraordinary session as well as with public opinion*, and jeopardizing prospects of expanding alliances, most plausibly with Komeito. Meanwhile, Kamei is yapping about the Japan Post and worker dispatching agency bills. Ozawa is likely to continue to dig in, so that issue will linger well into the regular Diet session, which overlaps with the consolidated local elections in April. As a Japanese voter, I'm beginning to worry that Kan will be too weakened to push the debates on consumption taxation and Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, facing down opponents with the threat of a snap election if necessary.
The video leak is a serious problem for the Kan administration, but there’s more than this and they are accumulating on Chief Cabinet Secretary (CCS) Yoshito Sengoku’s doorsteps. In this particular instant, making the legally unsound statement that equated it with a group of public prosecutors allegedly involved in the fabrication of evidence to buttress a weak criminal charge and the subsequent cover-up when the fabrication came to light in an attempt to put all the blame on the bureaucracy—which, ironically, it mostly should properly be placed—is going to backfire on him. He has a tendency to wing it in the spotlight—which is really not what the CCS should be doing, though I can't blame him much, given that Kan has turned out not to be a good communicator as prime minister, which fact has been a surprise to me—and have to walk it back, apologize, bluff his way though, whatever. That’s not good. Now let’s look at how his statement is ill-considered.
A) One is a criminal offense by an agent of the state against an individual, while the other is a piece of administrative malfeasance and only possibly a criminal offense by an agent of the state against the state. The latter can, yes, go all the way up to insurrection, but I'm sure that a leak that has little practical effect than to confirm the allegations of the Japanese government pales in comparison to an attempt to sustain an unsound indictment by tampering with the evidence (and entrap the defendant), casting a heavy pall on the entire prosecution process.
B) The evident contrast between the politically motivated release of the Chinese fisherman and the harsh treatment of the Japanese Coast Guard officer, assuming that the officer is indicted, will be all too painful, while the Kan administration will look utterly foolish if the official is not.
C) My guess is that the video was passed around among the officers like a Paris Hilton home movie, and the guy in Kobe got so mad that he went and posted his copy on YouTube. That, Mr. Hatoyama, is administrative failure, not a coup. (Yes, ex-Prime Minister called it a “coup d’état by members of the government.” And ex-MIAC Minister Kazuhiro Haraguchi used the word “insurrection against the state.”
Okay, C) is more of an aside, but my point is that bombastic misstatements from Hatoyama, Sengoku and the like indicate how seriously the DPJ is taking this as a threat to the long-term survival of the DPJ regime. This and Ozawa's lie-in—refusal to testify in the Diet—are playing havoc with the legislative schedule in this extraordinary session as well as with public opinion*, and jeopardizing prospects of expanding alliances, most plausibly with Komeito. Meanwhile, Kamei is yapping about the Japan Post and worker dispatching agency bills. Ozawa is likely to continue to dig in, so that issue will linger well into the regular Diet session, which overlaps with the consolidated local elections in April. As a Japanese voter, I'm beginning to worry that Kan will be too weakened to push the debates on consumption taxation and Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, facing down opponents with the threat of a snap election if necessary.
* The near-universal public outcry in Japan reminds me albeit in very low-key form of the way Kim Jong Il’s revelations over the abductees blew up in Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s face (though to be fair, he showed a remarkable stick-to-it-iveness through his second trip to North Korea and beyond).
Impressed by William D. O’Neill’s Commentary on Senkaku Collision
There must be more than enough opinions from the informed, less informed, uninformed, and of course the ill-informed to last a lifetime of reading. There’s one that’s really impressed me, though, and it’s this one from William D. O’Neill explaining that the Chinese fishing boat initiated the collisions. Now I have no way of verifying (or refuting for that matter) his claims except to turn to another nautical expert (and the claim-counterclaim may not be of that much importance to people who think that the islands belong to China and that’s all there is to it), but a forensic, if cursory, examination from someone who’s been there, done that, is a welcome addition to a debate that has been overwhelmingly dominated by social science and lawyer types—like me. It’s a breath of fresh air, really.
That said, I will soon inflict on you some of my ruminations on the subject that I don’t see reflected out there, at least as far as I’m aware. They are my comments in discussions with my friends at Eurasia Group—social science types, most of them—lightly edited for public consumption.
That said, I will soon inflict on you some of my ruminations on the subject that I don’t see reflected out there, at least as far as I’m aware. They are my comments in discussions with my friends at Eurasia Group—social science types, most of them—lightly edited for public consumption.
Friday, November 05, 2010
Just for Fun, Trivia of Sorts around the Senkaku Incident
The search for The Source begins. In the meantime, an edited version of a memo that I sent out in response to suspicions of a high-level, politically motivated leak to my Asia practice friends at Eurasia Group that will never find its way to its clients:
This Jiji Tsushin wire, which identifies the video as a version edited by the Japan Coast Guard station in Ishigaki and this Sankei report, conjointly support my conjecture that a relatively junior JCG official engineered the leak. FYI, I happened to receive a secondhand report on the JCG dismay just after the Chinese boat captain's release by the public prosecutors. The prosecutors have always been at odds with the regular police. Now, they and the Kan administration have managed to piss off the Coast Guard.
There’s an important lesson here for the Chinese authorities.
This Jiji Tsushin wire, which identifies the video as a version edited by the Japan Coast Guard station in Ishigaki and this Sankei report, conjointly support my conjecture that a relatively junior JCG official engineered the leak. FYI, I happened to receive a secondhand report on the JCG dismay just after the Chinese boat captain's release by the public prosecutors. The prosecutors have always been at odds with the regular police. Now, they and the Kan administration have managed to piss off the Coast Guard.
There’s an important lesson here for the Chinese authorities.
Monday, November 01, 2010
Hu’s Coming to Dinner?
Yes, he will. At least that’s what I think. There’s been much speculation in Japan whether Hu Jintao, the Chinese President, will actually show up to sup with his fellow heads of state and government at the upcoming APEC summit in Yokohama. The last-minute unilateral cancellation of a meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit between Prime Ministers Naoto Kan and Wen Jiabao by the Chinese side—accompanied by a tirade from the Chinese Foreign Deputy Minister—had put the matter in further doubt. The Japanese authorities pointed out that a key part of the denunciation—the last straw if you will—was the result of an erroneous AFP report*. On the heels of this dust-up, though, Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, for whom the Chinese netizens appear to harbor particular enmity, announced that the two prime ministers had indeed subsequently held a ten minute chat, where Wen reportedly expressed his regret that their meeting had to be canceled. I wondered how that story would be carried in the Chinese media. Now, I know. Yesterday (Sunday, Oct. 31), the answer came in 法制晩報 (Evening Legal Report: my translation), one of many semi-official publications operating out of Beijing, according to Damien Ma** at Eurasia Group. The Evening Legal Report, according to a Kyodo Tsushin wire by way of among others the Sankei, gave a matter-of-fact report of a ten-minute meeting and characterized it as a “coincidental” “reenactment of corridor diplomacy.” It does not appear to have referred to the Japanese claim about Wen’s regrets. In the meantime, the Chinese side appears to be putting the blame on attempts by national security conservative Foreign Minister Maehara and other hawkish elements in the Kan administration to repair the damage under the Hatoyama administration to the Japan-US bilateral relationship, according to the somewhat more authoritative—am I right, Damien?—環球時報 (Global Times) indicated today (Nov.1) in a bylined report.
Leaving aside guesswork on Chinese motives, I think that the first report is a sign that the Chinese authorities want to limit their reputation risk abroad while containing discontent at home—the demonstrations have all occurred in the less prosperous interior provinces (and Chongqing, a special city in the interior), the most recent ones spilling over into domestic complaints—which means that Hu will show, the only suspense surrounding the status of a bilateral that should take place on the sidelines. The second report? A reminder that the US is the other big dog in the neighborhood, as well as possibly a manifestation of the Chinese authorities’ desire to localize if not completely isolate in the minds of the Chinese public the undesired elements of the Japanese political establishment. There is no mention of the near-universal if low-key Japanese aversion to Chinese actions around the latest Senkaku incdident***.
(Addendum) More to the point, this Global Times editorial puts the blame squarely on Maehara’s shoulders. Note also that Maehara has risen to the top of the preferred politicians in Japan according to the latest Nikkei-TV Tokyo public opinion poll. I don’t think that this is a delayed recognition for his JAL bankruptcy workout efforts, or his less commendable work on the Yamba Dam project.
Leaving aside guesswork on Chinese motives, I think that the first report is a sign that the Chinese authorities want to limit their reputation risk abroad while containing discontent at home—the demonstrations have all occurred in the less prosperous interior provinces (and Chongqing, a special city in the interior), the most recent ones spilling over into domestic complaints—which means that Hu will show, the only suspense surrounding the status of a bilateral that should take place on the sidelines. The second report? A reminder that the US is the other big dog in the neighborhood, as well as possibly a manifestation of the Chinese authorities’ desire to localize if not completely isolate in the minds of the Chinese public the undesired elements of the Japanese political establishment. There is no mention of the near-universal if low-key Japanese aversion to Chinese actions around the latest Senkaku incdident***.
(Addendum) More to the point, this Global Times editorial puts the blame squarely on Maehara’s shoulders. Note also that Maehara has risen to the top of the preferred politicians in Japan according to the latest Nikkei-TV Tokyo public opinion poll. I don’t think that this is a delayed recognition for his JAL bankruptcy workout efforts, or his less commendable work on the Yamba Dam project.
* Is it just me, or is AFP generally less reliable than, say, Reuters?
** Damien, you will remember, blogs at the Atlantic website, a considerably more prestigious piece of virtual real estate than my more modest efforts. Little known fact: Damien played lead guitar for Johnny Cash’s studio recordings in the country legend’s last years. He is also quickly becoming an authority on rare earth elements. True story.
*** The Chinese belligerence took the Japanese public by surprise and captured its attention in a way that reminded me of the national response to the revelations of the North Korean abduction of Japanese citizen albeit in a much more low-key way. So many people in Japan, including those who had shown little to no interest in Japan’s international relations, or politics for that matter, woke up and took note.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Let’s Hope Mr. Fukuyama Has Worked Out His Announcement with His Chinese Counterpart
According to this Sankei report, Prime Ministers Kan and Wen did have a chat around the ASEAN summitries in Hanoi after all. Tetsuro Fukuyama, the Japanese Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, the two prime ministers held a ten minute chat in the waiting room for heads of state/government this morning (October 30), less than 24 hours after the Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue unilaterally announced that China was cancelling the eagerly awaited post-Senkaku bilateral meeting between the two and delivered a blistering tirade against the most recent Japanese actions surrounding the Senkaku Islands and the South China Sea gas fields. Fukuyama reportedly told the media that the two heads of government shared a common understanding that they:
Note that the Chinese gripe about the gas field announcement appears to have been the result of an erroneous AFP wire that was subsequently corrected after a Japanese MOFA protest. Does this give enough wiggle room to Wen? Hard to believe; it sounds too trivial. But you never know. It’s certainly not encouraging to know that the Chinese side didn’t bother to confirm the wire service report before acting.
a) regret that the summit meeting did not occur this time;I hope that Fukuyama has worked out his latest statement with his Chinese counterpart—the Japanese announcement of the bilateral meeting reportedly was marred by conflicting reports by government officials about a Chinese cancellation, which turned out to be true—so that it will not be followed yet another dressing-down by the Chinese deputy foreign minister or worse. After all, Wen (if, yet again, reports are to be believed) is under some pressure from hardliners for his more conciliatory policy regarding China’s relations with Japan. To look at this from a different angle, if Fukuyama is not directly contradicted by the Chinese authorities, that would be strong indication that the fix is in, and that the Chinese authorities are really serious about rapprochement.
b) appreciate the resumption of the private sector exchange between Japan and China;
c) will strive to promote the strategic mutually beneficial relationship; and
d) will create an opportunity in the future to talk at their leisure.
Note that the Chinese gripe about the gas field announcement appears to have been the result of an erroneous AFP wire that was subsequently corrected after a Japanese MOFA protest. Does this give enough wiggle room to Wen? Hard to believe; it sounds too trivial. But you never know. It’s certainly not encouraging to know that the Chinese side didn’t bother to confirm the wire service report before acting.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Is the Happiness Realization Party Newsworthy If It Manages to Mobilize 2,600 Happy Science Followers in Tokyo to Protest Chinese Action around the...
There’s some commotion out there on a discussion forum about the Japanese media’s treatment, or lack thereof, of a October 3 event in Shibuya featuring “about 2,600, which apparently included ordinary people, not just right-wing thugs” raging against a Chinese incursion into the territorial waters of the Senkaku Islands. But if this claim by the Happiness Realization Party, the political arm of the Happy Science—does it have a special Hell for economists?—cultreligious movement, is true, it was an event staged by the HRP itself, a party that won 0.39% of the proportional representation vote, 0.50% of the prefectural vote, and zero seats in the July 11 upper house election.
The HRP did somewhat better today (October 16) in its demonstration in front of the Chinese Embassy, as it attracted Toshio Tamogami, the former Chief of the Sir Defense General Staff who was prematurely retired during the Aso(!) administration for publicly challenging the government’s long-held and highly restrictive views on the constitutionality of collective defense (read:coming to the aid of the US military protecting Japan). In case you wondered, the HRP has been canoodling with Tamogami of late.
The Sankei group is the only MSM outlet that appears to be taking the event seriously.
So, are the MSM correct to make light of the two occasions? Yes and no. On one hand, they were not expressions of the genuine and general if low-key Japanese outrage but events manufactured by fringe movements that represent a tiny fraction of the Japanese public. On the other hand, they appear to have touched off a much larger and sporadically violent set of protests in China—okay, they do outnumber us 10 to 1—timed to coincide with the second event. The Japanese MSM probably should have used the Japanese events as lead-in to what would have been a useful meditation on the contrast between the two nations whenever one or other incident like this one pops up.
The HRP did somewhat better today (October 16) in its demonstration in front of the Chinese Embassy, as it attracted Toshio Tamogami, the former Chief of the Sir Defense General Staff who was prematurely retired during the Aso(!) administration for publicly challenging the government’s long-held and highly restrictive views on the constitutionality of collective defense (read:coming to the aid of the US military protecting Japan). In case you wondered, the HRP has been canoodling with Tamogami of late.
The Sankei group is the only MSM outlet that appears to be taking the event seriously.
So, are the MSM correct to make light of the two occasions? Yes and no. On one hand, they were not expressions of the genuine and general if low-key Japanese outrage but events manufactured by fringe movements that represent a tiny fraction of the Japanese public. On the other hand, they appear to have touched off a much larger and sporadically violent set of protests in China—okay, they do outnumber us 10 to 1—timed to coincide with the second event. The Japanese MSM probably should have used the Japanese events as lead-in to what would have been a useful meditation on the contrast between the two nations whenever one or other incident like this one pops up.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Why Is the DPJ Getting Such Bad Press? Why Is the LDP’s Policy Message—Such as It Is—Not Getting Across?
Questions, questions…
I was with a group of mostly foreign academics engaged in Japan studies (and one fellow blogger), when one of the two elders stated that the media was holding the DPJ up to much higher standards than it did with the LDP when the latter was in power. I wasn’t aware of this, but all the others in the group who had opinions on this matter agreed, so I’m inclined to believe that they were on to something. The LDP would be happy to tell you that the DPJ is merely being hoisted on its own petards—though it’s hard to listen to LDP Diet members without laughing when they preface their questions for the DPJ ministers with qualifiers to the effect that “the LDP may have been guilty of these sins itself, but…”—but I think that there’s also a structural explanation to this, and I said as much at that session. The following is a substantially revised, expanded version of my off-the-cuff comments on this point.
MSM reporters have been covering the LDP at its headquarters—where they have a “reporters’ club*”—since 1955. They have doing likewise with the DPJ only since 1996 (or 1998 depending on your preferred year of DPJ birth). The daily interaction under the reporters’ club system—there was a time when ambitious LDP politicians literally fed and watered the reporters on their beat—inevitably creates a measure of rapport between the reporters and their subjects. Now, the reporters are rotated in and out from their assignments at fairly short intervals—two years on average would be a reasonable guess—so this should be less of a problem theoretically. However, those rotations are likely to include turns at any of a large number of reporters’ clubs at the Prime Minister’s Office and ministries and agencies, where until September 2009 the LDP had with only a brief interruption monopolized or dominated ministerial and subcabinet assignments. Thus, there would have been plenty of time to develop the kind of relationships that could have delivered more favorable press to the LDP administrations than otherwise would have been the case. By contrast, even a large opposition party would be covered by its own reporters’ club and little more**. The devil you know, perhaps?
This also likely provides a good answer to another complaint at the group session: the lack of coverage where LDP policy ideas, such as they are, are concerned. Now, the only reporters’ club covering the LDP regularly is the LDP reporters’ club—which has traditionally focused on the political, not the policy, side of the LDP., since the ministry/agency/BOJ reporters’ club took care of the policy side. I can’t see the LDP reporters’ club changing its coat any time soon. Thus, now with a vastly smaller number of reporters covering the LDP in exile and institutionally inclined to focus on the political game, it stands to reason that the LDP’s policy pronouncements will be shortchanged. This also explains the preponderance, also noted at the group session, of youthful, articulate, telegenic figures in the LDP’s new shadow cabinet. With low expectations for help from the reporters’ club, the LDP is obviously courting the broadcasting networks’ attention, which also provides newspaper fodder for the morning edition the next day.
I was with a group of mostly foreign academics engaged in Japan studies (and one fellow blogger), when one of the two elders stated that the media was holding the DPJ up to much higher standards than it did with the LDP when the latter was in power. I wasn’t aware of this, but all the others in the group who had opinions on this matter agreed, so I’m inclined to believe that they were on to something. The LDP would be happy to tell you that the DPJ is merely being hoisted on its own petards—though it’s hard to listen to LDP Diet members without laughing when they preface their questions for the DPJ ministers with qualifiers to the effect that “the LDP may have been guilty of these sins itself, but…”—but I think that there’s also a structural explanation to this, and I said as much at that session. The following is a substantially revised, expanded version of my off-the-cuff comments on this point.
MSM reporters have been covering the LDP at its headquarters—where they have a “reporters’ club*”—since 1955. They have doing likewise with the DPJ only since 1996 (or 1998 depending on your preferred year of DPJ birth). The daily interaction under the reporters’ club system—there was a time when ambitious LDP politicians literally fed and watered the reporters on their beat—inevitably creates a measure of rapport between the reporters and their subjects. Now, the reporters are rotated in and out from their assignments at fairly short intervals—two years on average would be a reasonable guess—so this should be less of a problem theoretically. However, those rotations are likely to include turns at any of a large number of reporters’ clubs at the Prime Minister’s Office and ministries and agencies, where until September 2009 the LDP had with only a brief interruption monopolized or dominated ministerial and subcabinet assignments. Thus, there would have been plenty of time to develop the kind of relationships that could have delivered more favorable press to the LDP administrations than otherwise would have been the case. By contrast, even a large opposition party would be covered by its own reporters’ club and little more**. The devil you know, perhaps?
This also likely provides a good answer to another complaint at the group session: the lack of coverage where LDP policy ideas, such as they are, are concerned. Now, the only reporters’ club covering the LDP regularly is the LDP reporters’ club—which has traditionally focused on the political, not the policy, side of the LDP., since the ministry/agency/BOJ reporters’ club took care of the policy side. I can’t see the LDP reporters’ club changing its coat any time soon. Thus, now with a vastly smaller number of reporters covering the LDP in exile and institutionally inclined to focus on the political game, it stands to reason that the LDP’s policy pronouncements will be shortchanged. This also explains the preponderance, also noted at the group session, of youthful, articulate, telegenic figures in the LDP’s new shadow cabinet. With low expectations for help from the reporters’ club, the LDP is obviously courting the broadcasting networks’ attention, which also provides newspaper fodder for the morning edition the next day.
* In case anyone is wondering, a reporters club is a self-governing organization of mainstream reporters covering an institution who receive office space and access to regular briefing in return for agreeing to respect embargoes and other rules imposed by the club itself. The effect is an information cartel, or trust with the institution at the core. The DPJ regime has gone a long way in eroding the collusive arrangement.
** In fact, any added attention would most likely be unwelcome, since it would near-certainly come from the national beat, which covers crime, scandals and human interest stories. Guess which ones it’ll be coming after when it converges on politicians.
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