For a while, Taro Aso's ability to take advantage of the local votes for the 3x47 Prefectural electoral votes seemed in doubt. According to the Mainichi article (I first saw this link on Japan Observer but hadn't read it at the time), voting in the 37 Prefectural chapters that have elected to hold plebiscites (the article says that the number will reach 40) would mainly use a form of proportional voting called the D'Hondt method that essentially requires Mr. Aso in a given Prefecture to outpoll Yasuo Fukuda by more than three to one in order to sweep the three electoral votes. Moreover, four Prefectures would limit suffrage to Prefectural assemblypersons, local chapter heads (mostly though not exclusively Lower House Diet members) and other party worthies.
This did not look good for Mr. Aso, who wants to make an overwhelming showing in the initial battle for the 141 electoral votes available in the Prefectures.
But that was then. Today, Nobuteru Ishihara, the current LDP Policy and Research Council Chairman, appeared on Sunday Project and disclosed that the Tokyo and 7 other Prefectural chapters in the neighborhood (ed. I think he said "7 other Prefectural chapters in the neighborhood", but I can't be absolutely sure; I may have to correct this when the newspapers get around to reporting it) had decided to hold winner-take-all votes, and would announce the matter the following day. This is significant for several reasons:
First, winner-take-all is the preferred method for Mr. Aso, the underdog who desperately needs the momentum from a powerful, even overwhelming, showing in the Prefectural chapters, who enjoys all the upside benefits and assumes none of the downside risks from a lopsided outcome in the Kanto Plains and its environs.
Second, the media is concentrated in Tokyo. A victory there and its environs will receive far more attention than a victory in the outlying Prefectures, because Tokyo is where most of the reporters and camera crews hang out and political leaders make themselves available for sound bites.
Third, the fact that Mr. Ishihara – conveniently the head of the Tokyo chapter - was able to convince his Kanto cohorts to go along with a procedure that clearly benefits Mr. Aso could be an indication of where the sentiments of those chapter leaders lie. For his part, Mr. Ishihara is clearly an Aso sympathizer, so his high-minded (and yes truthful) explanation of the decision - that's the way the election should be held in the first place - should be taken with a grain of salt.
If Mr. Aso captures a sizeable majority in the Prefectures, it will look awkward for the LDP Diet members to deny him victory in the final tally. And his chances for just such an outcome will be substantially improved if Mr. Ishihara's strategy bears fruit.
If Mr. Aso manages to make a strong showing but not good enough to put himself over the top, Mr. Fukuda will have some extra ground to make up in the legitimacy column when he assumes the Prime Minister's chair. The Mentor tells me that such a turn of events is likely to cause long-term damage his standing with the local activists who have benefited in recent years from the high-profile campaigning efforts of Mr. Aso, in contrast to the far less visible Mr. Fukuda.
A same-day (Sunday) Asahi report says that 35 Prefectural chapters have decided to hold preliminary votes by all local party members. 19 are opting for proportional allocation (presumably by the D'Hondt method) of the three electoral votes, while 9 have chosen winner-takes-all.
Incidentally, Mr. Aso appeared far more prepared and articulate than Mr. Fukuda on Sunday Project. Mr. Aso has been on the main stage with few interruptions since the Koizumi administration while Mr. Fukuda, since he resigned as Prime Minister Koizumi's Chief Cabinet Secretary in May 2004, surfaced only briefly, and elusively at that, during his non-candidacy to succeed Prime Minister Koizumi. And it showed.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Saturday, September 15, 2007
I've Been a Greenspan Skeptic for Some Time
It all began when Alan Greenspan talked about "irrational exuberance", then later climbed on the bandwagon when the dot.com market kept rising. In later years, I heard a staunchly Republican economist of some note talk about Mr. Greenspan pumping the economy in time to avoid an economic downturn for the 2004 election. And this was more than a year before the election.
Yet, when I come across the following excerpt from his memoir, I am not surprised. In fact, it explains perfectly to me why Mr. Greenspan is now heaping praise on Bill Clinton.
Selectively truthful?
Greenspan was intensely criticized for endorsing a large tax cut in 2001 in congressional testimony during the first weeks of the Bush administration. He notes that he was recommending any tax cut, even a smaller one proposed by some Democrats. But he acknowledges that those who had warned him about the perception he was backing Bush's plan were right. "The tax-cut testimony proved to be politically explosive," he writes.
Yet, he adds: "While politics had not been my intent, I'd misjudged the emotions of the moment. . . . Yet I'd have given the same testimony if Al Gore had been president."
Yet, when I come across the following excerpt from his memoir, I am not surprised. In fact, it explains perfectly to me why Mr. Greenspan is now heaping praise on Bill Clinton.
Selectively truthful?
Greenspan was intensely criticized for endorsing a large tax cut in 2001 in congressional testimony during the first weeks of the Bush administration. He notes that he was recommending any tax cut, even a smaller one proposed by some Democrats. But he acknowledges that those who had warned him about the perception he was backing Bush's plan were right. "The tax-cut testimony proved to be politically explosive," he writes.
Yet, he adds: "While politics had not been my intent, I'd misjudged the emotions of the moment. . . . Yet I'd have given the same testimony if Al Gore had been president."
Some Thoughts on The Fukuda Administration and Somewhat Beyond
Some pungent words were used in the creation of this post. They have been maintained in the interests of preserving the original intent of the author. This is in no way to be interpreted as a general endorsement of offensive language in public discourse.
Here are my answers to questions that I received, as well as my comments on some points to the article that was attached to it. They have been edited for use as a blog post. I've omitted anything that has become irrelevant, such as comments based on the article's assumption (as well as mine at the time that the article was written) that Taro Aso R.I.P. was the likely successor. If my comments appear to be selective and disconnected, it's a long article, and I merely touched on the points where I believed that I had something meaningful to add.
1. Here, near the bottom, is my latest take on how long it will be before the next Lower House general election. As a subsequent development:
Yomiuri quotesTakeo Yasuo Fukuda saying,"I would like to search [for the right timing to dissolve the Lower House]. At a minimum, the (FY 2008) budget should be passed." This gives us a May election at the earliest. He adds, "When there is an important bill (in the regular Diet session), there could be an occasion to discuss the timing of dissolution with the DPJ and other opposition parties."
If I had to parse his words, I'd say that he's telling us that if the DPJ is so obstructionist that it won't let anything pass without a revote and the public sees the DPJ in that light as well, he's willing to let the LDP take a few losses, mainly Daizo Sugimura and other flaky specimens from the Koizumi Kids gang, in exchange for a near 3-year extension on the Lower House mandate for the coalition government. In that case, he'll fill out his term and, if it's what he wants, possibly (ed. inadvertently omitted when first posted) more.
2. I don't think that Mr. Fukuda needs to make that many changes in substance in the course that the Abe administration had been taking on its own. I firmly believe that Mr. Abe's fall is attributable to the who's and how's of his rule, or lack there of. Mr. Fukuda is being welcomed as the antithesis there. Having said that, I expect him to talk with a wee bit more honesty about the consumption tax, but I think that the majority of the public will support him there, as long as he looks competent in keeping down expenditures while immediately shifting a good portion of it - say 500 billion yen? – to high-profile, disparity-correcting measures.
Mr. Fukuda will be smart to keep Yoichi Masuzoe to deal with The Public Pension 50,000,000. (He, along with Masahiko Komura (for purely political reasons in his case) and Nobutaka Machimura and/or Kaoru Yosano (for mainly but not purely political reasons), would be my holdovers.) There's only so much you can do about that shit, so the Fukuda administration must show that it is peeing "bloody urine" to that end, and make sure that the bureaucracy is seen to be paying for the mess. Mr. Masuzoe is the ideal hit man/public face for that.
I'm relatively skeptical about the conventional wisdom of the importance of the disparity issue to the Upper House election results and, more generally, the unpopularity of the Abe administration. However, it has become the trope, the problem, so the Fukuda administration must be seen to be doing something effective about it, or it will fail to claw back those Upper House seats in the outlying Prefectures. But the ruling coalition must to be careful; there's the urban lower-class phenomenon as well. These are two very different sets of the dispossessed.
3. In talking about Abe's vision for a broader Japanese role in the region, it must be kept in mind that revision of the "pacifist clause" in Article 9 and the reinterpretation of the concept of collective self-defense are connected but not necessarily synchronistic. The conceptual reinterpretation can be put into play and implemented if and when it is convenient to do so. It will take the aligning of many stars; still, it's a far cry from the difficulties of the Constitutional amendment process. Moreover, that is sufficient in order to expand Japan's regional role. It is, I believe, in the context of Japan's global aspirations that Constitutional rearrangements are in order.
4. True, the Fukuda administration will have to prioritize regaining public support, which may come at the expense of attention to key foreign policy issues, most significantly the North Korean nuclear issue. Still, this is at least better than the virtual paralysis under the Abe administration at its most potent. Even a cautious, tentative Fukuda administration has some chance of easing economic sanctions - the Abe administration rashly if understandably linked them to the abductees issues in October 2006 - if a nuclear deal is in the offing.
5. The speed with which the LDP rallied around Fukuda and the structural soundness of the LDP-New Komeito, which I explain here argues strongly against the return of the string of weak, short-term Prime Ministers during much of the '90s.
6. Barring a stunning turnaround by Ichiro Ozawa, there's going to be a one- to two-month gap in the JSDM refueling operations while the coalition engineers a low-key, Lower House revote event, and no amount of yelling and screaming by anyone, including US policymakers, is going to prevent it. So they should sit back, and quietly let on that it's going to be a very unfortunate turn of events in term of short-term logistics, but no big deal politically. I'm not worried. US policymakers are not that stupid, and, besides, neither the Bush administration nor the Congress has the people (in the former case) or the time (in both cases) to worry about this shit.
Here are my answers to questions that I received, as well as my comments on some points to the article that was attached to it. They have been edited for use as a blog post. I've omitted anything that has become irrelevant, such as comments based on the article's assumption (as well as mine at the time that the article was written) that Taro Aso R.I.P. was the likely successor. If my comments appear to be selective and disconnected, it's a long article, and I merely touched on the points where I believed that I had something meaningful to add.
1. Here, near the bottom, is my latest take on how long it will be before the next Lower House general election. As a subsequent development:
Yomiuri quotes
If I had to parse his words, I'd say that he's telling us that if the DPJ is so obstructionist that it won't let anything pass without a revote and the public sees the DPJ in that light as well, he's willing to let the LDP take a few losses, mainly Daizo Sugimura and other flaky specimens from the Koizumi Kids gang, in exchange for a near 3-year extension on the Lower House mandate for the coalition government. In that case, he'll fill out his term and, if it's what he wants, possibly (ed. inadvertently omitted when first posted) more.
2. I don't think that Mr. Fukuda needs to make that many changes in substance in the course that the Abe administration had been taking on its own. I firmly believe that Mr. Abe's fall is attributable to the who's and how's of his rule, or lack there of. Mr. Fukuda is being welcomed as the antithesis there. Having said that, I expect him to talk with a wee bit more honesty about the consumption tax, but I think that the majority of the public will support him there, as long as he looks competent in keeping down expenditures while immediately shifting a good portion of it - say 500 billion yen? – to high-profile, disparity-correcting measures.
Mr. Fukuda will be smart to keep Yoichi Masuzoe to deal with The Public Pension 50,000,000. (He, along with Masahiko Komura (for purely political reasons in his case) and Nobutaka Machimura and/or Kaoru Yosano (for mainly but not purely political reasons), would be my holdovers.) There's only so much you can do about that shit, so the Fukuda administration must show that it is peeing "bloody urine" to that end, and make sure that the bureaucracy is seen to be paying for the mess. Mr. Masuzoe is the ideal hit man/public face for that.
I'm relatively skeptical about the conventional wisdom of the importance of the disparity issue to the Upper House election results and, more generally, the unpopularity of the Abe administration. However, it has become the trope, the problem, so the Fukuda administration must be seen to be doing something effective about it, or it will fail to claw back those Upper House seats in the outlying Prefectures. But the ruling coalition must to be careful; there's the urban lower-class phenomenon as well. These are two very different sets of the dispossessed.
3. In talking about Abe's vision for a broader Japanese role in the region, it must be kept in mind that revision of the "pacifist clause" in Article 9 and the reinterpretation of the concept of collective self-defense are connected but not necessarily synchronistic. The conceptual reinterpretation can be put into play and implemented if and when it is convenient to do so. It will take the aligning of many stars; still, it's a far cry from the difficulties of the Constitutional amendment process. Moreover, that is sufficient in order to expand Japan's regional role. It is, I believe, in the context of Japan's global aspirations that Constitutional rearrangements are in order.
4. True, the Fukuda administration will have to prioritize regaining public support, which may come at the expense of attention to key foreign policy issues, most significantly the North Korean nuclear issue. Still, this is at least better than the virtual paralysis under the Abe administration at its most potent. Even a cautious, tentative Fukuda administration has some chance of easing economic sanctions - the Abe administration rashly if understandably linked them to the abductees issues in October 2006 - if a nuclear deal is in the offing.
5. The speed with which the LDP rallied around Fukuda and the structural soundness of the LDP-New Komeito, which I explain here argues strongly against the return of the string of weak, short-term Prime Ministers during much of the '90s.
6. Barring a stunning turnaround by Ichiro Ozawa, there's going to be a one- to two-month gap in the JSDM refueling operations while the coalition engineers a low-key, Lower House revote event, and no amount of yelling and screaming by anyone, including US policymakers, is going to prevent it. So they should sit back, and quietly let on that it's going to be a very unfortunate turn of events in term of short-term logistics, but no big deal politically. I'm not worried. US policymakers are not that stupid, and, besides, neither the Bush administration nor the Congress has the people (in the former case) or the time (in both cases) to worry about this shit.
Friday, September 14, 2007
TakeoYasuo Fukuda Runaway Victor?
In case you haven't checked out the usual suspects (Shisaku must be busy today), Fukushiro Nukaga dropped out because most of his fellow members in the Tsushima faction (67 members) threw their support behind Yasuo Fukuda. The Machimura (80), Niwa-Koga (46), Yamazaki (38), Ibuki (25), and Nikai (16) factions also decided to support Mr. Fukuda, leaving the Komura faction (15) as the only one that has not made up its mind yet. Thus, Mr. Aso's support among the 387 Diet member voters is limited to his own faction's 15 members, some of the 69 unaligned members, plus whomever he can pry away from the other factions. There may be some hope for him in the 47 Prefectural chapters, with three votes each, where several secretary-generals have expressed a preference for Mr. Aso. However, most of the chapters are chaired by locally elected Lower House members, many if not most belonging to one faction or other. Thus, unless a significant number hold popular elections and Mr. Aso sweeps all or most of them, the boost he receives here will be very limited.
What is most striking to me is the swiftness and thoroughness of the shift towards Mr. Fukuda. I can't wait for the story to emerge, as it surely will, if only to have a better idea of how factions function today. Meanwhile, I'm left to wonder why. Are they trying to exorcise every last vestige of the Abe administration? Do they fear that a one-man, verbal gaffe machine will pick up where Abe's Cabinet choices left off?
In any case, the resurrection of the moderate, China-friendly Mr. Fukuda makes warnings of a revisionist surge in Japan ring hollow. Staying in power is what unites the LDP, and they've decided that a Fukuda administration works.
Immediate policy implications should be minor. A new counter-terrorism act will be passed by a supermajority revote, now in late November at the earliest, the refueling ships will return to the Indian Ocean, and life will go on without a new general election for the better part of next year, possibly more. The chastened LDP-New Komeito coalition will, however, be reluctant to exercise their supermajority on other issues, lest the media join the opposition in accusations of tyranny of the majority. Instead, it will do its best to maintain good relationships with the opposition and muddle along the best it can. Beyond that, I'll wait for the new Prime Minister's first speech, and his list of Ministers. It's remarkable how little I know of Mr. Fukuda's views. Further down the line, the evolution of the policy and political processes evolve through the cohabitation Diet period - it may last three years, until the 2010 Upper House election - will be a fascinating thing to watch.
What is most striking to me is the swiftness and thoroughness of the shift towards Mr. Fukuda. I can't wait for the story to emerge, as it surely will, if only to have a better idea of how factions function today. Meanwhile, I'm left to wonder why. Are they trying to exorcise every last vestige of the Abe administration? Do they fear that a one-man, verbal gaffe machine will pick up where Abe's Cabinet choices left off?
In any case, the resurrection of the moderate, China-friendly Mr. Fukuda makes warnings of a revisionist surge in Japan ring hollow. Staying in power is what unites the LDP, and they've decided that a Fukuda administration works.
Immediate policy implications should be minor. A new counter-terrorism act will be passed by a supermajority revote, now in late November at the earliest, the refueling ships will return to the Indian Ocean, and life will go on without a new general election for the better part of next year, possibly more. The chastened LDP-New Komeito coalition will, however, be reluctant to exercise their supermajority on other issues, lest the media join the opposition in accusations of tyranny of the majority. Instead, it will do its best to maintain good relationships with the opposition and muddle along the best it can. Beyond that, I'll wait for the new Prime Minister's first speech, and his list of Ministers. It's remarkable how little I know of Mr. Fukuda's views. Further down the line, the evolution of the policy and political processes evolve through the cohabitation Diet period - it may last three years, until the 2010 Upper House election - will be a fascinating thing to watch.
The Second Day in the LDP Sweeps: or, I'll Work for Food
I lost my money, I lost my car, I lost my house…
It looked like the revenge of the doves, with Makoto Koga (Niwa-Koga faction; 46 members), Taku Yamazaki (Yamazaki faction; 38 members), and Sadakazu Tanigaki (Tanigaki faction; 15 members); lining up behind Yasuo Fukuda (Machimura faction; 80 members). If each one of them were able to deliver all their member votes that would already give Mr. Fukuda 179 votes out of the 387 Diet member votes. None of the other faction heads have made a move to support Mr. Aso (Aso faction, 15 votes). The other possible candidate, Fukushiro Nukaga, belongs to the Tsushima faction, which has 67 members. The 47 prefectural LDP chapters have three votes each, so the candidates will be contesting 528 votes. Since the winner needs an absolute majority to win (if necessary, there will be a run-off between the top two finishers), Mr. Aso is not quite toast yet. Still, one day later, things are looking bad for him. According to media reports, two specific issues are being raised against him:
1) He is too closely identified with the Abe regime.
2) He unwittingly told the world that he'd known about Mr. Abe's desire to resign two days before the deed. So, the party faithful are blaming him for allowing the resignation to proceed in the most god-awful manner conceivable, embarrassing and compounding the political damage to Prime Minister Abe and the LDP.
ADD: The next key indicator will be how well Mr. Aso does in expanding his support base in the Prefectural chapters, where he jumped ahead initially.
Also, a faction will not, cannot, necessarily deliver all its votes to a single candidate. The Yamazaki faction, for example, has had its share of pro-Abe members, and Mr. Niwa, the co-head of the Niww-Koga faction, does not see eye to ey with Mr. Koga. But at least the faction numbers give you a sense of what Mr. Aso is up against.
It looked like the revenge of the doves, with Makoto Koga (Niwa-Koga faction; 46 members), Taku Yamazaki (Yamazaki faction; 38 members), and Sadakazu Tanigaki (Tanigaki faction; 15 members); lining up behind Yasuo Fukuda (Machimura faction; 80 members). If each one of them were able to deliver all their member votes that would already give Mr. Fukuda 179 votes out of the 387 Diet member votes. None of the other faction heads have made a move to support Mr. Aso (Aso faction, 15 votes). The other possible candidate, Fukushiro Nukaga, belongs to the Tsushima faction, which has 67 members. The 47 prefectural LDP chapters have three votes each, so the candidates will be contesting 528 votes. Since the winner needs an absolute majority to win (if necessary, there will be a run-off between the top two finishers), Mr. Aso is not quite toast yet. Still, one day later, things are looking bad for him. According to media reports, two specific issues are being raised against him:
1) He is too closely identified with the Abe regime.
2) He unwittingly told the world that he'd known about Mr. Abe's desire to resign two days before the deed. So, the party faithful are blaming him for allowing the resignation to proceed in the most god-awful manner conceivable, embarrassing and compounding the political damage to Prime Minister Abe and the LDP.
ADD: The next key indicator will be how well Mr. Aso does in expanding his support base in the Prefectural chapters, where he jumped ahead initially.
Also, a faction will not, cannot, necessarily deliver all its votes to a single candidate. The Yamazaki faction, for example, has had its share of pro-Abe members, and Mr. Niwa, the co-head of the Niww-Koga faction, does not see eye to ey with Mr. Koga. But at least the faction numbers give you a sense of what Mr. Aso is up against.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Why I Think that Taro Aso Will Win and Will Not Call Elections until Next August at the Earliest
I said it yesterday and I'll say it again: Taro Aso is the next Prime Minister, and his administration will last beyond the next regular Diet session till next August at the earliest. (Actually, I said September, but I look up the law, and I changed my mind, okay?)
Why Mr. Aso, who did not get his own micro-faction until he was in his sixties? Why a moderately engaging public speaker but also one who has been known to come forth with multiple verbal gaffes of not-quite "baby-birthing machine" proportions? The purported hawk who, as Foreign Minister, talked openly about conceding half the Northern Territories to Russia as a negotiations starter? There are good reasons why people have had a hard time taking him seriously as head of government material, even as he has scaled the highest echelons of the coalition government and the LDP party hierarchy; and why they, including the media, are not quite ready to concede the race to him. (The media do have an added interest in making this a real race, but that's beside the point here.)
First of all, the race will be conducted among the usual suspects. No Koizumi-type outliers will emerge as a serious candidate. The truncated, emergency selection process bypasses the normal popular vote by registered party members and puts the decision squarely in the hands of regional ward chiefs and Diet members. Not exactly smoke-filled room, it nevertheless rules out any possibility of the likes of Yoichi Masuzoe (who has anyway been torched mercilessly by the tabloid media for his purportedly prolific sexual achievements of past) being crowned by popular acclaim.
So let's take a look at the usual suspects. Yasuo Fukuda, Kaoru Yosano, and Fukushiro Nukaga are the most frequently quoted names, other than Sadakazu Tanigaki, whom I will get to later. In fact, they are almost, though not quite, the only ones being talked about.
The three men are safe choices, and you may have noticed that I have a thing for Mr. Yosano's hobbit-like charm. I also have warm feelings for Mr. Fukuda, partly from a fleeting look I had that showed him at his unassuming, considerate best. I have little feel for what Mr. Nukaga is like, but he seems to be a steady if unspectacular personage himself. But it is notable that none of them, all in their mid- to late-sixties, lead a faction. (In fact, Mr. Yosano doesn't even belong to one, which means he won't have a institutional power base to help him round up votes.) Choose one of the three, and you choose safety. Yes, safety over leadership, which was so damagingly absent in Mr. Abe.
And then there's Sadakazu Tanigaki, with his own micro-faction. Which brings me to my second point. Mr. Tanigaki shares another distinction with Mr. Mr. Aso: the pair actually ran for LDP president last time around against impossible odds. Believe it or not, this confers a certain measure of political legitimacy that is missing in the three did-not-runs. This is a matter of no small importance as the now chaotic, drifting LDP looks for someone to take the helm. This gives the pair an edge over all other candidates. Unfortunately for Mr. Tanigaki, his combination of overtly MOF-friendly fiscal conservatism and soft-walk, small-stick diplomacy will not allow him to gather the necessary votes to overtake Mr. Aso.
As for other possibilities, Nobutaka Machimura is one of the smarter and nicer people I got to know in METI, where he is from. But he is more of a caretaker than leader as the nominal head of the Machimura faction, and he has never ran for LDP president either. Besides, four successive PMs seem a little too much for the other factions to bear. He will not stand, and will not be elected if he does. There's always the Koizumi card, but he won't run either. I can't quite put my finger on it; it just feels so wrong. On what basis can he run? And what about his many, very real enemies? It goes against his formidable sense of political theater.
And that leaves Mr. Aso.
Why do I think that an Aso administration will last through next summer? Simply put, I don't see any advantages for Mr. Aso in calling for an early election. Either the Aso administration will prove unpopular, which means that they'll lose at least a very goodly portion of their Lower House seats, which is a truly stupid thing to do; or it will prove mildly popular, in which case they will still lose some seats and still leave the Upper House in opposition hands. As a matter of pure logic, it is not impossible that the Aso administration will prove so popular that and Mr. Aso decides that he wants a renewed mandate through a new election. I don't see how that can come to pass. Still, he will need an incredibly successful regular Diet session that requires a substantial extension to get things done in a split Diet. This at a minimum will take it very deep into June and likely some point in July, before the Lower House can be dissolved, after which Mr. Abe will have to wait a minimum of 24 days before the ensuing general election can be held. that should take us to August.
The problem with these predictions is that anything can happen in politics, as we have just seen in Mr. Abe's sudden resignation. Leaders fall ill, leaders die, and sex scandals explode, any of these of these things can happen to Mr. Aso as well within the month. Who knows, Mr. Koizumi might throw his hat in the ring after all. Beyond that, the economy might tank sooner rather than later.
And I could be just a plain, garden-variety of dead wrong. In which case, you'll understand why I'm not being paid to write this stuff. Unlike this precocious whippersnapper here.
Why Mr. Aso, who did not get his own micro-faction until he was in his sixties? Why a moderately engaging public speaker but also one who has been known to come forth with multiple verbal gaffes of not-quite "baby-birthing machine" proportions? The purported hawk who, as Foreign Minister, talked openly about conceding half the Northern Territories to Russia as a negotiations starter? There are good reasons why people have had a hard time taking him seriously as head of government material, even as he has scaled the highest echelons of the coalition government and the LDP party hierarchy; and why they, including the media, are not quite ready to concede the race to him. (The media do have an added interest in making this a real race, but that's beside the point here.)
First of all, the race will be conducted among the usual suspects. No Koizumi-type outliers will emerge as a serious candidate. The truncated, emergency selection process bypasses the normal popular vote by registered party members and puts the decision squarely in the hands of regional ward chiefs and Diet members. Not exactly smoke-filled room, it nevertheless rules out any possibility of the likes of Yoichi Masuzoe (who has anyway been torched mercilessly by the tabloid media for his purportedly prolific sexual achievements of past) being crowned by popular acclaim.
So let's take a look at the usual suspects. Yasuo Fukuda, Kaoru Yosano, and Fukushiro Nukaga are the most frequently quoted names, other than Sadakazu Tanigaki, whom I will get to later. In fact, they are almost, though not quite, the only ones being talked about.
The three men are safe choices, and you may have noticed that I have a thing for Mr. Yosano's hobbit-like charm. I also have warm feelings for Mr. Fukuda, partly from a fleeting look I had that showed him at his unassuming, considerate best. I have little feel for what Mr. Nukaga is like, but he seems to be a steady if unspectacular personage himself. But it is notable that none of them, all in their mid- to late-sixties, lead a faction. (In fact, Mr. Yosano doesn't even belong to one, which means he won't have a institutional power base to help him round up votes.) Choose one of the three, and you choose safety. Yes, safety over leadership, which was so damagingly absent in Mr. Abe.
And then there's Sadakazu Tanigaki, with his own micro-faction. Which brings me to my second point. Mr. Tanigaki shares another distinction with Mr. Mr. Aso: the pair actually ran for LDP president last time around against impossible odds. Believe it or not, this confers a certain measure of political legitimacy that is missing in the three did-not-runs. This is a matter of no small importance as the now chaotic, drifting LDP looks for someone to take the helm. This gives the pair an edge over all other candidates. Unfortunately for Mr. Tanigaki, his combination of overtly MOF-friendly fiscal conservatism and soft-walk, small-stick diplomacy will not allow him to gather the necessary votes to overtake Mr. Aso.
As for other possibilities, Nobutaka Machimura is one of the smarter and nicer people I got to know in METI, where he is from. But he is more of a caretaker than leader as the nominal head of the Machimura faction, and he has never ran for LDP president either. Besides, four successive PMs seem a little too much for the other factions to bear. He will not stand, and will not be elected if he does. There's always the Koizumi card, but he won't run either. I can't quite put my finger on it; it just feels so wrong. On what basis can he run? And what about his many, very real enemies? It goes against his formidable sense of political theater.
And that leaves Mr. Aso.
Why do I think that an Aso administration will last through next summer? Simply put, I don't see any advantages for Mr. Aso in calling for an early election. Either the Aso administration will prove unpopular, which means that they'll lose at least a very goodly portion of their Lower House seats, which is a truly stupid thing to do; or it will prove mildly popular, in which case they will still lose some seats and still leave the Upper House in opposition hands. As a matter of pure logic, it is not impossible that the Aso administration will prove so popular that and Mr. Aso decides that he wants a renewed mandate through a new election. I don't see how that can come to pass. Still, he will need an incredibly successful regular Diet session that requires a substantial extension to get things done in a split Diet. This at a minimum will take it very deep into June and likely some point in July, before the Lower House can be dissolved, after which Mr. Abe will have to wait a minimum of 24 days before the ensuing general election can be held. that should take us to August.
The problem with these predictions is that anything can happen in politics, as we have just seen in Mr. Abe's sudden resignation. Leaders fall ill, leaders die, and sex scandals explode, any of these of these things can happen to Mr. Aso as well within the month. Who knows, Mr. Koizumi might throw his hat in the ring after all. Beyond that, the economy might tank sooner rather than later.
And I could be just a plain, garden-variety of dead wrong. In which case, you'll understand why I'm not being paid to write this stuff. Unlike this precocious whippersnapper here.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Just This Morning, Ian Bremmer Was Telling People at Keidanren…
Putin was likely to name someone you hadn't heard of as his successor. Now this.
A Funny Thing Happened to TIME Online on the Way to My Blog
I was going to write another snarky piece about a TIME online article that began with Prime Minister Abe coming back from the "Asia Pacific Forum (sic)"when I went online, but first, I opened my email and found a message from Sam Jameson that ended abruptly with the information that he had to sign off because the Prime Minister had just resigned while he – Sam, Not Mr. Abe - was writing the email. And that was it for me.
Now, I'm ready, and, whaddya know, the TIME article is no longer there.
If I hear a tree fall in the forest, but there isn't even a stump when I get there…
Actually, TIME does have a fairly good article by the same writer in the economic-recovery sub-genre with overtones from the Japan-is-funny mega-genre. As always, I have problems with the anecdote-only approach, but maybe that's just me.
Now, I'm ready, and, whaddya know, the TIME article is no longer there.
If I hear a tree fall in the forest, but there isn't even a stump when I get there…
Actually, TIME does have a fairly good article by the same writer in the economic-recovery sub-genre with overtones from the Japan-is-funny mega-genre. As always, I have problems with the anecdote-only approach, but maybe that's just me.
Prime Minister Resigns
Monday, September 10, 2007
Are Those an Arm and a Leg I See in the Seas Incarnadined? The Prime Minister Puts His Job on the Line.
The following are the main points of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's comments in the September 9 press conference [in Sydney, Australia, before his return to Japan].
(Opening statement) Japan, the US, and Australia held their first [trilateral] summit meeting, where the heads of the US and Australia expressed their high evaluation of and gratitude for Japan's contribution to the "War on Terror". On my side, I explained the [my? our?] will to continue the "War on Terror". I also explained it at the Japan-US summit meeting with President Bush. The Diet is in a very severe situation, but since this has become an international pledge, a big responsibility lies with me. I am determined that all efforts must be expended to continue the refueling activities of the Self-Defense Forces. I intend to put my job on the line in order to receive the understanding of the DPJ and other opposition parties.
Q. Are you submitting a revision bill that extends the counter-terrorism act, or are you submitting a new act from the beginning? Are you willing to hold a meeting of the party heads with the JPD and other opposition parties before submitting the bill?
A. We must submit a bill to continue refueling activities of the Self-Defense Forces and achieve its enactment. In submitting the bill, we must make the maximum effort to receive the understanding of the opposition parties, the DPJ in particular. For this purpose, I must seek their understanding by undertaking the matter with the thought of putting my job on the line. I would like to have the meeting of the heads with Representative (of the DPJ Ichiro) Ozawa as early as possible.
Q. You said, "put my job on the line." Are you prepared to have the Cabinet resign en masse if the continuation (of the refueling activities) is not able to be achieved?
A. What I said was that all efforts must be made to allow the continuation. Under my responsibility, the responsibilities of my office, I must fulfill the responsibilities of my office by expending every ounce of my powers. (He fell silent for a while, but interrupting the moderator, who tried to turn to the next questioner, "well then, next…") Obviously, I do not intend to cling to my seat of office.
- Translation from September 10 online Mainichi
Although many people in the LDP are trying to parse this statement as an expression of his determination rather than his willingness to resign his post or, worse, if improbably, dissolve the Lower House for a general election, figures like the Yoichi Masuzoe, the outspoken Health, Labor and Welfare Minister, and (even before Mr. Abe's earlier Sept. 8 statement) Yasuhiro Nakasone, the ex-Prime Minister, are openly pointing to or even demanding, in the case of Mr. Nakasone, such an outcome.
The ruling coalition is not going to let Prime Minister Abe go the electorate on this issue if they can help it, nor do I think will they let him eat his words and stay. The thought of a new Prime Minister makes rejecting a compromise that avoids a maximum two-month hiatus a little less delectable for the DPJ. Still., it's hard to see what kind of calculations went into the Prime Minister's September 9 statement.
Bereft of a political justification, the only bit of amateur psychology that I can come up with is something I (think I) went over before in this blog: A seasoned political reporter who had covered the Prime Minister for many years told me that Mr. Abe wanted to be Prime Minister once, to fulfill his deceased father's – unrequited desires in accordance with his mother's wishes, but did not want it for himself. If you can believe that, then it makes about as much sense in the current case as anything else
(Opening statement) Japan, the US, and Australia held their first [trilateral] summit meeting, where the heads of the US and Australia expressed their high evaluation of and gratitude for Japan's contribution to the "War on Terror". On my side, I explained the [my? our?] will to continue the "War on Terror". I also explained it at the Japan-US summit meeting with President Bush. The Diet is in a very severe situation, but since this has become an international pledge, a big responsibility lies with me. I am determined that all efforts must be expended to continue the refueling activities of the Self-Defense Forces. I intend to put my job on the line in order to receive the understanding of the DPJ and other opposition parties.
Q. Are you submitting a revision bill that extends the counter-terrorism act, or are you submitting a new act from the beginning? Are you willing to hold a meeting of the party heads with the JPD and other opposition parties before submitting the bill?
A. We must submit a bill to continue refueling activities of the Self-Defense Forces and achieve its enactment. In submitting the bill, we must make the maximum effort to receive the understanding of the opposition parties, the DPJ in particular. For this purpose, I must seek their understanding by undertaking the matter with the thought of putting my job on the line. I would like to have the meeting of the heads with Representative (of the DPJ Ichiro) Ozawa as early as possible.
Q. You said, "put my job on the line." Are you prepared to have the Cabinet resign en masse if the continuation (of the refueling activities) is not able to be achieved?
A. What I said was that all efforts must be made to allow the continuation. Under my responsibility, the responsibilities of my office, I must fulfill the responsibilities of my office by expending every ounce of my powers. (He fell silent for a while, but interrupting the moderator, who tried to turn to the next questioner, "well then, next…") Obviously, I do not intend to cling to my seat of office.
- Translation from September 10 online Mainichi
Although many people in the LDP are trying to parse this statement as an expression of his determination rather than his willingness to resign his post or, worse, if improbably, dissolve the Lower House for a general election, figures like the Yoichi Masuzoe, the outspoken Health, Labor and Welfare Minister, and (even before Mr. Abe's earlier Sept. 8 statement) Yasuhiro Nakasone, the ex-Prime Minister, are openly pointing to or even demanding, in the case of Mr. Nakasone, such an outcome.
The ruling coalition is not going to let Prime Minister Abe go the electorate on this issue if they can help it, nor do I think will they let him eat his words and stay. The thought of a new Prime Minister makes rejecting a compromise that avoids a maximum two-month hiatus a little less delectable for the DPJ. Still., it's hard to see what kind of calculations went into the Prime Minister's September 9 statement.
Bereft of a political justification, the only bit of amateur psychology that I can come up with is something I (think I) went over before in this blog: A seasoned political reporter who had covered the Prime Minister for many years told me that Mr. Abe wanted to be Prime Minister once, to fulfill his deceased father's – unrequited desires in accordance with his mother's wishes, but did not want it for himself. If you can believe that, then it makes about as much sense in the current case as anything else
Saturday, September 08, 2007
The "History Issues" Trope on Japanese Leadership Is a Crock
A popular trope among people writing about Japan is that Japan will never assume a leadership role in Asia unless it deals with its "history issues". I've never been able to understand it. Literally. I don't understand what they mean by Asia, and I don't understand what they mean by "leadership". I think I know what set of issues they mean by "history issues", but I have a very different understanding of "history issues" when it comes to the effect on our international standing. Let me explain.
When a pundit first stakes his claim, he begins by assuming that Asia begins and ends with China and the Koreas, and possibly though never explicitly Taiwan. As he develops his argument, he usually feels compelled to implicate ASEAN, and rely on Singapore and the Philippines for provenance thereof. The Indian subcontinent is rarely touched upon; West Asia, including the Anatolian and Arabian Peninsulas, are to be strictly avoided.
Now the Philippines are a mainly Christian, former US colony; Singapore is heavily Chinese. It is clear that the pundit is, for the most part, talking about the Northeast Asia, with arguments bleeding out to the broader Sinic civilization plus a Southeast Asian outlier. There is probably greater awareness on the part of the pundit since the Six-Party talks began and the Shangahai Cooperation Organization took off that Russia is also part of Northeast Asia. It is, however, is usually ignored when the pundit expounds on this theme, since the term "history issues" would take on a very different and inconvenient coloring if Russia were to be included in the narrative.
More generally, consistency is usually sacrificed to convenience of the story, as he wantonly switches from one geographical dimension to another without so much as a warning.
And what does he mean by leadership? On what? If we confine the question to security issues in Northeast Asia, the most important arena is the Six-Party talks. But Japan is not the one who holds the most important cards there. China and South Korea continue to provide sustenance for North Korea.
It is at least conceivable that if Japan agreed to normalize relations with North Korea and cough up the billions of dollars of assistance as the means to "settle the past", the argument could be made that Japan and South Korea could make peace with North Korea and tell the US that there is no longer a security threat in Northeast Asia so thank you we no longer need your services. Leaving aside my suspicions that the current North Korean regime will not like that turn of events, the one thing that is standing in the way of Japan amending its ways has nothing to do with the "history issues".
I am talking, of course, about the abductees issue.
So much for the situation on the Korean Peninsula. As for Taiwan, the one other substantial, if much smaller, cloud on the horizon, our strategic ambiguity is only remotely related to "history issues", in the sense that many pro-Taiwan politicians in Japan harbor a very positive view of the pre-WW II Japanese role there, which independence-minded Taiwanese exploit to the fullest. But it is far more driven by the need to accommodate the national security relationship Japan has with the US, again only tangentially connected with "history issues". For lesser issues, such as the disagreement over the Senkaku Islands and the more pressing dispute over the conflicting claims over EEZ covering most significantly offshore gas fields, there is little reason to believe that China would be any more accommodating if Japan were to officially and unconditionally accept Beijing's line on "history issues". On both issues, each state will do what it can get away with; at most, "history issues" have a marginal effect on the rhetoric.
More important in this respect are the low-key but substantive coordination based on mutual interests that continue between the two states. Most recently, Japan and China reached agreement on the substance of a bilateral treaty for mutual assistance on criminal law enforcement. More broadly and to the point, our military vessels and defense ministers are now calling on each other and the two states are gearing up to set up hotlines and other means of cooperation. And all it has taken is Prime Minister Abe staying away from Yasukuni Shrine.
The one example often given by the pundit that is related to the leadership question is China's opposition to Japan's bid to become a member of the UN Security Council. Leaving aside for this occasion the existence of other constraints (including US opposition to the substantial expansion of the Security Council to accommodate the wishes of other nations and groups there of that believe that they too should be permanently represented), as well as my highly skeptical views on the value of the UN, it has mainly been the US that has used the Security Council for its purposes. The other permanent members are either fellow travelers or obstacles for the US. Will it be any different with Japan on board?
The pundit's arguments have little to do with the realities on the ground and very much to do with the sequence of events that Prime Minister Koizumi's Yasukuni visits touched off that nobody, not least of all Beijing, wanted, and everybody but the pundit has worked assiduously to roll back, with the singular, symbolic act of Yauskuni abstinence on the part of our current Prime Minister.
A final point. By now, you may have guessed what my personal subset of "history issues" is. It is the legacy from the more than 90 years since the arrival of the Black Ships and more specifically since 1937 (1931? 1941?) up to the end of WW II. It is the resultant fear of overseas military engagement and, to a much lesser degree, the vague sense of guilt towards our Northeast Asian Sinic neighbors that is holding us back. Politicians, given their professional interests, tend to feel strongly about this, if the left and the right are diametrically opposed to each other in drawing their policy implications from this. For the public in general, this is a matter of decidedly low-priority. Having seen the awful outcome of international intervention in the Middle East, I tend more and more to side with the - relatively speaking - non-committal masses here.
When a pundit first stakes his claim, he begins by assuming that Asia begins and ends with China and the Koreas, and possibly though never explicitly Taiwan. As he develops his argument, he usually feels compelled to implicate ASEAN, and rely on Singapore and the Philippines for provenance thereof. The Indian subcontinent is rarely touched upon; West Asia, including the Anatolian and Arabian Peninsulas, are to be strictly avoided.
Now the Philippines are a mainly Christian, former US colony; Singapore is heavily Chinese. It is clear that the pundit is, for the most part, talking about the Northeast Asia, with arguments bleeding out to the broader Sinic civilization plus a Southeast Asian outlier. There is probably greater awareness on the part of the pundit since the Six-Party talks began and the Shangahai Cooperation Organization took off that Russia is also part of Northeast Asia. It is, however, is usually ignored when the pundit expounds on this theme, since the term "history issues" would take on a very different and inconvenient coloring if Russia were to be included in the narrative.
More generally, consistency is usually sacrificed to convenience of the story, as he wantonly switches from one geographical dimension to another without so much as a warning.
And what does he mean by leadership? On what? If we confine the question to security issues in Northeast Asia, the most important arena is the Six-Party talks. But Japan is not the one who holds the most important cards there. China and South Korea continue to provide sustenance for North Korea.
It is at least conceivable that if Japan agreed to normalize relations with North Korea and cough up the billions of dollars of assistance as the means to "settle the past", the argument could be made that Japan and South Korea could make peace with North Korea and tell the US that there is no longer a security threat in Northeast Asia so thank you we no longer need your services. Leaving aside my suspicions that the current North Korean regime will not like that turn of events, the one thing that is standing in the way of Japan amending its ways has nothing to do with the "history issues".
I am talking, of course, about the abductees issue.
So much for the situation on the Korean Peninsula. As for Taiwan, the one other substantial, if much smaller, cloud on the horizon, our strategic ambiguity is only remotely related to "history issues", in the sense that many pro-Taiwan politicians in Japan harbor a very positive view of the pre-WW II Japanese role there, which independence-minded Taiwanese exploit to the fullest. But it is far more driven by the need to accommodate the national security relationship Japan has with the US, again only tangentially connected with "history issues". For lesser issues, such as the disagreement over the Senkaku Islands and the more pressing dispute over the conflicting claims over EEZ covering most significantly offshore gas fields, there is little reason to believe that China would be any more accommodating if Japan were to officially and unconditionally accept Beijing's line on "history issues". On both issues, each state will do what it can get away with; at most, "history issues" have a marginal effect on the rhetoric.
More important in this respect are the low-key but substantive coordination based on mutual interests that continue between the two states. Most recently, Japan and China reached agreement on the substance of a bilateral treaty for mutual assistance on criminal law enforcement. More broadly and to the point, our military vessels and defense ministers are now calling on each other and the two states are gearing up to set up hotlines and other means of cooperation. And all it has taken is Prime Minister Abe staying away from Yasukuni Shrine.
The one example often given by the pundit that is related to the leadership question is China's opposition to Japan's bid to become a member of the UN Security Council. Leaving aside for this occasion the existence of other constraints (including US opposition to the substantial expansion of the Security Council to accommodate the wishes of other nations and groups there of that believe that they too should be permanently represented), as well as my highly skeptical views on the value of the UN, it has mainly been the US that has used the Security Council for its purposes. The other permanent members are either fellow travelers or obstacles for the US. Will it be any different with Japan on board?
The pundit's arguments have little to do with the realities on the ground and very much to do with the sequence of events that Prime Minister Koizumi's Yasukuni visits touched off that nobody, not least of all Beijing, wanted, and everybody but the pundit has worked assiduously to roll back, with the singular, symbolic act of Yauskuni abstinence on the part of our current Prime Minister.
A final point. By now, you may have guessed what my personal subset of "history issues" is. It is the legacy from the more than 90 years since the arrival of the Black Ships and more specifically since 1937 (1931? 1941?) up to the end of WW II. It is the resultant fear of overseas military engagement and, to a much lesser degree, the vague sense of guilt towards our Northeast Asian Sinic neighbors that is holding us back. Politicians, given their professional interests, tend to feel strongly about this, if the left and the right are diametrically opposed to each other in drawing their policy implications from this. For the public in general, this is a matter of decidedly low-priority. Having seen the awful outcome of international intervention in the Middle East, I tend more and more to side with the - relatively speaking - non-committal masses here.
Takeo Hiranuma, Stand-Up Guy
Takeo Hiranuma was one of the more credible candidates to succeed Prime Minister Koizumi until the rebellion over Post Office privatization took him out of the running and the LDP altogether. As the de facto leader of the expellees – at least those who did not make league with Shizuka Kamei and Tamisuke Watanuki, the other two major figures among the outcasts - Mr. Hiranuma successfully negotiated the return of eleven other expelled Diet members. However, he himself decided not to return, refusing to sign the confessional document that was the condition for reinstatement.
Mr. Hiranuma, however, did campaign for LDP candidates in the July Upper house election, and for that and other less obvious reasons, the LDP is going to waive the confessional. Only this time, it is Mr. Hiranuma that is saying, not so fast.
Wednesday morning, Mr. Hiranuma talked to the media and said that the process would take maybe another week because "I have to consolidate the views of the people in my support group back home. I also must clarify the treatment of the people who ran unaligned and lost." The media are rightly interpreting the second point to mean that his less fortunate cohorts must be allowed to return with him.
That is highly problematic for the "assassins" who took those seats from the rebels. (Incumbency may not ensure a return ticket next time around.) No doubt there will be an outcry from them, as well as many of the other Koizumi Children in their support. It will also bring some bad publicity in the media. Expect editorials and op-eds accusing the LDP leadership of wholesale abandonment of the Koizumi reform.
I think that Mr. Hiranuma will get his way. He is a very popular figure in the LDP, and is proving his manhood twice over. (Did I just write that?) Thus, he brings a welcome sense of principled leadership to a LDP in disarray. Besides, in excusing Mr. Hiranuma, the LDP already drank the kool-aid. To refuse his demands on behalf of his less fortunate colleagues now would leave the LDP looking even unprincipled without gaining anything for it. Mr. Hiranuma has the LDP up a creek.
Should the LDP worry about pending charges of symbolic abandonment of the Koizumi reform? Certainly. But not nearly as much as it would have a year ago. Beyond the return of the eleven, the ups and (mainly) downs of the Abe administration in public opinion polls have had little to do with reform and everything to do with credibility. Indeed, the reform issue has been subjected to second-guessing, as there has been much talk over the kakusa mondai, i.e. income and wealth disparity issue, and how it lost the outlier communities for the LDP. (A view to which I have reservations, but I'll take that up some other time.) Remember that the local Post Office has historically been a key element of local communities, together with the police station and the public schools.
The LDP took its lumps when Prime Minister made then Secretary-General Hidenao Nakagawa engineer the return of the eleven, and sees little to lose in Mr. Hiranuma's return. I think they are right.
Is this in fact another nail in the coffin for the Koizumi reforms and confirmation of the return to politics as usual? Will a bidding war break out between the LDP-New Komeito coalition and the DPJ for the right to buy off the electorate with monies from public coffers? I'm not so sure about the strength of those arguments, in the same way that I've become less certain that the kakusa mondai was a decisive factor in the Upper House election. I don't have a strong enough view on these matters, though, to write about them. And it's particularly hard to think about them right now because everything is colored by the upcoming battle for power in the Diet and the LDP itself. It's the season of 政局 (the political game) over 政策 (policy).
Mr. Hiranuma, however, did campaign for LDP candidates in the July Upper house election, and for that and other less obvious reasons, the LDP is going to waive the confessional. Only this time, it is Mr. Hiranuma that is saying, not so fast.
Wednesday morning, Mr. Hiranuma talked to the media and said that the process would take maybe another week because "I have to consolidate the views of the people in my support group back home. I also must clarify the treatment of the people who ran unaligned and lost." The media are rightly interpreting the second point to mean that his less fortunate cohorts must be allowed to return with him.
That is highly problematic for the "assassins" who took those seats from the rebels. (Incumbency may not ensure a return ticket next time around.) No doubt there will be an outcry from them, as well as many of the other Koizumi Children in their support. It will also bring some bad publicity in the media. Expect editorials and op-eds accusing the LDP leadership of wholesale abandonment of the Koizumi reform.
I think that Mr. Hiranuma will get his way. He is a very popular figure in the LDP, and is proving his manhood twice over. (Did I just write that?) Thus, he brings a welcome sense of principled leadership to a LDP in disarray. Besides, in excusing Mr. Hiranuma, the LDP already drank the kool-aid. To refuse his demands on behalf of his less fortunate colleagues now would leave the LDP looking even unprincipled without gaining anything for it. Mr. Hiranuma has the LDP up a creek.
Should the LDP worry about pending charges of symbolic abandonment of the Koizumi reform? Certainly. But not nearly as much as it would have a year ago. Beyond the return of the eleven, the ups and (mainly) downs of the Abe administration in public opinion polls have had little to do with reform and everything to do with credibility. Indeed, the reform issue has been subjected to second-guessing, as there has been much talk over the kakusa mondai, i.e. income and wealth disparity issue, and how it lost the outlier communities for the LDP. (A view to which I have reservations, but I'll take that up some other time.) Remember that the local Post Office has historically been a key element of local communities, together with the police station and the public schools.
The LDP took its lumps when Prime Minister made then Secretary-General Hidenao Nakagawa engineer the return of the eleven, and sees little to lose in Mr. Hiranuma's return. I think they are right.
Is this in fact another nail in the coffin for the Koizumi reforms and confirmation of the return to politics as usual? Will a bidding war break out between the LDP-New Komeito coalition and the DPJ for the right to buy off the electorate with monies from public coffers? I'm not so sure about the strength of those arguments, in the same way that I've become less certain that the kakusa mondai was a decisive factor in the Upper House election. I don't have a strong enough view on these matters, though, to write about them. And it's particularly hard to think about them right now because everything is colored by the upcoming battle for power in the Diet and the LDP itself. It's the season of 政局 (the political game) over 政策 (policy).
Pentagon: Counter-terrorism Oil Not Being Used for Operation Iraqi Freedom
Remember this? The following Yomiuri report says that a Pentagon spokesman has stated that the Japanese fuel oil provided under the counter-terrorism act is not being used for Operation Iraqi Freedom and the offending web pages have been altered to avoid any misunderstanding.
Although Mr. Ishihara did not say anything that was obviously wrong, he said so much in his extensive explanations to justify the Iraqi connection that the DPJ should find plenty of material to draw on in criticizing the coalition government when the Diet convenes. The saving grace is that he is no longer Chief Cabinet Secretary.
Incidentally, I've reached the tentative conclusion that there are only two probable outcomes to the counter-terrorism act extension: a new comprehensive act that arrives in time to allow the JSDMF refueling ships to continue its operations uninterrupted; or a new law authorizing the Afghanistan operations that creates a maximum two-month gap that must be filled. I'll see if I can find the time to put it together later in the day.
海自の給油、イラク戦争転用を否定…米国防総省報道官
【ワシントン＝五十嵐文】米国防総省のスチュワート・アップトン報道担当官は７日、読売新聞の取材に対し、テロ対策特別措置法に基づき海上自衛隊 がインド洋で実施している給油がイラク戦争にも転用されているのではないかとの指摘が出ていることについて、「日本の補給艦から給油を受けている参加国 は、ＯＥＦ（アフガニスタンでの『不朽の自由作戦』）を支援するために燃料を使うとの合意の下に活動している」と述べ、イラクへの転用説を否定した。
中東海域などを管轄する米海軍中央司令部などのウエブサイトで、日本の給油活動が、アフガニスタンでのＯＥＦではなく、イラクでの「イラクの自由作戦」（ＯＩＦ）の一環として紹介されたことから、民主党などが臨時国会で追及する構えをみせている。
アップトン報道担当官は、サイトは２００５年７月掲載で、「誤解を招くおそれがあるためすでに変更された」と説明した。
（2007年9月8日11時22分 読売新聞）
Although Mr. Ishihara did not say anything that was obviously wrong, he said so much in his extensive explanations to justify the Iraqi connection that the DPJ should find plenty of material to draw on in criticizing the coalition government when the Diet convenes. The saving grace is that he is no longer Chief Cabinet Secretary.
Incidentally, I've reached the tentative conclusion that there are only two probable outcomes to the counter-terrorism act extension: a new comprehensive act that arrives in time to allow the JSDMF refueling ships to continue its operations uninterrupted; or a new law authorizing the Afghanistan operations that creates a maximum two-month gap that must be filled. I'll see if I can find the time to put it together later in the day.
海自の給油、イラク戦争転用を否定…米国防総省報道官
【ワシントン＝五十嵐文】米国防総省のスチュワート・アップトン報道担当官は７日、読売新聞の取材に対し、テロ対策特別措置法に基づき海上自衛隊 がインド洋で実施している給油がイラク戦争にも転用されているのではないかとの指摘が出ていることについて、「日本の補給艦から給油を受けている参加国 は、ＯＥＦ（アフガニスタンでの『不朽の自由作戦』）を支援するために燃料を使うとの合意の下に活動している」と述べ、イラクへの転用説を否定した。
中東海域などを管轄する米海軍中央司令部などのウエブサイトで、日本の給油活動が、アフガニスタンでのＯＥＦではなく、イラクでの「イラクの自由作戦」（ＯＩＦ）の一環として紹介されたことから、民主党などが臨時国会で追及する構えをみせている。
アップトン報道担当官は、サイトは２００５年７月掲載で、「誤解を招くおそれがあるためすでに変更された」と説明した。
（2007年9月8日11時22分 読売新聞）
Friday, September 07, 2007
Correction Plus re Koizumi Children/New Wind
…as follow-up to this…
Atarashii Kaze (New Wind), the prep school Tsutomu Takebe founded for LDP newbie Lower House members after the 2005 election that brought in a slew of rookies some of whom were decidedly raw, has 26 full members consisting of: 1 Chairman, Mr. Takebe; 2 second-term members; 22 first-term members; and 2 people seeking office. It has added one first-term member and lost none.
Four of the first-term members belong to factions. Mr. Takebe himself belongs to the Yamazaki faction. All other full members are unaligned.
New Wind also has seven multi-term "special members," all of whom belong to factions.
Atarashii Kaze (New Wind), the prep school Tsutomu Takebe founded for LDP newbie Lower House members after the 2005 election that brought in a slew of rookies some of whom were decidedly raw, has 26 full members consisting of: 1 Chairman, Mr. Takebe; 2 second-term members; 22 first-term members; and 2 people seeking office. It has added one first-term member and lost none.
Four of the first-term members belong to factions. Mr. Takebe himself belongs to the Yamazaki faction. All other full members are unaligned.
New Wind also has seven multi-term "special members," all of whom belong to factions.
One Reason Why Were Not Complaining about Chinese Products
I wondered why the Chinese products safety issue was not making much noise here. It turns out that it's the Chinese who are doing the complaining..
According to a Yomiuri report, on September 5, Japanese METI Minister Akira Amari and Chinese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai held a bilateral meeting in Sydney, Australia, on the eve of the annual APEC Summit, where Minister Bo requested that Japan ease regulations on pesticide residues and additives in agricultural products.
A spate of food scares in 2002 over mainly excessive amounts of pesticide residues on Chinese spinach led to tighter inspections, regulations and in 2003 legislation that went into effect last year. According to the article, Chinese authorities have been seeking a rollback of these measures to no avail. METI Minister Amari pushed back in light of the most recent developments, demanding stricter measures and better disclosure.
This does not explain the lack of media attention to made-in-China toys and textiles, but it does address the most immediate concern over our nearest supply of fresh foods. Read on if you want more background..
So now I know at least part of the story. My excuse for my total ignorance? I was out of the country at the time.
According to a Yomiuri report, on September 5, Japanese METI Minister Akira Amari and Chinese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai held a bilateral meeting in Sydney, Australia, on the eve of the annual APEC Summit, where Minister Bo requested that Japan ease regulations on pesticide residues and additives in agricultural products.
A spate of food scares in 2002 over mainly excessive amounts of pesticide residues on Chinese spinach led to tighter inspections, regulations and in 2003 legislation that went into effect last year. According to the article, Chinese authorities have been seeking a rollback of these measures to no avail. METI Minister Amari pushed back in light of the most recent developments, demanding stricter measures and better disclosure.
This does not explain the lack of media attention to made-in-China toys and textiles, but it does address the most immediate concern over our nearest supply of fresh foods. Read on if you want more background..
So now I know at least part of the story. My excuse for my total ignorance? I was out of the country at the time.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
The Abe Adminstration: The Gift that Keeps on Giving
Some day - and the days are getting shorter - when the Abe Cabinet is only a fond memory, the Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association (what, no reporters?) will erect on their premises a shrine with the Abe Administration as the deity; and to which, on a particularly slow news day, they will gather to pray: Oh great god of political scandal, please render unto us a minister, a vice minister, anyone, anything, to spare us from the shame of soiling the tops of our front pages with the latest five-year MAFF proposal for subsidizing Japanese turnip farmers with less than 2/5 hectares in non-rice paddy acreage. And their wish shall be granted.
The latest beneficence has been incarnated in the form of Dr. Ichiro Kamoshita, M.D., who, according to Shisaku, "can't count". The powers that be want to play it as a "mistake", which under my Rule 2 is not a take-one-step-back card. Prime Minster Abe agrees with me. With my Rule 2, that is. He does seem to reserving judgment until he sees the public response. Which is par for the course for him.
In Shinto, anything can be deified, a rock, a river, an umbrella, traitor to the Emperor, whatever. In fact, there's an old Japanese saying that used to be inscribed on one of a set of Edo Era playing cards: "Iwashi no atama mo shinjin kara", or: "Even something trivial as the head of a sardine can be an object of worship".
The latest beneficence has been incarnated in the form of Dr. Ichiro Kamoshita, M.D., who, according to Shisaku, "can't count". The powers that be want to play it as a "mistake", which under my Rule 2 is not a take-one-step-back card. Prime Minster Abe agrees with me. With my Rule 2, that is. He does seem to reserving judgment until he sees the public response. Which is par for the course for him.
In Shinto, anything can be deified, a rock, a river, an umbrella, traitor to the Emperor, whatever. In fact, there's an old Japanese saying that used to be inscribed on one of a set of Edo Era playing cards: "Iwashi no atama mo shinjin kara", or: "Even something trivial as the head of a sardine can be an object of worship".
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
What, Us Worry? The Chinese Product Safety Scare
China has its own "Oh, no, not again" problem, as WaPo puts Mattel's third recall of Chinese-made products on the first page of the Sept. 5 Business section. In fact, rarely a day seems to go by without media reports on the Chinese product safety issue. The public outcry seems to be quite substantial, and Congress is likely to pass legislation – mainly symbolic in the short run – that in effect targets Chinese exports to the US by the end of the year. The trail does not stop at the borders either, as the WaPo front page on the same day has another article that displays a less accommodating attitude to its Southeast Asian trading on the same issue.
Compared to this, worries and protests seem to be muted in usually safety-conscious, risk-averse Japan. True, grown-in-China eel disappeared from one of the nearby supermarkets (but not the other) more than a month ago, and I myself have been avoiding Chinese food products (but not Chinese food) when I have the choice, like buying twice-as-expensive domestic garlic. Still, the processed foods shelves continue to display a wide array of Chinese products and products with Chinese ingredients. I'm both too old and too young to have a handle on toys, but the formaldehyde-clothing scare that swept the US, Australia and New Zealand seems to have passed little noticed here.
Like I said, the Japanese public tends to be safety-conscious and risk-averse to a fault. Is it just the lack of domestic victims to stoke the fire? Heavy direct investments into China with concomitant product control easing public concerns? Lack of special interests lobbying against Chinese products? I don't have the confidence to offer any kind of definitive answer. In fact, I may be overestimating the difference between Japan and China on this issue. But I do think that it's real, and I'd like how you feel, and what, if you agree with me, the reasons are.
As I wrote here, there will be times when it is the Japanese media that runs with the China angle. But note that Yomiuri carried it as a US news item, without any reference to any Japanese implications.
Compared to this, worries and protests seem to be muted in usually safety-conscious, risk-averse Japan. True, grown-in-China eel disappeared from one of the nearby supermarkets (but not the other) more than a month ago, and I myself have been avoiding Chinese food products (but not Chinese food) when I have the choice, like buying twice-as-expensive domestic garlic. Still, the processed foods shelves continue to display a wide array of Chinese products and products with Chinese ingredients. I'm both too old and too young to have a handle on toys, but the formaldehyde-clothing scare that swept the US, Australia and New Zealand seems to have passed little noticed here.
Like I said, the Japanese public tends to be safety-conscious and risk-averse to a fault. Is it just the lack of domestic victims to stoke the fire? Heavy direct investments into China with concomitant product control easing public concerns? Lack of special interests lobbying against Chinese products? I don't have the confidence to offer any kind of definitive answer. In fact, I may be overestimating the difference between Japan and China on this issue. But I do think that it's real, and I'd like how you feel, and what, if you agree with me, the reasons are.
As I wrote here, there will be times when it is the Japanese media that runs with the China angle. But note that Yomiuri carried it as a US news item, without any reference to any Japanese implications.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Has the LDP Finished Cleaning House? Don't Ask the Party President
LDP leaders have convinced Yutaka Kobayashi to be a man and resign from his just-won, second-term Upper House seat and allow Akira Matsu, the runner-up and faithful member of the coalition-partner New Komeito to take over instead. He could stay on until the criminally indicted members of his campaign financing managers exhaust all appeals to any guilty verdicts, but at that point (any time beyond three months after the election to be exact), new elections would have to be called, one that could very likely be won by yet another DPJ candidate. Just as important, the LDP leadership clearly did not want to let this linger into the Diet session that convenes next week, where Mr. Kobayashi could have become yet another hugely distracting sideshow.
More surprising for the Japanese media was the sudden decision by Tokuichiro Tamazawa, a nine-term Lower House veteran, to leave the LDP (but not the Diet) as penitence because his political office had used the same receipts multiple times to account for expenditures (as befitting my Two Rules of LDP Diet Member Responsibility). No doubt the party leadership engineered this as well.
Party veteran Tamazawa's fate has irked some LDP members, who think this was harsh compared to Yukiko Sakamoto, who had lost her Vice Minister post in the Foreign Ministry to a similar sin but did not have to leave the party. Evidently, they are playing some kind of board game, where they've beach drawn a fake-receipts, take-one-step back card. Then of course there's Takehiko Endo, who took one giant step back from MAFF Minister. So that's my rule number three.
It is highly likely that the Prime Minister/party president had little to do with executing the latest demotion and exile; they have the look and feel of having been taken care of by the aconsiglieris. And normally, that would be that. However, in this case, they merely underscore the near-consensus in the JMSM that Prime Minister Abe had let Taro Aso, party Secretary-General, and Kaoru Yosano, the Chief Cabinet Secretary, take care of offing Mr. Endo and Ms. Sakamoto. In fact, one earlier news report had Mr. Abe allowing Mr. Aso to take care of all the Vice Minister selections.
Perhaps all the bad cards have been drawn, and no new crises in the HR department are imminent. But Mr. Abe's control is slipping badly, and the grown ups are taking over the ship. At least that is the perception, and that perception is created because everybody in the LDP is talking with impunity. And Mr. Aso and Mr. Yosano get the credit without talking the hits.
What seems like a long, long time ago, Prime Minister Koizumi brought the abductees and their family members home, but his Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary - later Secretary-General and Chief Cabinet Secretary - got all the credit. Perhaps it is only poetic justice that we are seeing the ascendancy of Secretary-General Aso and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yosano.
This has serious implications for the succession. The one safeguard that has kept Mr. Abe away from the scaffold has been the lack of a better alternative to lead them to victory in the next Lower House election (no later than September 2009). If Mr. Aso and Mr. Yosano continue their rise in public esteem - no sure thing, but the media will likely build them up, if only to set them up for a fall at the nearest convenient opportunity - the party faithful will surely take a good look at the prospects of premiericide. Mr. Abe's margin of error is looking very, very thin.
More surprising for the Japanese media was the sudden decision by Tokuichiro Tamazawa, a nine-term Lower House veteran, to leave the LDP (but not the Diet) as penitence because his political office had used the same receipts multiple times to account for expenditures (as befitting my Two Rules of LDP Diet Member Responsibility). No doubt the party leadership engineered this as well.
Party veteran Tamazawa's fate has irked some LDP members, who think this was harsh compared to Yukiko Sakamoto, who had lost her Vice Minister post in the Foreign Ministry to a similar sin but did not have to leave the party. Evidently, they are playing some kind of board game, where they've beach drawn a fake-receipts, take-one-step back card. Then of course there's Takehiko Endo, who took one giant step back from MAFF Minister. So that's my rule number three.
It is highly likely that the Prime Minister/party president had little to do with executing the latest demotion and exile; they have the look and feel of having been taken care of by the aconsiglieris. And normally, that would be that. However, in this case, they merely underscore the near-consensus in the JMSM that Prime Minister Abe had let Taro Aso, party Secretary-General, and Kaoru Yosano, the Chief Cabinet Secretary, take care of offing Mr. Endo and Ms. Sakamoto. In fact, one earlier news report had Mr. Abe allowing Mr. Aso to take care of all the Vice Minister selections.
Perhaps all the bad cards have been drawn, and no new crises in the HR department are imminent. But Mr. Abe's control is slipping badly, and the grown ups are taking over the ship. At least that is the perception, and that perception is created because everybody in the LDP is talking with impunity. And Mr. Aso and Mr. Yosano get the credit without talking the hits.
What seems like a long, long time ago, Prime Minister Koizumi brought the abductees and their family members home, but his Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary - later Secretary-General and Chief Cabinet Secretary - got all the credit. Perhaps it is only poetic justice that we are seeing the ascendancy of Secretary-General Aso and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yosano.
This has serious implications for the succession. The one safeguard that has kept Mr. Abe away from the scaffold has been the lack of a better alternative to lead them to victory in the next Lower House election (no later than September 2009). If Mr. Aso and Mr. Yosano continue their rise in public esteem - no sure thing, but the media will likely build them up, if only to set them up for a fall at the nearest convenient opportunity - the party faithful will surely take a good look at the prospects of premiericide. Mr. Abe's margin of error is looking very, very thin.
Where Did the Abductees Issue Become Part of the Response to the WMDs?
The Japanese Government issues an annual report titled: Report on the Government's Undertaking Concerning the Tackling of the Abductees Issue and Other Issues of Human Rights Violations by the North Korean Authorities
The report states its purpose at the very beginning:
"This document reports on the Government's undertaking concerning the tackling of the abductees issue and other issues of human rights violations by the North Korean authorities pursuant to the provision of The Act Concerning the Tackling of the Abductees Issue and Other Issues of Human Rights Violations by the North Korean Authorities (Act No. 96, 2006 Jun. 23)."
The first section of: Part 2. Abductees Chapter 1, Section 1. Domestic Undertakings; in its entirety:
(1) Measures Implemented against North Korea
In light of the launching of a ballistic missile by North Korea on July 5, 2006, the Government announced a set of measures such as forbidding the Mangyongbong 92, a North Korean cargo-passenger ship to entering [Japanese] ports, and tightening examinations on entries from North Korea. Moreover, when North Korea announced on October 9 the implementation of a nuclear test, [the Government] decided to forbid all North Korea-registered ships from entering [Japanese] ports, and decided the implementation of measures including a ban on the import of all categories of products from North Korea. These measures decided by comprehensively considering the various aspects of the situation including the fact that North Korea is not showing any sincere response to the abductees issue.
The text leaves the impression that the Government took the abductees issue into consideration on both occasions in determining the measures to be taken. In fact, there is no other reasonable interpretation. However, according to the 2006.07.05 press announcement by the Chief Cabinet Secretary (Shinzo Abe):
The launching of the ballistic missile or flying object [I like that; launching of a flying object] by North Korea directly concerns our country's security and is to be greatly alarmed about. Moreover, this case violates the Japan-DPRK Pyongyang Declaration and is incompatible with the Joint Declaration at the Six-Party talks, and is to be greatly regretted as well from the viewpoint of peace and safety of the international society and the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. From this point of view, it is necessary to give a steadfast, severe response to North Korea and we have decided to take the following substantive measures".
On July 5, there was no mention of the abductees issue. For that, we must turn to the next set of sanctions, three months later, the occasion of the nuclear test. On October 11, the Chief Cabinet Secretary (Yasuhisa Shiozaki) gave a danwa, or "talk". Here's the text in its entirety:
The National Security Council was held from 21 hours for approximately 20 minutes. As the result, I would like to allowed to announce our country's response for the time being pertaining to the nuclear test by North Korea.
Concerning the nuclear test by North Korea, we already clarified the position of our country by a declaration by the Chief Cabinet Secretary on the 9th.
Subsequently, the Government had considered our country's response; and, comprehensively taking into consideration the various elements of the situation including the fact that the Japan Meteorological Agency detected seismic waves different from the shapes of waves from a normal natural earthquake, that it is recognized that, in conjunction with the development of missiles by North Korea, that the threat to our country's security has doubled, North Korea has not shown any sincere response to the abductees issue, and that talks are being conducted in the UN Security Council with a view to making a severe response by the international society as a whole; and based on the opinions of the relevant Cabinet members and on orders from the Prime Minister, we have decided to take the following severe measures against North Korea and to expeditiously take the measures necessary for their implementation, and to decide them at the Cabinet session on the 13th.
In other words, the abductees issue was inserted on the second occasion as one of the factors that determined the Japanese response to the nuclear test, and the 2006 report (issued in 2007) retroactively stamped the July measures with the abductees issue seal. Since the only significant change between July and October other than the nuclear test is that Shinzo Abe had replaced Junichiro Koizumi as Prime Minister, the logical conclusion is that the addition was made at the order of Prime Minister Abe or someone who understood his desires. (The text itself bears the marks of careful calibration by the bureaucracy, but the thought is clearly of political origin.)
I had – mistakenly, it turns out – assumed that the sanctions had been in response to the WMD and missile delivery system issues, But it turns out that, because of the decision to insert the abductees issues on the occasion of the response to the nuclear tests, if and when (a very, very big "if and when") the Six-Party talks move forward and lifting/easing sanctions becomes a prerequisite, the Abe administration (another, growing, "if") will have to openly admit - it has no choice - that the abductees issue must be subsumed to the greater good of national security.
The report states its purpose at the very beginning:
"This document reports on the Government's undertaking concerning the tackling of the abductees issue and other issues of human rights violations by the North Korean authorities pursuant to the provision of The Act Concerning the Tackling of the Abductees Issue and Other Issues of Human Rights Violations by the North Korean Authorities (Act No. 96, 2006 Jun. 23)."
The first section of: Part 2. Abductees Chapter 1, Section 1. Domestic Undertakings; in its entirety:
(1) Measures Implemented against North Korea
In light of the launching of a ballistic missile by North Korea on July 5, 2006, the Government announced a set of measures such as forbidding the Mangyongbong 92, a North Korean cargo-passenger ship to entering [Japanese] ports, and tightening examinations on entries from North Korea. Moreover, when North Korea announced on October 9 the implementation of a nuclear test, [the Government] decided to forbid all North Korea-registered ships from entering [Japanese] ports, and decided the implementation of measures including a ban on the import of all categories of products from North Korea. These measures decided by comprehensively considering the various aspects of the situation including the fact that North Korea is not showing any sincere response to the abductees issue.
The text leaves the impression that the Government took the abductees issue into consideration on both occasions in determining the measures to be taken. In fact, there is no other reasonable interpretation. However, according to the 2006.07.05 press announcement by the Chief Cabinet Secretary (Shinzo Abe):
The launching of the ballistic missile or flying object [I like that; launching of a flying object] by North Korea directly concerns our country's security and is to be greatly alarmed about. Moreover, this case violates the Japan-DPRK Pyongyang Declaration and is incompatible with the Joint Declaration at the Six-Party talks, and is to be greatly regretted as well from the viewpoint of peace and safety of the international society and the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. From this point of view, it is necessary to give a steadfast, severe response to North Korea and we have decided to take the following substantive measures".
On July 5, there was no mention of the abductees issue. For that, we must turn to the next set of sanctions, three months later, the occasion of the nuclear test. On October 11, the Chief Cabinet Secretary (Yasuhisa Shiozaki) gave a danwa, or "talk". Here's the text in its entirety:
The National Security Council was held from 21 hours for approximately 20 minutes. As the result, I would like to allowed to announce our country's response for the time being pertaining to the nuclear test by North Korea.
Concerning the nuclear test by North Korea, we already clarified the position of our country by a declaration by the Chief Cabinet Secretary on the 9th.
Subsequently, the Government had considered our country's response; and, comprehensively taking into consideration the various elements of the situation including the fact that the Japan Meteorological Agency detected seismic waves different from the shapes of waves from a normal natural earthquake, that it is recognized that, in conjunction with the development of missiles by North Korea, that the threat to our country's security has doubled, North Korea has not shown any sincere response to the abductees issue, and that talks are being conducted in the UN Security Council with a view to making a severe response by the international society as a whole; and based on the opinions of the relevant Cabinet members and on orders from the Prime Minister, we have decided to take the following severe measures against North Korea and to expeditiously take the measures necessary for their implementation, and to decide them at the Cabinet session on the 13th.
In other words, the abductees issue was inserted on the second occasion as one of the factors that determined the Japanese response to the nuclear test, and the 2006 report (issued in 2007) retroactively stamped the July measures with the abductees issue seal. Since the only significant change between July and October other than the nuclear test is that Shinzo Abe had replaced Junichiro Koizumi as Prime Minister, the logical conclusion is that the addition was made at the order of Prime Minister Abe or someone who understood his desires. (The text itself bears the marks of careful calibration by the bureaucracy, but the thought is clearly of political origin.)
I had – mistakenly, it turns out – assumed that the sanctions had been in response to the WMD and missile delivery system issues, But it turns out that, because of the decision to insert the abductees issues on the occasion of the response to the nuclear tests, if and when (a very, very big "if and when") the Six-Party talks move forward and lifting/easing sanctions becomes a prerequisite, the Abe administration (another, growing, "if") will have to openly admit - it has no choice - that the abductees issue must be subsumed to the greater good of national security.
I Learn Something About Our War on Terror in the Iraqi Theater
No, not that theater. I am watching Sunday Project, my favorite TV program (after the wacky wushu serials on basic cable). Soichiro Tawara, the hard-hitting septuagenarian host, is questioning Nobuteru Ishihara, ex-Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary and new Chairman of the LDP Policy Research Council, on the prospects for the extension of the counter-terrorism act.
Even as Mr. Ishihara is explaining the distinction between Iraq and Afghanistan and how Japanese withdrawal would mean a disaster for the valiant Pakistani navy, Mr. Tawara, as always - this is the rudest man on the planet we are talking about - interrupts him and whips out a web page printout, two pages be exact, courtesy, he says, of Yukio Edano, DPJ hyper-policy wonk. They have been taken from the US Centcom Web site, and shows that most of the fuel oil that the JSDN provides for refueling as logistic support for counter-terrorism activities actually goes to operations in Iraq. Mr. Tawara's point is that we'd been told that there's one law on the books for Iraq and another for the war on terror in Afghanistan but it turns out we've been mostly helping out in Iraq either way.
Mr. Ishihara does not skip a beat – he claims he wasn't aware of this information, and he does look sincere – and goes on to explain how the Indian Ocean [i.e. presumed theater of operations] stretches to the African coast and the Persian Gulf so the whole area must be patrolled of course and we wouldn't want the terrorists moving in and out of Iraq do we? Mr. Tawara keeps pressing his point, Mr. Ishihara keeps repeating that there is no way to draw the line between naval operations around Afghanistan - a landlocked state, come to think of it – and Iraq, and I am thinking, gee, call me stupid, but I wasn't aware of that… The two kept repeating themselves until Mr. Tawara gruffly broke it off.
Come to think of it, it makes sense. The counter-terrorism act says nothing about the theater of operations, and the Iraq act only covers "activities to support humanitarian reconstruction and activities to support secure safety". The jurisdictional distinction is functional, not geographical. The problem is, we've had Afghanistan/Iraq, Afghanistan/Iraq drummed into our heads over and over again and how everyone but Ichiro Ozawa and his cousin is supposed to be on board for Afghanistan; so the notion that the refueled ships actual operate mainly in the Iraqi war theater? That comes as a sort of double-take for me, not to mention for the obstinate Mr. Tawara. How will it play with the rest of the public? The fact that Mr. Edano passed it on is a sure sign that the DPJ is going to exploit this mostly-Iraq angle once the Diet convenes on Sept.10.
That's how I remember the exchange, though I probably misremember much of the details. (Like, was that Edano, or really Maehara?) (MTC, did you videotape it?)
Now I have a request. Do any of you know how to find the web pages? It appeared to have "Operation Iraqi Freedom" emblazoned at the top, a big picture of a couple of naval vessels, and tables to show how much fuel oil have gone where. I can't find it here.
Even as Mr. Ishihara is explaining the distinction between Iraq and Afghanistan and how Japanese withdrawal would mean a disaster for the valiant Pakistani navy, Mr. Tawara, as always - this is the rudest man on the planet we are talking about - interrupts him and whips out a web page printout, two pages be exact, courtesy, he says, of Yukio Edano, DPJ hyper-policy wonk. They have been taken from the US Centcom Web site, and shows that most of the fuel oil that the JSDN provides for refueling as logistic support for counter-terrorism activities actually goes to operations in Iraq. Mr. Tawara's point is that we'd been told that there's one law on the books for Iraq and another for the war on terror in Afghanistan but it turns out we've been mostly helping out in Iraq either way.
Mr. Ishihara does not skip a beat – he claims he wasn't aware of this information, and he does look sincere – and goes on to explain how the Indian Ocean [i.e. presumed theater of operations] stretches to the African coast and the Persian Gulf so the whole area must be patrolled of course and we wouldn't want the terrorists moving in and out of Iraq do we? Mr. Tawara keeps pressing his point, Mr. Ishihara keeps repeating that there is no way to draw the line between naval operations around Afghanistan - a landlocked state, come to think of it – and Iraq, and I am thinking, gee, call me stupid, but I wasn't aware of that… The two kept repeating themselves until Mr. Tawara gruffly broke it off.
Come to think of it, it makes sense. The counter-terrorism act says nothing about the theater of operations, and the Iraq act only covers "activities to support humanitarian reconstruction and activities to support secure safety". The jurisdictional distinction is functional, not geographical. The problem is, we've had Afghanistan/Iraq, Afghanistan/Iraq drummed into our heads over and over again and how everyone but Ichiro Ozawa and his cousin is supposed to be on board for Afghanistan; so the notion that the refueled ships actual operate mainly in the Iraqi war theater? That comes as a sort of double-take for me, not to mention for the obstinate Mr. Tawara. How will it play with the rest of the public? The fact that Mr. Edano passed it on is a sure sign that the DPJ is going to exploit this mostly-Iraq angle once the Diet convenes on Sept.10.
That's how I remember the exchange, though I probably misremember much of the details. (Like, was that Edano, or really Maehara?) (MTC, did you videotape it?)
Now I have a request. Do any of you know how to find the web pages? It appeared to have "Operation Iraqi Freedom" emblazoned at the top, a big picture of a couple of naval vessels, and tables to show how much fuel oil have gone where. I can't find it here.
Monday, September 03, 2007
The Revolving Door at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries
| MAFF Minister | tenure | time served |
|---|---|---|
| Toshikatsu Matsuoka | 06.09.26-07.05.28 | 245 days |
| Norihiko Akagi | 07.06.01-08.01 | 62 days |
| Masatoshi Wakabayashi | 07.08.01-07.08.27 | 27 days |
| Takehiko Endo | 07.08.27-07.09.03 | 8 days |
| Masatoshi Wakabayashi | 07.09.03-? | ? |
Note that the tenure is getting shorter and shorter. This trend should stop, barring extraordinary revelations, as Mr. Wakabayashi, the ex-Environment Minister, has been called back as MAFF Minister, this time "permanently".
Mr. Wabayashi also executed the MAFF minister's duties in the brief interregnum between Mr. Matsuoka and Mr. Akagi, but that routinely happens when ministers travel overseas and is not an appointment.
Also jettisoned was first-term Yukiko Sakamoto as the Upper House Vice Minister at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The local LDP branch, which she chairs, and her own support association had been using multiple copies of single receipts as evidence for cost related to "meetings". As for the others with "politics and money" issues, Fukushiro Nukaga (Minister of Finance), Mitsuhide Iwaki (Chief Cabinet Secretary; Upper House), and Kanji Hagiwara (Vice Minister; Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry; Upper House) have been spared the sword; likewise on the LDP party side Toshihiro Nikai (Chairman, General Council) and Nobuteru Ishihara (Chairman, Policy Research Council). Two points:
1) You are responsible for the actions of your subordinates.
2) Mistakes are forgiven but falsehoods are not.
The Secretary-General, the Chairman of the General Council, and the Chairman of the Policy Research Council are the Big Three of the LDP. Since the President of the LDP usually serves as Prime Minister (Yohei Kono is the only LDP President who failed to do so; he had to settle for Speaker of the Lower House), the Big Three are in charge of the day-to-day activities. The Secretary-General oversees the political machine and is the most powerful. The General Committee Chairman nominally outranks his counterpart at the Policy Research Council, but is usually seen as a less powerful figure. Thus, the position has often served as a political reward to long-serving and affable - if not quite top-shelf talent – party stalwarts. (PRC policy decisions must receive GC approval before it becomes official party policy but the GC almost unfailingly rubberstamps the PRC decision.
Seriously, there is a sliver lining for the LDP to this mess. Cabinet appointments and the length of such tenures are highly valued in determining who gets what in the twice-yearly Imperial Honors. If things have not changed since I was involved in the peripheries, tenure is tallied by the year regardless of the actual number of days served. In other words, one day as Cabinet Minister is just as valuable as the entire calendar year in determining your service to the nation. Thus, Mr. Akagi and Mr. Endo have already earned a year as Cabinet Minister towards whatever award that awaits them when they pass the age of 70. (Gaijins can and do receive them earlier.) Mr. Matsuoka should have no use for those two years regardless of where he is now. Still, together with the permanent replacement for MAFF Minister, the Abe administration will have used the one calendar year to help bestow Imperial favor on three – likely four, since Mr. Wakabayashi should be allowed to count his non-overlapping tenures at MOE and MAFF as one year each - worthies among the party faithful.
Sunday, September 02, 2007
They Said that Christopher Hill Was a Good Man
Indeed, everybody heaped praise on Christopher Hill when he assumed responsibility for North Korea. However, an assistant secretary is an assistant secretary. When the Bush administration puts an assistant secretary in charge and lets everybody else walk away and cares so little that a crucial bank transfer can lie in limbo for two months, while the rest of the deal comes to a dead stop, then it's hard not to draw the conclusion that the Bush administration isn't really worrying about nuclear proliferation when it comes to North Korea. Which means, I think, that the Abe administration can put off making hard decisions with respect to the abductees issue for the time being, even as the Six-Party talks are being readied for resumption.
Are You Old Enough to Remember When We Stopped Asking for the Scotch Tape And Why?
Yes, Scotch Tape™ is still around. For that matter, so is Kleenex™ and Saran Wrap™ and Xerox™ and that's about all I can remember. For the very young, these are trademark names that morphed into generic terms, then morphed back into the specific. Does anyone have any idea how this happens? And how are they different from Hotchkiss, still a generic name for staplers in Japan and Korea, and Hoover, likewise in the UK for vacuum cleaner? (Or so I hear.)
I would appreciate any leads.
BTW, I think that "let it out" is somewhat inappropriate as a slogan for Kleenex™. But maybe that's just me.
I would appreciate any leads.
BTW, I think that "let it out" is somewhat inappropriate as a slogan for Kleenex™. But maybe that's just me.
Turn Around and They're Two: Whither the Koizumi Children?
And ere he blew three notes (such sweet
Soft notes as yet musician's cunning
Never gave the enraptured air)
There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling,
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering
Little hands clapping and little tongues chattering,
And, like fowls in a farmyard when barley is scattering
Out came the children running.
- Robert Browning, from The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Dear T:
It was very kind of you to inquire about the well-being of the Koizumi Children. I am sure they appreciate your concern. As it happens, today's Sankei has an article wrapped around the most recent meeting of Atarashii Kaze (New Wind) (est. 20 Dec. 2006), where Tsutomu Takebe, then-Prime Minister Koizumi's second-in-command for the LDP commissariat, brought together 24 first-term Upper House members and two second term members, all unaligned, under a gaggle of (actually, eight from five factions, including Mr. Takebe) seasoned backbenchers to promote "reform together with the people". The article, somewhat ominously, states that 17 of 21 first-term members attended the meeting. About to turn two (2006.09.11), the Koizumi children are being buffeted by the aftershocks from the Upper House election debacle.
The headline says it all:
Koizumi Children Fearful; Will Official [LDP] Candidates Be Replaced if Lower House is "Dissolved by Year End"?
According to the article, party HQ conducted an assessment of the electoral prospects of its 300 single-seat district Lower House members and found that only about 70 were favored to win, while the first-term members collectively projected as a near-total disaster. In order to maintain at least 240 seats (which, together with the New Komeito seats, should allow the ruling coalition to maintain its hold on the Lower House), Taro Aso, Secretary-General, and Yoshihide Suga, party election czar, intend to force Lower House members who have no hope of getting reelected to step down in favor of stronger candidates.
Normally, forcing out incumbents is not an easy task. Mr. Koizumi tried to do that for the last Upper House election; of the six, seven people targeted, only one stepped down. But these are not normal times, and first-term members lacking deep local roots who slipped in on Mr. Koizumi's sizeable coattails are particularly vulnerable. The article says that this policy is being met with approval from the majority of the LDP, and that second-fourth term members are particularly resentful of what they see as a bunch of pampered rookies whose careers had been promoted at their expense.
This is crunch time for the 66-year old Mr. Takebe as well, if he is to tighten ship with this motley crew in his efforts to build a durable power base of his own, if indeed that is his desire
Soft notes as yet musician's cunning
Never gave the enraptured air)
There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling,
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering
Little hands clapping and little tongues chattering,
And, like fowls in a farmyard when barley is scattering
Out came the children running.
- Robert Browning, from The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Dear T:
It was very kind of you to inquire about the well-being of the Koizumi Children. I am sure they appreciate your concern. As it happens, today's Sankei has an article wrapped around the most recent meeting of Atarashii Kaze (New Wind) (est. 20 Dec. 2006), where Tsutomu Takebe, then-Prime Minister Koizumi's second-in-command for the LDP commissariat, brought together 24 first-term Upper House members and two second term members, all unaligned, under a gaggle of (actually, eight from five factions, including Mr. Takebe) seasoned backbenchers to promote "reform together with the people". The article, somewhat ominously, states that 17 of 21 first-term members attended the meeting. About to turn two (2006.09.11), the Koizumi children are being buffeted by the aftershocks from the Upper House election debacle.
The headline says it all:
Koizumi Children Fearful; Will Official [LDP] Candidates Be Replaced if Lower House is "Dissolved by Year End"?
According to the article, party HQ conducted an assessment of the electoral prospects of its 300 single-seat district Lower House members and found that only about 70 were favored to win, while the first-term members collectively projected as a near-total disaster. In order to maintain at least 240 seats (which, together with the New Komeito seats, should allow the ruling coalition to maintain its hold on the Lower House), Taro Aso, Secretary-General, and Yoshihide Suga, party election czar, intend to force Lower House members who have no hope of getting reelected to step down in favor of stronger candidates.
Normally, forcing out incumbents is not an easy task. Mr. Koizumi tried to do that for the last Upper House election; of the six, seven people targeted, only one stepped down. But these are not normal times, and first-term members lacking deep local roots who slipped in on Mr. Koizumi's sizeable coattails are particularly vulnerable. The article says that this policy is being met with approval from the majority of the LDP, and that second-fourth term members are particularly resentful of what they see as a bunch of pampered rookies whose careers had been promoted at their expense.
This is crunch time for the 66-year old Mr. Takebe as well, if he is to tighten ship with this motley crew in his efforts to build a durable power base of his own, if indeed that is his desire
Has Norimitsu Ohnishi Done It Again with His Take on Shinzo Abe's Visit to India?
Here is Norimitsu Ohnishi's latest take on Shinzo Abe's history issues.
Mr. Ohnishi points to the continued popularity in Japan of Radhabinod Pal, the Indian jurist and lone dissenting judge at the Tokyo Tribunals (he called for complete acquittal of all the defendants). The hook for his article is, of course, Mr. Abe's tribute to Judge Pal before the Indian Parliament and his meeting with the judge's 81 year-old son on his what-I-did-on-my-summer-vacation trip to India.
Mr. Ohnishi's point is that "many of postwar Japan’s nationalist leaders and thinkers have long upheld Judge Pal as a hero, seizing on — and often distorting — his dissenting opinion at the Tokyo trials to argue that Japan did not wage a war of aggression in Asia but one of self-defense and liberation. As nationalist politicians like Mr. Abe have gained power in recent years, and as like-minded academics and journalists have pushed forward a revisionist view of Japan’s wartime history, Judge Pal has stepped back into the spotlight, where he remains a touchstone of the culture wars surrounding the Tokyo trials." Although he does not say so explicitly, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that Mr. Ohnishi, by blurring the conceptual boundaries between the war and war crimes, is alleging that Mr. Abe is one of those people trying to argue that "Japan did not wage a war of aggression in Asia but one of self-defense and liberation."
But then, what to make of Mr. Abe's August 15 words of contrition on the occasion of the commemoration of the end of the war:
In WW II, Japan caused much loss and pain to the many countries, the people of the Asian nations in particular. As the representative of the people [of Japan], with a deep sense of regret, I sincerely express my feelings of sorrow to the people who became the victims.
This does not sound like the words of a man claiming "self-defense and liberation". In fact, it sounds very much like the words of a man who would knowingly pay tribute to a jurist who was convinced that "the evidence is still overwhelming that atrocities were perpetrated by the members of the Japanese armed forces against the civilian population of some of the territories occupied by them as also against the prisoners of war".
The war, most thinking Asians will tell you, had many faces, and all but the hard-core right-wing nationalists here will admit that, at a minimum, we – if not we alone - wronged the Chinese and Koreans. Mr. Ohnishi by insinuation conflates every dissenting Japanese voice – including, yes, Mr. Abe's - with the diehard denialists.
Unlike this case (of which NYT made what could be charitably called an invisible retraction), there is no obvious error on the facts. Perhaps he has wised up and decided to let the critique coalesce in the reader's mind. But I will elect to take a more accommodating view; that Mr. Ohnishi thought that Western readers, American ones in particular, would find Justice Pal's views on the war as a whole so unfamiliar and displeasing that they could be safely introduced only as background to that familiar and greatly exaggerated right-wing resurgence trope.
Mr. Ohnishi points to the continued popularity in Japan of Radhabinod Pal, the Indian jurist and lone dissenting judge at the Tokyo Tribunals (he called for complete acquittal of all the defendants). The hook for his article is, of course, Mr. Abe's tribute to Judge Pal before the Indian Parliament and his meeting with the judge's 81 year-old son on his what-I-did-on-my-summer-vacation trip to India.
Mr. Ohnishi's point is that "many of postwar Japan’s nationalist leaders and thinkers have long upheld Judge Pal as a hero, seizing on — and often distorting — his dissenting opinion at the Tokyo trials to argue that Japan did not wage a war of aggression in Asia but one of self-defense and liberation. As nationalist politicians like Mr. Abe have gained power in recent years, and as like-minded academics and journalists have pushed forward a revisionist view of Japan’s wartime history, Judge Pal has stepped back into the spotlight, where he remains a touchstone of the culture wars surrounding the Tokyo trials." Although he does not say so explicitly, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that Mr. Ohnishi, by blurring the conceptual boundaries between the war and war crimes, is alleging that Mr. Abe is one of those people trying to argue that "Japan did not wage a war of aggression in Asia but one of self-defense and liberation."
But then, what to make of Mr. Abe's August 15 words of contrition on the occasion of the commemoration of the end of the war:
In WW II, Japan caused much loss and pain to the many countries, the people of the Asian nations in particular. As the representative of the people [of Japan], with a deep sense of regret, I sincerely express my feelings of sorrow to the people who became the victims.
This does not sound like the words of a man claiming "self-defense and liberation". In fact, it sounds very much like the words of a man who would knowingly pay tribute to a jurist who was convinced that "the evidence is still overwhelming that atrocities were perpetrated by the members of the Japanese armed forces against the civilian population of some of the territories occupied by them as also against the prisoners of war".
The war, most thinking Asians will tell you, had many faces, and all but the hard-core right-wing nationalists here will admit that, at a minimum, we – if not we alone - wronged the Chinese and Koreans. Mr. Ohnishi by insinuation conflates every dissenting Japanese voice – including, yes, Mr. Abe's - with the diehard denialists.
Unlike this case (of which NYT made what could be charitably called an invisible retraction), there is no obvious error on the facts. Perhaps he has wised up and decided to let the critique coalesce in the reader's mind. But I will elect to take a more accommodating view; that Mr. Ohnishi thought that Western readers, American ones in particular, would find Justice Pal's views on the war as a whole so unfamiliar and displeasing that they could be safely introduced only as background to that familiar and greatly exaggerated right-wing resurgence trope.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
The First Casualty of the New Abe Administration?
Takehiko Endo, the new Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery, is the head of an agricultural mutual aid cooperative that illegally received an extra 1.15 million yen in government subsidies for its agricultural disaster mutual aid fund by inflating the number of subscribers to the fund. Of the 265 subscribers it claimed it had, 105 had not even been aware that their names had been used. The fraud was discovered in 2004 by the National Accounting Agency, but after three years, the money has yet to be returned.
Mr. Endo says that he is not resigning, claiming that thebutler manager in charge did it and that he did not order it. Whichever; I think that this looks at least as bad as the political financing irregularities that took down Norihiko Akagi, for practical purposes the previous MAFF Minister, though not quite as serious as the influence peddling charges that likely led to the suicide of Toshikatsu Matsuoka, who in turn preceded Mr. Akagi at MAFF.
This reminds me of those Japanese ghost stories, where the ghost keeps coming back, again, and again, and again, until the main character goes insane and kills himself. He often manages to take down a lot of people around him in the process. A chilling summer staple of the mainlly humorous rakugo, the Japanese sit-down monologue genre.
Incidentally, Chief Cabinet Secretary and everybody's favorite Kaoru Yosano is saying that they are reserving judgment until Mr. Endo explains himself. They are not interested in the explanation (if they don't know by now…), they want to know how it plays in the media. I think they ought to be more proactive, though they're damned if they do, and damned if they don't.
ADD. In Japan, men sometimes shave their heads as a sign of atonement. Maybe that's what Mr. Endo has done. Or he doesn't have that option in the first place.
Mr. Endo says that he is not resigning, claiming that the
This reminds me of those Japanese ghost stories, where the ghost keeps coming back, again, and again, and again, until the main character goes insane and kills himself. He often manages to take down a lot of people around him in the process. A chilling summer staple of the mainlly humorous rakugo, the Japanese sit-down monologue genre.
Incidentally, Chief Cabinet Secretary and everybody's favorite Kaoru Yosano is saying that they are reserving judgment until Mr. Endo explains himself. They are not interested in the explanation (if they don't know by now…), they want to know how it plays in the media. I think they ought to be more proactive, though they're damned if they do, and damned if they don't.
ADD. In Japan, men sometimes shave their heads as a sign of atonement. Maybe that's what Mr. Endo has done. Or he doesn't have that option in the first place.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
First Order of Business at the Cabinet Session? Balancing the Factions
The new Abe Cabinet held an extraordinary session today (Aug. 29, a Wednesday; the Cabinet meets twice a week on Tuesday and Friday) and appointed the 22 senior vice-ministers (LDP 19, New Komeito 3) in the respective ministries and the Cabinet Office. For the appointees - In the case of the LDP, third (or in rare cases fourth) term Lower House Members and second term Upper House members - this is an important step in building resumes, and they are expected to use the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the territory and the people who populate it, and the bureaucracy does its best to oblige. As a result, they tend to become close to their respective ministries and their jurisdiction.
You may have guessed that a senior vice-minister does not wield much real power. That is also evident from something Asahi points out quite baldly in its headline Deputy Vice-Minister Emphasis on Factional Balance, 22 Appointed as well as the text, which gives the following list:
Tsushima faction 4, Machimura faction 3, Koga faction 2, Yamazaki faction 2, Ibuki faction 2, Tanigaki faction 2, Komura faction 1, Aso faction 1, Nikai faction 1, Unaligned 1.
Note that the largest Machimura faction has one fewer than the next largest Tsushima faction. That is only appropriate, since the Prime Minister's faction is expected to show humility in dividing the spoils. Also significant is the fact that the Tanigaki faction is the only U-16 micro-faction to have two. Consider this an analgesic for being shut out (against Mr. Mori's advice) from the Cabinet and the main party posts.
For even more junior coalition Diet members, there are the parliamentary vice-minister appointments. Expect more of the same.
You may have guessed that a senior vice-minister does not wield much real power. That is also evident from something Asahi points out quite baldly in its headline Deputy Vice-Minister Emphasis on Factional Balance, 22 Appointed as well as the text, which gives the following list:
Tsushima faction 4, Machimura faction 3, Koga faction 2, Yamazaki faction 2, Ibuki faction 2, Tanigaki faction 2, Komura faction 1, Aso faction 1, Nikai faction 1, Unaligned 1.
Note that the largest Machimura faction has one fewer than the next largest Tsushima faction. That is only appropriate, since the Prime Minister's faction is expected to show humility in dividing the spoils. Also significant is the fact that the Tanigaki faction is the only U-16 micro-faction to have two. Consider this an analgesic for being shut out (against Mr. Mori's advice) from the Cabinet and the main party posts.
For even more junior coalition Diet members, there are the parliamentary vice-minister appointments. Expect more of the same.
This Is Why We Play the Game: from the Abe Administration Poll Numbers
STATISTICS
Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Autobiography of Mark Twain
Here are the support/do not support poll figures for the Abe adminstration, post-election and post reshuffle:
Support Abe administration
Do not support Abe administration
For anyone who does not follow the Japanese media with regularity, the discrepancy between the poll numbers for Asahi and Yomiuri are par for the course and reflect their ideological and political leanings (left-center and center-right respectively). Kyodo Tsushin is a wire service and is considered more or less neutral
Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Autobiography of Mark Twain
Here are the support/do not support poll figures for the Abe adminstration, post-election and post reshuffle:
Support Abe administration
| Jul.30-31 | Aug.27-28 | |
|---|---|---|
| Asahi | 26% | 33% |
| Yomiuri | 31.7% | 44.2% |
| Kyodo Tsushin | 29.0% | 40.5% |
Do not support Abe administration
| Jul.30-31 | Aug.27-28 | |
|---|---|---|
| Asahi | 60% | 53% |
| Yomiuri | 59.9% | 36.1% |
| Kyodo Tsushin | 59.0% | 45.5% |
For anyone who does not follow the Japanese media with regularity, the discrepancy between the poll numbers for Asahi and Yomiuri are par for the course and reflect their ideological and political leanings (left-center and center-right respectively). Kyodo Tsushin is a wire service and is considered more or less neutral
Now You Can Read the Extent of Mr. Yano's Anger
Here, on the Asahi website, if you can read Japanese. But hurry, because online Asahi articles are perishable products.
Asahi adds an interesting angle to earlier media reports of Mr. Yano's 30-minute phone call to Prime Minister Abe in protest of his omission from the new Cabinet. According to Asahi, the prime minister tried to placate Mr. Yano by telling him that he would appoint him the next time around.
Assuming that the substance of the phone call is emanating from Mr. Yano himself – the words of Mr. Yano and Mr. Abe are placed in quotation marks, indicating that the reporter talked to, at a minimum, a reliable source who could speak for Mr. Yano:
a) Making such a promise – not out of character for the conciliatory Mr. Abe – is not the best way to make a show of leadership.
b) Going public with the promise is not the best way to make Mr. Abe keep it.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Post-Reshuffle Trivia and Speculation on the Counter-Terrorism Act Showdown
I expect a well-rounded English-language recap of the new Cabinet and it implications, past present and future from one of the weekly magazines. In the meantime, there are the bloggers, who provide the color commentary. As such, I offer you some things that caught my attention.
The Upper House LDP had feared that they would lose one of the two seats; they managed to keep both. But they are not happy. Rather, Upper House LDP member Tetsuro Yano is furious. Mr. Yano was widely assumed to have the inside track on one of the Cabinet posts usually reserved for the Upper House, but was shut out. Yomiuri reports that he called the Prime Minister to protest. No class act, true, but it's hard to believe that it was all in his mind and nowhere else.
What is it with the Prime Minister and his ex-faction chief and predecessor Yoshiro Mori? Mr. Mori criticized Mr. Abe for keeping Nobuteru Ishihara (Chairman, Policy Deliberation Commission), Yoshimi Watanabe (Minister for Financial Affairs, etc.) and Akira Amari (METI Minister), saying, "[The first Cabinet] included younger 'children' and was called the 'Friends Cabinet.' That was the 'first year class [of the three-year kindergarten]', but I feel that this one has become a little more 'second year class'. He came down especially hard on Mr. Ishihara (Lower House, Tokyo District No.8), claiming that the LDP needed a Policy Deliberation Commission Chairman (one of the Big Three party posts) from the peripheral provinces (地方chihou, usually - and somewhat misleadingly - referred to as "rural areas"). He had made specific suggestions (again publicly) in the make up of the Cabinet and LDP leadership in the week before the reshuffle. Last year, in the Koizumi succession race, He had openly lobbied for Mr. Abe to step aside in order to allow Yasuo Fukuda to get first crack, to no avail. Perhaps he has never gotten over that double show of disrespect for the natural order of things (leader-follower relationship, seniority).
Yomiuri says Makoto Koga was indeed tapped to be the Chairman of the General Council, on of the Big Three party posts, but had declined, opening the way for Toshihiro Nikai. Perhaps he felt offended at being asked to succeed Yuya Niwa his co-head of the Niwa-Koga faction. The two have a troubled relationship Think, Octavian and Mark Anthony, Stalin and Trotsky.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Alberto Gonzales Resigns. Are Things that Bad over There?
Quick, who do you think is going to be the "other" violin?
Actually, this has been going on at all levels of authority. It is an increasingly serious operational problem. For example, the two-month delay in the February Six-Party Talks agreement over the North Korean bank transfer could very well have been due to the sheer lack of administrative expertise available for planning and execution.
Dear MTC: in View of the High Esteem in Which I Know You Hold Kyodo Tsushin...
… it is with the greatest of regret that I must inform you of this unfortunate incident.
To be honest with you, I've lived long enough to know that there, but for the grace of God, go I.
Actually, been there, done that.
To be honest with you, I've lived long enough to know that there, but for the grace of God, go I.
Actually, been there, done that.
Abe Administration Remake Looks Good on Paper But Is It Too Late?
Prime Minister Abe administration has announced his new Cabinet, and it looks good. There will be criticism that Mr. Abe has given in to pressure from the factions, but all in all, it does not look like a group of people that will cause the kind of headaches under Abe administration 1.0 through 1.4 (or 1.31, depending on how you count the MAFF heads).
Leaping out are the names of Nobutaka Machimura (Minister of Foreign Affairs; head of Machimura faction, 82 members), Fukushiro Nukaga (Minister of Finance; main prime minister candidate of Tsushima faction, 63 members), Fumiaki Ibuki (Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology; head of Ibuki faction, 25 members), and Masahiko Komura (Minister of Defense; head of Komura faction, 15 members). Taro Aso (head of the Aso faction, 16 members) is the powerful party no.2 Secretary-General and Toshihiro Nikai (head of Nikai faction, 15 members) holds one of the other two top party posts as Chairman of the General Council. The co-heads of the Niwa-Koga faction (46 members) are somewhat surprisingly left out in the cold. But how are you going to choose one of two people who have very serious issues with each other? The Niwa-Koga faction does have the very effective Yoshihida Suga in charge of elections. Sadakazu Tanigaki and Taku Yamazaki, doves openly opposed to Mr. Abe, are no surprise absentees.
The rest: Hiroya Masuda (Minister of Internal Affairs and Communication; ex-governor), Kunio Hatoyama (Minister of Justice; Tsushima action), Yoichi Masuzoe (Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare; unaligned, Upper House), Takehiko Endo (Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery; Yamazaki faction, 36 members), Akira Amari (Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry; Yamzaki faction, but very sympathetic to Mr. Abe), Tesuzo Fuyushiba (Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport,; New Komeito), Ichiro Kamoshita (Minister of Environment; independent?), Kaoru Yosano (Chief Cabinet Secretary; independent), Shinya Izumi (Minister of State - Chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, Minister of State for Disaster Management; independent, Upper House) Fumio Kishida (Minister of State for Okinawa and Northern Territories Affairs; Niwa-Koga faction), Yoshimi Watanabe (Minister for Financial Services, Minister of State for Regulatory Reform; unaligned), Hiroko Ohta (Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy; not Diet Member), and Yoko Kamikawa (Minister for Declining Number of Children [they mean "Increasing"; Niwa-Koga faction). The announcements do not say where the Minister for Ocean Policy, Science and Technology Policy, Innovation, Gender Equality, Social Affairs and Food Safety portfolios go.
The Tanigaki faction (15 members) has been completely shut out. Also missing from the Cabinet list are the Aso, and Nikai factions, but remember, they are small factions, and their heads hold two of the three key party posts.
As for the unaligned, Yoichi Masuzoe is an intelligent and creative policy maker and forceful public speaker who has also been highly critical of Mr. Abe and his Cabinet. Thus, he is a substance-inclusiveness twofer. Another substance-inclusiveness twofer is the likeable Kaoru Yosano in the most important Cabinet post, who is also a masterful conciliator as well. (He was highly touted for Chief Cabinet Secretary for Abe administration 1.0.) Hiroya Masuda is widely considered as an inspired choice.
The choices for Foreign Affairs, Finance, and Defense look good too. Under the circumstances, Mr. Abe has done a good job. But it would have looked better the first time around. There will be many critics of the balancing act, who will portray it as a sign of weakness. Also, he will catch flak for reducing the number of women from three to two, and in very junior portfolios at that.
At the end of the day, it's the prime minister's job to turn it around.
Leaping out are the names of Nobutaka Machimura (Minister of Foreign Affairs; head of Machimura faction, 82 members), Fukushiro Nukaga (Minister of Finance; main prime minister candidate of Tsushima faction, 63 members), Fumiaki Ibuki (Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology; head of Ibuki faction, 25 members), and Masahiko Komura (Minister of Defense; head of Komura faction, 15 members). Taro Aso (head of the Aso faction, 16 members) is the powerful party no.2 Secretary-General and Toshihiro Nikai (head of Nikai faction, 15 members) holds one of the other two top party posts as Chairman of the General Council. The co-heads of the Niwa-Koga faction (46 members) are somewhat surprisingly left out in the cold. But how are you going to choose one of two people who have very serious issues with each other? The Niwa-Koga faction does have the very effective Yoshihida Suga in charge of elections. Sadakazu Tanigaki and Taku Yamazaki, doves openly opposed to Mr. Abe, are no surprise absentees.
The rest: Hiroya Masuda (Minister of Internal Affairs and Communication; ex-governor), Kunio Hatoyama (Minister of Justice; Tsushima action), Yoichi Masuzoe (Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare; unaligned, Upper House), Takehiko Endo (Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery; Yamazaki faction, 36 members), Akira Amari (Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry; Yamzaki faction, but very sympathetic to Mr. Abe), Tesuzo Fuyushiba (Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport,; New Komeito), Ichiro Kamoshita (Minister of Environment; independent?), Kaoru Yosano (Chief Cabinet Secretary; independent), Shinya Izumi (Minister of State - Chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, Minister of State for Disaster Management; independent, Upper House) Fumio Kishida (Minister of State for Okinawa and Northern Territories Affairs; Niwa-Koga faction), Yoshimi Watanabe (Minister for Financial Services, Minister of State for Regulatory Reform; unaligned), Hiroko Ohta (Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy; not Diet Member), and Yoko Kamikawa (Minister for Declining Number of Children [they mean "Increasing"; Niwa-Koga faction). The announcements do not say where the Minister for Ocean Policy, Science and Technology Policy, Innovation, Gender Equality, Social Affairs and Food Safety portfolios go.
The Tanigaki faction (15 members) has been completely shut out. Also missing from the Cabinet list are the Aso, and Nikai factions, but remember, they are small factions, and their heads hold two of the three key party posts.
As for the unaligned, Yoichi Masuzoe is an intelligent and creative policy maker and forceful public speaker who has also been highly critical of Mr. Abe and his Cabinet. Thus, he is a substance-inclusiveness twofer. Another substance-inclusiveness twofer is the likeable Kaoru Yosano in the most important Cabinet post, who is also a masterful conciliator as well. (He was highly touted for Chief Cabinet Secretary for Abe administration 1.0.) Hiroya Masuda is widely considered as an inspired choice.
The choices for Foreign Affairs, Finance, and Defense look good too. Under the circumstances, Mr. Abe has done a good job. But it would have looked better the first time around. There will be many critics of the balancing act, who will portray it as a sign of weakness. Also, he will catch flak for reducing the number of women from three to two, and in very junior portfolios at that.
At the end of the day, it's the prime minister's job to turn it around.
Lack of Excitement over the Cabinet Remake. Yet Another Comment on the Upper House Election
I think that too much time has passed since the election for the cabinet remake - not that Abe could have avoided it, given the need to deal with the implications of the political financing scandal - and too many incidents remindful of the pre-election Abe era happening in the meantime that any bright spots in the appointments will be merely noted and quickly forgotten. There's a belabored, shopworn feel to the political Christmas Eve atmosphere.
I also think that too much is made of the electoral consequences of the kakusa (economic winners and losers) issue. After all, the coalition did badly in the big cities as well, where the benefits of the economic recovery are supposedly accruing. As substantial as the crises were – which the Abe administration had more than its share – the seriousness of the leadership problem, real and perceived, in dealing with them cannot be overemphasized. Not that any of the other hopefuls project themselves very well in that respect.
I also think that too much is made of the electoral consequences of the kakusa (economic winners and losers) issue. After all, the coalition did badly in the big cities as well, where the benefits of the economic recovery are supposedly accruing. As substantial as the crises were – which the Abe administration had more than its share – the seriousness of the leadership problem, real and perceived, in dealing with them cannot be overemphasized. Not that any of the other hopefuls project themselves very well in that respect.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
O'Hanlon-Pollack Op-Ed/Report on Iraq
I'm sure most Americans who are reading this are aware of the O'Hanlon-Pollack NYT op-ed that claimed, "We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms" and concluded that "there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008 (my emphasis)." The op-ed has been hailed by supporters of the surge as a remarkable in-your-face rebuke to defeatists from two long-standing critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, while detractors assail the essay as propaganda by two bedrock supporters of the war in Iraq as output from a guided tour by Bush administration propaganda machine.
Less noticed is the two Brooking analysts' full report (still maddeningly anecdotal and too journalistic for my tastes), which presents a much bleaker picture. More or less the same claim, same conclusion; but, where the op-ed gives one paragraph to the (political) graveness of the situation and half a paragraph to the depiction of the Iraqi National Police as "a disaster", half the full report is devoted to the political difficulties, as well as very serious caveats to the military success. The latter also says, "The current Iraqi [proportional] electoral system is a disaster" and calls for a new national election under "a geographical representational system like [the United States or Great Britain". If you think that that is going to happen before "March-April 2008", after which the full report says that the US will have to draw down to pre-surge levels - the insurgents (code for Sunni) and the militia (Shiia) will appreciate that piece of information - then the future looks bright.
The title to the op-ed, A War We just Might Win, takes on an undoubtedly unintented irony for the more prosaically titled Iraq Trip Report at Brookings.
Note: By "anecdotal" and "journalistic", I mean the frequent use of an illustrative example or qualitative words or phrases like "many" and "far more" instead of numbers and fractions, or even relative terms like "majority" or "most".
Less noticed is the two Brooking analysts' full report (still maddeningly anecdotal and too journalistic for my tastes), which presents a much bleaker picture. More or less the same claim, same conclusion; but, where the op-ed gives one paragraph to the (political) graveness of the situation and half a paragraph to the depiction of the Iraqi National Police as "a disaster", half the full report is devoted to the political difficulties, as well as very serious caveats to the military success. The latter also says, "The current Iraqi [proportional] electoral system is a disaster" and calls for a new national election under "a geographical representational system like [the United States or Great Britain". If you think that that is going to happen before "March-April 2008", after which the full report says that the US will have to draw down to pre-surge levels - the insurgents (code for Sunni) and the militia (Shiia) will appreciate that piece of information - then the future looks bright.
The title to the op-ed, A War We just Might Win, takes on an undoubtedly unintented irony for the more prosaically titled Iraq Trip Report at Brookings.
Note: By "anecdotal" and "journalistic", I mean the frequent use of an illustrative example or qualitative words or phrases like "many" and "far more" instead of numbers and fractions, or even relative terms like "majority" or "most".
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Radhabinod Pal, Lone Dissenter at Tokyo Tribunal
While finding that 'the evidence is still overwhelming that atrocities were perpetrated by the members of the Japanese armed forces against the civilian population of some of the territories occupied by them as also against the prisoners of war', he produced a judgment questioning the legitimacy of the tribunal and its rulings. He held the view that the legitimacy of the tribunal was circumspect and questionable as the spirit of retribution, and not impartial justice, was the underlying criterion for passing the judgment.
-Wikipedia-
No wonder nobody cares what his real objections were.
-Wikipedia-
No wonder nobody cares what his real objections were.
Oops, Defense Minister Koike Is on the Outs (and Another Minister Has Political Financing Worries)
Yuriko Koike, the Defense Minister, whom I had tagged as the one minister who would keep her job in Abe Cabinet 2.0 (replacing ver.14), won't do so after all. In a press briefing she gave on the 24th at the New Delhi hotel where she was staying, she stated, "Nobody has taken responsibility within the Defense Ministry for the Aegis destroyer information system leak. I wish to take the responsibility. I want to change totally the people and their mindset, and have the new minister take charge…… I have said that I will 'resign' [on the occasion of the Cabinet reshuffle]." She added later to reporters at the New Delhi Airport, "I communicated to the prime minister my intent [not to stay on]. I did not get a direct answer", and "This does not mean that I am taking responsibility for the [confusion over] the personnel decision on the vice minister post."
I took these quotes from the Yomiuri hard-copy front page version (which may have had something to do with the editorial decision to carry Prime Minister Abe's summit with Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah in a much smaller space on page 2).
On her return to Japan at Narita Airport next morning, she seemed to dampen any speculation that she would remain in the Cabinet in another capacity, stating, "I've communicated to the prime minister that 'I want to work hard to support Prime Minister Abe as one foot soldier of the party from now on'". However, she did not completely rule out possibility of serving if asked. This, the latest from the online Mainichi
All this is forcing reporters to chase MOD and LDP sources for comments. They are uniformly critical of her decision, although the reasons seem to vary, whether it be taking it on herself to resign after creating a mess just before, giving a somewhat unconvincing reason for the decision, running away from a confrontation with Ichiro Ozawa, or jumping ship before being pushed out anyway by Mr. Abe.
If her departure takes one awkward problem out of Mr. Abe's hands, he can't be pleased that Ms. Koike took the matter and its announcement into her own hands. This reinforces an image of a passive prime minister that does not take charge of the situation and instead allows the situation to dictate to him. In this respect, it does not help him that the two core personnel decisions he has made so far, creating a dual power structure of Cabinet ministers on one hand and the White House-style sub-Cabinet prime minister's team on the other, and engineering the return of the Post Office privatization rebels, both backfired spectacularly. Another silver lining, of course, is that he will be able to replace her with a more conciliatory figure in dealing with counter-terrorism act whose extension will be the biggest and most urgent issue of the upcoming Diet session.
Ms. Koike is not the only Cabinet minister to run into trouble these days. There is Shiozaki Yasuhisa, inflicted twice-fold by the political financing scandal (imagine the misfortune of having one of your accountants embezzle money from you and your losing your job because of it; well, not quite, but close enough to the truth to feel some sympathy for Mr. Shiozaki) and his latest run-in with Ms. Koike. Then, there's Yoshihide Suga, Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications, and close . Scandal- and foot-in-mouth-disease-free---all things being relative in politics--Mr. Suga had been one of the brighter lights in the Abe Administration, and MIAC had been rewarded with an oversight role in rehabilitating the public pension system, bringing some functions of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare under its jurisdiction, albeit indirectly. However, if he had harbored any thoughts of staying on, he surely gave them up, as suspiciously large overhead costs have shown up on his books.
Seriously, politicians who want to keep their jobs should start slipping me fat envelopes filled with unmarked 10,000 Yen bills just so I won't write favorably about their prospects. You already owe me one, Mr. Suga.
I took these quotes from the Yomiuri hard-copy front page version (which may have had something to do with the editorial decision to carry Prime Minister Abe's summit with Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah in a much smaller space on page 2).
On her return to Japan at Narita Airport next morning, she seemed to dampen any speculation that she would remain in the Cabinet in another capacity, stating, "I've communicated to the prime minister that 'I want to work hard to support Prime Minister Abe as one foot soldier of the party from now on'". However, she did not completely rule out possibility of serving if asked. This, the latest from the online Mainichi
All this is forcing reporters to chase MOD and LDP sources for comments. They are uniformly critical of her decision, although the reasons seem to vary, whether it be taking it on herself to resign after creating a mess just before, giving a somewhat unconvincing reason for the decision, running away from a confrontation with Ichiro Ozawa, or jumping ship before being pushed out anyway by Mr. Abe.
If her departure takes one awkward problem out of Mr. Abe's hands, he can't be pleased that Ms. Koike took the matter and its announcement into her own hands. This reinforces an image of a passive prime minister that does not take charge of the situation and instead allows the situation to dictate to him. In this respect, it does not help him that the two core personnel decisions he has made so far, creating a dual power structure of Cabinet ministers on one hand and the White House-style sub-Cabinet prime minister's team on the other, and engineering the return of the Post Office privatization rebels, both backfired spectacularly. Another silver lining, of course, is that he will be able to replace her with a more conciliatory figure in dealing with counter-terrorism act whose extension will be the biggest and most urgent issue of the upcoming Diet session.
Ms. Koike is not the only Cabinet minister to run into trouble these days. There is Shiozaki Yasuhisa, inflicted twice-fold by the political financing scandal (imagine the misfortune of having one of your accountants embezzle money from you and your losing your job because of it; well, not quite, but close enough to the truth to feel some sympathy for Mr. Shiozaki) and his latest run-in with Ms. Koike. Then, there's Yoshihide Suga, Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications, and close . Scandal- and foot-in-mouth-disease-free---all things being relative in politics--Mr. Suga had been one of the brighter lights in the Abe Administration, and MIAC had been rewarded with an oversight role in rehabilitating the public pension system, bringing some functions of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare under its jurisdiction, albeit indirectly. However, if he had harbored any thoughts of staying on, he surely gave them up, as suspiciously large overhead costs have shown up on his books.
Seriously, politicians who want to keep their jobs should start slipping me fat envelopes filled with unmarked 10,000 Yen bills just so I won't write favorably about their prospects. You already owe me one, Mr. Suga.
Friday, August 24, 2007
More on the Khalil Gibran International Academy
I took note of it here. WaPo now says In New York, a Word Starts a Firestorm. Reading the article, it is apparent that it was more like the lynching party finally catching up with the victim. With an Orthodox Jew who doesn't understand Arabic now charge, it' s hard to escape the impression that the New York authorities are waiting for the school to whither and fade away. Assume you were a Muslim and thinking of sending your child there. What would you do now?
So I guess my rhetorical question is: Will any American of note come to Ms. Almontazeri's defense? The school's? Not if Dr. Pipes, who has obviously learned well from his many years of studying the USSR, has his way:
"Daniel Pipes, a pro-Israel conservative who created Campus Watch, a Web site dedicated to exposing alleged bias in university Middle East-studies programs, wrote in the New York Sun that the school would cause problems because "learning Arabic in [and] of itself promotes an Islamic outlook."
Would there be an outcry in the US if someone opposed teaching Hebrew in schools, saying, "learning Hebrew in and of itself promotes a Jewish outlook"?
And then I wonder, am I any different from these people?
So I guess my rhetorical question is: Will any American of note come to Ms. Almontazeri's defense? The school's? Not if Dr. Pipes, who has obviously learned well from his many years of studying the USSR, has his way:
"Daniel Pipes, a pro-Israel conservative who created Campus Watch, a Web site dedicated to exposing alleged bias in university Middle East-studies programs, wrote in the New York Sun that the school would cause problems because "learning Arabic in [and] of itself promotes an Islamic outlook."
Would there be an outcry in the US if someone opposed teaching Hebrew in schools, saying, "learning Hebrew in and of itself promotes a Jewish outlook"?
And then I wonder, am I any different from these people?
I'm Not the Only One Who Doesn't Like President Bush's Iraq Analogy
I'm not the only one who doesn't like President Bush's Iraq analogy. Of course Americans opposed to his policy on Iraq are overwhelmingly reacting to his comparison with Vietnam. (His supporters are, needless to say, counterattacking.) According to the Yomiuri, the Vietnamese don't like it either, if the headline, "Vietnam Foreign Ministry Expresses Displeasure at President Bush's Remarks" is to be believed. However, Reuters thinks that, "Reacting to Bush Speech, Vietnam Focuses on Present". Why the difference? Yomiuri writes
The Vietnamese MOF spokesman expressed displeasure,…… saying, "To the people, [the war] was a fight for justice."
The article closes with another quote from the spokesman:
"The people stood up for independence and freedom, and national unification. The scars of the war still remain."
According to Reuters, the spokesman's comments went like this:
"Vietnamese fought for "a righteous cause" during the U.S. war but preferred to focus on the present, a government spokesman said on Thursday in reaction to President George W. Bush's speech comparing the Iraq and Vietnam conflicts.
"The war leaves consequences that are still visible today, and so are our memories," Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Le Dung said at one of his twice-monthly media briefings.
"But as a nation with a tradition that treasures peace, we are determined to not forget the past but value the present and look forward to a better future with other countries including the United States."
As for my own crusade against the Japan-Iraq analogy, Asahi chimes in with "US President Equates Pre-War Japan with Al-Qaeda, Criticisms toward His View of History". The article gives a somewhat misleading impression that his take on Japan was a big part of the focus of the criticism. (Actually, it seems to have gone almost unnoticed in the US media in the shadows of the Vietnam analogy.) The article is harshly critical of President Bush, closing with:
Mr. Bush depends on his war against terror, but exposed his lack of understanding for the history and culture of other countries including Japan. [The speech] omits inconvenient facts and appeals to the domestic constituency with America's "idealism" and "good intentions".
Speaking of inconvenient facts, Asahi was once one of the foremost proponents of an aggressive foreign policy, going all the way back to its role in touching off the Hibiya Riots.
Yomiuri, reporting from Washington, is non-committal on that point in "US President Appeals for Continuation of Engagement in Iraq, Comparing it with 'Japan's Democratization'", the correspondent confining herself to the following:
[President Bush] introduced a distinct view of history to the effect that freedom expanded into and established itself in Japan, Korea and elsewhere in Asia through US involvement.
Note the use of the word "独自" (original; 《fml》 peculiar; of one's own; unique according to one on-line dictionary; I have translated it as "distinct") in the original text. I think that there is an understated sense of irony there, but maybe that's just me. More significantly, the first Yomiuri article out of its Bangkok bureau seems to have gone to some trouble to produce an article critical of President Bush's Iraq policy while the latter from its Washington correspondent is distinctly neutral otherwise.
The Vietnamese MOF spokesman expressed displeasure,…… saying, "To the people, [the war] was a fight for justice."
The article closes with another quote from the spokesman:
"The people stood up for independence and freedom, and national unification. The scars of the war still remain."
According to Reuters, the spokesman's comments went like this:
"Vietnamese fought for "a righteous cause" during the U.S. war but preferred to focus on the present, a government spokesman said on Thursday in reaction to President George W. Bush's speech comparing the Iraq and Vietnam conflicts.
"The war leaves consequences that are still visible today, and so are our memories," Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Le Dung said at one of his twice-monthly media briefings.
"But as a nation with a tradition that treasures peace, we are determined to not forget the past but value the present and look forward to a better future with other countries including the United States."
As for my own crusade against the Japan-Iraq analogy, Asahi chimes in with "US President Equates Pre-War Japan with Al-Qaeda, Criticisms toward His View of History". The article gives a somewhat misleading impression that his take on Japan was a big part of the focus of the criticism. (Actually, it seems to have gone almost unnoticed in the US media in the shadows of the Vietnam analogy.) The article is harshly critical of President Bush, closing with:
Mr. Bush depends on his war against terror, but exposed his lack of understanding for the history and culture of other countries including Japan. [The speech] omits inconvenient facts and appeals to the domestic constituency with America's "idealism" and "good intentions".
Speaking of inconvenient facts, Asahi was once one of the foremost proponents of an aggressive foreign policy, going all the way back to its role in touching off the Hibiya Riots.
Yomiuri, reporting from Washington, is non-committal on that point in "US President Appeals for Continuation of Engagement in Iraq, Comparing it with 'Japan's Democratization'", the correspondent confining herself to the following:
[President Bush] introduced a distinct view of history to the effect that freedom expanded into and established itself in Japan, Korea and elsewhere in Asia through US involvement.
Note the use of the word "独自" (original; 《fml》 peculiar; of one's own; unique according to one on-line dictionary; I have translated it as "distinct") in the original text. I think that there is an understated sense of irony there, but maybe that's just me. More significantly, the first Yomiuri article out of its Bangkok bureau seems to have gone to some trouble to produce an article critical of President Bush's Iraq policy while the latter from its Washington correspondent is distinctly neutral otherwise.
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