I want to open today's speech with a story that begins on a sunny morning, when thousands of Americans were murdered in a surprise attack -- and our nation was propelled into a conflict that would take us to every corner of the globe.
The enemy who attacked us despises freedom, and harbors resentment at the slights he believes America and Western nations have inflicted on his people. He fights to establish his rule over an entire region. And over time, he turns to a strategy of suicide attacks destined to create so much carnage that the American people will tire of the violence and give up the fight.
If this story sounds familiar, it is -- except for one thing. The enemy I have just described is not al Qaeda, and the attack is not 9/11, and the empire is not the radical caliphate envisioned by Osama bin Laden. Instead, what I've described is the war machine of Imperial Japan in the 1940s, its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and its attempt to impose its empire throughout East Asia.
Ultimately, the United States prevailed in World War II, and we have fought two more land wars in Asia. And many in this hall were veterans of those campaigns. Yet even the most optimistic among you probably would not have foreseen that the Japanese would transform themselves into one of America's strongest and most steadfast allies, or that the South Koreans would recover from enemy invasion to raise up one of the world's most powerful economies, or that Asia would pull itself out of poverty and hopelessness as it embraced markets and freedom.
---The opening paragraphs of President Bush's August 22 speech before the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars---
Third, President Roosevelt believed that free nations are peaceful nations that would not threaten America. He knew that it was the lack of democracy in Japan that allowed an un-elected group of militarists to take control of the state, threaten our neighbors, attack America, and plunge an entire region into war. And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan.
……
With every step toward freedom, the Japanese economy flourished. With every step toward freedom, the Japanese became a model for others in the region. With every step toward freedom, the Japanese became a valued member of the world community, a force for peace and stability in the region, and a trusted and reliable ally of the United States of America.
……
Today we must not forget the lessons of the past, and the lesson of this experience is clear: The most powerful weapon in the arsenal of democracy is the spirit of liberty. In the 20th century, the spirit of liberty worked to spread freedom from Japan and Germany to Eastern Europe and Latin America and Southeast Asia and Africa. And the spirit of liberty is at work today. Across the broader Middle East, we can see freedom's power to transform nations and deliver hope to people who have not known it. In Afghanistan and Iraq and Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories, people have gone to the polls and chosen their leaders in free elections. Their example is inspiring millions across that region to claim their liberty, as well -- and they will have it.
As freedom advances across a troubled part of the world, it is once again opposed by fanatical adherence of a murderous ideology. And once again, the stakes are high. Now, as then, our enemies have made their fight a test of American credibility and resolve. Now, as then, they are trying to intimidate free people and break our will. And now, as then, they will fail.
---from President Bush's 2005 August 30 speech commemorating V-Day at Naval Air Station North Island, San Diego---
There was a time when many said that the cultures of Japan and Germany were incapable of sustaining democratic values. Well, they were wrong. Some say the same of Iraq today. They are mistaken. (Applause) The nation of Iraq, with its proud heritage, abundant resources and skilled and educated people, is fully capable of moving toward democracy and living in freedom.
---from President Bush's 2001 February 23 address before a joint session of Congress---
So maybe it's worth repeating that Japan had been a democracy well before General McArthur stepped foot on Japanese soil. And that it was under that democracy that the Japanese media---with the support of much of the Japanese public---consistently bashed the wishy-washy appeasers among the civilian leadership and all but encouraged the military to take the reins of government.
The democratic process works when it works; when it doesn't, it doesn't.
Hitler blahblahblah, Milosevic blahblahblah, Hamas blahblahblah……
Thursday, August 23, 2007
The Smoking Iranian Gun in Iraq? I Doubt It, But Let's Put It in Play
The English version of the Mainichi has outsourced its entire overseas coverage to AP. That's a shame, because the Japanese version carries this spectacular August 23 scoop on help from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to Iraqi militia, a US allegation the Iranian government has been strenuously denying. If the report can be verified, it would be an important step in setting the stage for US strikes into Iranian territory, something that has become increasingly likely as the Bush administration sees Iranian meddling as a serious obstacle to its war in Iraq.
Is something like this really going on? If I had to guess, I would say yes. As for the story itself though, I think that somebody has pulled a fast one on Mainichi. There's no reason for real Mahdi members to talk to the "Mainichi assistant in Baghdad" about Iranian involvement in their activities; in fact, they would be incredibly stupid to do so. So, I'll believe the report when I hear that the men who talked to the assistant as well as the assistant himself have been killed off. Swiftly. Gruesomely. Still, it's such a stunning story that I'm going off the reservation today and translating it here for your viewing pleasure:
Iraq: Shiite Militia Admit to Military Training in Iran
(Cairo, Muneo Takahashi)
By August 22, members of the Mahdi Army, a Islamic Shiite militia in Iraq, disclosed in an investigation by a Mainichi assistant in Baghdad that they had been receiving military training from the Revolutionary Guard in their neighbor country Iran. The US Forces in Iraq repeatedly criticized Iran for supporting Shiite militia, but Iran had denied it. The Iranian claim will be placed in serious doubt by the testimony from within the Mahdi Army.
The Mahdi Army is the militia organization of the anti-American militant "Sadrists". A Mahdi Army member (36) calling himself "Saad" in Sadr City in South Baghdad, the Mahdi Army's power base, testified that "the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is giving training in sniping and dealing with explosives" in underground shelters in Sadr City remaining from the Saddam Hussein days. He revealed that he has transported arms from Iran to Iraq multiple times since July 2004, and said, "I received military training from the Revolutionary Guard from January through March this year in Iran."
The leading member (36) in the Abu Karal (Caral?) district revealed that "[we] have destroyed four US military Humvees (Highly mobile multipurpose vehicles) in the past two weeks" in attacks that he had led. He revealed that they had modified powerfully destructive Iranian landmines and were using them as roadside bombs.
Another member also said that "[we] obtained Katushya rockets to target US military bases" and that "[he] had transported bonuses from Iran for his brothers (Mahdi Army members)."
According to "Saad", they are receiving these arms and funds through the Iranian external information agency called "Ittilat" in Farsi.
From the testimonies, the Iranian intent to bring disorder to the military forces in Iraq of the US, with which it is in conflict, by using the Mahdi Army can be discerned. It is likely that the arms that have been passed on to the Mahdi Army are also being used to attack the "Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council", fellow Shiite and rival to the Sadrists in the Iraqi south and elsewhere, and is resulting in amplifying disorder within Iraq.
Major General Lynch of the US forces in Iraq criticized Iran on the 19th, saying that "about fifty members of the Revolutionary Guard are training Shiite militia." Hosseini, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, denied the charge, saying, "it is absolutely groundless."
Mainichi Shinbun 2007.08.23 03:00 AM
Is something like this really going on? If I had to guess, I would say yes. As for the story itself though, I think that somebody has pulled a fast one on Mainichi. There's no reason for real Mahdi members to talk to the "Mainichi assistant in Baghdad" about Iranian involvement in their activities; in fact, they would be incredibly stupid to do so. So, I'll believe the report when I hear that the men who talked to the assistant as well as the assistant himself have been killed off. Swiftly. Gruesomely. Still, it's such a stunning story that I'm going off the reservation today and translating it here for your viewing pleasure:
Iraq: Shiite Militia Admit to Military Training in Iran
(Cairo, Muneo Takahashi)
By August 22, members of the Mahdi Army, a Islamic Shiite militia in Iraq, disclosed in an investigation by a Mainichi assistant in Baghdad that they had been receiving military training from the Revolutionary Guard in their neighbor country Iran. The US Forces in Iraq repeatedly criticized Iran for supporting Shiite militia, but Iran had denied it. The Iranian claim will be placed in serious doubt by the testimony from within the Mahdi Army.
The Mahdi Army is the militia organization of the anti-American militant "Sadrists". A Mahdi Army member (36) calling himself "Saad" in Sadr City in South Baghdad, the Mahdi Army's power base, testified that "the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is giving training in sniping and dealing with explosives" in underground shelters in Sadr City remaining from the Saddam Hussein days. He revealed that he has transported arms from Iran to Iraq multiple times since July 2004, and said, "I received military training from the Revolutionary Guard from January through March this year in Iran."
The leading member (36) in the Abu Karal (Caral?) district revealed that "[we] have destroyed four US military Humvees (Highly mobile multipurpose vehicles) in the past two weeks" in attacks that he had led. He revealed that they had modified powerfully destructive Iranian landmines and were using them as roadside bombs.
Another member also said that "[we] obtained Katushya rockets to target US military bases" and that "[he] had transported bonuses from Iran for his brothers (Mahdi Army members)."
According to "Saad", they are receiving these arms and funds through the Iranian external information agency called "Ittilat" in Farsi.
From the testimonies, the Iranian intent to bring disorder to the military forces in Iraq of the US, with which it is in conflict, by using the Mahdi Army can be discerned. It is likely that the arms that have been passed on to the Mahdi Army are also being used to attack the "Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council", fellow Shiite and rival to the Sadrists in the Iraqi south and elsewhere, and is resulting in amplifying disorder within Iraq.
Major General Lynch of the US forces in Iraq criticized Iran on the 19th, saying that "about fifty members of the Revolutionary Guard are training Shiite militia." Hosseini, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, denied the charge, saying, "it is absolutely groundless."
Mainichi Shinbun 2007.08.23 03:00 AM
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
LDP Discontents Start a New Policy Group. Are the Factions on the Move?
It is not a major news item, but the main dailies are carrying the news. Seven LDP Lower House members got together on the 21st and agreed to found a study group to propose an alternative to what they see as the excessively market-oriented directions of the Koizumi-Abe .administrations. The policy proposals will be announced in early September, thus likely between the inauguration of the new Cabinet and the start of the Diet session. The eight founding members (one member was absent from the inaugural meeting due to a prior commitment) are actively seeking more participants from the rest of the LDP.
The Mainichi notes that the founding members all belong to three factions that have only one Cabinet member (from the Yamazaki faction) between them, and casts doubt on their claim that this is not an anti-Abe movement. So, could T be onto something? Are the factions on the move after all? Does the fact that the dovish heads of the two smaller factions, Sadakazu and Tanigaki and Taku Yamazaki, are openly critical of the prime minister mean anything? Is it significant that the Tsushima faction--by far the largest of the three, a close second in the LDP only to the Machimura faction, which has produced the last three prime ministers including Mr. Abe---has traditionally been very much pro-China (Prime Ministers Kakuei Tanaka, Noboru Takeshita, and Ryutaro Hashimoto, to name three Old Friends of China who have led the faction before Yuji Tsushima), whereas Mr. Abe's relationship with our neighbors is seen more as an arrangement of mutual convenience?
We'll know more after we see the definitive list of Diet members who sign on to this policy study group. (Will it include members from other factions, for instance?) Even more when the new Cabinet is announced. But it is important to remember that the Tsushima faction had started off with two Cabinet members. But Administrative Reform Minister Genichiro Sada and Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma, both Tsushima faction members in good standing, had to resign as the result of, respectively, a political financing scandal and inopportune words about the atomic bombs. In both cases, Mr. Abe promoted his sub-Cabinet level advisors (Yoshimi Watanabe and Yuriko Koike) with the corresponding portfolios, leaving the Tsushima faction out in the cold. My guess is that this imbalance will be corrected, as Mr. Abe seeks to broaden his support base within the LDP.
It is also notable that the eight founding members do not include the leadership of the three factions (arguably; I welcome any corrections). Though I do think that Mr. Mori (the true proprietor of the Machimura faction) will make sure that no one from his faction will up putting his/her name to the group manifesto, I don't see the other factions lining up en masse under the banners of this likely time-limited study group. Accordingly, it is unlikely that the new group is any harbinger of the three factions lining up against the Prime Minister, and the others in his support.
The Mainichi notes that the founding members all belong to three factions that have only one Cabinet member (from the Yamazaki faction) between them, and casts doubt on their claim that this is not an anti-Abe movement. So, could T be onto something? Are the factions on the move after all? Does the fact that the dovish heads of the two smaller factions, Sadakazu and Tanigaki and Taku Yamazaki, are openly critical of the prime minister mean anything? Is it significant that the Tsushima faction--by far the largest of the three, a close second in the LDP only to the Machimura faction, which has produced the last three prime ministers including Mr. Abe---has traditionally been very much pro-China (Prime Ministers Kakuei Tanaka, Noboru Takeshita, and Ryutaro Hashimoto, to name three Old Friends of China who have led the faction before Yuji Tsushima), whereas Mr. Abe's relationship with our neighbors is seen more as an arrangement of mutual convenience?
We'll know more after we see the definitive list of Diet members who sign on to this policy study group. (Will it include members from other factions, for instance?) Even more when the new Cabinet is announced. But it is important to remember that the Tsushima faction had started off with two Cabinet members. But Administrative Reform Minister Genichiro Sada and Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma, both Tsushima faction members in good standing, had to resign as the result of, respectively, a political financing scandal and inopportune words about the atomic bombs. In both cases, Mr. Abe promoted his sub-Cabinet level advisors (Yoshimi Watanabe and Yuriko Koike) with the corresponding portfolios, leaving the Tsushima faction out in the cold. My guess is that this imbalance will be corrected, as Mr. Abe seeks to broaden his support base within the LDP.
It is also notable that the eight founding members do not include the leadership of the three factions (arguably; I welcome any corrections). Though I do think that Mr. Mori (the true proprietor of the Machimura faction) will make sure that no one from his faction will up putting his/her name to the group manifesto, I don't see the other factions lining up en masse under the banners of this likely time-limited study group. Accordingly, it is unlikely that the new group is any harbinger of the three factions lining up against the Prime Minister, and the others in his support.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
On Factions and the Prime Minister's Decision to Stay on
This is my answer to a comment on this post. Since it's been nearly a week since the original post, I'm reposting it. I think that it has content that stands on its own.
T:
First, my apologies for not elaborating further on my habatsu comment. I'm easily distracted.
As for my response to your first question, I'm mildly surprised that there are still many first-term Diet members able to resist the call of the factions. Mr. Koizumi's support that they received in 2005 will have little to do with what kind of entry-level political appointee or party post they will get in, say, 2008, after they have their second Lower House election win under their belts. As for LDP HQ support, Tsutomu Takebe, the secretary-general who ran the 2005 election, launched an informal group of 24 junior Diet members consisting mostly of Koizumi Children. So, the real question is, do you stay on your own, cast your lot with a 66 year-old ex-SG who currrently has no formal role at party HQ, or join a faction? There is little political continuity at party HQ. In that sense, the LDP is closer to American political parties than ideological or religious parties.
Are factions lining up for/against Mr. Abe? I could have missed something, but could you be referring to Taku Yamzaki and Sadakazu Tanigaki's criticism's of the prime minister? Being at the other end of the LDP political spectrum, that's not surprising.. But they only have 51 Diet members between them out of 313 LDP faction member MPs (the rest are unaffiliated), and the others do not seem to be lining up along factions lines, except to secure cabinet, sub-cabinet, and party posts (with the Upper House members acting as a cross-factional faction of its own for cabinet posts).
It's little more than a guess, but I think it was Mr. Abe's decision, and his alone, to stay on. It was widely reported on the JMSM that Yoshiro Mori, ex-Prime Minister and Koizumi-Abe minder, Hidenao Nakagawa, then LDP SG, and Mikio Aoki, head of the LDP Upper House members, went to the prime minister to tell him that the LDP was likely to lose too badly for him to stay on. Mr. Nakagawa gave what must have been a heavily censored version of the visit on national TV, which still made it clear that resignation was at least one of the possibilities that they had broached. If the trio had been really encouraging, I am sure that Mr. Nakagawa would have mentioned it in his interview. Mr. Mori has given a decidedly anemic version of his role in the talks as well. (I suspect that Mr. Mori still has not completely reconciled himself to the fact that Mr. Abe declined to respect seniority and defer to Yasuo Fukuda in 2006).
Behind that diffident, hands-off demeanor is a self-contained, quietly insistent man of strong, if sometimes shallow, convictions.
T:
First, my apologies for not elaborating further on my habatsu comment. I'm easily distracted.
As for my response to your first question, I'm mildly surprised that there are still many first-term Diet members able to resist the call of the factions. Mr. Koizumi's support that they received in 2005 will have little to do with what kind of entry-level political appointee or party post they will get in, say, 2008, after they have their second Lower House election win under their belts. As for LDP HQ support, Tsutomu Takebe, the secretary-general who ran the 2005 election, launched an informal group of 24 junior Diet members consisting mostly of Koizumi Children. So, the real question is, do you stay on your own, cast your lot with a 66 year-old ex-SG who currrently has no formal role at party HQ, or join a faction? There is little political continuity at party HQ. In that sense, the LDP is closer to American political parties than ideological or religious parties.
Are factions lining up for/against Mr. Abe? I could have missed something, but could you be referring to Taku Yamzaki and Sadakazu Tanigaki's criticism's of the prime minister? Being at the other end of the LDP political spectrum, that's not surprising.. But they only have 51 Diet members between them out of 313 LDP faction member MPs (the rest are unaffiliated), and the others do not seem to be lining up along factions lines, except to secure cabinet, sub-cabinet, and party posts (with the Upper House members acting as a cross-factional faction of its own for cabinet posts).
It's little more than a guess, but I think it was Mr. Abe's decision, and his alone, to stay on. It was widely reported on the JMSM that Yoshiro Mori, ex-Prime Minister and Koizumi-Abe minder, Hidenao Nakagawa, then LDP SG, and Mikio Aoki, head of the LDP Upper House members, went to the prime minister to tell him that the LDP was likely to lose too badly for him to stay on. Mr. Nakagawa gave what must have been a heavily censored version of the visit on national TV, which still made it clear that resignation was at least one of the possibilities that they had broached. If the trio had been really encouraging, I am sure that Mr. Nakagawa would have mentioned it in his interview. Mr. Mori has given a decidedly anemic version of his role in the talks as well. (I suspect that Mr. Mori still has not completely reconciled himself to the fact that Mr. Abe declined to respect seniority and defer to Yasuo Fukuda in 2006).
Behind that diffident, hands-off demeanor is a self-contained, quietly insistent man of strong, if sometimes shallow, convictions.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Body Count and Other Matters in the Defense Ministry Civil War
The preliminary body count is in on the civil war in the Ministry of Defense. Takemasa Moriya, the vice minister, is on the outs, and will be succeeded by Kouhei Masuda (class of 75). Such being the case, it is obvious that MOD Minister Koike Yuriko's first choice, Tetsuya Nishikawa (72), and Shinjirou Yamazaki (74), the vice minister's counterproposal have to go; likewise the two other bureau and agency heads who have seniority over the vice minister-select. They are the collateral damage. But what is the outcome of the war? And the implications for the geopolitical landscape, as it were?
The Abe administration had hoped to clean house and go into the September Diet session with a new team of party leaders and Cabinet members. Yet they allowed a personnel decision to get out of hand and reinforce the image of a pleasant but detached, behind-the-curve prime minister. It is by no means fatal, but certainly narrows the margin of error for the ruling coalition.
Even as it achieved full ministry status in January with the bipartisan blessing of the DPJ, the Ministry of Defense had been plagued with public procurement scandals and repeated information leaks. Particularly in view of the security breaches, it was not reassuring to know that the minister and her deputy had been contacting each other by way of cell phones. That, more than the unseemly sight of an openly rebellious bureaucracy, showed that MOD was not yet quite ready for prime time.
As for the Defense Minister herself, her chances of remaining beyond the August 27 makeover remain strong. As a very recent Cabinet appointee (July 4) Ms. Koike would have been the one obvious holdover candidate in the first place. Although her handling of events showed weaknesses in her executive tool kit and the media and some LDP members has taken her to task for that, it is difficult for the public to understand why a minister cannot hire and fire her own administrative deputies against the wishes of the bureaucracy. With public sentiment already running against the bureaucracy, I do not think the Abe administration wants to put itself in the position of punishing Ms. Koike.
Then, there are the real issues.
There are two major security issues that require attention. One is the realignment of US forces in Japan (and the Pacific) and, most importantly, easing the burden on Okinawa; the other is the overseas projection of Japanese military potential.
According to media reports from both ends of the political spectrum, Okinawa warmed to Ms. Koike during her tenure in the Koizumi Cabinet as she took on the Okinawa/Hokkaido (it's a long story) portfolio while continuing to serve as Environment Minister. Perhaps it was little more than political theater, like the kariyushi wear that she highlighted as part of the Cool Biz energy conservation campaign for the Koizumi administration. But then, so much of the politics of Okinawa is theater high and low. In any case, she most recently showed that her Okinawa ties were in good order when Yoshikazu Shimabukuro, mayor of Nago, showed up "unexpectedly" at a kariyushi promotion event in Okinawa on Thursday featuring Ms. Koike and supported her dismissal of Mr. Moriya (who is not a popular figure in Okinawa). Japan and the US agreed in 1996 to relocate the massive Futenma US air base to Nago on Henoko Bay within seven years maximum. But little could be done until the newly-elected Mayor Shimabukuro agreed in April 2006 to accept the transfer, and difficult negotiations still lie ahead in order to finalize plans, let alone begin construction. Thus, Mr. Shimabukuro's continued support is crucial if the long-delayed realignment is to go ahead. And any progress that has the blessing of the local authorities will work in favor of the Abe administration, even if actual construction could only begin some time in the future. This clearly works in favor of Ms. Koike's continuation as Defense Minister.
The extension of the overseas role of the Self-Defense Forces is a different matter. For practical purposes, this issue currently has two components: providing air transport in and out of Iraq; and refueling allied ships on the Indian Ocean for operations in Afghanistan. Each has its own renewable legislation, and the counter-terrorism act that gives authorization for Afghanistan expires on November 1. The problem for Ms. Koike is that she and Ichiro Ozawa, the DPJ chief, have a past. Early in her well-traveled career, she was an Ozawa protégé. However, she declined to leave the coalition government when Mr. Ozawa led his then Liberal Party back into the opposition in 2000, and instead remained as part of the rump Conservative Party that eventually was folded into the LDP. Most recently, she criticized Mr. Ozawa's adamant opposition to the renewal of the counter-terrorism act. This was very much a performance in character for the feisty Defense Minister. Retaining Ms. Koike certainly is not an auspicious turn of events for compromise; the kind of compromise that the coalition government needs to reach in order to secure an extension by Nov. 1.
The Abe administration had hoped to clean house and go into the September Diet session with a new team of party leaders and Cabinet members. Yet they allowed a personnel decision to get out of hand and reinforce the image of a pleasant but detached, behind-the-curve prime minister. It is by no means fatal, but certainly narrows the margin of error for the ruling coalition.
Even as it achieved full ministry status in January with the bipartisan blessing of the DPJ, the Ministry of Defense had been plagued with public procurement scandals and repeated information leaks. Particularly in view of the security breaches, it was not reassuring to know that the minister and her deputy had been contacting each other by way of cell phones. That, more than the unseemly sight of an openly rebellious bureaucracy, showed that MOD was not yet quite ready for prime time.
As for the Defense Minister herself, her chances of remaining beyond the August 27 makeover remain strong. As a very recent Cabinet appointee (July 4) Ms. Koike would have been the one obvious holdover candidate in the first place. Although her handling of events showed weaknesses in her executive tool kit and the media and some LDP members has taken her to task for that, it is difficult for the public to understand why a minister cannot hire and fire her own administrative deputies against the wishes of the bureaucracy. With public sentiment already running against the bureaucracy, I do not think the Abe administration wants to put itself in the position of punishing Ms. Koike.
Then, there are the real issues.
There are two major security issues that require attention. One is the realignment of US forces in Japan (and the Pacific) and, most importantly, easing the burden on Okinawa; the other is the overseas projection of Japanese military potential.
According to media reports from both ends of the political spectrum, Okinawa warmed to Ms. Koike during her tenure in the Koizumi Cabinet as she took on the Okinawa/Hokkaido (it's a long story) portfolio while continuing to serve as Environment Minister. Perhaps it was little more than political theater, like the kariyushi wear that she highlighted as part of the Cool Biz energy conservation campaign for the Koizumi administration. But then, so much of the politics of Okinawa is theater high and low. In any case, she most recently showed that her Okinawa ties were in good order when Yoshikazu Shimabukuro, mayor of Nago, showed up "unexpectedly" at a kariyushi promotion event in Okinawa on Thursday featuring Ms. Koike and supported her dismissal of Mr. Moriya (who is not a popular figure in Okinawa). Japan and the US agreed in 1996 to relocate the massive Futenma US air base to Nago on Henoko Bay within seven years maximum. But little could be done until the newly-elected Mayor Shimabukuro agreed in April 2006 to accept the transfer, and difficult negotiations still lie ahead in order to finalize plans, let alone begin construction. Thus, Mr. Shimabukuro's continued support is crucial if the long-delayed realignment is to go ahead. And any progress that has the blessing of the local authorities will work in favor of the Abe administration, even if actual construction could only begin some time in the future. This clearly works in favor of Ms. Koike's continuation as Defense Minister.
The extension of the overseas role of the Self-Defense Forces is a different matter. For practical purposes, this issue currently has two components: providing air transport in and out of Iraq; and refueling allied ships on the Indian Ocean for operations in Afghanistan. Each has its own renewable legislation, and the counter-terrorism act that gives authorization for Afghanistan expires on November 1. The problem for Ms. Koike is that she and Ichiro Ozawa, the DPJ chief, have a past. Early in her well-traveled career, she was an Ozawa protégé. However, she declined to leave the coalition government when Mr. Ozawa led his then Liberal Party back into the opposition in 2000, and instead remained as part of the rump Conservative Party that eventually was folded into the LDP. Most recently, she criticized Mr. Ozawa's adamant opposition to the renewal of the counter-terrorism act. This was very much a performance in character for the feisty Defense Minister. Retaining Ms. Koike certainly is not an auspicious turn of events for compromise; the kind of compromise that the coalition government needs to reach in order to secure an extension by Nov. 1.
Friday, August 17, 2007
The LDP Loses Big and Prime Minister's No-Show at Yasukuni Takes on New Meaning for TIME
Prime Minister Abe comes in with a muscular foreign policy and national security agenda, loses Upper House election, putting Japan back on the old, more inward-looking America-reliant track. The correspondent thinks that that is not a good idea, given the rise of China and India.
That appears to be the storyline of this TIME article from Bryan Walsh. Though it's pretty much what conventional wisdom dictates these days, there's no reason to reject it for that sake alone. In fact, there's much to be said for this line of reasoning, although I personally am more or less satisfied with the course that our national security policy will likely be taking. (For one thing, I believe that Japan's national interests are generally consonant not only with India but also with China, and that the Chinese authorities feel the same way.)
But my quarrel, as so often, is with the details. For if the media cannot get the facts right, then how can you be sure that they understand? And if they don't understand, why should we believe what they say?
Prime Minister Abe did not go to pay his respects at the Yasukuni Shrine on August 15. Mr. Walsh sees this as "simply the latest step back toward a more disengaged Japan." But it was nothing of the sort. His no-show was foreordained sometime during the spring or summer of 2006, when Mr. Abe and his associates reached an unstated understanding that Mr. Abe would not visit Yasukuni during his likely tenure as successor to Junichiro Koizumi. In fact, it has enabled Mr. Abe to pursue what some call a nationalist agenda with nary a peep from Chinese authorities. (Most people see such acquiescence as a consequence of their desire for domestic stability. I don't disagree with this assessment, but I also believe that this is possible only because they do not actually see such a Japan in its own right as a strategic threat in its own right.) Besides, he has always believed that the spring and autumn rites are the more important events, which makes sense when you consider his historical perspective and political agenda.
In fact, the Upper House election vote against the LDP had far more to do with outrage at the political financing scandals, public communications-challenged Cabinet members, and the public pension system debacle than with rejection of Mr. Abe's external policies. The resultant difficulties that the ruling coalition will have in getting an extension of the counter-terrorism act could be of serious consequence – I change my mind on an almost daily basis about the prospects for a deal - but they have as much to do with the personal inclinations of Ozawa Ichiro, the DPJ leader, than with policy differences between the LDP and the DPJ as institutions. Yes, Mr. Abe needs a renewed emphasis on the domestic front, but that in of itself need not set back his external policy priorities, which from international standards were exceedingly modest in the first place. The DPJ supports patriotism in education, and a constitutional amendment needs a supermajority in the first place. And the tentative favorite to take over just in case Mr. Abe must leave is Taro Aso, whose views are to a great extent in synch with Mr. Abe's. (I still have trouble seeing him as prime minister material, but I digress.) Don't assume that Mr. Abe's policy priorities are on the outs, just because he himself is on the ropes.
Then there is the historical backdrop. Mr. Walsh writes:
Aug. 15 is the anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II, a day of reflection for the Japanese and celebration for much of the rest of Asia.
Now there are 1.3 billion people in China, and I am sure that it is a cause for celebration for the Han, or 91.1% of Chinese citizens., and I am sure that the 72.3 million Koreans feel even more strongly about this. And I guess that most of the 4.6 million Singaporeans will agree that August 15 is a good day. But what of the 1.44 billion people on the Indian subcontinent, not to mention the 20 million Sri Lankans just off shore? Do you think that they share, to a man, fond memories of the victory for their British overlords? Do the 234 million Indonesians care that on August 15, the Dutch could finally confirm for good (or so they thought) the return of their East Indies colonies? Or was it merely a milestone of decidedly mixed blessings that passes barely noticed in the narrative of their fight to regain sovereignty, which they officially declared on August 17, only two days later? As for the 142.8 million Russians, or at least 79.8% of them (geographically, Russia is a predominantly Asian empire), I'm sure that they remain disappointed that the war ended so early. In fact, they made sure it didn't, for themselves at least.)
You see, underpinning Mr. Walsh's article is a uniquely American perspective that sees the war with Japan as a war of liberation, and there is an undeniable truth to that. But for most of Asia, it was a war of the empires. Know that there lies Japan's true transgression, and that "Asia" so understands that. Know too, that there is also a very broad Japanese consensus on this that includes Mr. Abe to Mr. Ozawa and stretches from the left and far into the right, including along the way luminaries such as Yasuhiro Nakasone.
Why does all this matter? For one thing, unless you understand the backstory, you won't understand the who, what, and why of the conflicts over our histories and the contemporary symbols thereof. More to the point of this complaint, you will have no clue of the long-term external consequences of the setback to Mr. Abe. For another, you won't understand why so many well-meaning American interjections into the debate at best do nothing and at worst exacerbate them, but that's a subject of another story.
Sorry, Anonymous. Not enough time and energy today for a longer piece on habatsu. Stay tuned.
That appears to be the storyline of this TIME article from Bryan Walsh. Though it's pretty much what conventional wisdom dictates these days, there's no reason to reject it for that sake alone. In fact, there's much to be said for this line of reasoning, although I personally am more or less satisfied with the course that our national security policy will likely be taking. (For one thing, I believe that Japan's national interests are generally consonant not only with India but also with China, and that the Chinese authorities feel the same way.)
But my quarrel, as so often, is with the details. For if the media cannot get the facts right, then how can you be sure that they understand? And if they don't understand, why should we believe what they say?
Prime Minister Abe did not go to pay his respects at the Yasukuni Shrine on August 15. Mr. Walsh sees this as "simply the latest step back toward a more disengaged Japan." But it was nothing of the sort. His no-show was foreordained sometime during the spring or summer of 2006, when Mr. Abe and his associates reached an unstated understanding that Mr. Abe would not visit Yasukuni during his likely tenure as successor to Junichiro Koizumi. In fact, it has enabled Mr. Abe to pursue what some call a nationalist agenda with nary a peep from Chinese authorities. (Most people see such acquiescence as a consequence of their desire for domestic stability. I don't disagree with this assessment, but I also believe that this is possible only because they do not actually see such a Japan in its own right as a strategic threat in its own right.) Besides, he has always believed that the spring and autumn rites are the more important events, which makes sense when you consider his historical perspective and political agenda.
In fact, the Upper House election vote against the LDP had far more to do with outrage at the political financing scandals, public communications-challenged Cabinet members, and the public pension system debacle than with rejection of Mr. Abe's external policies. The resultant difficulties that the ruling coalition will have in getting an extension of the counter-terrorism act could be of serious consequence – I change my mind on an almost daily basis about the prospects for a deal - but they have as much to do with the personal inclinations of Ozawa Ichiro, the DPJ leader, than with policy differences between the LDP and the DPJ as institutions. Yes, Mr. Abe needs a renewed emphasis on the domestic front, but that in of itself need not set back his external policy priorities, which from international standards were exceedingly modest in the first place. The DPJ supports patriotism in education, and a constitutional amendment needs a supermajority in the first place. And the tentative favorite to take over just in case Mr. Abe must leave is Taro Aso, whose views are to a great extent in synch with Mr. Abe's. (I still have trouble seeing him as prime minister material, but I digress.) Don't assume that Mr. Abe's policy priorities are on the outs, just because he himself is on the ropes.
Then there is the historical backdrop. Mr. Walsh writes:
Aug. 15 is the anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II, a day of reflection for the Japanese and celebration for much of the rest of Asia.
Now there are 1.3 billion people in China, and I am sure that it is a cause for celebration for the Han, or 91.1% of Chinese citizens., and I am sure that the 72.3 million Koreans feel even more strongly about this. And I guess that most of the 4.6 million Singaporeans will agree that August 15 is a good day. But what of the 1.44 billion people on the Indian subcontinent, not to mention the 20 million Sri Lankans just off shore? Do you think that they share, to a man, fond memories of the victory for their British overlords? Do the 234 million Indonesians care that on August 15, the Dutch could finally confirm for good (or so they thought) the return of their East Indies colonies? Or was it merely a milestone of decidedly mixed blessings that passes barely noticed in the narrative of their fight to regain sovereignty, which they officially declared on August 17, only two days later? As for the 142.8 million Russians, or at least 79.8% of them (geographically, Russia is a predominantly Asian empire), I'm sure that they remain disappointed that the war ended so early. In fact, they made sure it didn't, for themselves at least.)
You see, underpinning Mr. Walsh's article is a uniquely American perspective that sees the war with Japan as a war of liberation, and there is an undeniable truth to that. But for most of Asia, it was a war of the empires. Know that there lies Japan's true transgression, and that "Asia" so understands that. Know too, that there is also a very broad Japanese consensus on this that includes Mr. Abe to Mr. Ozawa and stretches from the left and far into the right, including along the way luminaries such as Yasuhiro Nakasone.
Why does all this matter? For one thing, unless you understand the backstory, you won't understand the who, what, and why of the conflicts over our histories and the contemporary symbols thereof. More to the point of this complaint, you will have no clue of the long-term external consequences of the setback to Mr. Abe. For another, you won't understand why so many well-meaning American interjections into the debate at best do nothing and at worst exacerbate them, but that's a subject of another story.
Sorry, Anonymous. Not enough time and energy today for a longer piece on habatsu. Stay tuned.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
The Mainichi Says It's the Defense Minister Winning on Both Counts and Takes a Dig at the Prime Minister as Well
A Mainichi reporter has taken Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki's statement that "the procedures are the problem, and I am not taking issue with the substance", and claiming this as evidence that Defense Minister Yuriko Koike will get her way and replace Takemasa Moriya, the current vice minister, with the Policy Agency transfer Tetsuya Nishikawa. So much for my prophetic powers, though the possibility remains that this is spin from the Koike camp.
But going by the headline, the real story here is:
The Defense Vice Minister: "Inexperience" Again on Personnel Issue. Voices of Doubt Raised at the "Wait-and-See" Prime Minister"
All eyes will be on the fate of Ms. Koike come August 27. And the well-traveled defense minister has enemies of her own. But I don't think that the prime minister can afford to kick her out of the Cabinet. And you know how my guesses work out.
But going by the headline, the real story here is:
The Defense Vice Minister: "Inexperience" Again on Personnel Issue. Voices of Doubt Raised at the "Wait-and-See" Prime Minister"
All eyes will be on the fate of Ms. Koike come August 27. And the well-traveled defense minister has enemies of her own. But I don't think that the prime minister can afford to kick her out of the Cabinet. And you know how my guesses work out.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
The Defense Minister Saves Us from the Political Doldrums of Summer with a Well-Aimed Zinger at Her Deputy.
The Defense Ministry makeover would be put off until the new Cabinet would be installed on August 27. That left the JMSM parsing yesterday(14th)'s inconclusive 20-minute meeting between Defense Minster Koike and her Vice Minister and top MOD bureaucrat Takemasa Moriya.
Until, that is, Ms. Koike delivered this zinger:
Concerning Mr. Moriya's anger as the fact that "[he] hadn't been told about [his retirement]", Ms. Koike criticized him, saying, "Beyond this specific occasion, it often happened that I'd call him on his cell phone and he'd call back the next morning. I think this is a problem in terms of crisis management. In this particular case, I called him twice."
Beyond the obvious power asymmetry (Mr. Moriya cannot go around giving press interviews on the issue) and public sentiment against the bureaucracy (Mr. Moriya is a civilian, not a military officer, so even the pro-military Sankei bloggers are overwhelmingly in favor of Ms. Koike), this one must hurt.
Ms. Koike also threw in an apology to her Cabinet Chief nemesis Yasuhisa Shiozaki for the inadvertent leak, just as she had been making the rounds of the requisite nemawashi.
I've already been quite sure that Mr. Moriya is a goner. But with this latest, Ms. Koike has improved her odds of staying on. (Though a transfer to another portfolio of equal weight is a possibility.) The only test of will that remains is, who will succeed Mr. Moriya. My guess is, she'll give in here.
Seriously, guys, you've been the subject of similar accusations of dereliction, many times, over your lifetime? And they came at you when you least expected, to the greatest of effect? And they cost you?
Other than a minister with a minor portfolio changing her mind at the last minute, no member of the Cabinet visited Yasukuni on what we somewhat euphemistically call, "Shuusen Kinen-bi (Anniversary of the End of the War; August 15)". Ex-Prime Minister Koizumi did. But that doesn't count either. So this was a total non-story.
Until, that is, Ms. Koike delivered this zinger:
Concerning Mr. Moriya's anger as the fact that "[he] hadn't been told about [his retirement]", Ms. Koike criticized him, saying, "Beyond this specific occasion, it often happened that I'd call him on his cell phone and he'd call back the next morning. I think this is a problem in terms of crisis management. In this particular case, I called him twice."
Beyond the obvious power asymmetry (Mr. Moriya cannot go around giving press interviews on the issue) and public sentiment against the bureaucracy (Mr. Moriya is a civilian, not a military officer, so even the pro-military Sankei bloggers are overwhelmingly in favor of Ms. Koike), this one must hurt.
Ms. Koike also threw in an apology to her Cabinet Chief nemesis Yasuhisa Shiozaki for the inadvertent leak, just as she had been making the rounds of the requisite nemawashi.
I've already been quite sure that Mr. Moriya is a goner. But with this latest, Ms. Koike has improved her odds of staying on. (Though a transfer to another portfolio of equal weight is a possibility.) The only test of will that remains is, who will succeed Mr. Moriya. My guess is, she'll give in here.
Seriously, guys, you've been the subject of similar accusations of dereliction, many times, over your lifetime? And they came at you when you least expected, to the greatest of effect? And they cost you?
Other than a minister with a minor portfolio changing her mind at the last minute, no member of the Cabinet visited Yasukuni on what we somewhat euphemistically call, "Shuusen Kinen-bi (Anniversary of the End of the War; August 15)". Ex-Prime Minister Koizumi did. But that doesn't count either. So this was a total non-story.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
The Plot Thickens on the Koike-Moriya Affair
Yasuhisa Shiozaki, the Chief Cabinet Secretary, has put his foot down and refused to allow Yuriko Koike, the Defense Minister, to fire Takemasa Moriya, the long serving defense vice-minister. He told her yesterday that the defense minister cannot be fired without the agreement of the Cabinet Personnel Deliberation Committee, which vets all senior bureaucratic appointments before they are put up for approval by the Cabinet. Mr. Shiozaki also told her that the decision would be made by the defense minister in the new Cabinet, scheduled to be installed on the 27th, two weeks later. It is hard to believe that Mr. Shiozaki could have made the decision without at least tacit approval from Mr. Abe. Committee and Cabinet approval should be pro forma events, but in this case, the total lack of nemawashi before the decision and her subsequent trip to the US apparently gave the vice minister an opening to make good use of his formidable political contacts. Widely rumored to be one of the very few Cabinet members to be asked to stay on, the odds on her demise has risen considerably.
There may be some personal animosity between Ms. Koike and Mr. Shiozaki. The two reputedly crossed swords early in the Abe administration when she was introduced by Prime Minister Abe to President Bush as the counterpart to the National Security Advisor, and Mr. Shiozaki later called Stephen Hadley to remind him that he was the real counterpart. Ms. Koike had accepted a demotion from Environment Minister to the sub-cabinet national security advisor portfolio with hopes of creating the Japanese version of the US National Security Council, so Mr. Shiozaki's interjection must have been particularly irksome.
In any case, the real stake here is the leadership issue. The Abe administration has been riddled with political financing malfeasance and misspeakings, leading to three Cabinet resignations one suicide in a little over ten months. Mr. Abe has been criticized not only for the poor choices, but also for the showing a certain diffidence that allowed these political crises to continue longer than they deserved, appearing more pares than primus in dealing with Cabinet members who were, in many cases, his seniors in biological age and Diet tenure.
Disarray involving his Chief Cabinet Secretary, his latest Cabinet appointment, and a powerful, rebellious bureaucrat: this is the last thing Mr. Abe needs as he tries to make a new go of it with a split legislature.
Notes:
(Sequence of salient events on August 13)
Ms. Koike meets Mr. Shiozaki during morning hours.
10:45-12:18 Prime Minister Abe meets Mr. Shiozaki.
13:59-14:47 Mr. Abe meets Mr. Moriya, who is accompanied by the MOD Information HQ chief.
18:06-18:27 Ms. Koike meets Mr. Abe.
(Sequence of expected salient events after Aug. 13)
Aug. 15 Cabinet meeting (the twice-weekly Cabinet meetings are expected to be suspended for an informal summer recess before the Cabinet reshuffle)
Aug. 27 Cabinet reshuffle and extraordinary Cabinet meeting (late night)
Aug. 28 Regular Cabinet meeting
There is a certain political logic to Ms. Koike's precipitous decision. If she had waited till September, ditching the long-serving likely would no longer have been an option for her, given that efforts to extend the counter-terrorism act would have gone into overdrive by then.
The Cabinet Personnel Deliberation Committee consists of the Chief Cabinet Secretary and his three deputies (two Diet members and one senior bureaucrat). The Committee vets all bureaucratic appointments that require Cabinet approval, i.e. vice ministers, agency and bureau chiefs their administrative equivalents.
There may be some personal animosity between Ms. Koike and Mr. Shiozaki. The two reputedly crossed swords early in the Abe administration when she was introduced by Prime Minister Abe to President Bush as the counterpart to the National Security Advisor, and Mr. Shiozaki later called Stephen Hadley to remind him that he was the real counterpart. Ms. Koike had accepted a demotion from Environment Minister to the sub-cabinet national security advisor portfolio with hopes of creating the Japanese version of the US National Security Council, so Mr. Shiozaki's interjection must have been particularly irksome.
In any case, the real stake here is the leadership issue. The Abe administration has been riddled with political financing malfeasance and misspeakings, leading to three Cabinet resignations one suicide in a little over ten months. Mr. Abe has been criticized not only for the poor choices, but also for the showing a certain diffidence that allowed these political crises to continue longer than they deserved, appearing more pares than primus in dealing with Cabinet members who were, in many cases, his seniors in biological age and Diet tenure.
Disarray involving his Chief Cabinet Secretary, his latest Cabinet appointment, and a powerful, rebellious bureaucrat: this is the last thing Mr. Abe needs as he tries to make a new go of it with a split legislature.
Notes:
(Sequence of salient events on August 13)
Ms. Koike meets Mr. Shiozaki during morning hours.
10:45-12:18 Prime Minister Abe meets Mr. Shiozaki.
13:59-14:47 Mr. Abe meets Mr. Moriya, who is accompanied by the MOD Information HQ chief.
18:06-18:27 Ms. Koike meets Mr. Abe.
(Sequence of expected salient events after Aug. 13)
Aug. 15 Cabinet meeting (the twice-weekly Cabinet meetings are expected to be suspended for an informal summer recess before the Cabinet reshuffle)
Aug. 27 Cabinet reshuffle and extraordinary Cabinet meeting (late night)
Aug. 28 Regular Cabinet meeting
There is a certain political logic to Ms. Koike's precipitous decision. If she had waited till September, ditching the long-serving likely would no longer have been an option for her, given that efforts to extend the counter-terrorism act would have gone into overdrive by then.
The Cabinet Personnel Deliberation Committee consists of the Chief Cabinet Secretary and his three deputies (two Diet members and one senior bureaucrat). The Committee vets all bureaucratic appointments that require Cabinet approval, i.e. vice ministers, agency and bureau chiefs their administrative equivalents.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Head of City's Arabic School Steps Down Under Pressure
Head of City's Arabic School Steps Down Under Pressure
The principal of New York City's first public school dedicated to the study of Arabic language and culture resigned under pressure yesterday, days after she was quoted defending the use of the word "intifada" as a T-shirt slogan.
Debbie Almontaser, a veteran public school teacher, stepped down as the principal of Khalil Gibran International Academy, a middle school that is to open this fall in Brooklyn.
…
Ms. Almontaser's remarks, made last weekend, were in response to questions from The Post over the phrase "Intifada NYC," which was printed on T-shirts sold by Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media, a Brooklyn-based organization. The shirts have no relation to her school.
"The word basically means 'shaking off,' " Ms. Almontaser told the paper. "That is the root word if you look it up in Arabic."
Ms. Almontaser may not have been condoning the violence that the Palestinians unleashed in the occupied territories, but her views on the righteousness of their cause were evident.
In her defense, the West has never faced up to the fact that Israel remains the only final solution to a European problem that the Allies imposed on the colonies*. If nothing else, the Arab media will surely seize on the fact that the other people in article, Joel I. Klein, the school commissioner, Michael R. Bloomberg, the mayor, Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, are Jewish.
* Europe settled the better part of its internal accounts in the 20th Century through territorial concessions and what would now be called ethnic cleansing. The post-WW II Soviet takeover glazed over some faults that ruptured when the empire came apart in the nineties.
The principal of New York City's first public school dedicated to the study of Arabic language and culture resigned under pressure yesterday, days after she was quoted defending the use of the word "intifada" as a T-shirt slogan.
Debbie Almontaser, a veteran public school teacher, stepped down as the principal of Khalil Gibran International Academy, a middle school that is to open this fall in Brooklyn.
…
Ms. Almontaser's remarks, made last weekend, were in response to questions from The Post over the phrase "Intifada NYC," which was printed on T-shirts sold by Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media, a Brooklyn-based organization. The shirts have no relation to her school.
"The word basically means 'shaking off,' " Ms. Almontaser told the paper. "That is the root word if you look it up in Arabic."
Ms. Almontaser may not have been condoning the violence that the Palestinians unleashed in the occupied territories, but her views on the righteousness of their cause were evident.
In her defense, the West has never faced up to the fact that Israel remains the only final solution to a European problem that the Allies imposed on the colonies*. If nothing else, the Arab media will surely seize on the fact that the other people in article, Joel I. Klein, the school commissioner, Michael R. Bloomberg, the mayor, Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, are Jewish.
* Europe settled the better part of its internal accounts in the 20th Century through territorial concessions and what would now be called ethnic cleansing. The post-WW II Soviet takeover glazed over some faults that ruptured when the empire came apart in the nineties.
Afghan-Pakistani Jirga Shows the Power of the English Language
That looks like Arabic script in the photo in the Al Jazeera article on the Afghan-Pakistani conference held in Kabul. Otherwise, it's nothing but English on the banners. In fact, the news footage on BBC showed President Musharraf addressing the jirga in English, overdubbed with a local language. Another reminder that English has become the language of global discourse.
Of course the tools of globalization can be used to good effect by all. The English language is no exception, as the CNN-friendly spokesmen of the Taliban showed us to such effect, in the pre-9.11 days.
Using those tools and creating them are two very different matters, as this physicist informs us on science and Islam.
Of course the tools of globalization can be used to good effect by all. The English language is no exception, as the CNN-friendly spokesmen of the Taliban showed us to such effect, in the pre-9.11 days.
Using those tools and creating them are two very different matters, as this physicist informs us on science and Islam.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Yuriko Koike Strikes Again, This Time at the Heart of the Defense Establishment.
Yuriko Koike, the new Defense Minister and possibly the only holdover in the upcoming cabinet shuffle later this month, is a bare-knuckles political fighter who was the first to enlist with then-Prime Minister Koizumi to run as an "assassin" against the Lower House rebels who voted against the 2005 Post Office privatization bill. The fact that she abandoned her LH seat in Hyogo Prefecture to move two and a half hours by Shinkansen to run against a renegade incumbent in Tokyo made her act all the more remarkable. (She won running away.) Now, according to the Sankei, she is facing a rebellion from Takemasa Moriya, her deputy as the long-serving administrative vice minister of the Ministry of Defense, who is drawing on his political contacts to resist being retired and replaced by a Police Agency transferee.
If true, Mr. Moriya has picked the wrong fight with the wrong politician at the wrong time.
The Self-Defense Agency had since its insipience been dominated by the Ministry of Finance and the Police Agency. The two powerful bureaucracies (and to a lesser extent other ministries including) routinely seconded its career bureaucrats to monopolize the choicest JSDA offices, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs monopolized decision-making in the meatier national security issues. Thus, the desires of the JSDA were two-fold: rid top management of MOF, PA and other outsiders; and achieve full-ministry status. The JSDA made gradual but steady headway on the first objective, and it achieved the second this year under Prime Minister Abe. Mr. Moriya, born and bred as a JSDA official, appears to have been a major player in this respect, and he was rewarded with an unheard-of 4-year reign as JSDA/MOD vice minister, including a special dispensation to serve beyond the mandatory retirement age for public servants. (The normal life span of a vice minister in any ministry or agency is one to two years. Few survive deep into their third year.)
Ms. Koike must have thought that enough is enough, and, before embarking on a trip to the US, she decided to replace Mr. Moriya with Mr. Tetsuya Nishikawa. The catch? She had chosen a PA transferee, instead of someone of native stock.. Adding insult to injury, in contrast to longstanding custom, Ms. Koike had made the decision on her own, without consulting the MOD bureaucracy. According to the Sankei, Mr. Moriya has mobilized his formidable political contacts to resist this reverse coup.
The problem for Mr. Moriya is that, regardless of what he has been led to believe, Ms. Koike is the politician, and he is the bureaucrat. In the first place, the LDP is not going to sacrifice one of their own to save the neck – and if that is not possible, face - of a bureaucrat, even is Ms. Koike by all reports appears to have broken long-standing unwritten rules in not consulting the Chief Cabinet Secretary and his three deputies. (An appointment of a vice minister does require a Cabinet decision.) More importantly, if Prime Minister Abe never could have afforded to give the impression that he had caved under pressure from the bureaucracy or its LDP supporters, then to do so now would cost him what political capital he has left after the Upper House election debacle.
For Mr. Moriya's sake, I hope that the reports of his resistance are greatly exaggerated.
If true, Mr. Moriya has picked the wrong fight with the wrong politician at the wrong time.
The Self-Defense Agency had since its insipience been dominated by the Ministry of Finance and the Police Agency. The two powerful bureaucracies (and to a lesser extent other ministries including) routinely seconded its career bureaucrats to monopolize the choicest JSDA offices, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs monopolized decision-making in the meatier national security issues. Thus, the desires of the JSDA were two-fold: rid top management of MOF, PA and other outsiders; and achieve full-ministry status. The JSDA made gradual but steady headway on the first objective, and it achieved the second this year under Prime Minister Abe. Mr. Moriya, born and bred as a JSDA official, appears to have been a major player in this respect, and he was rewarded with an unheard-of 4-year reign as JSDA/MOD vice minister, including a special dispensation to serve beyond the mandatory retirement age for public servants. (The normal life span of a vice minister in any ministry or agency is one to two years. Few survive deep into their third year.)
Ms. Koike must have thought that enough is enough, and, before embarking on a trip to the US, she decided to replace Mr. Moriya with Mr. Tetsuya Nishikawa. The catch? She had chosen a PA transferee, instead of someone of native stock.. Adding insult to injury, in contrast to longstanding custom, Ms. Koike had made the decision on her own, without consulting the MOD bureaucracy. According to the Sankei, Mr. Moriya has mobilized his formidable political contacts to resist this reverse coup.
The problem for Mr. Moriya is that, regardless of what he has been led to believe, Ms. Koike is the politician, and he is the bureaucrat. In the first place, the LDP is not going to sacrifice one of their own to save the neck – and if that is not possible, face - of a bureaucrat, even is Ms. Koike by all reports appears to have broken long-standing unwritten rules in not consulting the Chief Cabinet Secretary and his three deputies. (An appointment of a vice minister does require a Cabinet decision.) More importantly, if Prime Minister Abe never could have afforded to give the impression that he had caved under pressure from the bureaucracy or its LDP supporters, then to do so now would cost him what political capital he has left after the Upper House election debacle.
For Mr. Moriya's sake, I hope that the reports of his resistance are greatly exaggerated.
AFL-CIO Hosts the Democratic Presidential Candidates Forum, and Yomiuri Goes with Senator Clinton Bashing China.
The headline of the Japanese-language article reads: "I Won't Eat Horrible Quality Chinese Food Products" Senator Clinton Declares.. According to the article, she said that "we need to deal with Chinese manipulation of its currency" and went on to state that "strict standards should be imposed on imports from China" and that she "wouldn't eat horrible quality Chinese food, nor would [she] buy toys that made children sick." She received "applause and cheers". Barack Obama and John Edwards were also quoted in what "created an appearance of China bashing". (The online Asahi does not mention the debate at all.)
Compare this with the US media, such as the WaPo, which focused on the efforts of the candidates to show off their pro-labor credentials, as well as the war on terror (with Mr. Obama's designs on targets in Pakistan serving as the bone of contention); the NYT, which went mainly with immigration as a labor issue, with a brief Obama/Pakistan coda; and the AP by way of WaPo, which covered more or less the same ground as the lengthier WaPo original. But nowhere in any of these articles, or anywhere else on the English-language sites that I follow, is there any mention of China. Even AFL-CIO's own weblog, which covered the event extensively, ignores it altogether.
This contrast in media perspective reflects a huge gap in the ways the two nations each see the world. In Japan, the US and China are seen as the main external forces shaping our policy agenda. In the US, the China question still lacks immediacy in the political debate. It will figure more prominently there as various pieces of protectionist legislation make their way through Congress and presidential candidates work hard to show their pro-American credentials and look responsible at the same time. The human right issue should also become an important part of mainly the Democratic debate as the August 2008 Beijing Olympics draws near. But even then, China does not figure to be a decisive issue in the 2008 elections.
The number one external issue for the US is, of course, the conflation of the war on terror and the war in Iraq. In bypassing the commotion altogether, the Japanese media reminds us that, for us, the war on terror and the war on Iraq are distant events on foreign shores and hills and vales. And it is this gap that complicates the most immediate problem facing the divided Diet: the extension of the anti-terrorism act, which expires on November 1.
You can find what the candidates said about China here and here. For your convenience, I've copied Ms. Clinton's comments here:
SEN. CLINTON: I want to say amen to Joe Biden, because he’s 100 percent right. You know, six and a half years ago, we had a balanced budget and a surplus; now we are in deep debt with a rising deficit, and it is absolutely true that George Bush has put it on the credit card, expecting our children and grandchildren to pay for it. We’ve got to get back to fiscal responsibility in order to undercut the Chinese power over us because of the debt we hold.
We also have to deal with their currency manipulation. We have to have tougher standards on what they import into this country. I do not want to eat bad food from China or have my children having toys that are going to get them sick. So let’s be tougher on China going forward. (Cheers, applause.)
Compare this with the US media, such as the WaPo, which focused on the efforts of the candidates to show off their pro-labor credentials, as well as the war on terror (with Mr. Obama's designs on targets in Pakistan serving as the bone of contention); the NYT, which went mainly with immigration as a labor issue, with a brief Obama/Pakistan coda; and the AP by way of WaPo, which covered more or less the same ground as the lengthier WaPo original. But nowhere in any of these articles, or anywhere else on the English-language sites that I follow, is there any mention of China. Even AFL-CIO's own weblog, which covered the event extensively, ignores it altogether.
This contrast in media perspective reflects a huge gap in the ways the two nations each see the world. In Japan, the US and China are seen as the main external forces shaping our policy agenda. In the US, the China question still lacks immediacy in the political debate. It will figure more prominently there as various pieces of protectionist legislation make their way through Congress and presidential candidates work hard to show their pro-American credentials and look responsible at the same time. The human right issue should also become an important part of mainly the Democratic debate as the August 2008 Beijing Olympics draws near. But even then, China does not figure to be a decisive issue in the 2008 elections.
The number one external issue for the US is, of course, the conflation of the war on terror and the war in Iraq. In bypassing the commotion altogether, the Japanese media reminds us that, for us, the war on terror and the war on Iraq are distant events on foreign shores and hills and vales. And it is this gap that complicates the most immediate problem facing the divided Diet: the extension of the anti-terrorism act, which expires on November 1.
You can find what the candidates said about China here and here. For your convenience, I've copied Ms. Clinton's comments here:
SEN. CLINTON: I want to say amen to Joe Biden, because he’s 100 percent right. You know, six and a half years ago, we had a balanced budget and a surplus; now we are in deep debt with a rising deficit, and it is absolutely true that George Bush has put it on the credit card, expecting our children and grandchildren to pay for it. We’ve got to get back to fiscal responsibility in order to undercut the Chinese power over us because of the debt we hold.
We also have to deal with their currency manipulation. We have to have tougher standards on what they import into this country. I do not want to eat bad food from China or have my children having toys that are going to get them sick. So let’s be tougher on China going forward. (Cheers, applause.)
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
The End of TimesSelect?
The New York Post (by way of Matt Drudge in my case) tells us that the New York Times is about to go back to a free-service format. If true, it's about time. As RK in New York once reminded me, TimeSelect only served to teach us that life could go on without Paul Krugman. (RK is a Republican.)
Monday, August 06, 2007
How Do I Read the New Komeito Loss in the Upper House Election?
How do I read the New Komeito loss in the Upper House election? That's the latest assignment from my favorite Japan analyst. As per request, I am posting my homework here.
Somewhat overshadowed by the coalition's loss of an Upper House majority, as well as the LDP's first ever loss of a plurality since the Great Conservative Merger of 1955, is the heavy setback that junior coalition partner New Komeito also suffered. There seems to have been some defections from the NK's Sokagakkai constituency, and the NK's ability to throw Sokagakkai support behind the LDP where it is not fielding its own candidates (all single- and two-seat districts as well as one three-seat district) has been called into question. In the aftermath of the debacle, the NK and/or the LDP, depending on whom you listen to, was rethinking the value of the coalition.
This is important if anything comes of it because, depending on the results of the next Lower House general election (coming no later than October 2009 and possibly as early as late spring 2008), the NK could hold the casting vote in deciding the new prime minister. However, from an election perspective, the LDP continues to make more sense as the NK coalition partner. Moreover, practical concerns make DPJ-NK cooperation in the next two Upper House elections difficult, if not impossible. Thus, barring a fundamental realignment of the Japanese political parties, the LDP-NK coalition will hold for the foreseeable future. Let me explain…
The coalition brings no obvious benefits in the proportional-seat election, where both parties work to keep their party faithful in line while bringing in as many unaligned and cross-party votes as possible. The NK may have suffered from guilt by association this time around, as polls leading up to the vote showed roughly one-tenth of NK supporters intending to cross over to the opposition, and the actual NK votes did drop from 8.62 million (15.4% of all votes cast) to 7.77 million (13.2%). (It won 8.19 million, or 15.1%, in 2001). The LDP by contrast, managed a much smaller drop, from 16.80 million (30.0%) to 16.54 million (28.1%). I believe that the NK has a core Sokagakkai constituency of around 8 million, and that a small percentage of this religious faithful as well as a very small fraction of non-Sokagakkai floaters are willing to move their votes around. But despite what must have been the drop off in floater and religious faithful vote for the NK, it managed to keep seven seats, down only one from 2004 (and 2001). So the downside for the NK has been limited.
The benefits accrue to the coalition in the local-seat election, where the seats are apportioned to the provinces according to the number of eligible voter residents with each province receiving a minimum of one seat. The value of the LDP-NK coalition for the LDP is in the support the NK gives to the LDP candidates where the NK is not fielding its own candidates. This is most evident in the single-seat or two-seat districts, where the NK has no realistic prospects of winning on its own. (The NK has in the past chosen not to field candidates in some three-seat districts.) The value to the NK is in the support the LDP can throw to the NK candidate in any three-seat district where the LDP fields only one candidate. The LDP does not have realistic prospects of winning two seats on its own in these three-seat districts because they are urban provinces, where the traditional LDP support base of farmers, public works-dependent construction firms, the local post office and others is less effective.
In the July election, one province had five seats, five had three, and twelve had two, while the rest (29) had one each. In the provinces where collaboration occurred (one-, two-, and three-seaters), both the LDP and NK received significantly more votes for the local election than they received for the (national) proportional election. The crossover effect is easier to discern for NK candidates. Since the NK has very limited appeal beyond its institutional Sokagakkai support base, I think that it is fair to assume that most of the additional votes for the local NK candidate came from LDP supporters.
NK help for the LDP candidate in the single- and two-seat elections is harder to discern because the difference between the proportional and local votes varied wildly. The more personal nature of the support for LDP candidates, as well as the resultant potential for defections from the LDP support base, undoubtedly contributed to this variance. However, there is enough of a gain to make me believe that the NK support did substantially help LDP candidates both successful and unsuccessful in receiving more votes than they would have received on their own. The coalition did work, if not to the total satisfaction of the two parties.
But what would the electoral prospects of the NK in a coalition with the DPJ? Not as good as the deal they have now. The DPJ has a much smaller support base than the LDP, and is consequently more reliant on the unaligned "floater" votes. In other words, the DPJ has less control over the number of votes it can throw to the NK. Moreover, there are practical concerns that virtually preclude collaboration in the 2010 and 2013 general elections.
In a perfect world, the NK would be able to keep its coalition benefits by fielding the second coalition candidate in the three-seat districts. But the DPJ will have two incumbents in two of the three-seat districts in the 2010 election in question, while both the DPJ and NK have one incumbent in the other. Chiba will step up from a two-seat to three-seat district. But the NK was not strong enough to field a candidate there in the July election, when the DPJ won two seats. As for the other three-seat district, Osaka, the single LDP and KN candidates will have their hands full in a four-way fight with the DPJ and JCP. In other words, there is little room for DPJ-NK coordination to come into play in the 2010 Upper House election in the all-important (to the NK) three-seat districts. The NK has nothing to gain from leaving the coalition even if the 2010 election were the only general election under consideration, and prospects look even worse in 2013, when the DPJ will be fielding two incumbents in four of the five (and one incumbent in Osaka, where it will likely again face a four-way single-candidate fight, leaving no room for collaboration).
On a substantive policy level, some people think that the DPJ is a more natural fit for the pacifist Buddhism that underlies the NK foreign and security policy. It is true that Ichiro Ozawa's stand against the renewal of the anti-terror law and his emphasis on the importance of the UN is much more than a mere tactical choice to position the DPJ in opposition to an unpopular coalition policy to support the US in Iraq (and, to a lesser extent, in Afghanistan), or to appease the still significant support from the traditionally pacifist, politically anti-American labor unions. However, Mr. Ozawa's shelf life could be fairly limited, if only because of his health problems, and there is reportedly substantial mistrust between Mr. Ozawa and the NK. Moreover, the younger, more libertarian generation of LDP Diet members, represented by people like the previous pro-US DPJ leader Seiji Maehara and current policy head Takeaki Matsumoto, prefer a much more muscular security policy. There is no reason to believe that, over the long-term, the NK will find more ideological comfort in collaboration with the DPJ.
Barring a fundamental realignment of the political parties, the LDP-NK coalition, now in its ninth year, shall continue.
A quantitative analysis should yield a better understanding of the benefits of the coalition. More importantly, my conclusions are based solely on the analysis of the Upper House general elections. I do not expect my conclusions to be significantly altered by an analysis of the Lower House general elections, but someone will have to pay me to do that. I need to use less user-friendly databases for that, and the analysis itself promises to be more complex due to the more complicated nature of the Lower House electoral system.
The NK suffered a big loss in the local-seat election, going in with five seats and escaping with only two. Three of the four NK incumbents standing for election in four of the five three-seat districts lost. (The NK did not field a candidate in Chiba, the fifth three-seat district.) In all three cases, the big winner was the DPJ, which took two seats in each of them, while the LDP managed to keep one apiece. The three-seat districts are all urban districts, where the LDP has not fared well of late. Here, the coalition fielded two candidates, one each from the NK and LDP (the exception being Chiba, where the LDP fielded two candidates and the NK none). But the DPJ won two seats in each of the three three-seat elections that it contested with two candidates. The coalition did a good job of vote allocation - the NK received considerably more votes in the three- and five-seat elections it contested than it did in the same prefectures for the proportional seat election and the LDP seemed to have benefited from NK support in districts where the NK did not field a candidate (though the benefit to the LDP is more difficult to gauge from publicly available data). But in each of the three cases, the JDP outpolled the LDP-NK coalition total by a wide margin, and in only one of these cases could even a perfect 50-50 split of the cumulative LDP-NK vote have lifted the NK candidate above the successful DPJ candidate with the fewer votes. Unfortunately for the coalition, the shift in voter sentiment swamped the positive effects of the vote sharing.
Somewhat overshadowed by the coalition's loss of an Upper House majority, as well as the LDP's first ever loss of a plurality since the Great Conservative Merger of 1955, is the heavy setback that junior coalition partner New Komeito also suffered. There seems to have been some defections from the NK's Sokagakkai constituency, and the NK's ability to throw Sokagakkai support behind the LDP where it is not fielding its own candidates (all single- and two-seat districts as well as one three-seat district) has been called into question. In the aftermath of the debacle, the NK and/or the LDP, depending on whom you listen to, was rethinking the value of the coalition.
This is important if anything comes of it because, depending on the results of the next Lower House general election (coming no later than October 2009 and possibly as early as late spring 2008), the NK could hold the casting vote in deciding the new prime minister. However, from an election perspective, the LDP continues to make more sense as the NK coalition partner. Moreover, practical concerns make DPJ-NK cooperation in the next two Upper House elections difficult, if not impossible. Thus, barring a fundamental realignment of the Japanese political parties, the LDP-NK coalition will hold for the foreseeable future. Let me explain…
The coalition brings no obvious benefits in the proportional-seat election, where both parties work to keep their party faithful in line while bringing in as many unaligned and cross-party votes as possible. The NK may have suffered from guilt by association this time around, as polls leading up to the vote showed roughly one-tenth of NK supporters intending to cross over to the opposition, and the actual NK votes did drop from 8.62 million (15.4% of all votes cast) to 7.77 million (13.2%). (It won 8.19 million, or 15.1%, in 2001). The LDP by contrast, managed a much smaller drop, from 16.80 million (30.0%) to 16.54 million (28.1%). I believe that the NK has a core Sokagakkai constituency of around 8 million, and that a small percentage of this religious faithful as well as a very small fraction of non-Sokagakkai floaters are willing to move their votes around. But despite what must have been the drop off in floater and religious faithful vote for the NK, it managed to keep seven seats, down only one from 2004 (and 2001). So the downside for the NK has been limited.
The benefits accrue to the coalition in the local-seat election, where the seats are apportioned to the provinces according to the number of eligible voter residents with each province receiving a minimum of one seat. The value of the LDP-NK coalition for the LDP is in the support the NK gives to the LDP candidates where the NK is not fielding its own candidates. This is most evident in the single-seat or two-seat districts, where the NK has no realistic prospects of winning on its own. (The NK has in the past chosen not to field candidates in some three-seat districts.) The value to the NK is in the support the LDP can throw to the NK candidate in any three-seat district where the LDP fields only one candidate. The LDP does not have realistic prospects of winning two seats on its own in these three-seat districts because they are urban provinces, where the traditional LDP support base of farmers, public works-dependent construction firms, the local post office and others is less effective.
In the July election, one province had five seats, five had three, and twelve had two, while the rest (29) had one each. In the provinces where collaboration occurred (one-, two-, and three-seaters), both the LDP and NK received significantly more votes for the local election than they received for the (national) proportional election. The crossover effect is easier to discern for NK candidates. Since the NK has very limited appeal beyond its institutional Sokagakkai support base, I think that it is fair to assume that most of the additional votes for the local NK candidate came from LDP supporters.
NK help for the LDP candidate in the single- and two-seat elections is harder to discern because the difference between the proportional and local votes varied wildly. The more personal nature of the support for LDP candidates, as well as the resultant potential for defections from the LDP support base, undoubtedly contributed to this variance. However, there is enough of a gain to make me believe that the NK support did substantially help LDP candidates both successful and unsuccessful in receiving more votes than they would have received on their own. The coalition did work, if not to the total satisfaction of the two parties.
But what would the electoral prospects of the NK in a coalition with the DPJ? Not as good as the deal they have now. The DPJ has a much smaller support base than the LDP, and is consequently more reliant on the unaligned "floater" votes. In other words, the DPJ has less control over the number of votes it can throw to the NK. Moreover, there are practical concerns that virtually preclude collaboration in the 2010 and 2013 general elections.
In a perfect world, the NK would be able to keep its coalition benefits by fielding the second coalition candidate in the three-seat districts. But the DPJ will have two incumbents in two of the three-seat districts in the 2010 election in question, while both the DPJ and NK have one incumbent in the other. Chiba will step up from a two-seat to three-seat district. But the NK was not strong enough to field a candidate there in the July election, when the DPJ won two seats. As for the other three-seat district, Osaka, the single LDP and KN candidates will have their hands full in a four-way fight with the DPJ and JCP. In other words, there is little room for DPJ-NK coordination to come into play in the 2010 Upper House election in the all-important (to the NK) three-seat districts. The NK has nothing to gain from leaving the coalition even if the 2010 election were the only general election under consideration, and prospects look even worse in 2013, when the DPJ will be fielding two incumbents in four of the five (and one incumbent in Osaka, where it will likely again face a four-way single-candidate fight, leaving no room for collaboration).
On a substantive policy level, some people think that the DPJ is a more natural fit for the pacifist Buddhism that underlies the NK foreign and security policy. It is true that Ichiro Ozawa's stand against the renewal of the anti-terror law and his emphasis on the importance of the UN is much more than a mere tactical choice to position the DPJ in opposition to an unpopular coalition policy to support the US in Iraq (and, to a lesser extent, in Afghanistan), or to appease the still significant support from the traditionally pacifist, politically anti-American labor unions. However, Mr. Ozawa's shelf life could be fairly limited, if only because of his health problems, and there is reportedly substantial mistrust between Mr. Ozawa and the NK. Moreover, the younger, more libertarian generation of LDP Diet members, represented by people like the previous pro-US DPJ leader Seiji Maehara and current policy head Takeaki Matsumoto, prefer a much more muscular security policy. There is no reason to believe that, over the long-term, the NK will find more ideological comfort in collaboration with the DPJ.
Barring a fundamental realignment of the political parties, the LDP-NK coalition, now in its ninth year, shall continue.
A quantitative analysis should yield a better understanding of the benefits of the coalition. More importantly, my conclusions are based solely on the analysis of the Upper House general elections. I do not expect my conclusions to be significantly altered by an analysis of the Lower House general elections, but someone will have to pay me to do that. I need to use less user-friendly databases for that, and the analysis itself promises to be more complex due to the more complicated nature of the Lower House electoral system.
The NK suffered a big loss in the local-seat election, going in with five seats and escaping with only two. Three of the four NK incumbents standing for election in four of the five three-seat districts lost. (The NK did not field a candidate in Chiba, the fifth three-seat district.) In all three cases, the big winner was the DPJ, which took two seats in each of them, while the LDP managed to keep one apiece. The three-seat districts are all urban districts, where the LDP has not fared well of late. Here, the coalition fielded two candidates, one each from the NK and LDP (the exception being Chiba, where the LDP fielded two candidates and the NK none). But the DPJ won two seats in each of the three three-seat elections that it contested with two candidates. The coalition did a good job of vote allocation - the NK received considerably more votes in the three- and five-seat elections it contested than it did in the same prefectures for the proportional seat election and the LDP seemed to have benefited from NK support in districts where the NK did not field a candidate (though the benefit to the LDP is more difficult to gauge from publicly available data). But in each of the three cases, the JDP outpolled the LDP-NK coalition total by a wide margin, and in only one of these cases could even a perfect 50-50 split of the cumulative LDP-NK vote have lifted the NK candidate above the successful DPJ candidate with the fewer votes. Unfortunately for the coalition, the shift in voter sentiment swamped the positive effects of the vote sharing.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Thoughts on the LDP Take on the Upper House Election Results Plus Some Odds And Ends
The prime minister stays on but cabinet heads roll, and the secretary-general falls on his sword. So, apparently, the LDP leadership has decided. They can make its stick too - for the time being - since the LDP has 306 seats out of 480 in the all-important Lower House, and there's no one else in the LDP poised to take over.
Prime Minister Abe and the LDP leadership claim that the electorate may have blamed the LDP for its political scandals and the public pension mess, but it did not repudiate his policies. Perhaps. But the public did not exactly endorse his emphasis on constitutional amendment and patriotism in education as priority issues. In fact, if you follow his trajectory since he first came to notice as a sub-cabinet member of the Koizumi administration, you will notice the following:
Mr. Abe made his name as an administration hardliner on the abductees issue. But the only reason the abductees became a top issue was because Prime Minister Koizumi decided to make it one. And the only occasions on which the Japanese government made any headway were when Prime Minister Koizumi twice flew to Pyongyang and essentially bribed the North Korean regime. Mr. Abe has delivered little on the abductees.
Mr. Abe (and the LDP) can take a breather only because the LDP has a comfortable Lower House majority on its own even without the help of the New Komeito. But the majority exists only because Mr. Koizumi bet the house in 2005 by dissolving the Lower House over Post Office privatization and won a landslide victory in the general election. And it was only with visible reluctance that Mr. Abe went along with the reform legislation. Accordingly, after he became prime minister, he made it a top political priority to allow back in the Lower House rebels who had managed to maintain their seats in the general election. But this led to his first serious setback in public opinion polls, from which he never managed to recover.
Another political decision has brought him nothing but grief as well. He chose his cabinet members mainly on the basis of their role in corralling support for the LDP presidency election and their personal relationships with him, giving short shrift to the wishes of party elders and faction leaders. But many of his ministers either became ensnared in a continuous stream of political financing scandals or committed one verbal gaffe after another. And at least one replacement for the failures kept both problems in the public eye, late into the electoral campaign. Although Mr. Abe was not personally implicated in the political financing scandals, they did touch him personally, as their frequency and his hands-off-the-tiller responses gave him an air of powerlessness.
(It is notable that Mr. Koizumi's most serious political troubles over a cabinet appointee's behavior came when he allowed political considerations to overrule practical concerns. Makiko Tanaka, the charismatic but undisciplined daughter of ex-Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, bungled her way through her brief tenure as foreign minister and caused a major setback for Mr. Koizumi in public opinion polls. She had been given her pick of cabinet appointments because her very public campaigning was directly responsible for pushing him over the top against the heavily favored ex-Prime Minister Hashimoto.)
However, the prime minister has not been totally without success in raising his esteem with the public. Although Mr. Abe was clearly Mr. Koizumi's handpicked successor, he has so far repudiated at least one part of his predecessor's legacy. He has not visited the Yasukuni Shrine since he became prime minister, even though his views on pre-1945 issues are clearly to the right of Mr. Koizumi's, This was the unstated quo pro quo for China's acceptance of his 2006 September visit, right after the installment of his cabinet. This raised his public approval to a historical high. It is also important to note that the only notable uptick in his popularity came when the Chinese prime minister (but not the more important head of state) paid a return visit in April.
Mr. Abe is in many ways the anti-Koizumi, yet he owed the prime minister's chair to his predecessor, and will continue to do so. The further, double irony is that where he has deviated from his legacy, he has faltered miserably, except where he has deviated from his own personal beliefs.
I can now tell you now that my favorite Japan analyst was off by just one seat on LDP returns.
The DPJ, JCP, DSP, and the New Party Japan have between them 122 seats out of 242. That's a simple majority. Not that the Communist Party will march in lockstep with the other opposition parties, and the other opposition parties do not exactly harbor unconditional love for the DPJ. But even if the ruling coalition brings in the People's Party and all the unaligned - an impossibility since, for one, some of the newly-elected unaligned ran with the official support of multiple opposition parties against LDP candidates – they will still have only 120 votes in the Upper House. The possibility that the ruling coalition can cobble together a working majority in the Upper House by bringing in the unaligned, micro-parties, and defectors is not there in the foreseeable future.
The New Komeito, the junior coalition partner, also took a beating, as it won only nine, a net loss of three. They did particularly badly in the three-seat districts, where the DPJ managed to take two seats in three of the four three-seat districts that the New Komeito contested. The third seat in all cases went to the LDP, leaving the New Komeito in the cold. This will be a persistent problem for the narrow-based New Komeito, if the voters continue to lock in on the two major parties in future elections. In this respect, it is notable that the JCP and DSP, the perennial opposition parties also suffered losses.
The Yomiuri estimates the proportion of the number of actual votes to the number of eligible voters at 58.64%, a modest rise from 56.57% in 2004. Public attention was significantly higher this time around according to polls, but it did not materialize as actual turnout. (Imagine if there had not been the growing awareness of the 2003 voting reform, which has made it much easier for voters to vote before the actual election day.) The election, it appears, was not so much won by the DPJ as lost by the LDP.
One Internet poll had Mr. Koizumi as the favored candidate to succeed Mr. Abe. Mr. Abe himself ran a close second.
I know the Ichiro Ozawa is not popular in many quarters and has potentially serious health problems (he did not show up in post-election celebrations due to exhaustion), but you can't argue with success.
Tomorrow, the US House of Representatives vote on the comfort women issue. Perhaps then we'll see how long the post-election buzz lasts in the foreign media.
Prime Minister Abe and the LDP leadership claim that the electorate may have blamed the LDP for its political scandals and the public pension mess, but it did not repudiate his policies. Perhaps. But the public did not exactly endorse his emphasis on constitutional amendment and patriotism in education as priority issues. In fact, if you follow his trajectory since he first came to notice as a sub-cabinet member of the Koizumi administration, you will notice the following:
Mr. Abe made his name as an administration hardliner on the abductees issue. But the only reason the abductees became a top issue was because Prime Minister Koizumi decided to make it one. And the only occasions on which the Japanese government made any headway were when Prime Minister Koizumi twice flew to Pyongyang and essentially bribed the North Korean regime. Mr. Abe has delivered little on the abductees.
Mr. Abe (and the LDP) can take a breather only because the LDP has a comfortable Lower House majority on its own even without the help of the New Komeito. But the majority exists only because Mr. Koizumi bet the house in 2005 by dissolving the Lower House over Post Office privatization and won a landslide victory in the general election. And it was only with visible reluctance that Mr. Abe went along with the reform legislation. Accordingly, after he became prime minister, he made it a top political priority to allow back in the Lower House rebels who had managed to maintain their seats in the general election. But this led to his first serious setback in public opinion polls, from which he never managed to recover.
Another political decision has brought him nothing but grief as well. He chose his cabinet members mainly on the basis of their role in corralling support for the LDP presidency election and their personal relationships with him, giving short shrift to the wishes of party elders and faction leaders. But many of his ministers either became ensnared in a continuous stream of political financing scandals or committed one verbal gaffe after another. And at least one replacement for the failures kept both problems in the public eye, late into the electoral campaign. Although Mr. Abe was not personally implicated in the political financing scandals, they did touch him personally, as their frequency and his hands-off-the-tiller responses gave him an air of powerlessness.
(It is notable that Mr. Koizumi's most serious political troubles over a cabinet appointee's behavior came when he allowed political considerations to overrule practical concerns. Makiko Tanaka, the charismatic but undisciplined daughter of ex-Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, bungled her way through her brief tenure as foreign minister and caused a major setback for Mr. Koizumi in public opinion polls. She had been given her pick of cabinet appointments because her very public campaigning was directly responsible for pushing him over the top against the heavily favored ex-Prime Minister Hashimoto.)
However, the prime minister has not been totally without success in raising his esteem with the public. Although Mr. Abe was clearly Mr. Koizumi's handpicked successor, he has so far repudiated at least one part of his predecessor's legacy. He has not visited the Yasukuni Shrine since he became prime minister, even though his views on pre-1945 issues are clearly to the right of Mr. Koizumi's, This was the unstated quo pro quo for China's acceptance of his 2006 September visit, right after the installment of his cabinet. This raised his public approval to a historical high. It is also important to note that the only notable uptick in his popularity came when the Chinese prime minister (but not the more important head of state) paid a return visit in April.
Mr. Abe is in many ways the anti-Koizumi, yet he owed the prime minister's chair to his predecessor, and will continue to do so. The further, double irony is that where he has deviated from his legacy, he has faltered miserably, except where he has deviated from his own personal beliefs.
I can now tell you now that my favorite Japan analyst was off by just one seat on LDP returns.
The DPJ, JCP, DSP, and the New Party Japan have between them 122 seats out of 242. That's a simple majority. Not that the Communist Party will march in lockstep with the other opposition parties, and the other opposition parties do not exactly harbor unconditional love for the DPJ. But even if the ruling coalition brings in the People's Party and all the unaligned - an impossibility since, for one, some of the newly-elected unaligned ran with the official support of multiple opposition parties against LDP candidates – they will still have only 120 votes in the Upper House. The possibility that the ruling coalition can cobble together a working majority in the Upper House by bringing in the unaligned, micro-parties, and defectors is not there in the foreseeable future.
The New Komeito, the junior coalition partner, also took a beating, as it won only nine, a net loss of three. They did particularly badly in the three-seat districts, where the DPJ managed to take two seats in three of the four three-seat districts that the New Komeito contested. The third seat in all cases went to the LDP, leaving the New Komeito in the cold. This will be a persistent problem for the narrow-based New Komeito, if the voters continue to lock in on the two major parties in future elections. In this respect, it is notable that the JCP and DSP, the perennial opposition parties also suffered losses.
The Yomiuri estimates the proportion of the number of actual votes to the number of eligible voters at 58.64%, a modest rise from 56.57% in 2004. Public attention was significantly higher this time around according to polls, but it did not materialize as actual turnout. (Imagine if there had not been the growing awareness of the 2003 voting reform, which has made it much easier for voters to vote before the actual election day.) The election, it appears, was not so much won by the DPJ as lost by the LDP.
One Internet poll had Mr. Koizumi as the favored candidate to succeed Mr. Abe. Mr. Abe himself ran a close second.
I know the Ichiro Ozawa is not popular in many quarters and has potentially serious health problems (he did not show up in post-election celebrations due to exhaustion), but you can't argue with success.
Tomorrow, the US House of Representatives vote on the comfort women issue. Perhaps then we'll see how long the post-election buzz lasts in the foreign media.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
While Waiting for the Rain to Let Up I Find This, about the Art of Spin.
Robert Novak brings you this:
Karl Rove, President Bush's political lieutenant, told a closed-door meeting of 2008 Republican House candidates and their aides Tuesday that it was less the war in Iraq than corruption in Congress that caused their party's defeat in the 2006 elections.
Rove's clear advice to the candidates is to distance themselves from the culture of Washington. Specifically, Republican candidates are urged to make clear they have no connection with disgraced congressmen such as Duke Cunningham and Mark Foley.
In effect, Rove was rebutting the complaint inside the party that George W. Bush is responsible for Republican miseries by invading Iraq.
I wonder how John McCain, whose principled support of the war in Iraq has never been questioned, and Fred Thompson, the successful ex-lobbyist, would respond to that.
Karl Rove, President Bush's political lieutenant, told a closed-door meeting of 2008 Republican House candidates and their aides Tuesday that it was less the war in Iraq than corruption in Congress that caused their party's defeat in the 2006 elections.
Rove's clear advice to the candidates is to distance themselves from the culture of Washington. Specifically, Republican candidates are urged to make clear they have no connection with disgraced congressmen such as Duke Cunningham and Mark Foley.
In effect, Rove was rebutting the complaint inside the party that George W. Bush is responsible for Republican miseries by invading Iraq.
I wonder how John McCain, whose principled support of the war in Iraq has never been questioned, and Fred Thompson, the successful ex-lobbyist, would respond to that.
I Go forth to Choose Between the Return of the Lost Decade and the End of Democracy （Or Do I?)
Unlike most of the people who are kind enough to read my blog, I have the opportunity to vote for the LDP and put an end to democracy in Japan; the DPJ and push Japan right back into the political chaos and economic stagnation of the Lost Decade and please the North Koreans no end; or none of the above. Given these choices, can "none of the above" be too bad? We'll see.
The expected opposition victory - the morning voting, as well as the two-week pre-election day voting, is up and the weather is holding – or, rather, the coalition loss, is likely to leave a divided Diet, which will make it difficult for the Abe administration to achieve much legislation during the next regular Diet session, typically beginning in December and going through June. If the coalition wants to avoid this predicament, it will have to do more than just corral unaffiliated Upper House members, or even bring the New People's Party; it must reach into the ranks of the opposition parties and seek out potential defectors.
The likelihood of legislative deadlock has brought on speculation in many quarters, including a cabinet member, that the Lower House will have to be dissolved for a general election well before its term expires in 2009. Indeed, I have done so myself. But I have not been able to think through the consequences of the outcome. Have you?
Looking further ahead, political deadlock has the potential to become a recurrent problem, as the electorate decides every three years to reward or punish the parties in power through the Upper House election. Now U.S. Congress can muddle through Senate-House divisions (or even executive-legislative splits) by vote seeking across party lines on individual issues, but Japanese party discipline is strong.
Two things could change these long-term prospects: a serious and lasting deterioration in the fortunes of the DPJ, or a major realignment of the political parties. The former seems unlikely. Although the LDP has beaten back many challenges before (Mr. Ozawa is taking his third crack at it), the DPJ appears to have the lasting power that comes from a reasonable facsimile of the human resources (sizeable representation in the Diet seats, viable candidates, and a growing party machine) and policy diversity (which some people might call lack of principle) that has served the LDP so well. The latter seems more likely, particularly if the public tires of persistent deadlock and the media pick up on such public sentiment.
The expected opposition victory - the morning voting, as well as the two-week pre-election day voting, is up and the weather is holding – or, rather, the coalition loss, is likely to leave a divided Diet, which will make it difficult for the Abe administration to achieve much legislation during the next regular Diet session, typically beginning in December and going through June. If the coalition wants to avoid this predicament, it will have to do more than just corral unaffiliated Upper House members, or even bring the New People's Party; it must reach into the ranks of the opposition parties and seek out potential defectors.
The likelihood of legislative deadlock has brought on speculation in many quarters, including a cabinet member, that the Lower House will have to be dissolved for a general election well before its term expires in 2009. Indeed, I have done so myself. But I have not been able to think through the consequences of the outcome. Have you?
Looking further ahead, political deadlock has the potential to become a recurrent problem, as the electorate decides every three years to reward or punish the parties in power through the Upper House election. Now U.S. Congress can muddle through Senate-House divisions (or even executive-legislative splits) by vote seeking across party lines on individual issues, but Japanese party discipline is strong.
Two things could change these long-term prospects: a serious and lasting deterioration in the fortunes of the DPJ, or a major realignment of the political parties. The former seems unlikely. Although the LDP has beaten back many challenges before (Mr. Ozawa is taking his third crack at it), the DPJ appears to have the lasting power that comes from a reasonable facsimile of the human resources (sizeable representation in the Diet seats, viable candidates, and a growing party machine) and policy diversity (which some people might call lack of principle) that has served the LDP so well. The latter seems more likely, particularly if the public tires of persistent deadlock and the media pick up on such public sentiment.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
This Article on the Upper House Election Is a Good Reminder of TIME "Magazine"'s Embrace of the Internet.
This article on the Upper House election, appearing just two calendar days (in real time a little less) before voting day, is a good reminder of TIME "magazine"'s embrace of the Internet. Yes, it's an AP wire, not self-generated content. It provides an excellent and timely overview for people who have nothing more than a passing interest in the Japanese political scene. It tells you that TIME, in contrast to the mostly weekly-content online Newsweek, is serious in its drive to be a day-by-day, consistent presence on your PCs. And a slew of professional blogs also draw in many, if sometimes maniacal, eyeballs to the TIME website on the cheap.
The fact that TIME relies on an AP wire also speaks to the resource limitations of the retail MSM. Only the wire services have the resources to build up the knowledge, expertise, and contacts to cover overseas issues with depth and accuracy. Which means that in-house correspondents will lean towards interview-rich, local-color pieces, the Pocari Sweat, Calpis meets Hiroshima oysters, Yubari melon stories....
That was not nice. So, to restore some balance, I'll point out a flaw in the AP article:
In the most punishing scandal, the pension records of 50 million benefit claims were discovered missing… The government has not said how much the lost claims are worth, but the Communist Party estimates it at $165 billion — a substantial chunk of the $1.25 trillion in total deposits.
That's a bad quote to end the pension riff on, since it gives the impression to the casual reader that the money is lost to the pensioners for good. In fact it is likely that the bulk, perhaps most, of the claims will ultimately reconciled, possibly even before much of the payment is due. But this is what happens when a correspondent is unable to work with the native language and must rely on assistants for veracity
The fact that TIME relies on an AP wire also speaks to the resource limitations of the retail MSM. Only the wire services have the resources to build up the knowledge, expertise, and contacts to cover overseas issues with depth and accuracy. Which means that in-house correspondents will lean towards interview-rich, local-color pieces, the Pocari Sweat, Calpis meets Hiroshima oysters, Yubari melon stories....
That was not nice. So, to restore some balance, I'll point out a flaw in the AP article:
In the most punishing scandal, the pension records of 50 million benefit claims were discovered missing… The government has not said how much the lost claims are worth, but the Communist Party estimates it at $165 billion — a substantial chunk of the $1.25 trillion in total deposits.
That's a bad quote to end the pension riff on, since it gives the impression to the casual reader that the money is lost to the pensioners for good. In fact it is likely that the bulk, perhaps most, of the claims will ultimately reconciled, possibly even before much of the payment is due. But this is what happens when a correspondent is unable to work with the native language and must rely on assistants for veracity
My Favorite Japan Analyst Writes in on the Upper House Election
My favorite Japan analyst writes in on the Upper House election. Although I'm not going to put the exact number down here since it may be proprietary information, let's just say that it's very much in line with all the current 40 over-under speculation going on.
Which reminds me, let's just say I'm glad I'm not a real bookie; otherwise, thansk to my earlier 45 over-under offer, I'd be looking forward to a long, long summer vacation. With the fishes.
The turnout looks to be good. Interest is up, and the weekend weather forecasts have improved. This is bad news for the coalition, since the volatile unaligned electorate will break sharply towards the opposition this time.
Coalition candidates have made some headway into getting their supporters behind their candidates. But nothing seems to happening that lessens the public's desire to punish the LDP (though not to reward the opposition) this time around.
I don't see any way that the coalition can engineer a working majority any time soon. I suppose the prime minister can stay on nevertheless if he wishes though, by keeping Taro Aso, and shedding lightweights and lesser lights and replacing them with a more balanced group of middleweights and light heavyweights.. (I assume that the one true heavyweight, with his sense of political drama if nothing else, will continue to make himself scarce.)
Which reminds me, let's just say I'm glad I'm not a real bookie; otherwise, thansk to my earlier 45 over-under offer, I'd be looking forward to a long, long summer vacation. With the fishes.
The turnout looks to be good. Interest is up, and the weekend weather forecasts have improved. This is bad news for the coalition, since the volatile unaligned electorate will break sharply towards the opposition this time.
Coalition candidates have made some headway into getting their supporters behind their candidates. But nothing seems to happening that lessens the public's desire to punish the LDP (though not to reward the opposition) this time around.
I don't see any way that the coalition can engineer a working majority any time soon. I suppose the prime minister can stay on nevertheless if he wishes though, by keeping Taro Aso, and shedding lightweights and lesser lights and replacing them with a more balanced group of middleweights and light heavyweights.. (I assume that the one true heavyweight, with his sense of political drama if nothing else, will continue to make himself scarce.)
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
LDP Jaws Start Wagging in Anticipation of an Upper House Election Debacle, Ex-PM Mori Steps in; Have We Heard This Story Before?
With LDP prospects looking dire and even its coalition partner New Komeito facing something of a reputation risk by association, LDP officials and Cabinet members have been chiming in on the fate of the prime minister in the event of a debacle in Upper House election next Sunday.
As early as June 21, Upper House LDP Secretary-General Yoichi Masuzoe (who is the Bay City Rollers to LDP Secretary-General Hidenao "Big" Nakagawa's Beatles), irate over the one-week extension to the regular Diet session that the Abe regime rammed through to gain time to enact his version of public service reform, said on national TV, "It depends on whether the prime minister can explain why [the Diet session] was extended. If not, we'll suffer an enormous loss. There's the danger that the Cabinet may resign and the administration disintegrate", and repeated his complaint even more forcefully with the press. Mr. Nakagawa did some damage control over this and other grumbling from Upper House incumbent candidates - you would be pissed off too if you were an incumbent and your party leader decided that the best way to win the election was to give your opponents an extra week to campaign without any of the restrictions that come into effect once the campaign officially starts, while you were stuck in Tokyo tending to official business that you weren't sure your constituents really cared about – saying, "there's no possibility that the prime minister will resign just because we fail to retain a majority, since an Upper House election is [merely] an occasion for mid-term evaluation."
Things heated up even more after the Diet recessed and the campaign began in earnest, what with new accusations of political financing irregularities (implicating two more Cabinet ministers and awful damage control pushing LDP/Abe poll numbers further down). Poised to take over if Mr. Abe falters according to some speculations (which I discount), Foreign Minister Aso, as if to deflect suspicion of grave robbery, weighed in on July 12 with his view that "an Upper House election has nothing to do with the election of an administration; it's not the Lower House election."
Things got really dicey as the coalition poll numbers continued to fall, as a sitting Cabinet member, Yoshimi Watanabe, last seen here on this blog, sallied forth on July 23 saying, "If [management of the parliamentary process] ultimately comes to a dead end and nothing can be done about it, it will result in a choice of regimes."
The next day, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki refuted this view, essentially reprising Mr. Aso's claim, saying, "Upper House lections have been deemed in principle not to be elections to choose regimes. So is this one. [Although there has been a case where a Cabinet resigned as the result of an Upper House election,] that was the decision of that administration." Shoichi "Little" Nakagawa also seconded these thoughts, stating that the election had nothing to do with nominating the prime minister.
Now I can understand Cabinet members and top LDP officials minimizing the consequences of the Upper House election. But it is definitely not music to the ears of Upper House members, who are being told that they don't matter, or to the public who are being asked to take it seriously and give up weekend travel plans (or go to the trouble of absentee voting) to vote in an inconsequential election. And all this defeatist talk is very depressing.
So it is no wonder that ex-Prime Minister and Mr. Abe's guardian Yoshiro Mori sought to dampen such LDP speculation, stating, "the prime minister is saying, "[we'll] do the [corroboration and notification [of the public pension records] properly." If it isn't done properly, the prime minister himself must resign. Isn't now the time to watch over the situation so that the work can go ahead quietly?" In the context of Japanese political parlance, you have heard Mr. Mori tell the LDP minions to shut up.
LDP jaws wag in disunion, Mr. Abe keeps his counsel, and Mr. Mori wades in to calm the waters. Have we heard this story before?
As early as June 21, Upper House LDP Secretary-General Yoichi Masuzoe (who is the Bay City Rollers to LDP Secretary-General Hidenao "Big" Nakagawa's Beatles), irate over the one-week extension to the regular Diet session that the Abe regime rammed through to gain time to enact his version of public service reform, said on national TV, "It depends on whether the prime minister can explain why [the Diet session] was extended. If not, we'll suffer an enormous loss. There's the danger that the Cabinet may resign and the administration disintegrate", and repeated his complaint even more forcefully with the press. Mr. Nakagawa did some damage control over this and other grumbling from Upper House incumbent candidates - you would be pissed off too if you were an incumbent and your party leader decided that the best way to win the election was to give your opponents an extra week to campaign without any of the restrictions that come into effect once the campaign officially starts, while you were stuck in Tokyo tending to official business that you weren't sure your constituents really cared about – saying, "there's no possibility that the prime minister will resign just because we fail to retain a majority, since an Upper House election is [merely] an occasion for mid-term evaluation."
Things heated up even more after the Diet recessed and the campaign began in earnest, what with new accusations of political financing irregularities (implicating two more Cabinet ministers and awful damage control pushing LDP/Abe poll numbers further down). Poised to take over if Mr. Abe falters according to some speculations (which I discount), Foreign Minister Aso, as if to deflect suspicion of grave robbery, weighed in on July 12 with his view that "an Upper House election has nothing to do with the election of an administration; it's not the Lower House election."
Things got really dicey as the coalition poll numbers continued to fall, as a sitting Cabinet member, Yoshimi Watanabe, last seen here on this blog, sallied forth on July 23 saying, "If [management of the parliamentary process] ultimately comes to a dead end and nothing can be done about it, it will result in a choice of regimes."
The next day, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki refuted this view, essentially reprising Mr. Aso's claim, saying, "Upper House lections have been deemed in principle not to be elections to choose regimes. So is this one. [Although there has been a case where a Cabinet resigned as the result of an Upper House election,] that was the decision of that administration." Shoichi "Little" Nakagawa also seconded these thoughts, stating that the election had nothing to do with nominating the prime minister.
Now I can understand Cabinet members and top LDP officials minimizing the consequences of the Upper House election. But it is definitely not music to the ears of Upper House members, who are being told that they don't matter, or to the public who are being asked to take it seriously and give up weekend travel plans (or go to the trouble of absentee voting) to vote in an inconsequential election. And all this defeatist talk is very depressing.
So it is no wonder that ex-Prime Minister and Mr. Abe's guardian Yoshiro Mori sought to dampen such LDP speculation, stating, "the prime minister is saying, "[we'll] do the [corroboration and notification [of the public pension records] properly." If it isn't done properly, the prime minister himself must resign. Isn't now the time to watch over the situation so that the work can go ahead quietly?" In the context of Japanese political parlance, you have heard Mr. Mori tell the LDP minions to shut up.
LDP jaws wag in disunion, Mr. Abe keeps his counsel, and Mr. Mori wades in to calm the waters. Have we heard this story before?
Has Someone Already Written the Book on Racial Balance in the Visual Media?
Has someone already written the book on racial balance in the visual media? Anybody? If no one has and you want to take a crack at it, the ad in frame 5 of 13 of the slideshow in this Slate article would be a good place to start.
It's a Volkswagen ad highlighting safety. The four young people in the auto are a black couple in front with the male in the driver's seat and a white male and Asian female in the back. The images are a perfectly pitched rendition of the racial and gender dynamics of the times. Compared to this, those ads with babies/children of every color in the appropriate proportions are a snap. (Just to be on the safe side, the ad avoids any romantic overtones, so the couples could just be friends for all the viewer knows.)
The first Die Hard (1988) managed to sustain such a balance over an entire movie, and threw in class conflict and geopolitics into the mix. Every death is painstakingly calibrated not to offend, while maximizing customer satisfaction, starting with Takagi, the Japanese business executive (the only decent character to die; remember, we're talking about 1988) and finishing up with Karl, the superhuman terrorist in the anticlimax, including a couple of arrogant (yes, black and white) FBI agents along the way.
And remember, that's Takagi, not Tad, not Dan, not any of those names Japanese businessmen routinely adopt to work with Americans, if you catch my drift.
It's a Volkswagen ad highlighting safety. The four young people in the auto are a black couple in front with the male in the driver's seat and a white male and Asian female in the back. The images are a perfectly pitched rendition of the racial and gender dynamics of the times. Compared to this, those ads with babies/children of every color in the appropriate proportions are a snap. (Just to be on the safe side, the ad avoids any romantic overtones, so the couples could just be friends for all the viewer knows.)
The first Die Hard (1988) managed to sustain such a balance over an entire movie, and threw in class conflict and geopolitics into the mix. Every death is painstakingly calibrated not to offend, while maximizing customer satisfaction, starting with Takagi, the Japanese business executive (the only decent character to die; remember, we're talking about 1988) and finishing up with Karl, the superhuman terrorist in the anticlimax, including a couple of arrogant (yes, black and white) FBI agents along the way.
And remember, that's Takagi, not Tad, not Dan, not any of those names Japanese businessmen routinely adopt to work with Americans, if you catch my drift.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Even More Upper House Election Trivia: This Time, Mr. Shiozaki (But That's Not My Point)
The latest Cabinet member to be implicated in the never-ending political financing scandal is Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki. The story itself is fairly run-of-the-mill, following what has now become a familiar pattern that ultimately winds up with the media deploring the lack of a satisfactory explanation; you can read the original story here if you can read Japanese. (Sorry, the English version did not carry it.) It was a very small article in the hard copy version as well, which should please conspiracy theorists.
But no, that's not what caught my attention; what struck me was the fact that the story was first carried by Akahata, or Red Flag, the Communist Party's official newspaper. And I know that because the Yomiuri article says so. (And so does Asahi, which I will do not link to unless it is absolutely material because Asashi links go dead too quickly to serve my purposes.)
You see, way, way back in the day, I used to joke that if you were afraid that a scandal would break out, you should leak it to the Akahata, since none of the mainstream newspapers would do follow up on an Akahata scoop. But that was then.
But no, that's not what caught my attention; what struck me was the fact that the story was first carried by Akahata, or Red Flag, the Communist Party's official newspaper. And I know that because the Yomiuri article says so. (And so does Asahi, which I will do not link to unless it is absolutely material because Asashi links go dead too quickly to serve my purposes.)
You see, way, way back in the day, I used to joke that if you were afraid that a scandal would break out, you should leak it to the Akahata, since none of the mainstream newspapers would do follow up on an Akahata scoop. But that was then.
I Know that Life Can Imitate Art, but
When I wrote the latest description for this blog, Anyone can sell crap, we sell sh**, I was just having fun…
Never did I think that NYT would do anything like this.
Calvin, I know that there could be another Calvin Sims or two at NYT, but I can recognize that voice anywhere. What's going on at the NYT-Discovery Channel? Or is it just the NYT now? You make your Canadian colleague Norimitsu Ohnishi look like a flaming Japanese nationalist. You make Fox News look fair and balanced. Well, not really. But you see my point.
And Mr. Orr, I don't know you, but judging from this video, I think that you should stick to financial education.
SG, who sent alerted me to this link, is reminded of Beijing and Pyonyang. I think that it's more unreconstructed old-school Socialist Partythink.
Never did I think that NYT would do anything like this.
Calvin, I know that there could be another Calvin Sims or two at NYT, but I can recognize that voice anywhere. What's going on at the NYT-Discovery Channel? Or is it just the NYT now? You make your Canadian colleague Norimitsu Ohnishi look like a flaming Japanese nationalist. You make Fox News look fair and balanced. Well, not really. But you see my point.
And Mr. Orr, I don't know you, but judging from this video, I think that you should stick to financial education.
SG, who sent alerted me to this link, is reminded of Beijing and Pyonyang. I think that it's more unreconstructed old-school Socialist Partythink.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Reuters Gets It about as Right as You Can in a Wire
If you have time to read only one article on the Upper House election, you can't do much better than this Reuters piece. No, it says little about the opposition, and I'm not quite convinced that "Foreign Minister Taro Aso, 66, who shares much of Abe's policy agenda and is known for his love of "manga" comics and for verbal gaffes, is widely seen as a frontrunner to replace Abe." And it relies heavily on two recent polls for material. Still, the writer appears to know what she's writing about, and it shows.
A couple of brief excerpts show how deftly she encapsulates Prime Minister Abe's dilemma
"The surveys by the Asahi and Sankei newspapers were the latest to forecast a loss for Abe's coalition after government bungling of pension records and a series of gaffes and scandals that led ministers to resign and one to commit suicide."
"Abe, 52, came to power last September pledging to boost Japan's security profile and rewrite the country's 1947 pacifist constitution.
Those changes would be welcome to the United States, Japan's closest security ally, but rank well below bread-and-butter issues such as pensions with most voters."
There are a couple of quotes in the article, but they both come from Professor Yasunori Sone, a well-regarded political scientist with excellent command of public trends and technical details.
Incidentally, there's some speculation about how the coalition can maintain a measure of control in the Upper House, so that it will be easier to use the Lower House supermajority to overrule UH simple-majority vetoes. That is, by registering as a joint Diet group in the UH, this would enable them to be the largest UH "party", which, by longstanding custom, would entitle them to occupy the UH presidency, chairmanships in the UH procedural committee, budget committee, and other venues important to maintaining and facilitating the flow of legislation and budget bills. There are many examples of such joint Diet groups consisting of opposition parties, sometimes in order to maintain parliamentary (Dietary?) privileges that are denied to small parties falling under a threshold.
I thought about that, but dismissed the possibility. The UH chairs are nowhere near as powerful their US counterparts in controlling the agenda over matters under their respective jurisdictions, and party discipline is almighty when it comes to individual voting. Thus, there is very little room to use your procedural control to pull away some UH Diet members from the opposition on individual issues. Also, such a naked play for power would play very badly in the public eye. Moreover, if it came to that, nothing would prevent the opposition from breaking longstanding tradition and getting behind a, say, DPJ candidate for the presidency and divvying up the rest of the prime UH chairmanships.
This is not discussed in the Reutersarticle, but since the UH-LH relationship is covered quite nicely in the article, I decided to mention it here.
A couple of brief excerpts show how deftly she encapsulates Prime Minister Abe's dilemma
"The surveys by the Asahi and Sankei newspapers were the latest to forecast a loss for Abe's coalition after government bungling of pension records and a series of gaffes and scandals that led ministers to resign and one to commit suicide."
"Abe, 52, came to power last September pledging to boost Japan's security profile and rewrite the country's 1947 pacifist constitution.
Those changes would be welcome to the United States, Japan's closest security ally, but rank well below bread-and-butter issues such as pensions with most voters."
There are a couple of quotes in the article, but they both come from Professor Yasunori Sone, a well-regarded political scientist with excellent command of public trends and technical details.
Incidentally, there's some speculation about how the coalition can maintain a measure of control in the Upper House, so that it will be easier to use the Lower House supermajority to overrule UH simple-majority vetoes. That is, by registering as a joint Diet group in the UH, this would enable them to be the largest UH "party", which, by longstanding custom, would entitle them to occupy the UH presidency, chairmanships in the UH procedural committee, budget committee, and other venues important to maintaining and facilitating the flow of legislation and budget bills. There are many examples of such joint Diet groups consisting of opposition parties, sometimes in order to maintain parliamentary (Dietary?) privileges that are denied to small parties falling under a threshold.
I thought about that, but dismissed the possibility. The UH chairs are nowhere near as powerful their US counterparts in controlling the agenda over matters under their respective jurisdictions, and party discipline is almighty when it comes to individual voting. Thus, there is very little room to use your procedural control to pull away some UH Diet members from the opposition on individual issues. Also, such a naked play for power would play very badly in the public eye. Moreover, if it came to that, nothing would prevent the opposition from breaking longstanding tradition and getting behind a, say, DPJ candidate for the presidency and divvying up the rest of the prime UH chairmanships.
This is not discussed in the Reutersarticle, but since the UH-LH relationship is covered quite nicely in the article, I decided to mention it here.
More Upper House Trivia: ex-Gaijin Out on Election the Hustings
hustings: definition
pl.n. (used with a sing. or pl. verb)
1. a. A place where political campaign speeches are made: a candidate out on the hustings in the farm belt.
b. The activities involved in political campaigning: a veteran of the hustings.
There are three candidates among the Upper House proportional-seats candidates who have names that are recognizable as naturalized citizens, two on the DPJ list and one on the People's New Party.
The DPJ has the colorful incumbent マルテイ・ツルネン (Tsurunen Marutei), formerly Martti Turnunen of Finland (Finland and Japan like each other; we both fought Russia, and, by some accounts, belong to the same broad language group) on its list and hopeful 金ジョンオク (Kimu Jonoku), the katakana (one of the two Japanese alphabets) version of his given name Kim Jongok and dead giveaway that he was born a Korean. (Mr. Kim's choice when he became a naturalized Japanese citizen is one of several options that Koreans have when they make this choice. It is something I would like to elaborate one of these days.)
The PNP has the most colorful name in Pema Gyaurupo (Pema Gyalpo in its original roman alphabetical version), a scholar of Tibetan studies and the Dalai Lama's virtual ambassador in Japan. It also has Fujimori (like Pele, Magic, and Ichiro, the PNP obviously feels that Mr. Fujimori is big enough to go with one name), the ex-president of Peru. Technically, Fijimori does not qualify as a gaijin since he obtained Japanese citizenship at birth, but certainly deserves honorary mention, like Sadaharu Oh in Cooperstown.
What intrigues me is that none of these people adopted names that obscure their foreign origins (unlike Shokei Arai, the naturalized South Korean Lower House Diet member who took his life in the wake of a personal political scandal).
The Japanese national side in soccer, rugby, basketball, softball, volleyball, and American football, as well as individual sports like table tennis, all include or have included naturalized citizens as key members on their rosters. And the top two sumo wrestlers are Mongolians. Now politics may be a contact sport as well, but the outcome also turns on popular consent. In other words, two political parties led by savvy old-timers (DPJ - Ichiro Ozawa; PNP – Tamisuke Watanuki, Shizuka "bad cop" Kamei, and Yasuoki "good cop" Kamei) from the LDP of the good old days have decided that these names will help pull in votes at the national level. Against a background of the heavy celebrity politicking on the national stage, this is surely an encouraging commentary on civil society in Japan.
PS: Is there no statute of limitations on the photos candidates are allowed to submit for a publicly paid-for ad? One of the candidates on party X looks at least 20 years younger than she should. And she didn't look like that when I saw her back in the day. The image has the smooth and shiny, retouched smile that reminds me of North Korean propaganda photos. Anyone who has access to the newspaper inserts in the national dailies is free to write in with his/her guess on who I'm talking about. I do not erase any comments, anonymous or non-, other than surf-by spam, so your efforts, if any, will not go to naught. (Visual legerdemain for the candidates' photos, by the way, does not appear to be limited to women.)
pl.n. (used with a sing. or pl. verb)
1. a. A place where political campaign speeches are made: a candidate out on the hustings in the farm belt.
b. The activities involved in political campaigning: a veteran of the hustings.
There are three candidates among the Upper House proportional-seats candidates who have names that are recognizable as naturalized citizens, two on the DPJ list and one on the People's New Party.
The DPJ has the colorful incumbent マルテイ・ツルネン (Tsurunen Marutei), formerly Martti Turnunen of Finland (Finland and Japan like each other; we both fought Russia, and, by some accounts, belong to the same broad language group) on its list and hopeful 金ジョンオク (Kimu Jonoku), the katakana (one of the two Japanese alphabets) version of his given name Kim Jongok and dead giveaway that he was born a Korean. (Mr. Kim's choice when he became a naturalized Japanese citizen is one of several options that Koreans have when they make this choice. It is something I would like to elaborate one of these days.)
The PNP has the most colorful name in Pema Gyaurupo (Pema Gyalpo in its original roman alphabetical version), a scholar of Tibetan studies and the Dalai Lama's virtual ambassador in Japan. It also has Fujimori (like Pele, Magic, and Ichiro, the PNP obviously feels that Mr. Fujimori is big enough to go with one name), the ex-president of Peru. Technically, Fijimori does not qualify as a gaijin since he obtained Japanese citizenship at birth, but certainly deserves honorary mention, like Sadaharu Oh in Cooperstown.
What intrigues me is that none of these people adopted names that obscure their foreign origins (unlike Shokei Arai, the naturalized South Korean Lower House Diet member who took his life in the wake of a personal political scandal).
The Japanese national side in soccer, rugby, basketball, softball, volleyball, and American football, as well as individual sports like table tennis, all include or have included naturalized citizens as key members on their rosters. And the top two sumo wrestlers are Mongolians. Now politics may be a contact sport as well, but the outcome also turns on popular consent. In other words, two political parties led by savvy old-timers (DPJ - Ichiro Ozawa; PNP – Tamisuke Watanuki, Shizuka "bad cop" Kamei, and Yasuoki "good cop" Kamei) from the LDP of the good old days have decided that these names will help pull in votes at the national level. Against a background of the heavy celebrity politicking on the national stage, this is surely an encouraging commentary on civil society in Japan.
PS: Is there no statute of limitations on the photos candidates are allowed to submit for a publicly paid-for ad? One of the candidates on party X looks at least 20 years younger than she should. And she didn't look like that when I saw her back in the day. The image has the smooth and shiny, retouched smile that reminds me of North Korean propaganda photos. Anyone who has access to the newspaper inserts in the national dailies is free to write in with his/her guess on who I'm talking about. I do not erase any comments, anonymous or non-, other than surf-by spam, so your efforts, if any, will not go to naught. (Visual legerdemain for the candidates' photos, by the way, does not appear to be limited to women.)
Saturday, July 21, 2007
South Korean Public Vote on Their Part of the Cross-Straits Relationship with Their Airline (and Ferry) Tickets
A July 21 Yomiuri article that didn't even make it to its web site tells us that, between January-May this year, 1.03 million South Koreans visited Japan while 0.91 million Japanese visited South Korea. Think about it; South Korea has a little less than two-fifths of the number of people that Japan has, yet more Koreans are now visiting Japan than the other way around, despite the Han-ryu Korean-drama craze in Japan.
The article attributes the remarkable turn of events to the exchange rate, which puts the Won at a ten-year high against the Yen at 100 Won = 13.30 Yen (July 20). (There is, of course, no need longer any need to be reminded of the underlying prosperity of the South Korean economy.) Those are impressively pre-Asian numbers, and the article gives more facts and figures on tourism (in fact, there's even a small photo of a heavily Korean neighborhood in Shinjuku teeming with Korean tourists (and possibly even me, since I sometimes shop there for foodstuff that I cannot find elsewhere)) and, more broadly, trade. Within the nice array of solid information, anecdotes like the following indeed do illuminate:
A 28 year-old woman, a corporate employee who came to Japan from Seoul on a 4-day, 3-night trip, says of her choice of destination, "I vacillated between Hong Kong [and Tokyo], but I chose Tokyo because it would be cheaper to do shopping here." (my translation)
I'm not sure how the state-to-state relationship is doing right now, but the people-to-people one looks quite good. I'd like to know, though, what people on both ends of this exchange make of the effect of all this on the nation-to-nation relationship. Also, what they think about the per capita imbalance.
The article attributes the remarkable turn of events to the exchange rate, which puts the Won at a ten-year high against the Yen at 100 Won = 13.30 Yen (July 20). (There is, of course, no need longer any need to be reminded of the underlying prosperity of the South Korean economy.) Those are impressively pre-Asian numbers, and the article gives more facts and figures on tourism (in fact, there's even a small photo of a heavily Korean neighborhood in Shinjuku teeming with Korean tourists (and possibly even me, since I sometimes shop there for foodstuff that I cannot find elsewhere)) and, more broadly, trade. Within the nice array of solid information, anecdotes like the following indeed do illuminate:
A 28 year-old woman, a corporate employee who came to Japan from Seoul on a 4-day, 3-night trip, says of her choice of destination, "I vacillated between Hong Kong [and Tokyo], but I chose Tokyo because it would be cheaper to do shopping here." (my translation)
I'm not sure how the state-to-state relationship is doing right now, but the people-to-people one looks quite good. I'd like to know, though, what people on both ends of this exchange make of the effect of all this on the nation-to-nation relationship. Also, what they think about the per capita imbalance.
The Media Response to Foreign Minister Aso's "Alzheimer's" Comment Is Subdued. Is There a Conspiracy?
"In Japan one 60-kilogram bag of rice is sold for 16,000 yen, whereas in China, Japanese rice is sold for 1,300 yen per kilogram--equivalent to 78,000 yen per bag. Even a person with Alzheimer's can work out whether 78,000 yen or 16,000 yen is more expensive."
Despite the predictable cries from the opposition for his head, the JMSM response to Foreign Minister Aso's "Alzheimer's" comment has been subdued. Is there a conspiracy? No.
There are several reasons why Mr. Aso's comment is receiving less attention than previous gaffes from this foot-in-mouth disease-afflicted administration.
First of all, Mr. Aso and the LDP have the latest earthquake and the questions it has raised with nuclear safety to thank for. This matter has so far failed to take on partisan colors, except for cries of opportunism when Prime Minister Abe went to the disaster area. But seriously, what else could you expect? And the LDP can thank the gods he didn't pat the TEPCO man on the back, telling him he was doing a good job. Let's just say, we haven't seen many slow news days recently.
Yes, I do suspect that there is a measure of caution in the JMSM about possibly overplaying this verbal misstep in a way that eclipses the substantive issues only a couple of weeks before voting day. But I am sure that the JMSM (and not just the daily tabloids) would have jumped in with relish if he had, say, uttered anything that could have been even remotely linked with a potential nuclear weapons program. In fact, Mr. Aso's words revealed nothing about Mr. his views on rice, aging, or any other substantive issues. And that takes us to my main point.
You see, Mr. Aso is a guy, most of us men are guys (caution: do not open at work unless you are using a headphone), and there's a roughly equal number of women who are resigned to sharing life with one guy or other. (Husbands, boyfriends of course, but also dads, brothers, kids.) Unlike Hakuo Yanagisawa's painfully labored "breeding machine" metaphor or Defense Minister Kyuma's third-rail musings on the meaning of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Mr. Aso's words were the kind of things we say in casual, private conversation, things grownups do not want to show up in on YouTube. But, like it or not, that is the way we are; careless, sometimes, callous, no. Mr. Aso was being his guy self, and it is precisely this inimitable knack of keeping it real in public that sets this manga-loving foreign minister apart from the rest of his usually scripted peers (though the hawkish Shoichi Nakagawa also manages to leave the reservation frequently with his dyspeptic wit) and overall makes him such an effective public speaker.
In sum, I do not think that this will have any effect on voting behavior come July 29. (I know that this is just my thumb saying stuff that cannot be disproved.) However, it does serve as a potent reminder why people had such a hard time taking him seriously as a potential prime minister when he ran for the LDP presidency in 2006. That's an important thing to keep in mind in any post-Abe speculations. And that is the real takeaway from this latest uproar.
Cows, please accept my heartfelt apologies for my inappropriate comment in the third paragraph of this post (second paragraph of my own comments). You have my promise that such an incident will not be repeated in the future. I would also like to take this opportunity to inform you that no cows were used in the manufacture of this post or any other post or feature on this blog. In the interests of full disclosure, it is with the greatest of regret that I inform you that I did use some cow parts in preparing today's dinner. Yes, I cooked the dinner, but I did not shoot the cow, oh no.
Despite the predictable cries from the opposition for his head, the JMSM response to Foreign Minister Aso's "Alzheimer's" comment has been subdued. Is there a conspiracy? No.
There are several reasons why Mr. Aso's comment is receiving less attention than previous gaffes from this foot-in-mouth disease-afflicted administration.
First of all, Mr. Aso and the LDP have the latest earthquake and the questions it has raised with nuclear safety to thank for. This matter has so far failed to take on partisan colors, except for cries of opportunism when Prime Minister Abe went to the disaster area. But seriously, what else could you expect? And the LDP can thank the gods he didn't pat the TEPCO man on the back, telling him he was doing a good job. Let's just say, we haven't seen many slow news days recently.
Yes, I do suspect that there is a measure of caution in the JMSM about possibly overplaying this verbal misstep in a way that eclipses the substantive issues only a couple of weeks before voting day. But I am sure that the JMSM (and not just the daily tabloids) would have jumped in with relish if he had, say, uttered anything that could have been even remotely linked with a potential nuclear weapons program. In fact, Mr. Aso's words revealed nothing about Mr. his views on rice, aging, or any other substantive issues. And that takes us to my main point.
You see, Mr. Aso is a guy, most of us men are guys (caution: do not open at work unless you are using a headphone), and there's a roughly equal number of women who are resigned to sharing life with one guy or other. (Husbands, boyfriends of course, but also dads, brothers, kids.) Unlike Hakuo Yanagisawa's painfully labored "breeding machine" metaphor or Defense Minister Kyuma's third-rail musings on the meaning of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Mr. Aso's words were the kind of things we say in casual, private conversation, things grownups do not want to show up in on YouTube. But, like it or not, that is the way we are; careless, sometimes, callous, no. Mr. Aso was being his guy self, and it is precisely this inimitable knack of keeping it real in public that sets this manga-loving foreign minister apart from the rest of his usually scripted peers (though the hawkish Shoichi Nakagawa also manages to leave the reservation frequently with his dyspeptic wit) and overall makes him such an effective public speaker.
In sum, I do not think that this will have any effect on voting behavior come July 29. (I know that this is just my thumb saying stuff that cannot be disproved.) However, it does serve as a potent reminder why people had such a hard time taking him seriously as a potential prime minister when he ran for the LDP presidency in 2006. That's an important thing to keep in mind in any post-Abe speculations. And that is the real takeaway from this latest uproar.
Cows, please accept my heartfelt apologies for my inappropriate comment in the third paragraph of this post (second paragraph of my own comments). You have my promise that such an incident will not be repeated in the future. I would also like to take this opportunity to inform you that no cows were used in the manufacture of this post or any other post or feature on this blog. In the interests of full disclosure, it is with the greatest of regret that I inform you that I did use some cow parts in preparing today's dinner. Yes, I cooked the dinner, but I did not shoot the cow, oh no.
Friday, July 20, 2007
The BBC Takes on Constitutional Amendment as an Upper House Election Issue
The BBC takes on constitutional amendment as an Upper House election issue, and in what is becoming a distressingly familiar turn of events, manages to get it wrong in so many ways.
Later this month Japanese politicians will be fighting an election that will decide the make-up of the upper house of parliament.… One issue that is attracting a fair amount of attention is his plan to reform the country's pacifist constitution.
What the article doesn't tell you is that the only reason that the issue is getting any attention is because Prime Minister Abe chose to make it one of his two signature issues of the campaign against the wishes of most of the party leadership. It didn't make political sense; constitutional amendment had been the least of concerns of the electorate, even before the public pension scandals broke out in full flush. Moreover, discussions over the substance of any amendments would only come much later in the political schedule, so why focus your campaign on the only parties that oppose amendment outright, the always marginal Communists and the all-but-gone Social Democrats? Even so, events have overtaken Mr. Abe's desires. The cumulative effect of all the scandals have made sure that constitutional amendment is an issue of little interest during the campaign.
The writer does go on to give you in a remarkably short narrative a good recap of the post-war history of Article 9 mostly through an interview of Professor Phil Deans (TUJ) But he goes on to make an important factual assertion on his own and gets it completely wrong:
It is only relatively recently, though, that the LDP has had a leader from the conservative wing of the party determined to press ahead with changing the constitution - and also enough MPs in parliament to give it a chance of getting passed.
One can only assume that the writer is talking about the Lower House, where the Prime Minister Koizumi-led LDP scored a historic victory in 2005 and now holds 306 seats. But in order to proceed to the simple majority referendum stage, you need a 2/3 supermajority in each of the two Houses. The Lower House has 480 seats, and 480*2/3=320. The writer cannot claim to have misspoken here and actually meant the LDP-New Komeito coalition, since the pacifist New Komeito is dead set against the kind of amendment that Mr. Abe wants.
The writer then gives us Mr. Abe's motives:
Mr. Abe appears to believe constitutional revision is one of the best hopes his party has of shoring up its vote.
If so, then Mr. Abe is one of the few people in the LDP who thought so, or so I believe. This is a debatable question, but is moot anyway, as we already saw. In any case, the writer ignores that likelihood that he was driven at least as much and perhaps significantly more by his personal convictions. Give him this, Mr. Abe seems to have at least some measure of the stubbornness of his most cherished convictions. The writer swallows the following quote from Professor Deans. I think Professor Deans is highly misleading:
"So partly this move towards constitutional revision … is Abe looking for a cause, something to believe in, looking for something to sell to the public. Reform of the constitution is his big ticket item."
The writer tries to add something on his own, again by way of interviews:
What is interesting when you ask people their views about constitutional revision is that how old they are tends to affect what they think about the issue.
Now this is a frequently repeated, plausible assertion that is supported by some surveys, if I remember correctly. But it is disingenuous to claim that it is something that you have come across by talking to people and give just two example as proof. The 70-something pacifist who wants to maintain the status quo can be easily refuted by the example of Hisahiko Okazaki, the 70-something realist/hawk and confidante to Mr. As I chronicled elsewhere, the human experience is much richer than the simple generational assertion the writer seems to make through the two examples.
The writer continues:
The reality is that changing the constitution in parliament, or the Diet as it is known, will not be easy even if the LDP were to strengthen its hold on the upper house in next month's elections.
So true. But isn't it a little silly to use this as a lead-in to an explanation about the procedural realities, when the only meaningful question is to what extent the LDP can minimize losses?
The writers finishes with several paragraphs on reaction from China and South Korea. He quotes Professor Masatoshi Honda (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies) on this, but but the quote is rrelevant. Then, he finishes with the following:
So will China and South Korea trust Japan's leaders enough to get on with it? So far they have said little, but that is perhaps because it is only recently that Mr Abe has hinted at what exactly will be changed.
He has told reporters he will start by revising the constitution item by item, rather than amending it as a whole, and incorporate environmental rights into the document before tackling the preamble and the war-renouncing Article 9.
That cautious approach could blunt criticism from abroad in the early stages of any constitutional revision, but any change to Article 9 will no doubt attract a lot more attention.
But our neighbors know very well what Mr. Abe wants. Mr. Abe's piecemeal approach likely refers to a talk he gave on July 11 (for which no really good online source is available). But our neighbors, China in particular, have been uncommonly quiet for many months on this, in China's case possibly for a year or more, when all the talk seemed to center on Article 9. Thus, the reason for the seeming quiescence must be sought at least partly beyond Mr. Abe's "cautious approach" incongruously leading off with environmental rights (I have to see it to believe it; you can't make constitutional amendment an annual exercise). There is some self-evident truth to the writer's conclusion that "any change to Article 9 will no doubt attract a lot more attention", but if that's all that he'd wanted to say, he used up a lot of space, if not time, to do so.
Now it is one thing when a Steve Clemons or a Francis Fukuyama flies in to Tokyo, hangs out for a few days with English-language speakers, then picks up on a popular trope and writes it up as a right-wing surge (sorry, DT, I'll get on that piece one of these days), but its totally another when a Tokyo-based correspondent of a trusted international news service fails to "get it".
The key to understanding this lies in the extreme reliance on anecdotes. Now an anecdote can help illuminate and clarify a general point, but it can never prove it. Just because one of your classmates has a PS3, it does not mean, "I'm the only one that doesn't have a PS3 waaaaah!" But is the underlying logic here any different from that of a story filled with unsubstantiated anecdotes?
Of course it's easy to write a story using anecdotes. You go out there and interview a few people, then string up the choicest bits to fit your preconceived storyline, and, voila, you're finished for the day, no need to do research, no need to read primary sources, so your local staff can take the day off too. I expect better from the top-tier British media. Have the 24/7 demands of the Internet forced BBC to dumb down its standards? But if you can't trust reports on what you are familiar with, how can you rely on them about things you don't know?
Later this month Japanese politicians will be fighting an election that will decide the make-up of the upper house of parliament.… One issue that is attracting a fair amount of attention is his plan to reform the country's pacifist constitution.
What the article doesn't tell you is that the only reason that the issue is getting any attention is because Prime Minister Abe chose to make it one of his two signature issues of the campaign against the wishes of most of the party leadership. It didn't make political sense; constitutional amendment had been the least of concerns of the electorate, even before the public pension scandals broke out in full flush. Moreover, discussions over the substance of any amendments would only come much later in the political schedule, so why focus your campaign on the only parties that oppose amendment outright, the always marginal Communists and the all-but-gone Social Democrats? Even so, events have overtaken Mr. Abe's desires. The cumulative effect of all the scandals have made sure that constitutional amendment is an issue of little interest during the campaign.
The writer does go on to give you in a remarkably short narrative a good recap of the post-war history of Article 9 mostly through an interview of Professor Phil Deans (TUJ) But he goes on to make an important factual assertion on his own and gets it completely wrong:
It is only relatively recently, though, that the LDP has had a leader from the conservative wing of the party determined to press ahead with changing the constitution - and also enough MPs in parliament to give it a chance of getting passed.
One can only assume that the writer is talking about the Lower House, where the Prime Minister Koizumi-led LDP scored a historic victory in 2005 and now holds 306 seats. But in order to proceed to the simple majority referendum stage, you need a 2/3 supermajority in each of the two Houses. The Lower House has 480 seats, and 480*2/3=320. The writer cannot claim to have misspoken here and actually meant the LDP-New Komeito coalition, since the pacifist New Komeito is dead set against the kind of amendment that Mr. Abe wants.
The writer then gives us Mr. Abe's motives:
Mr. Abe appears to believe constitutional revision is one of the best hopes his party has of shoring up its vote.
If so, then Mr. Abe is one of the few people in the LDP who thought so, or so I believe. This is a debatable question, but is moot anyway, as we already saw. In any case, the writer ignores that likelihood that he was driven at least as much and perhaps significantly more by his personal convictions. Give him this, Mr. Abe seems to have at least some measure of the stubbornness of his most cherished convictions. The writer swallows the following quote from Professor Deans. I think Professor Deans is highly misleading:
"So partly this move towards constitutional revision … is Abe looking for a cause, something to believe in, looking for something to sell to the public. Reform of the constitution is his big ticket item."
The writer tries to add something on his own, again by way of interviews:
What is interesting when you ask people their views about constitutional revision is that how old they are tends to affect what they think about the issue.
Now this is a frequently repeated, plausible assertion that is supported by some surveys, if I remember correctly. But it is disingenuous to claim that it is something that you have come across by talking to people and give just two example as proof. The 70-something pacifist who wants to maintain the status quo can be easily refuted by the example of Hisahiko Okazaki, the 70-something realist/hawk and confidante to Mr. As I chronicled elsewhere, the human experience is much richer than the simple generational assertion the writer seems to make through the two examples.
The writer continues:
The reality is that changing the constitution in parliament, or the Diet as it is known, will not be easy even if the LDP were to strengthen its hold on the upper house in next month's elections.
So true. But isn't it a little silly to use this as a lead-in to an explanation about the procedural realities, when the only meaningful question is to what extent the LDP can minimize losses?
The writers finishes with several paragraphs on reaction from China and South Korea. He quotes Professor Masatoshi Honda (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies) on this, but but the quote is rrelevant. Then, he finishes with the following:
So will China and South Korea trust Japan's leaders enough to get on with it? So far they have said little, but that is perhaps because it is only recently that Mr Abe has hinted at what exactly will be changed.
He has told reporters he will start by revising the constitution item by item, rather than amending it as a whole, and incorporate environmental rights into the document before tackling the preamble and the war-renouncing Article 9.
That cautious approach could blunt criticism from abroad in the early stages of any constitutional revision, but any change to Article 9 will no doubt attract a lot more attention.
But our neighbors know very well what Mr. Abe wants. Mr. Abe's piecemeal approach likely refers to a talk he gave on July 11 (for which no really good online source is available). But our neighbors, China in particular, have been uncommonly quiet for many months on this, in China's case possibly for a year or more, when all the talk seemed to center on Article 9. Thus, the reason for the seeming quiescence must be sought at least partly beyond Mr. Abe's "cautious approach" incongruously leading off with environmental rights (I have to see it to believe it; you can't make constitutional amendment an annual exercise). There is some self-evident truth to the writer's conclusion that "any change to Article 9 will no doubt attract a lot more attention", but if that's all that he'd wanted to say, he used up a lot of space, if not time, to do so.
Now it is one thing when a Steve Clemons or a Francis Fukuyama flies in to Tokyo, hangs out for a few days with English-language speakers, then picks up on a popular trope and writes it up as a right-wing surge (sorry, DT, I'll get on that piece one of these days), but its totally another when a Tokyo-based correspondent of a trusted international news service fails to "get it".
The key to understanding this lies in the extreme reliance on anecdotes. Now an anecdote can help illuminate and clarify a general point, but it can never prove it. Just because one of your classmates has a PS3, it does not mean, "I'm the only one that doesn't have a PS3 waaaaah!" But is the underlying logic here any different from that of a story filled with unsubstantiated anecdotes?
Of course it's easy to write a story using anecdotes. You go out there and interview a few people, then string up the choicest bits to fit your preconceived storyline, and, voila, you're finished for the day, no need to do research, no need to read primary sources, so your local staff can take the day off too. I expect better from the top-tier British media. Have the 24/7 demands of the Internet forced BBC to dumb down its standards? But if you can't trust reports on what you are familiar with, how can you rely on them about things you don't know?
Do You Think that Japanese Authorities and Utilities Could Get Away with Something Like This?
Do you think that the Japanese authorities and utilities could get away with something like this? No, not the longstanding neglect. (underinvestment in infrastructure seems to be a serious, widespread, chronic problem in the US. What will the old urban centers look like in twenty years?) I'm talking about this:
Consolidated Edison, the utility that operates the steam system, insisted its equipment is in good shape.
And this:
"I don't think there is any reason to worry," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in the aftermath of the blast, which killed one person and injured dozens, some seriously. "I think that you see that these pipes generally perform fine."
Imagine:
TEPCO, the utility that operates the Kashiwazaki nuclear power plant, insisted its equipment and safety system is in good shape.
And:
"I don't think there is any reason to worry," Nuclear and Industrial Safety head Yasuhisa Komoda said in the aftermath of the earthquake, which spilled approximately 100 kg of low-radiation waste water into the ocean and overturned several barrels filled with other nuclear waste. "I think that you see that the equipment generally perform fine."
Does anyone doubt that many people at TEPCO as well as Mr. Komoda would be out of their jobs very quickly?
Although we may walk the walk in like manner in a global community, we clearly continue to talk the talk differently.
Consolidated Edison, the utility that operates the steam system, insisted its equipment is in good shape.
And this:
"I don't think there is any reason to worry," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in the aftermath of the blast, which killed one person and injured dozens, some seriously. "I think that you see that these pipes generally perform fine."
Imagine:
TEPCO, the utility that operates the Kashiwazaki nuclear power plant, insisted its equipment and safety system is in good shape.
And:
"I don't think there is any reason to worry," Nuclear and Industrial Safety head Yasuhisa Komoda said in the aftermath of the earthquake, which spilled approximately 100 kg of low-radiation waste water into the ocean and overturned several barrels filled with other nuclear waste. "I think that you see that the equipment generally perform fine."
Does anyone doubt that many people at TEPCO as well as Mr. Komoda would be out of their jobs very quickly?
Although we may walk the walk in like manner in a global community, we clearly continue to talk the talk differently.
Corrections: My Bad - Asahi Was Correct, If Not Quite Right
Yesterday, I aired my suspicions towards Asahi here, but it appears they were correct and I was wrong with regard to the quotation. Apologies to everyone, albeit a qualified one with regard to Asahi. Media reports still leave sizable gaps in their approaches to the issue, and Asahi's is as problematic as any of them. I'll try to attack the matter head-on when I have the time.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
What the Japanese Media Make of the Iranian TV Broadcast of the Iranian-American Prisoners' Footage
The US media is awash with reports and op-eds about the airing on Iranian TV of the footage of the Iranian-American scholars imprisoned in Iraq. The issue has not gone totally unnoticed in the Japanese media. The Asahi headline reads: US Researchers, etc. Detained in Iran Reveal Democratization Schemes; Yomiuri chooses to go with: Iran National TV Shows Images of Detained Americans. Mainichi and Sankei do not have it on their web site yet.
Now "scheme" may be somewhat strong as a translation, but the original word "工作 kousaku" is used in this kind of context to connote activities by "agents and spies". Does this choice of words by Asahi mean that it agrees with the Iranian authorities, or does it mean that it has reached that conclusion independently on the basis of the following quote in the Asahi:
"[Haleh Isfandari] described the Wilson Center as a highway for antiestablishment people to come to the US. [She] said that there was an intent to influence and change decision-making in Iran."
This must be referring to the following words by Mrs. Isfandiari:
"The goal of the Iran program," she recounted, "was that, whenever a speaker comes from Iran and talks at an important place like the Wilson Center, some people come and listen. Who are these people? They are policymakers . . . people who are active in the U.S. government institutions, people who work in Congress, people who are in the intelligence agencies, people who are in the media, people who are in foundations, who are in universities, and people who are in research organizations." (from preceding WaPo link)
Or, to quote the NYT:
"But the purpose of inviting speakers from Iran," she said, "was to have a group of people listen to them. These people were American political decision makers, congressmen, intelligence figures, academics, researchers and journalists." She added, "And so the purpose was to create a network between the speaker and these people."
Oddly, neither WaPo nor NYT mentions a "highway" or "influence and change decision-making in Iran", though it would be silly to assume that the project has nothing of the sort in mind. But then, what state does not conduct this kind of first-track, second-track public diplomacy?
In any case, manufacturing a quote for Mrs. Isfandari, if that is indeed what happened at Asahi (I confess that I trust the two US newspapers more than the Japanese media in the use of quotation marks), as well as using a word full of negative connotations like "kousaku, leave me with the feeling that Asahi is delivering an anti-US editorial in the guise of straight news.
Now "scheme" may be somewhat strong as a translation, but the original word "工作 kousaku" is used in this kind of context to connote activities by "agents and spies". Does this choice of words by Asahi mean that it agrees with the Iranian authorities, or does it mean that it has reached that conclusion independently on the basis of the following quote in the Asahi:
"[Haleh Isfandari] described the Wilson Center as a highway for antiestablishment people to come to the US. [She] said that there was an intent to influence and change decision-making in Iran."
This must be referring to the following words by Mrs. Isfandiari:
"The goal of the Iran program," she recounted, "was that, whenever a speaker comes from Iran and talks at an important place like the Wilson Center, some people come and listen. Who are these people? They are policymakers . . . people who are active in the U.S. government institutions, people who work in Congress, people who are in the intelligence agencies, people who are in the media, people who are in foundations, who are in universities, and people who are in research organizations." (from preceding WaPo link)
Or, to quote the NYT:
"But the purpose of inviting speakers from Iran," she said, "was to have a group of people listen to them. These people were American political decision makers, congressmen, intelligence figures, academics, researchers and journalists." She added, "And so the purpose was to create a network between the speaker and these people."
Oddly, neither WaPo nor NYT mentions a "highway" or "influence and change decision-making in Iran", though it would be silly to assume that the project has nothing of the sort in mind. But then, what state does not conduct this kind of first-track, second-track public diplomacy?
In any case, manufacturing a quote for Mrs. Isfandari, if that is indeed what happened at Asahi (I confess that I trust the two US newspapers more than the Japanese media in the use of quotation marks), as well as using a word full of negative connotations like "kousaku, leave me with the feeling that Asahi is delivering an anti-US editorial in the guise of straight news.
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