The High Courts Have Spoken on the 2012 Lower House election; So What Does This Hold for the Future?

Almost completely ignored by the international media, judicial panels in the Japanese high courts, the courts of first instance for disputes regarding the legality of elections and their outcome, have now ruled on all sixteen cases challenging the validity of a total of 31 single member seat elections in the December lower house election on constitutional grounds. Fourteen judicial panels have ruled that the elections in their respective disputes were unconstitutional while two maintained that they were merely in a state of unconstitutionality. However, only two of the “unconstitutional” rulings actually annulled the elections (one of the two giving the Diet until November 26, essentially a one-year grace period, to work out a five-seat reduction under to the November 2012 amendment that would bring the maximum population disparity between single member districts based on the 2010 National Census under the two-to-one threshold that appears to be the judiciary’s red line. The Supreme Court is expected to provide a final ruling on appeal, most certainly by the calendar year’s end. It is highly likely to go with the flow and rule the elections unconstitutional but decline to vacate the seats in question. The Supreme Court is typically more conservative than the most radical lower courts and, with all the 15 justices convening for the ruling on these appeals, there is less room for surprise. Think of this as the judicial version of the law of large numbers.

However, the five-seat reduction will not eliminate the one-seat set-aside for each of the 47 prefectures, which the Supreme Court rightly points to as the fundamental cause of the disparities. Thus, if the Diet fails to act by the time the next Census is taken in 2015, causing the judiciary’s red line to be crossed again—the maximum disparity under the current recommendation is 1.998-to-one according the 2010 Census—in a subsequent election, the Supreme Court is likely to be less forgiving and to rule the election itself unconstitutional, possibly even vacating the offending seats. In the meantime, the set-aside is in play as part of the broader overhaul that the Diet has been working on since the DPJ administration. What is the likely outcome of that?

The most likely outcome in my view is that the Diet will pass the five-seat reduction amendment under the redistricting recommendation from an advisory council to the prime minister that affects 42 districts in 17 prefectures but will fail to agree to a formula that satisfies the judiciary’s concerns. The Supreme Court will then grudgingly decline to put the “state of unconstitutionality” stigma on any election held under the new arrangement.

The DPJ, JRP, and Your Party are in favor of eliminating the single member seat set-aside, but the LDP-Komeito coalition has agreed to push the LDP overhaul formula that reduces the number of proportional seats from 180 to 150 but does not touch the single member seat arrangement beyond the five-seat reduction. But that does necessarily mean a standoff. At this point, I believe that the LDP-Komeito coalition is likely to use its lower house supermajority to pass the LDP-Komeito formula. This will be poorly received by the media, mainstream or otherwise, since it not only fails to meet the judiciary’s concern but also entails concerns over the constitutionality of a complicated formula that in principle sets aside 60 of the 150 proportional seats for the parties other than the party that won the most seats. However, last November, the LDP and Komeito, in an agreement with the DPJ, committed to significantly reduce the number of lower house seats by the end of the ongoing Diet session as the political pound of flesh for raising the consumption tax rate. Even if the LDP is too tilted in favor of the low-population prefectures to come to an agreement on a formula that satisfies the judiciary’s concern, it can at least use the supermajority to avoid the visceral reaction from the electorate come July that would be forthcoming if it misses out on the on the November promise.

Of course the LDP-Komeito could decide to pass only the five-seat reduction and revisit the overhaul issue after the July election. However, I believe that this is less likely since the LDP will bear the brunt of the criticism on both the constitutional question and the tax hike pound of flesh against the backdrop of an imminent national election. Better, then, to take a half measure and weather the backlash while the Abe administration and the LDP are riding high in the polls, and worry about the implications of the next National Census when it arrives. Or so I think.

Is Michiyo Yakushiji the Beginning of the End for the DPJ?

Today’s (March 20) Yomiuri reports that Toru Hashimoto’s Japan Restoration Party (JRP) and Yoshimi Watanabe et al’s Your Party (YP) have agreed to jointly support YP’s Michiyo Yakushiji in the July three-seat, Aichi Prefecture, House of Councillors election. This, if it is the harbinger of a breakthrough in the two parties’ attempts for nationwide coordination, is likely to be remembered as the beginning of the end for the DPJ, which had already been encountering difficulties raising and keeping prospective HoC candidates.

The objective of the mainstream opposition parties (JRP, YP, and DPJ) is to be the runner-up to the LDP. There is room long-term for only one such viable presence. Thus, the DPJ, coming off its rejection by voters in the December House of Representatives election, is standing at the crossroads of the path to revival—and irrelevance (and likely disintegration).The objective of the JRP and YP, in turn, is to not to beat the LDP but to make sure that the DPJ goes the way of the horse and buggy. They also happen to be natural allies policy-wise; they even share the same largely neoliberal advisors (one of whom stood successfully for the JRP in the last election). Their limited HoC presence makes it easier for them to coordinate their candidacies. This is in contrast to the DPJ, which has 28 incumbents in prefectural district seats that will be up for grabs in July. Yakushiji’s joint nomination suggests that the JRP and YP leaderships will be able to set aside their considerable egos to project a joint frontline, with fatal implications for the DPJ as currently configured.

Kuroda Needs a Quick Kill

In a concession to DPJ sensibilities, the Abe administration nominated Haruhiko Kuroda twice, first to serve the remainder of Governor Shirakawa’s term from March 19 through April 8 and second for a full five-year term. Although Mitsuru Sakurai, the DPJ’s Policy Research Council Chairman, reportedly suggested that the DPJ could still vote against him on the second vote, it would be a highly unlikely turn of events, given the all-but-certain political fallout from negative media and market responses. However, this makes it somewhat less likely that the BOJ Policy Board will vote on April 4 on a further relaxation of monetary policy along the lines that Kuroda has been advocating.

Not that Kuroda can wait that long. The currency and equity markets have been positioned favorably for the Abe administration and Kuroda solely on policy expectations. Kuroda must match reality with those expectations sooner rather than later, or marker sentiment could swiftly turn against him and do serious harm to Abenomics. Thus, a second, extraordinary BOJ board meeting could be in order soon after Kuroda’s confirmation for the full five-year term. I won’t hazard to guess what the outcome would look like—stretching JGB maturities and changing the composition of purchases under the Asset Purchase Program should be easier to do at this point in time than the two measures just voted down eight to one—but much pressure will surely be brought to bear regardless on the rest of the Policy Board members.

And the Confusion Made the Brain Go ‘Round

Depending on which professional economists you listen to, the monetary and/or fiscal policy components of Abenomics will or will not work. There’s no consensus there. It’s as if astronomers couldn’t agree which was revolving around the other, the Earth or the Sun. Is economics more numeromancy than science or what?

The Kuroda Monetary Easing and the Question of When

Haruhiko Kuroda, the BOJ governor nominee, and the two deputy governor nominees are going to be appointed, no question about that. It is also widely believed that Kuroda will push for further monetary easing when the BOJ Policy Board meets for its next monthly session on April 3 and 4, or, less likely, even sooner in a yet-to-be-scheduled extraordinary session after the almost-done-deal March 19 appointment. Kuroda’s menu consists of 1) moving up the commencement, currently scheduled for January 2014, of the monthly 13 trillion yen purchases under the BOJ Asset Purchase Program, 2) easing or doing away with the BOJ rule that caps BOJ’s Japanese government bond (JGB) holdings at the total value of BOJ notes (all legal tender minus coins), 3) extending the maturity of Program-eligible JGBs, currently at three years maximum, and 4) changing the composition of purchases under the Program, currently scheduled post-January 2014 as 2 trillion JGBs, 10 trillion T-Bills, and the remainder to maintain the existing level of other assets (corporate bonds, commercial paper, etc.). What are the chances of Kuroda making headway on these items?

The Board has nine members, so Kuroda needs five votes to make any changes. Today’s (March 8) hardcopy Yomiuri casually reports that Board member Sayuri Shirai proposed 1) and 2) at the March 6-7 Board meeting and was voted down 8 to 1. Assuming that the two new deputy governors follow Kuroda’s lead, it only takes one Board member to change his mind—Shirai is the only woman on the Board—for a majority. But so soon after the March 7 vote? It can happen—the Abe administration could lean on the former Mitsui-Sumitomo Bank executive, while the former TEPCO executive looks particularly vulnerable to government pressure—but it’s not a sure bet, particularly with regard to 1) and 2), for the April session.

Take note, also, that purchase of assets denominated in foreign currencies is off the board for the foreseeable future. No matter what Prime Minister Abe may have said in the past, the political costs on the international front are too big. Japan is not South Korea or Switzerland. A good analogy is whaling, where Japan, not Norway, takes most of the flak.

Anime: Natsume Yujuncho

If you are an anime fan, google Natsume Yujincho and you’ll get all four seasons of 13 episode each—a remarkable feat in of itself since the vast majority struggle to survive two. And if you can read Portuguese subtitles, you don’t even have to know Japanese.

More on TPP, and RCEP, and Japan and China and South Korea

Paul Sracic and Richard Katz have kindly corrected my error regarding the 90-day prior notification to—not approval from—Congress, while reminding me that it is no longer required by law since trade promotion (fast-track) authority (TPA) expired in 2007 but the Obama administration is respecting it any way since it will be seeking fast-track authority when it seeks ratification. Thanks. It’s a slippery road from a technical error to rumormongering if I don’t check the facts with an authoritative source. And it’s unporofessional.

Paul’s substantive point, actually, is that that TPA will be harder to secure than TPP ratification itself because it can be filibustered while ratification under TPA cannot. Paul also mentioned that the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) pushed by ASEAN is “portrayed as a competitor or threat to TPP.” in the US media. Let’s hope that he amplifies that point in an op-ed or something of the sort. In the meantime, the following was my more general take on the proliferation of FTAs.

---

Now that everyone—and I mean literally everyone—agrees that the Doha Round is dead, FTA is the name of the game, and there's a lot of (positive) competition going on among the various efforts. The US and EU plant a kicking tee for an FTA? All the more reason for the Abe administration to finesse its way into the TPP negotiations, which in turn is surely pushing China and South Korea to move forward on the trilateral FTA with Japan.

If throwing your hat into the TPP negotiations is enough to help China and South Korea to put domestically combustible history and sovereignty issues aside to negotiate with Japan on a prospective FTA, then it should be more than enough to convince them to move forward with RCEP, a development for which the rest of the prospective RCEP members will offer their unconditional support for commercial, geoeconomic, and geopolitical reasons.

To Be Sure, It’s Not Really about Tariffs

White House and USTR officials have been quick to add that everything is on the table. Fair enough. But Japan is not the only country that will have a hard time clearing domestic obstacles without one exception or other, and there must be more powerful agricultural lobbies than rice farmers. Does this mean that the Abe and Obama administrations had this preliminary outcome in their sights all along? Could be. And with the 20-30 month-old beef already taken care of under the Noda administration—seriously, Abe really should thank Noda, if he hasn’t already—the Detroit Three’s grievances against Japanese auto manufacturers and US insurers’ complaints against the Japan Post group’s efforts to expand its insurance operations now loom as major non-tariff barrier issues that will have to be addressed, for starters, by the Obama administration, desirably from its viewpoint with a little help from the Abe administration, in the 90-day process to secure congressional consent to allow Japan to join the negotiations.

Abe Says the Right Things in CSIS Talk; Nails Big One on TPP in Summit

“That is the core message I’m here to make, and I should repeat it by saying I am back and – (laughter, applause) – and – thank you – and so shall Japan be.

“That much is what I have wanted to say. I could stop here and take your questions for the next 15 minutes. I know, however, that Ambassador Sasae has started to look very much anxious – (laughter) – so I’ll go on talking anyway. Bear with me for another 20 minutes.”

Prime Minister Abe said the right things in his February 22 CSIS talk that he gave in Washington, the Japan-US alliance, North Korea, China, etc. The “Japan is back” speech and the Q&A short enough to scan through in a few minutes and there’s English language coverage, so I won’t dwell on the contents. Two things on the periphery caught my eye, though. First, the moderator (Michael Green) looked for non-Japanese journalists—a press conference was scheduled for Japanese reporters later on—but only one of the five people who got to ask questions was a journalist (Chris Nelson, proprietor of the ubiquitous Nelson Report). Didn’t anyone else from the US media care enough to show up and lob questions at him to see if he might say something that could stir up commotion, as has been his wont from time to time? It’ll take a little more time and effort before Japan really is back in the eyes of the media, in the United States where it still counts the most for Japan. Second, Abe comes across as self-assured and composed. Both the jokes at the beginning of his speech were told at his own expense, the first a reference to his disastrous first administration, the second a sly recognition of his record of controversial statements (most recently hinting at the possibility of purchasing foreign bonds as part of his easy money policy in a Diet session). Not particularly remarkable and surely prepared beforehand, but they work, at least in transcript. Am I reading too much into one, brief session, and two jokes? Or did America see a truly new, better version of Shinzo Abe?

The real surprise (for me, at least) was that, according to media reports, Abe and President Obama came up with a joint statement in which they “交渉参加に際し、一方的に全ての関税を撤廃することをあらかじめ約束することを求められるものではないことを確認する(confirm that it will not be required in joining the negotiations to unilaterally promise beforehand to eliminate all customs duties)” and that Abe stated in a post-summit press conference that “聖域なき関税撤廃が前提でないことが明確になった(it has become clear that eliminating customs duties without sanctuary is not a premise).” It had been hard for me to believe that Abe could come back from a meeting with Obama without enough cover to come out in favor of an early commitment to the TPP negotiations, not with all the talk surrounding his Washington visit given the negotiations timeline, and still avoid serious political damage. Yet I was still surprised that he managed to come up with wording that will surely keep the LDP naysayers at bay. I think that he owes one to Obama. The Abe administration is the one who manages to keep the agriculture lobby at bay and businesses and the mainstream media happy five months before the July House of Councillors election, while the Obama administration must go to Congress, where opponents of Japan’s participation will have another set piece to offer in resistance.

Is Abe good? Lucky? I’m increasingly convinced that he’s both.

How Serious Is the Lack of Pre-School Care?

Something—alcohol?—has made me angry today. This is the outcome. Hopefully, I will not regret it tomorrow morning, when the bourbon (and the cheaper whiskey) has worn off.

Very serious, according to the mothers in this ANN report. Well, it depends on when, where, and how you look at the issue. My tentative conclusion is that it is indeed a serious problem that deserves the kind of attention that these mothers are demanding. Let me explain.

When? More serious in October 2011, when 46,620 pre-school children were looking for day (night?) care in vain, in contrast to April of the same year, when the number of children of the waiting list was only 25,556. The Japanese school year begins on April 1. Case closed.

Where? In Metropolitan Tokyo and its environs, apparently. Tokyo accounted for the parents of 10,489 children who, in October 2011, could not find a place to drop them off so they could go to work (or school, or whatever), while neighbor Kanagawa Prefecture accounted for 5,380, or an aggregate 34.0% of the national total. The aggregate population of the two prefectures in 2010 was 22,236,826, or 17.3% of the national total of 128,057,352. So yes, it’s a metropolitan problem, and a disproportionately (if you really want to know)Tokyo—Kawasaki—Yokohama one. Case closed. Wait, really?

How? There’re always people waiting on any Yamanote Line platform, a 3-5 minute wait for the next train, but very few people will be waiting 3-5 minutes after the last train left on those local lines, where the next one arrives in, say, another 30 minutes. Now, imagine what life would be like if that train came in one a year, and left, oh, 46K (or 16K Tokyo-Kanagawa) preschool-care children on the platform? And we haven’t even mentioned the children of parents who gave up before trying.

Case closed. (The idiots.)

Seriously, what industry runs at full capacity year after year while leaving demand unmet?

Counterfactual: What If the Target-Control Radar Issue Been on the DPJ Foot?

Another piece of counterfactual speculation? Is this addictive or what?

On February 8, the Chinese Ministry of Defense issued a denial against the Japanese allegation that a PLA Navy frigate had locked its target-control radar on a MSDF destroyer. The next morning, the Japanese defense minister indicated that evidence might be released to the public if the Chinese authorities persisted in their denial. Later in the day, however, the same minister appeared to be hedging. As days went by, the Abe administration appeared to be further distancing itself from the disclosure option. By February 16, the Abe administration appeared to have decided definitively against disclosure.

The reasons given for the reluctance and (apparently) eventual abandonment are plausible, though questions remain. First, the MSDF appears to have been reluctant from the beginning because it did not want to reveal its counter-surveillance capabilities. But the factors that went into identifying the nature of the radar were already being made public. Would making the actual wavelength of the Chinese radar public in addition to the information that the MSDF could detect and identify such wavelengths further compromise Japanese security? Second, the defense minister, for one, worries that the Chinese authorities might not admit to the deed even after disclosure. But keeping the evidence under wraps instead of allowing outside experts, of whom there are many, to decide for themselves weakens the Japanese case even more than any Chinese denial. Third, there is the need to collaborate with China, specifically with regard to sanctions against North Korea in the wake of its latest nuclear test. Here, though, Chinese cooperation is grudging. More to the point, is Chinese behavior around the nuclear test influenced by its relationship with Japan? Is Japan, a non-nuclear, non-UNSC member state that has tied its hands against North Korea with its singular focus on the abduction issue, really a player?

There may be perfect explanations to reinforce all three arguments. But the Abe administration has been slow to make a coherent, convincing case for its actions, or lack thereof. In the meantime, a Chinese surveillance vessel has entered the territorial waters of the Senkaku Islands as recently as February 18. So my counterfactual question is this: If this were a DPJ administration, would the opposition and the mainstream media have mostly stood by and given it a pass, or would they have swarmed all over it for waffling and, more generally, failing to stand up to China?

I have no personal attachment to the DPJ and did not vote for it in December, but I can’t help feeling sorry for it on this one.

“Currency Wars” on China Radio International

Anyone who’s interested in my thoughts on Prime Minister Abe’s “currency wars,” tune in to China Radio International next Monday between 11:00am-12:00pm Tokyo Standard Time.

CRI is not that bad. I’ve said “Senkaku Islands” twice and that “from our perspective, it’s China that’s been provoking Japan” and they still want me back. That’s certainly fairer and more balanced than… And if you don’t want to tune in but still would like to know what I have to say, I’ll try to remember to post my memo after the event.

Breaking News from Post 3.11, Post-Valentine’s Day Miyagi Prefecture

“The 44 year-old who stole chocolates from national civil servant: ‘I wanted [the chocolates]’”

—real title of a news item, Yomiuri Shimbun, Feb. 18, 2013

On February 16 (Sat), a 44 year-old, self-described unemployed Sendai resident was arrested for stealing a bag of Valentine’s chocolates and other things worth a total of approximately 550 yen off a bicycle owned by a national civil servant. The civil servant chased down the thief and took him down.

To be sure, the story did not appear in the hardcopy Tokyo edition. Still, as a former national civil servant, it’s nice to see a civil servant mentioned in the media as the victim, not the perpetrator, of a common crime. What next, an ex-policeman making a citizen’s arrest on a shoplifter? A Self-Defense Force sailor on shore leave rescuing a kitten from a tree? Stay tuned.

Yes, My Net Value May Be Lower than That of the Least Wealthy of the Aso Cabinet Misters… So?

On February 15, the government disclosed the personal assets of the cabinet ministers of the Aso administration, who were appointed on December 26, 2012, and their political appointee subordinates as well as their spouses and dependent children*. This is conducted under a longstanding cabinet decision that requires them to make such public disclosure when they assume and leave office. These disclosures are intended to prevent these political appointees from profiting from their terms in office. So, you were a reporter, you would wait until a political appointee leaves office, and then file a report if and only if you see any significant changes in the financial status of said appointee, right?

But you won’t, will you? Instead, you will file a report when they assume office, and your attention will be focused on who has the most assets (and if you’re really creative, who has the least) and whether this cabinet is worth more than the last one. You’ll do that not because that has anything to do with the “value” of that cabinet and its components but because that’s what the public is fascinated with and because that’s what every other reporter on the cabinet beat is writing about. But when they leave office…fuggidaboutit.

And their upfront efforts are nothing to throw Pulitzers at, either. Some media reports at least have the decency to mention that there’s no way to figure out what shares in privately held companies are worth, but they never bother to mention that the real value of real estate holdings is vastly underestimated even though most of it is relatively easy to figure out. More specifically, real estate is disclosed at the actual tax base, which is 1/3rd of the notional tax base for land (and as low as 1/6 for housing up to 200 m2*), which in turn is only 70% of the publicly assessed market value. Buildings get lesser discounts off the notional value of up to 2/3rds off current value minus notional depreciation. So, if you believe that the current value of real estate is what the disclosures say it is, well, I have a bridge in New York that you can afford.

I’m not saying that the media should do the arithmetic. It’s just that they satisfy the prurient interests of the public in a half-assed way and get paid for it without doing the homework. And that pisses me off mightily.

Speaking of prurient interests, though, there is a truly bizarre factoid lurking in the disclosures. The 70 year-old Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Aso claims two children as dependents. Now he’s a Catholic—a surprisingly large number of Japanese prime ministers are Christians—and the two children are listed as “oldest son” and “oldest daughter”, and the son has a golf club membership—yes, you have to disclose that, too—and a car, so I don’t think Aso is pulling a Rupert Murdoch/Andres Segovia here. Is that any of our business? No, but it will be if one of them decides to seek public office. I mean, it’s okay for one of my… but let’s not go there.**

* Yes, there’s a very serious human rights issue here. But it gains little traction here.

** In case you wondered, I have been drinking.
* Added for clarification.

“G20 Steps Back from Currency Brink”? Give Me a Break

The Group of 20 nations declared on Saturday there would be no currency war and deferred plans to set new debt-cutting targets, underlining broad concern about the fragile state of the world economy.”

—headline, Reuters, February 16, 2013

Whew, that was close…? But read the headline carefully and it’s clear that the G20 finance ministers and central bankers met in Moscow on Feb. 15-16 and decided…nothing, really. Well, what were they expected to do? Censouring deflationary Japan for essentially going QE3 lite in a world where the major currencies, i.e. viable reserve currencies, float freely* would have been tantamount to telling it to give up monetary policy as a macroeconomic tool. (And where was the G20 when Switzerland hard-capped the Franc?) And there’s still plenty of time before the September G20 Summit, when the heads of state/government have to make up their minds about what to do with the 2010 Toronto Summit goals. But even the lead did not satisfy the copy editor, who must be being paid by the eyeball, who jazzed ti up with “Brink.” Brink indeed.

* The Renminbi will only qualify as a major currency when it becomes a viable reserve currency.

Why Kyarypamyupamyu Is the Quintessential Japanese

Her official website says that her full name is “Caroline Charonplop Kyarypamyupamyu,” yet she always goes by her last name. Now, how much more japonesque can you get?

And speaking of japonesque, does she follow the ukiyoe artists to Paris? Or is she the next in line after Jerry Lewis, and Philip K. Dick? Kyarypamyupamyu, or, as increasingly is the case, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu?

The Annual Yomiuri-Gallup Survey: The Japanese lack of Trust in Our Institutions

 The results of the annual Yomiuri Shimbun-Gallup survey on Japan and the United States, conducted by random digital dialing and reported briefly at Yomiuri online, are published in more detail in the hardcopy version. Most of the questions concern the Japan-US relationship and/or matters of mutual interest, but it’s the first one that caught my attention, the one that asks responders to choose from sixteen domestic institutions the ones that they specially trust. The following is a full translation of that first Q&A, followed by my minimal comments. Ready?

Q. If there are any organizations and public institutions in our country that we will read out loud, please choose as many as you like.

Japan			United States
prime minister		44%  6	president	56%  8
Diet		25% 13	Congress	24% 14
police, prosecutors		44%  6	police, prosecutors	71%  4
courts		56%  4	courts	62%  6
Self-Defense Force		71%  1	military	93%  1
temples, shrines, churches		41%  8	churches (and synagogues?)	77%  3
central ministries and agencies		24% 14	federal agencies	43% 12
local government		46%  5	local government	57%  7
schools	41%  8		schools	69%  5
hospitals	68%  2		hospitals	83%  2
newspapers	57%  3		newspapers	53%  9
television	34% 10		television	44% 11
big business	28% 11		big business	38% 13
labor unions	26% 12		labor unions	46% 10
others	00%		others	--
none	06%		none	--
no answer	00%		no answer	00%

Notes: 1) “–” no one chose this answer.

2) I put the ordinance numbers in for your convenience.

3) I used red for the Japanese/US institution that polled better than its counterpart.

Of the fourteen institutions, twelve US institutions are more trusted domestically than their Japanese counterparts, and mostly by wide margins. The discrepancy is particularly large in the case of “police and prosecutors” and “schools”, national administrative institutions, and religious institutions. The two others only lose out to their Japanese counterparts by slim margins. (I’ll just mention in passing that one of those two Japanese winners are…newspapers!—now who’d’a thunk?) The military tops the list of winners in both countries, followed by hospitals.

The lack of Japanese trust in police and prosecutors and schools can be reliably traced to recent, major scandals, while the disregard for central ministries and agencies is most surely due to the steady negative drumbeat that has continued through the “lost decades,” magnified by the post-3.11 revelations and frustrations. The religious gap is surely a manifestation of the secular nature of Japanese society. I wonder what numbers European responders would provide, particularly in largely secular nations with a significant Catholic presence (France…).

Which brings me to a question about the US trust in churches: The United States has seen many national scandals break out in the religious world, from individual megachurch leaders and televangelists procuring prostitutes to the systemic failure of the Catholic church to protect children from sexual predators of the cloth it its employ. Why hasn’t that translated into lower numbers? Come to think of it, why are the numbers so high for the US police and prosecutors?

Questions, questions, and no way to answer them to my satisfaction, certainly no overarching thoughts to cover them all, but the survey has provided an interesting set of facts to ponder—perhaps I should go look for the results of the previous surveys to see if there’s timeline data—so I’ve brought them to your attention.

Professor Sracic Counts ‘Em So You Don’t Have to: State of the Union Address and Japan

One popular Japanese parlor game (to the extent that Japanese houses have parlors) is counting the number of time that “Japan” is mentioned in a major policy statement by a US president/presidential candidate/cabinet member. Now, Paul Sracic is not one of those counters—he has a day job in political science that makes him cover major policy statements for what they are, policy statements for the United States—but he has been kind enough to tell me that President Obama mentioned “Japan” just once, as in:

“Caterpillar is bringing jobs back from Japan.”

...and a shout-out to Youngstown, Ohio...

Thanks, Paul, we needed that.

Paul is not all sticks and coal, though. He just urged the Obama administration to welcome Prime Minister Abe and Japan into the TPP negotiations. But can Abe take a hint? He needs an exception come his February visit to Washington, when a nod from Obama can seal a July victory for the LDP. Stay tuned.

Unfalsifiable Thoughts: Gangnam Style

I would be one of the handful of people on this planet who have not watched South Korean rapper Psy’s Gangnam Style YouTube video but for most of my fellow countrypersons in Japan, who also met it with indifference. Google “江南スタイル (Japanese for Gangnam Style)” and you get 2.7 million hits, so it’s not as if Gangnam Style has been ignored altogether. Still, Japan is so out of step with the rest of the world, where “Gangnam Style” now produces 753 million hits and the official PSY YouTube video has been viewed 1.31 billion times (both including Japan, true), that people have wondered what’s going on here.

It’s not for lack of interest in or hostility towards things Korean. Japan is still far and away the largest overseas outlet for Hanryu entertainment products with significant knock-on effects on the tourism and, to a lesser extent, language school markets. The most recent cross-straits tiff over history issues have dampened the enthusiasm a tad—and NHK, the state-owned media group, last year dropped Korean entertainers from its new-year’s-eve omnibus variety show—but only a tad; Hanryu soap operas (is there any other kind?) contemporary and historical still grace the TV landscape, largely daytime and late-night in the case of terrestrial broadcasts, 24/7 in the case of satellite and cable* and Korean girls groups continue their valiant battle in against the AKB48 juggernaut in implicit alliance with their shorter, less-leggy, Japanese counterparts.**

Come to think of it, that must be why PSY never caught on here. Hanryu is a lot like us, only more beautiful, more polished, more articulate, more ripped (in the case of male entertainers). Familiarity, with perfection: that’s the Hanryu formula for success, the kind of success that has yet to be found elsewhere outside of Korea. PSY, by contrast, is almost a comic act. A middle-aged guy hopping around on an imaginary horse? Why, we could have far more outrageous stuff on any one episode of our nightly, dirt-cheap, variety shows featuring any number of rent-a-comics from Yoshimoto and its lesser competitors as well as past-consume-by-date straight personalities. There is no market here for weird Asians—we are, come to think of it, Asians***—William Hung never caught on, and PSY didn’t get that far either.

* This is a casual, unscientific observation that does not even have the benefit of a cursory newspaper check on today’s TV programming. Remember, these are my “unfalsifiable thoughts” so the normal self-imposed rules of fact-based blogging do not apply.

** I have an idea here for an SNS game, an industry BTW that appears to have reached or is close to be reaching its saturation point.

*** Reminds me of the Chris Rock joke in his White President Obama video about Obama going into the hoods to organize.

Someone Should Be Doing a Survey on Media-Reader Correlations

Conventional wisdom has it that Sankei Shimbun reports from a neoliberal xenophobe’s perspective while its Asahi counterpart represents the antibusiness, appeasement end of the political spectrum, and Yomiuri and Mainichi lie somewhere in between. It is also widely assumed that there is some correlation between their contents and the mindset of their respective readers, a correlation that I’ve speculated before to be a major cause of the non-random correlation between the results of the random-digit dialing (RDD) opinion polls that major media outlets regularly conduct and the opinions of the media outlets themselves. But how strong is the correlation? And how are the media and their consumers connected by causal relationships? Are we what read, or do we read what we are? I have my own guesses, but I’d be surprised if there weren’t quantitative academic studies on this subject, at least in Japanese. In the unlikely event that there isn’t, there’s a mother lode waiting here for political science PhD candidates with the research money to carry out a well-designed RDD survey.