I think that Ichiro Ozawa and the DPJ have received something of a bad rap for its agricultural policy, which many people have contrasted unfavorably with the LDP-MAFF’s big business-oriented, top-down-cartelistic approach. I think this is a misperception to which I have succumbed myself in the past.
Helping Ozawa beat the rap is easy: the basic fits-all-sizes, direct payment (i.e. income subsidy) approach including frills for remote locations and organic farming appears in the 2005 election manifesto, complete with the 1-trillion yen/yr price tag. So if you want to blame someone, blame Katsuya Okada, not Ozawa.
The DPJ’s alleged sins require a little more explanation, although the fact that the program had been in place before Ozawa grabbed the reins—or the rein him, it’s kind of hard to tell with Ozawa—and possibly before suggests of itself that it is grounded in genuine socio-economic policy goals and is not merely a rural version of DPJ helicopter money tactics. In fact, the DPJ’s direct income support is more market-friendly than the LDP-MAFF’s “size matters” strategy, since it basically places the outcome of the price mechanism above the judgment of politicians and bureaucrats. There’s the 1 trillion yen price tag, but we won’t be able to pass judgment on it until we see the DPJ’s FY2010 budget and its likely four-year policy program coterminous with the Lower House mandate*.
I’m not saying that one agricultural policy is inherently better than the other. In fact, both sides shy away from the third rail, which is the tax regime that incents Japanese farmers to hold on to their smallholds, so what we have here is something of a pot-v.-kettle standoff, except that both sides studiously avoid mention of their respective backsides.
* I am pretty skeptical, but maybe that’s my ex-bureaucrat bias doing the thinking. In any case, I genuinely hope they succeed; I’m not going to do a Rush Limbaugh.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
Asahi Superimposes the Tokyo Results onto the Lower House Election—Not so Fast
Asahi makes an attempt to translate the results of the Tokyo’s Prefectural Assembly election to its single-member districts (SMDs) in the Lower House of the national Diet*. According to the report, the DPJ comes out ahead in 24 out of the 25 SMDs, and all 25 if you include the successful Networks candidate—which as I’ve noted before supports the DPJ in national elections—that the DPJ supported in the remaining one. So does that mean that the DPJ will sweep the board come 30 August? (Which reminds me, happy birthday CAO.)
Not so fast. If you are going to count the Network seat as a DPJ gimmie, then the LDP will surely want to add the Komeito votes in the national tally. The LDP and Komeito will put up only one candidate in each of the 300 SMD elections nationwide between the two. The LDP-Komeito vote combined take would beat the DPJ in 7 out of 15 seats in the Tokyo SMDS included in the 3-seat-and-up multi-member districts that Komeito did contest. That’s not really fair either. You have to add to the DPJ tally the Network votes—as well as a portion of the Communist vote in the SMDs where the JCP will not put up candidates. No matter. My point is that counting the Network seat without taking into account the Kometo vote is wishfulAsahi thinking.
* I’ve reproduced the relevant Asahi image at the top since Asahi usually takes its material off-line very quickly. Asahi, like most of the Japanese mass media, essentially hates the Internet.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
A Little Historical Perspective on the Tokyo Election
Yomiuri says that 13.44% of eligible voters had voted by 11AM, up 3.19 percentage points from the 2005 elections, but down from the 3.98 percentage point margin at 9AM. So let’s say that this election winds up 3 percentage points ahead of the 2005 election: such a turnout, at 46.99%, would place the election at—14th out of 16 post-WW II Tokyo Prefectural Assembly elections. This should help political parties with rock-solid constituencies, such as Komeito and the Communist Party. It would also be an indication of public dissatisfaction over the choice between the LDP and DPJ as the core of the next national administration.
Historically, turnout has followed a downward trend everywhere and Tokyo is no exception. The assembly election turnout dropped from a 1959 high of 70.13%*, up from 1955’s 59.63%—very low for those early years—to a 1998 low of 40.80%.
But the peaks and troughs tell a story of their own. The 1959 peak coincided with the national battle over the renewal of the Japan-U.S. security relationship that was to reach its peak with the signing of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan on 19 January 1960, while the low point reached in the previous 1955 election had been preceded by a Lower House general election only a couple of months earlier. The second lowest at a 43.99% turnout, the 2005 assembly election preceded Prime Minister Koizumi’s Post Office election by a couple of months, but nobody had an inkling at the time that one month later Koizumi would dissolve the Lower House and call an election.
Although I won’t rule out the possibility that a more thorough examination may show otherwise, these examples suggest that the interest of Tokyo voters in the assembly election waxes and wanes with their interest in the national political scene. From this point of view, the disinterest demonstrated by a turnout in the mid 40 percentile range, will speak volumes about the disappointment on the part of the public on the political parties across the board.
Historically, turnout has followed a downward trend everywhere and Tokyo is no exception. The assembly election turnout dropped from a 1959 high of 70.13%*, up from 1955’s 59.63%—very low for those early years—to a 1998 low of 40.80%.
But the peaks and troughs tell a story of their own. The 1959 peak coincided with the national battle over the renewal of the Japan-U.S. security relationship that was to reach its peak with the signing of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan on 19 January 1960, while the low point reached in the previous 1955 election had been preceded by a Lower House general election only a couple of months earlier. The second lowest at a 43.99% turnout, the 2005 assembly election preceded Prime Minister Koizumi’s Post Office election by a couple of months, but nobody had an inkling at the time that one month later Koizumi would dissolve the Lower House and call an election.
Although I won’t rule out the possibility that a more thorough examination may show otherwise, these examples suggest that the interest of Tokyo voters in the assembly election waxes and wanes with their interest in the national political scene. From this point of view, the disinterest demonstrated by a turnout in the mid 40 percentile range, will speak volumes about the disappointment on the part of the public on the political parties across the board.
Last Thought before the Tokyo Election
Actually, the polls have been open since 7:00AM and Asahi says voting in the first two hours was 3.98% of total eligible voters, up from 2005’s 3.20%. Could be people are out early, with a forecast of afternoon rain, but a high turnout will hurt the LDP and Komeito, who know that non-partisan voters are more likely to float to the opposition. Which reminds me of something that has been nagging me: Why did Aso draw attention to the elction by making himself so visible in the campaign? It drew media attention, and also made his denials of national impact ring hollow. That is like pushing for his own downfall before he gets to call snap election.
That’s it for now. I’ll get to your comments, Ross and Mark, later in the day.
That’s it for now. I’ll get to your comments, Ross and Mark, later in the day.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Notes on Tomorrow’s Tokyo Prefectural Assembly Election
The Aso camp has been insistent that it will treat a LDP-Komeito combined majority in tomorrow’s (12 July) Tokyo Prefectural Assembly election as a victory. It has also been downplaying the importance of the election, claiming that it is not a referendum on the Aso administration. Let’s take a look at the first point.
Currently, the LDP and Komeito hold 48 and 22 seats respectively for a total of 70 seats; they must keep 64 seats (out of the 127 seats) to maintain a joint majority. Let’s assume that Komeito with its bedrock Sokagakkai support keeps 22 seats. This means that the LDP takes the whole 6-seat hit, which leaves it with 42 seats. Now, assume that the DPJ keeps its 33 seats while capturing the 3 seats the national coalition partners lose, as well as the 2 currently vacant seats. This means that everyone else holds on to what it has—Communists 13, Tokyo Consumers’ Network 4, Social Democrats 0, others 1, and independents 3—and the DPJ winds up with 127 – 64 – (13 + 4 + 1 + 3) = 52, a 10-seat advantage over the LDP, with 42. Now, the Komeito may win or lose a few seats of its own, and the Communists may grab a few more on their own, God knows from whom. Still, the message remains clear: in any scenario where the smaller parties maintain their ground—a narrow LDP-Komeito victory over the DPJ is highly likely to leave the LDP badly outdistanced by the DPJ on a one-on-one basis*.
This has serious implications in a national election. Note that the 127-seat Tokyo Prefectural Assembly electoral districts consist of 2 eight-seat districts, 3 six-seaters, 3 five-seaters, 6 four-seaters, 5 three-seaters, 16 two-seaters and 7 one-seaters. This means that less than 7% of the seats are contested in first-past-the-stile elections in contrast to the national Lower House election, where the 25 single-seat districts, or almost 60% of the 42 Tokyo seats, will be subject to winner-take-all contests. In short, even a relative modest popular-vote victory can mean a landslide victory for the winner, while votes for smaller parties will be of much less significance in the outcome.
But can the LDP achieve even this modest goal?
The 4-5 July Yomiuri public opinion poll gives the following percentage breakdown of the Tokyo residents’ voting intentions for the 12 July election (2005 poll in parentheses):
Note also that he DPJ does even better on a question regarding the national Lower House election, at 39.8% to 25.4% (LDP 20.8%, Komeito 4.6%). This is Tokyo, where the voters are fickle, and progressive. But it’s hard to believe that the Aso administration can withstand yet another loss—which, unlike gubernatorial and mayoral elections, cannot be blamed on the candidate—and lead the LDP into the Lower House election.
* There’s also the Tokyo Seikatsusha Nettowaaku, or Tokyo Consumers’ Network. The Network is a political offshoot of the consumers’ cooperative movement consisting mostly of women. It now holds four seats in the Tokyo Prefectural Assembly and—most important for the purposes of this post—supports the DPJ in the national election. It’s not exactly Komeito, but it’s not zero-seat JSDP either, even though it has very low name recognition. If it does well in the Tokyo election, like the vote for the Communists, the results must be seen as yet another sign of dissatisfaction with the status quo, including the DPJ.
** Since nothing notable happened between the weekend Yomiuri poll and my Monday stroll at the train station, I must admit that, unless some Communist supporters are hiding their intent from the pollsters, which is always a possibility, the Communist surge so far exists only in my imagination—and perhaps my hometown, a traditional Communist stronghold. So it’s likely that the support for the DPJ that has been extended to local elections of late is holding firm in Tokyo as well. In the same context, I think that it is significant that 42.7% of the responders showed no preference for any party.
Currently, the LDP and Komeito hold 48 and 22 seats respectively for a total of 70 seats; they must keep 64 seats (out of the 127 seats) to maintain a joint majority. Let’s assume that Komeito with its bedrock Sokagakkai support keeps 22 seats. This means that the LDP takes the whole 6-seat hit, which leaves it with 42 seats. Now, assume that the DPJ keeps its 33 seats while capturing the 3 seats the national coalition partners lose, as well as the 2 currently vacant seats. This means that everyone else holds on to what it has—Communists 13, Tokyo Consumers’ Network 4, Social Democrats 0, others 1, and independents 3—and the DPJ winds up with 127 – 64 – (13 + 4 + 1 + 3) = 52, a 10-seat advantage over the LDP, with 42. Now, the Komeito may win or lose a few seats of its own, and the Communists may grab a few more on their own, God knows from whom. Still, the message remains clear: in any scenario where the smaller parties maintain their ground—a narrow LDP-Komeito victory over the DPJ is highly likely to leave the LDP badly outdistanced by the DPJ on a one-on-one basis*.
This has serious implications in a national election. Note that the 127-seat Tokyo Prefectural Assembly electoral districts consist of 2 eight-seat districts, 3 six-seaters, 3 five-seaters, 6 four-seaters, 5 three-seaters, 16 two-seaters and 7 one-seaters. This means that less than 7% of the seats are contested in first-past-the-stile elections in contrast to the national Lower House election, where the 25 single-seat districts, or almost 60% of the 42 Tokyo seats, will be subject to winner-take-all contests. In short, even a relative modest popular-vote victory can mean a landslide victory for the winner, while votes for smaller parties will be of much less significance in the outcome.
But can the LDP achieve even this modest goal?
The 4-5 July Yomiuri public opinion poll gives the following percentage breakdown of the Tokyo residents’ voting intentions for the 12 July election (2005 poll in parentheses):
DPJ……..29.4 (14.3)The DPJ beats the LDP and Komeito combined 29.4% to 22.0. This means that even if Komeito successfully throws all the Sokagakkai votes to the LDP in the 23 single- and two-seat districts and the LDP does a better job of splitting its votes between its multiple contenders in the 3-seat and up districts, the LDP has a huge a uphill battle to gain enough seats to maintain a LDP-Komeito joint majority. It looks likely that the LDP and the Komeito will hang together**.
LDP………: 16.9 (25.9)
Komeito….: 5.1 ( 6.7)
JCP……….: 4.5 ( 4.8)
SDP……….: 0.8
No answer : 42.7%
Note also that he DPJ does even better on a question regarding the national Lower House election, at 39.8% to 25.4% (LDP 20.8%, Komeito 4.6%). This is Tokyo, where the voters are fickle, and progressive. But it’s hard to believe that the Aso administration can withstand yet another loss—which, unlike gubernatorial and mayoral elections, cannot be blamed on the candidate—and lead the LDP into the Lower House election.
* There’s also the Tokyo Seikatsusha Nettowaaku, or Tokyo Consumers’ Network. The Network is a political offshoot of the consumers’ cooperative movement consisting mostly of women. It now holds four seats in the Tokyo Prefectural Assembly and—most important for the purposes of this post—supports the DPJ in the national election. It’s not exactly Komeito, but it’s not zero-seat JSDP either, even though it has very low name recognition. If it does well in the Tokyo election, like the vote for the Communists, the results must be seen as yet another sign of dissatisfaction with the status quo, including the DPJ.
** Since nothing notable happened between the weekend Yomiuri poll and my Monday stroll at the train station, I must admit that, unless some Communist supporters are hiding their intent from the pollsters, which is always a possibility, the Communist surge so far exists only in my imagination—and perhaps my hometown, a traditional Communist stronghold. So it’s likely that the support for the DPJ that has been extended to local elections of late is holding firm in Tokyo as well. In the same context, I think that it is significant that 42.7% of the responders showed no preference for any party.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Yukio Hatoyama’s Money Woes Take a Turn for the Worse
DPJ leader Yukio Hatoyama’s issues with regard to his political finances management organization (PFMO) keep getting weirder. When he addressed the issue publicly on 2 July after completing an internal investigation employing a team of lawyers, he was left to guessing why the aide had used the names of unsuspecting acquaintances, some of them dead, to disguise illegal transfers from Hatoyama’s private account by recording them as donations from individuals in reports filed with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in compliance with legal requirements and available to the general public on the Internet*. I had been wondering why he or the team of lawyers hadn’t bothered to ask when, a week later, the saga took another turn as it was revealed that Hatoyama’s PFMO had sought and obtained from MIAC certificates that would enable a large number of these same unsuspecting individuals to claim tax credits for their donations. Now, at least some of these individuals—the ones who were alive at the time we assume—are claiming that yes, they had made those donations after all.
The best case scenario for the Hatoyama camp is that the “investigation” was so shoddy that the lawyers struck out a large number of individual donors without bothering to ask them if they had actually made those donations or not. The worst case scenario is that the aide obtained permission to use the names of Hatoyama acquaintances, and took the necessary measures to give them tax benefits as a quid pro quo, but forgot about that when he gave evidence during the internal investigation. In any case, like so many other “internal” investigations during institutional crises, it appears that the Hatoyama camp has avoided the kind of thorough process that uncovers questions that it would avoid if it only could. Except it couldn’t—wishing rarely makes things come true—and the result is a stream of embarrassing and often illegal revelations that could wind up destroying Hatoyama’s bid for the Prime Minister’s chair.
I think that attention will soon turn to what Hatoyama knew and when. He needs to explain himself, and do so soon, or he will be obliged to leave.
* It amazes me that the LDP and DPJ have not been using the information on the MIAC website to better political advantage. Is this a Japanese politics version of the MAD doctrine? But shouldn’t at least the JCP and Socialists be doing something about this?
The best case scenario for the Hatoyama camp is that the “investigation” was so shoddy that the lawyers struck out a large number of individual donors without bothering to ask them if they had actually made those donations or not. The worst case scenario is that the aide obtained permission to use the names of Hatoyama acquaintances, and took the necessary measures to give them tax benefits as a quid pro quo, but forgot about that when he gave evidence during the internal investigation. In any case, like so many other “internal” investigations during institutional crises, it appears that the Hatoyama camp has avoided the kind of thorough process that uncovers questions that it would avoid if it only could. Except it couldn’t—wishing rarely makes things come true—and the result is a stream of embarrassing and often illegal revelations that could wind up destroying Hatoyama’s bid for the Prime Minister’s chair.
I think that attention will soon turn to what Hatoyama knew and when. He needs to explain himself, and do so soon, or he will be obliged to leave.
* It amazes me that the LDP and DPJ have not been using the information on the MIAC website to better political advantage. Is this a Japanese politics version of the MAD doctrine? But shouldn’t at least the JCP and Socialists be doing something about this?
Everybody’s Dumping on the LDP…So What Are the Alternatives?
The other day, I talked to some people who are intimately involved with but not of the LDP. This and other conversations only confirm what we’ve been seeing in the mainstream media (and the tabloids) in recent months: Aso has been an unmitigated disaster, and the LDP is in total disarray. I’ve also heard from people associated with the LDP/DPJ world speculating about a Communist surge in the 12 July Tokyo Prefectural Assembly election, or even personally voting, just maybe just voting, for the JCP.
The LDP is set to lose, in Tokyo as well as the national election, but the DPJ fails to inspire while the Socialists aka Social Democrats, long dead as the go-to protest party, has barely enough life to beg for a seat at the upcoming DPJ feast (faintly echoing the Socialists’ unholy coalition with the LDP that spawned the ill-fated Murayama Administration and destroyed the Socialists for most practical purposes). And I keep coming across anecdotal evidence that favors the JCP.
I can’t imagine the JCP coming in ahead of the Komeito in Tokyo or nationally. Still, it’s positioning itself to be the only place to go if you want to use your protest vote instead of sitting this year out—and there are an awful lot of undecided floaters still out there. If the floater do decide to go to the voting stations, chances are, they’ll end up denying a working majority to both coalitions…in Tokyo and across the nation. For that alone, the Sunday Tokyo election is worth watching.
Mark, I’ll try to get back to you over the weekend.
The LDP is set to lose, in Tokyo as well as the national election, but the DPJ fails to inspire while the Socialists aka Social Democrats, long dead as the go-to protest party, has barely enough life to beg for a seat at the upcoming DPJ feast (faintly echoing the Socialists’ unholy coalition with the LDP that spawned the ill-fated Murayama Administration and destroyed the Socialists for most practical purposes). And I keep coming across anecdotal evidence that favors the JCP.
I can’t imagine the JCP coming in ahead of the Komeito in Tokyo or nationally. Still, it’s positioning itself to be the only place to go if you want to use your protest vote instead of sitting this year out—and there are an awful lot of undecided floaters still out there. If the floater do decide to go to the voting stations, chances are, they’ll end up denying a working majority to both coalitions…in Tokyo and across the nation. For that alone, the Sunday Tokyo election is worth watching.
Mark, I’ll try to get back to you over the weekend.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Rambling on about the Economy, More Mean Words about an Academic, etc., etc.
I couldn’t post the following as comment here since it was too long. Please read through the original post and comments if you want to make sense out of it.
My point is we should not criticize the person, but the idea. I think you’re missing out if you automatically discount ideas via their source.
There are only so many hours in a day, so many years in my life. I have no time to give voluntarily to people who have only wasted my time in return for my past attention. So the deal is this: I’m willing to read anything written in the English language about Japan by any idiot as long as it appears in a major media or other influential outlets (say, WaPo or Foreign Affairs) and is not overly long. It is, like a murder case, significant in its own right. To give an example that you would understand, liberal commentators regularly read and watch the likes of Rush Limbaugh, but won’t visit some raving right-wing blogger getting five hits a day. I also respond to any non-spam comments on my blog. I invite people to a dialog; it would be wrong for me to turn around and refuse it.
"The Japanese monetary base has taken similar leaps in past years while money supply remained stubbornly stable. ... You’ll have to turn to a real economist to have a meaningful discussion about the long-term implications if any of future exchange rates and short-term fluctuations in the US monetary base."
Don't we have an obligation to try and figure out this stuff for ourselves? How are we suppose to vote if we have to turn to various economists to determine long-range implications?
No, no more than we have the obligation to solve the Four Color Theorem—both of which BTW I have tried my hands at, unsuccessfully, at various moments in my life. Otherwise, 100% (give or take a few nano-percentage points) of the voting public would be disqualified from voting. In any case, fluctuations in the monetary base are a short-term phenomenon.
i.) The increase in the US monetary base dwarves that of Japan's during the BOJ quantitative easing period (especially if you allow for the time factor).
I think this highlights the point that fluctuations in the monetary base are a bad point to launch an argument on the long-term consequences of Obama/Bernanke’s economic policies.
I think it very unlikely the Fed will be able to reduce these holdings any time in the near future.
Okay, let’s see what happens.
iii.) The BOJ's quantitative easing was made easier by Japan's trade surplus and a high amount of savings within Japan.
iv.) America's will be made all that much harder by the exact opposite, a high level of borrowing and a trade deficit
You could also make the argument that the Fed has carried out a far more massive expansion of the money supply without creating hyperinflation or an asset bubble. In any case, since I don’t have the economic and financial expertise, I’ll just have to wait to see the long-term outcome.
v.) Japan's debt is mostly to Japanese savers, America's debt is to a large extent to foreign holders. Of course, the "foreigners" don't want to dump their bonds for obvious reasons, but other than blatant self-interest, there's nothing to stop them from doing this. They've no sense of duty to America.
By implication, I assume that it is the “sense of duty to Japan” that will keep Japanese pension fund managers buying those low-yield government bonds and holding on to them in the face of rising inflationary expectations in the future. Okay, let’s see what happens if and when the time comes.
Having spent more time on this issue over the last week, I will say that at this point, the Fed could still find some way to avoid future inflation. However, I see absolutely no political will to do so. When push comes to shove, my expectation is the Fed will keep on printing. We'll have to wait and see. (I predict very serious inflation in six months to three years.)
I have to confess that the lack of inflation (and the disappearance of hyperinflation in all but the most god-forsaken locations of this planet) since, say, the nineties, has mystified me. So let’s see if you prediction of “serious inflation” (would you care to put a number to that? 6% in US dollars? 7? 10%? 20%?) comes true.
By decoupling I mean I fail to understand why China needs America as much as America needs China…. Why can't China just make goods for themselves?
I hope I’m not misquoting you here by way of abridgement. The Chinese government obviously saw the value of keeping the export and related sectors booming in order to generate income and wealth. If it sees a serious threat of dollar inflation coming and stop buying up the foreign exchange generated by Chinese exports, this will push up the yuan, which in turn will cause Chinese trade surplus to fall and external investments to rise. The U.S. trade balance will depend to a great extent on how exchange rates and inflation rates balance out. I don’t see this in terms of one “needing” the other more than the other way around. BTW, it’s really the Chinese government’s decision to make (if it wants to) in the short-run, since it is the one that is buying up the foreign exchange generated by the Chinese trade surplus (and net inbound foreign investment) to maintain exchange rates at the desired levels.
Of course Chinese economic actors can and do make lots of stuff, some of it for the Chinese market, others for exports. They might, or might not, be able to satisfy the entire domestic demand for manufactured goods and tradable services. But I don’t think even the USSR tried that during the height of the Cold War.
My point is we should not criticize the person, but the idea. I think you’re missing out if you automatically discount ideas via their source.
There are only so many hours in a day, so many years in my life. I have no time to give voluntarily to people who have only wasted my time in return for my past attention. So the deal is this: I’m willing to read anything written in the English language about Japan by any idiot as long as it appears in a major media or other influential outlets (say, WaPo or Foreign Affairs) and is not overly long. It is, like a murder case, significant in its own right. To give an example that you would understand, liberal commentators regularly read and watch the likes of Rush Limbaugh, but won’t visit some raving right-wing blogger getting five hits a day. I also respond to any non-spam comments on my blog. I invite people to a dialog; it would be wrong for me to turn around and refuse it.
"The Japanese monetary base has taken similar leaps in past years while money supply remained stubbornly stable. ... You’ll have to turn to a real economist to have a meaningful discussion about the long-term implications if any of future exchange rates and short-term fluctuations in the US monetary base."
Don't we have an obligation to try and figure out this stuff for ourselves? How are we suppose to vote if we have to turn to various economists to determine long-range implications?
No, no more than we have the obligation to solve the Four Color Theorem—both of which BTW I have tried my hands at, unsuccessfully, at various moments in my life. Otherwise, 100% (give or take a few nano-percentage points) of the voting public would be disqualified from voting. In any case, fluctuations in the monetary base are a short-term phenomenon.
i.) The increase in the US monetary base dwarves that of Japan's during the BOJ quantitative easing period (especially if you allow for the time factor).
I think this highlights the point that fluctuations in the monetary base are a bad point to launch an argument on the long-term consequences of Obama/Bernanke’s economic policies.
I think it very unlikely the Fed will be able to reduce these holdings any time in the near future.
Okay, let’s see what happens.
iii.) The BOJ's quantitative easing was made easier by Japan's trade surplus and a high amount of savings within Japan.
iv.) America's will be made all that much harder by the exact opposite, a high level of borrowing and a trade deficit
You could also make the argument that the Fed has carried out a far more massive expansion of the money supply without creating hyperinflation or an asset bubble. In any case, since I don’t have the economic and financial expertise, I’ll just have to wait to see the long-term outcome.
v.) Japan's debt is mostly to Japanese savers, America's debt is to a large extent to foreign holders. Of course, the "foreigners" don't want to dump their bonds for obvious reasons, but other than blatant self-interest, there's nothing to stop them from doing this. They've no sense of duty to America.
By implication, I assume that it is the “sense of duty to Japan” that will keep Japanese pension fund managers buying those low-yield government bonds and holding on to them in the face of rising inflationary expectations in the future. Okay, let’s see what happens if and when the time comes.
Having spent more time on this issue over the last week, I will say that at this point, the Fed could still find some way to avoid future inflation. However, I see absolutely no political will to do so. When push comes to shove, my expectation is the Fed will keep on printing. We'll have to wait and see. (I predict very serious inflation in six months to three years.)
I have to confess that the lack of inflation (and the disappearance of hyperinflation in all but the most god-forsaken locations of this planet) since, say, the nineties, has mystified me. So let’s see if you prediction of “serious inflation” (would you care to put a number to that? 6% in US dollars? 7? 10%? 20%?) comes true.
By decoupling I mean I fail to understand why China needs America as much as America needs China…. Why can't China just make goods for themselves?
I hope I’m not misquoting you here by way of abridgement. The Chinese government obviously saw the value of keeping the export and related sectors booming in order to generate income and wealth. If it sees a serious threat of dollar inflation coming and stop buying up the foreign exchange generated by Chinese exports, this will push up the yuan, which in turn will cause Chinese trade surplus to fall and external investments to rise. The U.S. trade balance will depend to a great extent on how exchange rates and inflation rates balance out. I don’t see this in terms of one “needing” the other more than the other way around. BTW, it’s really the Chinese government’s decision to make (if it wants to) in the short-run, since it is the one that is buying up the foreign exchange generated by the Chinese trade surplus (and net inbound foreign investment) to maintain exchange rates at the desired levels.
Of course Chinese economic actors can and do make lots of stuff, some of it for the Chinese market, others for exports. They might, or might not, be able to satisfy the entire domestic demand for manufactured goods and tradable services. But I don’t think even the USSR tried that during the height of the Cold War.
A Brief Look at the Seiwa-kai’s Books
The FY2007 political financing report from the Seiwa-kai,, currently the largest LDP faction, which has not totally coincidentally produced four successive Prime Ministers—Mori, Koizumi, Abe and Fukuda—between 2000-2008 and has also stood behind incumbent Taro Aso’s “successful” bid, can be found here.
As with Prime Minister Aso’s Ikou-kai, some Seiwa-kai members are more equal than others. Rank-and-file Diet members paid 600,000 in dues, but senior members gave up 1,200,000 and ex-Diet members still in play got a discount rate of 350,000*. Mori’s Seifu-kai contributed 20,000,000—as did newly anointed faction head Nobutaka Machimura’s Shinyu-kai. Hidenao Nakagawa (now persona non grata) coughed up 10,000,000. arank-and-file Diet member received 2,000,000 in return. Now, this is only half of the 4,000,000 that Aso’s faction members received in the same year. But Upper House Seiwa-kai members who faced election that year received 5,000,000, while losers (and past losers who were still active) got as little extra at 7,000,000 or 10,000,000. Overall, the much larger Seiwa-kai appears to have taken a tailor-made approach in contrast to the Aso faction’s one-size-fits-all system, and was moreover able to help, indeed give an extra boost to, its less fortunate members. Size matters, it seems. But how different is that from any other business?
There are some variations, but that’s the general idea.
As with Prime Minister Aso’s Ikou-kai, some Seiwa-kai members are more equal than others. Rank-and-file Diet members paid 600,000 in dues, but senior members gave up 1,200,000 and ex-Diet members still in play got a discount rate of 350,000*. Mori’s Seifu-kai contributed 20,000,000—as did newly anointed faction head Nobutaka Machimura’s Shinyu-kai. Hidenao Nakagawa (now persona non grata) coughed up 10,000,000. arank-and-file Diet member received 2,000,000 in return. Now, this is only half of the 4,000,000 that Aso’s faction members received in the same year. But Upper House Seiwa-kai members who faced election that year received 5,000,000, while losers (and past losers who were still active) got as little extra at 7,000,000 or 10,000,000. Overall, the much larger Seiwa-kai appears to have taken a tailor-made approach in contrast to the Aso faction’s one-size-fits-all system, and was moreover able to help, indeed give an extra boost to, its less fortunate members. Size matters, it seems. But how different is that from any other business?
There are some variations, but that’s the general idea.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Sights along the Taro Aso Money Trail
The blog gifts you on this the Tanabatas Day with political financing money miscellany.
According to its FY2007 report filed with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, Yukio Hatoyama’s political finances management organization raked in 208,705,324 yen (of which 8,395,145 were carried over from FY2006) that year while incurring 159,665,501 in expenditures. Of the revenue, 49,926,000 came by way of individual donations, while 99,330,000 came from “political organizations” i.e. the DPJ. Most of the difference was made up by 45,830,000 from a single fundraising party held on 3 December 2007. Nastay! But what about the other side?
During the same period, according to the FY2007 report it filed, Taro Aso’s political finances management organization took in 193,343,250 while spending 143,911,327. However, 56,773,691 consisted of carryover from the previous FY, so the true gross revenue for FY2007 was only 136,569,559. Where donations were concerned, Aso received only 9,660,000 from individuals and 39,972,000 from political organizations. Most of the difference was made up by 84,734,240 from a single fundraising party held on 8 June 2007.
The donations from political organizations are of particular interest though. For the sole reason for the existence of six of the eleven organizations named as 50,000-and-up donors and yielding 31,500,000 or 78.8% of those donations appears to be holding once-a-year fundraising parties for Aso and his faction members*…and I don’t think the party tickets were being snapped up by goth-lolis and B-Boys. Unlike Hatoyama’s case, it’s perfectly legal, but it makes you wonder. In fact, if you go through all the reports filed at the MIAC portal, you are likely to come to the conclusion that fundraising parties will leave a gaping loophole in the DPJ pledge to ban corporate donations altogether.
There’s an interesting side story here. The Japanese Communist Party has seized on the corporate money issue**. In fact, their main line of attack for the election season appears to be that the LDP and DPJ are two peas in a pod. Yesterday, a top JCP official drew an unusually large crowd in front of the local train station. He was campaigning for the 12 July Tokyo Prefectural Assembly election, which is being seen as a virtual referendum on the Aso administration. As I passed by twice a couple of minutes apart, the official was hammering on the two-peas-in-a-pod message with a couple of talking points: the Tokyo DPJ’s near-consistent support for Governor Ishihara’s legislative initiatives***—and corporate money. The mostly middle-aged and elderly audience—it’s that kind of a neighborhood—appeared to be soaking it up. I came away with the feeling that the Communists are going to capture a large chunk of the protest vote. It’s a side story worth keeping an eye on, because if that happens, it will have ramifications beyond the 12 July Tokyo election.
* The national associations of doctors and pharmaceuticals accounted for 7,000,000 or 17.5%, or most of the remainder. The expenditures are also of some interest. Filed reports show that Aso’s organizations donated 21,500,000 (including 11,500,000 from his political finance management organization) to his faction’s political finance management organization in addition to 550,000 in annual dues from his own pocket. His political finance management organization received 4,000,000 in return like those of all the other faction members. 21,500,000 – 4,000,000 = 16,500,000 appears to be the price he pays for ownership. Even a twenty-member faction is an expensive plaything. Former owner Yohei Kono and Taro Kono pay 2,000,000 and 2,560,000 respectively. Other faction members only paid the 550,000 each in dues. Incidentally, 4,000,000 – 550,000 = 3,450,000 covers about 5% of the annual costs incurred by an LDP Diet member running a very tight ship.
** The Social Democrats have their own issues regarding labor unions. Besides, they want to hitch a ride on the DPJ bandwagon.
*** Governor Ishihara is campaigning hard for the Tokyo LDP. I think it means that his two political sons will not be breaking out of the national LDP any time soon.
According to its FY2007 report filed with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, Yukio Hatoyama’s political finances management organization raked in 208,705,324 yen (of which 8,395,145 were carried over from FY2006) that year while incurring 159,665,501 in expenditures. Of the revenue, 49,926,000 came by way of individual donations, while 99,330,000 came from “political organizations” i.e. the DPJ. Most of the difference was made up by 45,830,000 from a single fundraising party held on 3 December 2007. Nastay! But what about the other side?
During the same period, according to the FY2007 report it filed, Taro Aso’s political finances management organization took in 193,343,250 while spending 143,911,327. However, 56,773,691 consisted of carryover from the previous FY, so the true gross revenue for FY2007 was only 136,569,559. Where donations were concerned, Aso received only 9,660,000 from individuals and 39,972,000 from political organizations. Most of the difference was made up by 84,734,240 from a single fundraising party held on 8 June 2007.
The donations from political organizations are of particular interest though. For the sole reason for the existence of six of the eleven organizations named as 50,000-and-up donors and yielding 31,500,000 or 78.8% of those donations appears to be holding once-a-year fundraising parties for Aso and his faction members*…and I don’t think the party tickets were being snapped up by goth-lolis and B-Boys. Unlike Hatoyama’s case, it’s perfectly legal, but it makes you wonder. In fact, if you go through all the reports filed at the MIAC portal, you are likely to come to the conclusion that fundraising parties will leave a gaping loophole in the DPJ pledge to ban corporate donations altogether.
There’s an interesting side story here. The Japanese Communist Party has seized on the corporate money issue**. In fact, their main line of attack for the election season appears to be that the LDP and DPJ are two peas in a pod. Yesterday, a top JCP official drew an unusually large crowd in front of the local train station. He was campaigning for the 12 July Tokyo Prefectural Assembly election, which is being seen as a virtual referendum on the Aso administration. As I passed by twice a couple of minutes apart, the official was hammering on the two-peas-in-a-pod message with a couple of talking points: the Tokyo DPJ’s near-consistent support for Governor Ishihara’s legislative initiatives***—and corporate money. The mostly middle-aged and elderly audience—it’s that kind of a neighborhood—appeared to be soaking it up. I came away with the feeling that the Communists are going to capture a large chunk of the protest vote. It’s a side story worth keeping an eye on, because if that happens, it will have ramifications beyond the 12 July Tokyo election.
* The national associations of doctors and pharmaceuticals accounted for 7,000,000 or 17.5%, or most of the remainder. The expenditures are also of some interest. Filed reports show that Aso’s organizations donated 21,500,000 (including 11,500,000 from his political finance management organization) to his faction’s political finance management organization in addition to 550,000 in annual dues from his own pocket. His political finance management organization received 4,000,000 in return like those of all the other faction members. 21,500,000 – 4,000,000 = 16,500,000 appears to be the price he pays for ownership. Even a twenty-member faction is an expensive plaything. Former owner Yohei Kono and Taro Kono pay 2,000,000 and 2,560,000 respectively. Other faction members only paid the 550,000 each in dues. Incidentally, 4,000,000 – 550,000 = 3,450,000 covers about 5% of the annual costs incurred by an LDP Diet member running a very tight ship.
** The Social Democrats have their own issues regarding labor unions. Besides, they want to hitch a ride on the DPJ bandwagon.
*** Governor Ishihara is campaigning hard for the Tokyo LDP. I think it means that his two political sons will not be breaking out of the national LDP any time soon.
Monday, July 06, 2009
Nakasone, LDP Elders, etc., etc…
My dialogue with Mark the Techie continues:
Why do you like Nakasone? And what do you think of his son, Hirofumi?
The elder Nakasone had—still has—a clear vision of his objectives as a statesman and held to it as best he could throughout his political life. For him, the political game was secondary. He understood the need to set his priorities accordingly, as can be seen from his handling of the Yasukuni controversy. He matched this purposeful approach with an eloquence that is sorely missing otherwise from post-WW II politics in Japan. He also put his personal stamp on administrative reform. He was a worthy representative of the LDP at the high watermark of the 1955 regime. His son appears to be an amicable, inoffensive representative of the more conservative elements of the LDP, nothing more, nothing less. He’s the son of a Prime Minister, yet has spent all his political life in the Upper House; go figure. I’d love to have him as a neighbor though.
In your original post, you seem to discount the power of the faction heads. But in your first reply, you claim that many younger politicians obey their elders. Who are these elders that have control of the younger politicians?
I haven’t done a good job of explaining myself, have I? Let me take another crack at this theme.
I am sorely disappointed with the genteel fifty-somethings who have failed to step up in the post-Koizumi years and instead allowed their elders to play the political game with the Prime Minister’s chair and senior party posts. (Remember that the generally untested Abe essentially had the Prime Minister’s job dropped in his lap by Koizumi.) Don’t they understand that politics is a blood sport? Yoshimi Watanabe id leave the LDP, but his new movement (with Kenji Eda) is unlikely to emerge as significant focal point in any post-electoral search for realignment. Pockets of youthful dissidence do flare up as the party leadership lurches from one crisis to another, but ultimately come to naught as their elders preach unity, leaving the impression of aimlessness and disarray in the face of pending disaster. The junior varsity for the opposition has an excuse; Ozawa, Hatoyama, and Kan are, after all, the founding fathers of the DPJ and its predecessors. Besides, Okada and—even more significantly—Maehara have taken their turns.
Faction heads and their deputies are not totally powerless, insofar as parliamentarians continue to see value in their faction membership. But Yoshiro Mori appears to maintain substantial influence over his faction although it has been some years since he yielded formal leadership. Within the same faction and possibly beyond, Yoshinao Nakagawa has emerged as a focal point for diehard reformists, precipitating a bitter intra-faction schism.
By the way, I find it curious that you separate foreign policy from economic policy. Based on the success of Japan during the post war period, I'd say a successful economic policy is the most integral part of a successful foreign policy. After the Iraq war, and after nearly a decade of a botched reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, it seems funny for an ex-MITI bureaucrat to split foreign policy and economic policy like that.
If your point is that a strong domestic economy is essential to achieving ambitious foreign policy goals, I can’t agree with you more.
Globalization? Is that what it's called? Interesting. But for the West, I think another word is more applicable. I think it's called de-globalization. Think of Gordon Brown and his "British jobs for British workers" spiel. Or think of Sarkozy and his admonition against exporting jobs to eastern Europe. Or think of the Buy American provision. But most importantly, think of GE. Nearly three decades ago, Jack Welch unleashed his shareholder value ideology. Good for shareholders. Not good for the current account. About a week ago, Jeff Immelt said the U.S. had outsourced too much, and needed to have a stronger manufacturing base. Quite a difference, wouldn't you say?
The economic downturn has created a backlash. Let’s see what happens other than Buy American provisions in Obama’s economic package (which the other OECD member countries are opposing) that goes beyond rhetoric. For example, will Sarkozy propose limitations on the free movement of labor and capital within the EU? Suspend Poland’s membership?
I'm sure Japan's continued support for the IMF gives some relief to the U.S. and Europe, but I would note that since the crisis began, it seems like Japan has been most active through the institutions it controls - the ADB, JBIC, etc.
Japan was the first to extend a substantial amount of money to the IMF during the current crisis. JBIC is basically the lender of last resorts for Japanese exports and foreign investment. It’s going into action as part of the government-sponsored emergency financing efforts. Nothing unusual in that. I don’t know what we’re doing with regard to ADB right now, but I doubt there’s anything new there as well.
I don't know what happened in Australia for most of the 20th century and I don't really see why Australia's switch to the Asian Football Federation is particularly important. On the other hand, I would note that Kevin Rudd seems to be a big advocate for this Asia-Pacific thingy. I wonder why? Also, I believe his budget calls for buying lots of military equipment for defense against China. Presumably, he will buy this equipment from the U.S. In addition, Australia continues to pester Japan on whaling. Furthermore, it recently killed the Rio Tinto deal with Chinalco. Throughout that process, I heard many voices in Australia who expressed concern about Chinese investment. Frankly, his recent actions have made me wonder if Kevin Rudd's professed affection for China was more a stunt to attempt to panic Japan - a stunt that backfired because Japan itself wants to get closer to China.
In 1972 Gough Whitlam came to power and started the process that transformed Australia, which till then had drawn a neat racial parallel with the far more malignant regime in South Africa. Essentially, White Australia decided to become Asia(-Pacific) Australia. Australia’s switch to the Asian Football Federation is a cultural symbol of this transformation.
As for relations with China, remember that when Rudd came to power, China was still the new black. I don’t think it had anything to do with Japan, a mature market as far as Australia’s natural resources and agricultural industry were concerned. But it’s easy to get worked up over natural resources when they’re still in the ground. I think that’s silly—unlike factories, no one can dismantle a mine and cart it off out of your national jurisdiction—but that’s the way the world works. In any case, China national champions and state investment vehicles, unlike say Norwegian or Qatar sovereign wealth funds, are more likely to follow the dictates of non-commercial interests. Connect this to the not unrelated authoritarian nature of China’s political regime and more or less inchoate fears about rising Chinese dominance, and I can understand where the public outcry was coming from.
I don’t know what exactly triggered the perceived shift in Australia’s defense posture. Maybe the strategic implications of a growing Chinese blue-water navy pushed the Australia’s national security establishment past the tipping point. I happen to think that the threat is greatly overestimated, but I can see how things might look quite different from a Southeast Asia/South Pacific perspective. I’ll believe it when I see an Australian aircraft carrier.
The “research” whaling issue, if I understand it correctly, addressed a highly emotive concern of a particular Labor Party constituency. I believe that the Rudd administration has become considerably more subdued since the kangaroo slaughter controversy—total nonsense in my view, but I don’t have a vote on this.
I agree that the U.S. is becoming less white, though I think the financial crisis could alter that trend somewhat. You say this will have powerful cultural and social implications. What are they? What changes will result? I am very interested in hearing what you have to say on this issue.
Note that I wrote in the present tense. There’s a natural progression from blackface vaudeville routines to the Jack Benny Show to I Spy to Eddie Murphy. Then there’s the greatly expanded role of Hispanics in pop music. These are just a couple of examples of profound changes in U.S. popular culture. (And what high culture exists that was once not popular?) Social change: public acceptance of mixed race couples. Basically, cultural and social barriers of all sorts are coming down in a browning of America.
Since America is by far the greatest post-WW II exporter of cultural and social constructs, this change affects the rest of the world—a world where Al Qaeda uses rap video to recruit terrorists. In a thousand years, unless humanity fcuks up royally (there’s a not insignificant chance of that happening), they’ll all be subscribing to variations of a global culture using variations of a language vaguely resembling English—and it’ll be America’s fault.
Why do you like Nakasone? And what do you think of his son, Hirofumi?
The elder Nakasone had—still has—a clear vision of his objectives as a statesman and held to it as best he could throughout his political life. For him, the political game was secondary. He understood the need to set his priorities accordingly, as can be seen from his handling of the Yasukuni controversy. He matched this purposeful approach with an eloquence that is sorely missing otherwise from post-WW II politics in Japan. He also put his personal stamp on administrative reform. He was a worthy representative of the LDP at the high watermark of the 1955 regime. His son appears to be an amicable, inoffensive representative of the more conservative elements of the LDP, nothing more, nothing less. He’s the son of a Prime Minister, yet has spent all his political life in the Upper House; go figure. I’d love to have him as a neighbor though.
In your original post, you seem to discount the power of the faction heads. But in your first reply, you claim that many younger politicians obey their elders. Who are these elders that have control of the younger politicians?
I haven’t done a good job of explaining myself, have I? Let me take another crack at this theme.
I am sorely disappointed with the genteel fifty-somethings who have failed to step up in the post-Koizumi years and instead allowed their elders to play the political game with the Prime Minister’s chair and senior party posts. (Remember that the generally untested Abe essentially had the Prime Minister’s job dropped in his lap by Koizumi.) Don’t they understand that politics is a blood sport? Yoshimi Watanabe id leave the LDP, but his new movement (with Kenji Eda) is unlikely to emerge as significant focal point in any post-electoral search for realignment. Pockets of youthful dissidence do flare up as the party leadership lurches from one crisis to another, but ultimately come to naught as their elders preach unity, leaving the impression of aimlessness and disarray in the face of pending disaster. The junior varsity for the opposition has an excuse; Ozawa, Hatoyama, and Kan are, after all, the founding fathers of the DPJ and its predecessors. Besides, Okada and—even more significantly—Maehara have taken their turns.
Faction heads and their deputies are not totally powerless, insofar as parliamentarians continue to see value in their faction membership. But Yoshiro Mori appears to maintain substantial influence over his faction although it has been some years since he yielded formal leadership. Within the same faction and possibly beyond, Yoshinao Nakagawa has emerged as a focal point for diehard reformists, precipitating a bitter intra-faction schism.
By the way, I find it curious that you separate foreign policy from economic policy. Based on the success of Japan during the post war period, I'd say a successful economic policy is the most integral part of a successful foreign policy. After the Iraq war, and after nearly a decade of a botched reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, it seems funny for an ex-MITI bureaucrat to split foreign policy and economic policy like that.
If your point is that a strong domestic economy is essential to achieving ambitious foreign policy goals, I can’t agree with you more.
Globalization? Is that what it's called? Interesting. But for the West, I think another word is more applicable. I think it's called de-globalization. Think of Gordon Brown and his "British jobs for British workers" spiel. Or think of Sarkozy and his admonition against exporting jobs to eastern Europe. Or think of the Buy American provision. But most importantly, think of GE. Nearly three decades ago, Jack Welch unleashed his shareholder value ideology. Good for shareholders. Not good for the current account. About a week ago, Jeff Immelt said the U.S. had outsourced too much, and needed to have a stronger manufacturing base. Quite a difference, wouldn't you say?
The economic downturn has created a backlash. Let’s see what happens other than Buy American provisions in Obama’s economic package (which the other OECD member countries are opposing) that goes beyond rhetoric. For example, will Sarkozy propose limitations on the free movement of labor and capital within the EU? Suspend Poland’s membership?
I'm sure Japan's continued support for the IMF gives some relief to the U.S. and Europe, but I would note that since the crisis began, it seems like Japan has been most active through the institutions it controls - the ADB, JBIC, etc.
Japan was the first to extend a substantial amount of money to the IMF during the current crisis. JBIC is basically the lender of last resorts for Japanese exports and foreign investment. It’s going into action as part of the government-sponsored emergency financing efforts. Nothing unusual in that. I don’t know what we’re doing with regard to ADB right now, but I doubt there’s anything new there as well.
I don't know what happened in Australia for most of the 20th century and I don't really see why Australia's switch to the Asian Football Federation is particularly important. On the other hand, I would note that Kevin Rudd seems to be a big advocate for this Asia-Pacific thingy. I wonder why? Also, I believe his budget calls for buying lots of military equipment for defense against China. Presumably, he will buy this equipment from the U.S. In addition, Australia continues to pester Japan on whaling. Furthermore, it recently killed the Rio Tinto deal with Chinalco. Throughout that process, I heard many voices in Australia who expressed concern about Chinese investment. Frankly, his recent actions have made me wonder if Kevin Rudd's professed affection for China was more a stunt to attempt to panic Japan - a stunt that backfired because Japan itself wants to get closer to China.
In 1972 Gough Whitlam came to power and started the process that transformed Australia, which till then had drawn a neat racial parallel with the far more malignant regime in South Africa. Essentially, White Australia decided to become Asia(-Pacific) Australia. Australia’s switch to the Asian Football Federation is a cultural symbol of this transformation.
As for relations with China, remember that when Rudd came to power, China was still the new black. I don’t think it had anything to do with Japan, a mature market as far as Australia’s natural resources and agricultural industry were concerned. But it’s easy to get worked up over natural resources when they’re still in the ground. I think that’s silly—unlike factories, no one can dismantle a mine and cart it off out of your national jurisdiction—but that’s the way the world works. In any case, China national champions and state investment vehicles, unlike say Norwegian or Qatar sovereign wealth funds, are more likely to follow the dictates of non-commercial interests. Connect this to the not unrelated authoritarian nature of China’s political regime and more or less inchoate fears about rising Chinese dominance, and I can understand where the public outcry was coming from.
I don’t know what exactly triggered the perceived shift in Australia’s defense posture. Maybe the strategic implications of a growing Chinese blue-water navy pushed the Australia’s national security establishment past the tipping point. I happen to think that the threat is greatly overestimated, but I can see how things might look quite different from a Southeast Asia/South Pacific perspective. I’ll believe it when I see an Australian aircraft carrier.
The “research” whaling issue, if I understand it correctly, addressed a highly emotive concern of a particular Labor Party constituency. I believe that the Rudd administration has become considerably more subdued since the kangaroo slaughter controversy—total nonsense in my view, but I don’t have a vote on this.
I agree that the U.S. is becoming less white, though I think the financial crisis could alter that trend somewhat. You say this will have powerful cultural and social implications. What are they? What changes will result? I am very interested in hearing what you have to say on this issue.
Note that I wrote in the present tense. There’s a natural progression from blackface vaudeville routines to the Jack Benny Show to I Spy to Eddie Murphy. Then there’s the greatly expanded role of Hispanics in pop music. These are just a couple of examples of profound changes in U.S. popular culture. (And what high culture exists that was once not popular?) Social change: public acceptance of mixed race couples. Basically, cultural and social barriers of all sorts are coming down in a browning of America.
Since America is by far the greatest post-WW II exporter of cultural and social constructs, this change affects the rest of the world—a world where Al Qaeda uses rap video to recruit terrorists. In a thousand years, unless humanity fcuks up royally (there’s a not insignificant chance of that happening), they’ll all be subscribing to variations of a global culture using variations of a language vaguely resembling English—and it’ll be America’s fault.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
“If Paul Krugman Were a Woman He would be Noriko Hama”?
Um, no. Seriously, Daniel Gross doing Japan has shaken my trust in that webzine to its foundations. It’s everything journalism should not be.
Take 1: McSushi: Why is American Food So Popular in Japan?
The image of Japan as being inhospitable to imports is old, enduring, and not entirely unjustified. The government is offering immigrants from South America—many themselves descendants of Japanese emigrants—$3,000 to return home (the better to free up jobs for native-born Japanese).
The charge that “Japan as being inhospitable to imports is old, enduring, and not entirely unjustified” is not entirely unjustified. But then, choose your examples carefully and you can make similar charges against any country. More to the point, does the $3,000 one-off payment back up Gross’s claim?
Why does Gross suppose that a South American immigrant would give up his Japanese job for a paltry $3,000? In fact, unemployed Latin American immigrants—actually, any Japanese emigrants, their spouses, children and grandchildren—can receive unemployment benefits or go on welfare, just like Japanese citizens in the same situation. The immigrants do not have to take the $3,000 (and the money for their dependants) and go back home; they have a choice. This is all a complicated issue, and I’m not arguing that the Japanese authorities, the Japanese education system and other elements of Japanese society couldn’t have done a better job with these immigrants in the first place. But that’s another story. Gross obviously does not understand any of this and made no effort to do so. His only interest is in using this example to set his readers up for a riff on American food in Japan.
The vista that meets visitors at Narita Airport is hardly more welcoming: masked staffers, health disclosure forms, and a sign warning that people who are coming in from countries such as Bolivia and Brazil must go in a special line. (They're looking for either soccer players or swine flu.)
First and foremost, this is a good example of American ignorance about soccer. Ko Ishikawa, a small and slender but skilled defender, to the best of my knowledge has been the only Bolivian soccer player that has played in the J-League in its 17-year history. Which makes Gross’s gag work only for people who have bought into American stereotypes about those Latinos. So what was the purpose of the “special line”? Didn’t Gross bother to ask? Isn’t that what he’s getting paid to do? Bolivia and Brazil have never been known as hotbeds of “swine flu.” What’s going on here? It does appear to be some sort of quarantine measure. What’s the global standard? Most important to the article, what does this have to do with “being inhospitable to imports”?
But Japan—Tokyo, at least—isn't uniformly hostile to imports. Though fiercely proud of its many cuisines, Japan is surprisingly open to food-related businesses from overseas.
Let me put it this way, Gross must be the only one I know who is surprised. I don’t expect him to actually know that we used to say in the 1960s that the three most popular things with kids were, “Kyojin (baseball team), Taiho (the great half-Russian sumo grand champion), tamago-yaki (fried eggs),” or that the first MacDonald’s opened in the Ginza Mitsukoshi—in its heyday the Japanese cultural equivalent of Saks Fifth Avenue. But tofu, sushi, tempura, in fact, most of what Gross probably thinks as Japanese cuisine are Chinese and European imports with a Japanese twist (or more). Likewise the locally even more popular udon (Chinese), ramen (China) and curry (and) rice (India; Bengali, I think). (Off topic: Teppanyaki is more of an American invention that took a Japanese cooking device and used it in the services of a meat-oriented food culture.) And of course it’s not just food-related businesses, as anyone who’s walked the streets of Ginza, Roppongi, or Omote-sando will know.
An array of recognizable names welcomes visitors to Gaien-Higashi Street: Wolfgang Puck, McDonald's, Outback Steakhouse, the Hard Rock Café (with Hello Kitty playing the guitar in the window). And there's even the ne plus ultra mediocre American cuisine: T.G.I. Friday's. I've traveled about 20 hours and 7,000-odd miles to wind up in a strip mall.
No, Gross hasn’t wound up in a “strip mall.” Cultural transplants take on different, exalted significance away from home. Japanese cuisine is a good example. I’ve often marveled at how all “Japanese” restaurants are expensive where he come from. Would Gross believe that in Japan, a $4 tempura meal complete with miso soup can be quite enjoyable*?
One man’s crap is another man’s cool. Isn’t that the kind of thing that journalists are supposed to look into?
It struck me that while Esperanto may be dead, the language of food may have replaced it as one that transcends borders and can be universally understood.
This guy obviously doesn’t get out much. Or is Washington that awful?<
(The logic of dubbing fried chicken pieces as "shaka shaka chicken" still eludes this gaijin.)
Because he never asks, that’s why. For those of you who are not proficient in colloquial Japanese, shaka shaka is adjectival onomatopoeia for “shaking.” It’s the sound that you make when you shake the pieces in their wrapper to coat them with seasoning. That way, the seasoning will have little time to suck the moisture out of the pieces, or so I assume. And, of course, nowhere in the article does he find a way to justify the “McSushi” in his title—too bad he failed to notice the many kaiten zushi. restaurants, a McSushi if ever there was one. (It would have taken this article in a totally different direction.)
Oh, and he never tries to answer the question in the title. Maybe it’s not his fault. But what does that say about the editor?
Take 2: If Paul Krugman Were a Woman
Both Paul Krugman and Noriko Hamada are economists. Both Krugman and Hamada have published many books for the general public. Both appear in the mainstream media on occasion. But there the resemblance ends. And everything Hamada says about the Japanese economy is part of the conventional wisdom. As for her prescription, it is a “gross” understatement to say that she is “not as sure-footed when it comes to a cure.” In fact, he makes her come across as some kind of buffoon. Is that why he, as a Slate writer, compares her to Krugman, ideologically closer to Salon? Luckily for Gross, this is basically a summary of an interview, so he doesn’t have as many chances to make a fool of himself.
* It’s a mystery to me too, since they have to dip the tempura in the batter and fry it on the spot. No microwave oven in sight, it’s more diner than fast food restaurant, if you know what I mean.
Take 1: McSushi: Why is American Food So Popular in Japan?
The image of Japan as being inhospitable to imports is old, enduring, and not entirely unjustified. The government is offering immigrants from South America—many themselves descendants of Japanese emigrants—$3,000 to return home (the better to free up jobs for native-born Japanese).
The charge that “Japan as being inhospitable to imports is old, enduring, and not entirely unjustified” is not entirely unjustified. But then, choose your examples carefully and you can make similar charges against any country. More to the point, does the $3,000 one-off payment back up Gross’s claim?
Why does Gross suppose that a South American immigrant would give up his Japanese job for a paltry $3,000? In fact, unemployed Latin American immigrants—actually, any Japanese emigrants, their spouses, children and grandchildren—can receive unemployment benefits or go on welfare, just like Japanese citizens in the same situation. The immigrants do not have to take the $3,000 (and the money for their dependants) and go back home; they have a choice. This is all a complicated issue, and I’m not arguing that the Japanese authorities, the Japanese education system and other elements of Japanese society couldn’t have done a better job with these immigrants in the first place. But that’s another story. Gross obviously does not understand any of this and made no effort to do so. His only interest is in using this example to set his readers up for a riff on American food in Japan.
The vista that meets visitors at Narita Airport is hardly more welcoming: masked staffers, health disclosure forms, and a sign warning that people who are coming in from countries such as Bolivia and Brazil must go in a special line. (They're looking for either soccer players or swine flu.)
First and foremost, this is a good example of American ignorance about soccer. Ko Ishikawa, a small and slender but skilled defender, to the best of my knowledge has been the only Bolivian soccer player that has played in the J-League in its 17-year history. Which makes Gross’s gag work only for people who have bought into American stereotypes about those Latinos. So what was the purpose of the “special line”? Didn’t Gross bother to ask? Isn’t that what he’s getting paid to do? Bolivia and Brazil have never been known as hotbeds of “swine flu.” What’s going on here? It does appear to be some sort of quarantine measure. What’s the global standard? Most important to the article, what does this have to do with “being inhospitable to imports”?
But Japan—Tokyo, at least—isn't uniformly hostile to imports. Though fiercely proud of its many cuisines, Japan is surprisingly open to food-related businesses from overseas.
Let me put it this way, Gross must be the only one I know who is surprised. I don’t expect him to actually know that we used to say in the 1960s that the three most popular things with kids were, “Kyojin (baseball team), Taiho (the great half-Russian sumo grand champion), tamago-yaki (fried eggs),” or that the first MacDonald’s opened in the Ginza Mitsukoshi—in its heyday the Japanese cultural equivalent of Saks Fifth Avenue. But tofu, sushi, tempura, in fact, most of what Gross probably thinks as Japanese cuisine are Chinese and European imports with a Japanese twist (or more). Likewise the locally even more popular udon (Chinese), ramen (China) and curry (and) rice (India; Bengali, I think). (Off topic: Teppanyaki is more of an American invention that took a Japanese cooking device and used it in the services of a meat-oriented food culture.) And of course it’s not just food-related businesses, as anyone who’s walked the streets of Ginza, Roppongi, or Omote-sando will know.
An array of recognizable names welcomes visitors to Gaien-Higashi Street: Wolfgang Puck, McDonald's, Outback Steakhouse, the Hard Rock Café (with Hello Kitty playing the guitar in the window). And there's even the ne plus ultra mediocre American cuisine: T.G.I. Friday's. I've traveled about 20 hours and 7,000-odd miles to wind up in a strip mall.
No, Gross hasn’t wound up in a “strip mall.” Cultural transplants take on different, exalted significance away from home. Japanese cuisine is a good example. I’ve often marveled at how all “Japanese” restaurants are expensive where he come from. Would Gross believe that in Japan, a $4 tempura meal complete with miso soup can be quite enjoyable*?
One man’s crap is another man’s cool. Isn’t that the kind of thing that journalists are supposed to look into?
It struck me that while Esperanto may be dead, the language of food may have replaced it as one that transcends borders and can be universally understood.
This guy obviously doesn’t get out much. Or is Washington that awful?<
(The logic of dubbing fried chicken pieces as "shaka shaka chicken" still eludes this gaijin.)
Because he never asks, that’s why. For those of you who are not proficient in colloquial Japanese, shaka shaka is adjectival onomatopoeia for “shaking.” It’s the sound that you make when you shake the pieces in their wrapper to coat them with seasoning. That way, the seasoning will have little time to suck the moisture out of the pieces, or so I assume. And, of course, nowhere in the article does he find a way to justify the “McSushi” in his title—too bad he failed to notice the many kaiten zushi. restaurants, a McSushi if ever there was one. (It would have taken this article in a totally different direction.)
Oh, and he never tries to answer the question in the title. Maybe it’s not his fault. But what does that say about the editor?
Take 2: If Paul Krugman Were a Woman
Both Paul Krugman and Noriko Hamada are economists. Both Krugman and Hamada have published many books for the general public. Both appear in the mainstream media on occasion. But there the resemblance ends. And everything Hamada says about the Japanese economy is part of the conventional wisdom. As for her prescription, it is a “gross” understatement to say that she is “not as sure-footed when it comes to a cure.” In fact, he makes her come across as some kind of buffoon. Is that why he, as a Slate writer, compares her to Krugman, ideologically closer to Salon? Luckily for Gross, this is basically a summary of an interview, so he doesn’t have as many chances to make a fool of himself.
* It’s a mystery to me too, since they have to dip the tempura in the batter and fry it on the spot. No microwave oven in sight, it’s more diner than fast food restaurant, if you know what I mean.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Of Rabbit Hutches and Love Hotels? Oh the Cultural Clichés…
This CNN reporter thinks that “[l]ove hotels fill a need for privacy in a country where high population density often means couples have little time alone.” Actually, this reminds me of a story about urban, daylight, car sex in Italy. I think they both have a lot less to do with high population density and a lot more to do with young adults living with their parents. I mean, where are the love hotels in Manhattan?
What do you think? And is there an American connection between adultery and suburban motels? Or Argentine cruises?
And what the heck does the CNN desk mean by “Love Hotel business Zooms”? What are the revenue figures?
What do you think? And is there an American connection between adultery and suburban motels? Or Argentine cruises?
And what the heck does the CNN desk mean by “Love Hotel business Zooms”? What are the revenue figures?
A Closer Look at Hatoyama’s Political Finances
Anyone who wants to know more about Yukio Hatoyama’s personal political finances can look at the FY 2007 Yuai Seikei Konwa-Kai report as most recently corrected* You don’t have to be a Sankei Shinmun sympathizer to suspect that some donations from “individuals” that actually came from Hatoyama’s coffers remain uncorrected. (The rest of eh media does not appear to have reached that point yet, though even the liberal-leftish Chunichi Shinbun** isn’t accepting Hatoyama’s story.
Neither appealing to governance issues—the DPJ is the opposition—nor raising leadership questions—three words: Abe, Fukuda, and Aso—will turn the tide for the LDP, but nailing yet another DPJ leader for political financing irregularities once again just might cause enough floater voters to stay away from the ballot box or write in non-DPJ protest parties to keep the LDP-Komeito coalition in power. Thus, the best-case scenario for the LDP will be a half-hearted attempt by Hatoyama to hang tough, while grumbling within the DPJ remains low enough to allow him to keep his job—mirroring what is likely to be the situation in the LDP barring an unambiguous DPJ victory in the Tokyo Prefectural Assembly election on 12 July.
Hatoyama, of course, can stanch the bleeding by disclosing the list of under-50,000 yen donors or handing it over to a team of independent legal and accounting experts for a thorough check and showing that the under-50,000 donations were on the level. I believe that there will be increasing pressure from the media for him to do this.
Some details on the numbers follow for the truly interested.
Hatoyama’s FY2007 political finances as corrected now show that he received 49,926,000 yen in donations from individuals, Of the 21,860,000 yen in donations—two-fifths of the total—coming from the sixteen named donors, there were two donations totaling 9,000,000 yen from Hatoyama himself, eight 1,500,000 yen donations from eight donors including one from his Bridgestone heiress mother, two 1860,000 yen donations from one donor, two 100,000 yen donations, one 50,000 yen donation, and one 15,000 yen donation and one 10,000 yen donation—note that the name of the donor in each case did not require reporting. In other words, he and his mother accounted for almost half of the 50,000 yen-and-up donations. The 5,220,000 yen that Hatoyama now claims as a personal loan*** also deserves a close look. There are forty-eight such “donations”, one of which accounted for 500,000 yen. The rest mostly fell between 50,000-200,000 yen, with one each at 20,000 and 10,000 yen—amounts that did not require reporting. The last point in particular indicates that there may be more under-50,000 anonymous donors—accounting for 27,791,000 yen or three-fifths of the total—whose donations actually came out of Hatoyama’s political bank account controlled by the aide in question.
Incidentally, I have nothing against people spending as much of their own money as they want to get elected. As long as everything’s on the up and up, I’m cool with that; the electorate seems to have a way of separating the Bloombergs from the Forbeses. Ans if it doesn’t, tough sh!t. That being said, the law is the law, and Hatoyama is no different from me in that he is not allowed to donate more than 10 million yen each year to any personal political finance organization****.
* The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications website carries all available political finances reports as PDF files on this sub-portal. Enjoy.
** Although a local newspaper, it prints more copies than Sankei and leapfrogs ahead of Nikkei into fourth place (behind Yomiuri, Asahi, and Mainichi, I that order) if you add Tokyo Shinbun and two other affiliates.
*** This, as I explained in my previous post, is a dubious claim. I believe that it would be disallowed in bankruptcy proceedings.
**** Of course if you lift the ceiling, you also must close the massive gift-tax/inheritance-tax loophole that allows politicians to pass the political organization with its money and all to their heirs tax-free.
Neither appealing to governance issues—the DPJ is the opposition—nor raising leadership questions—three words: Abe, Fukuda, and Aso—will turn the tide for the LDP, but nailing yet another DPJ leader for political financing irregularities once again just might cause enough floater voters to stay away from the ballot box or write in non-DPJ protest parties to keep the LDP-Komeito coalition in power. Thus, the best-case scenario for the LDP will be a half-hearted attempt by Hatoyama to hang tough, while grumbling within the DPJ remains low enough to allow him to keep his job—mirroring what is likely to be the situation in the LDP barring an unambiguous DPJ victory in the Tokyo Prefectural Assembly election on 12 July.
Hatoyama, of course, can stanch the bleeding by disclosing the list of under-50,000 yen donors or handing it over to a team of independent legal and accounting experts for a thorough check and showing that the under-50,000 donations were on the level. I believe that there will be increasing pressure from the media for him to do this.
Some details on the numbers follow for the truly interested.
Hatoyama’s FY2007 political finances as corrected now show that he received 49,926,000 yen in donations from individuals, Of the 21,860,000 yen in donations—two-fifths of the total—coming from the sixteen named donors, there were two donations totaling 9,000,000 yen from Hatoyama himself, eight 1,500,000 yen donations from eight donors including one from his Bridgestone heiress mother, two 1860,000 yen donations from one donor, two 100,000 yen donations, one 50,000 yen donation, and one 15,000 yen donation and one 10,000 yen donation—note that the name of the donor in each case did not require reporting. In other words, he and his mother accounted for almost half of the 50,000 yen-and-up donations. The 5,220,000 yen that Hatoyama now claims as a personal loan*** also deserves a close look. There are forty-eight such “donations”, one of which accounted for 500,000 yen. The rest mostly fell between 50,000-200,000 yen, with one each at 20,000 and 10,000 yen—amounts that did not require reporting. The last point in particular indicates that there may be more under-50,000 anonymous donors—accounting for 27,791,000 yen or three-fifths of the total—whose donations actually came out of Hatoyama’s political bank account controlled by the aide in question.
Incidentally, I have nothing against people spending as much of their own money as they want to get elected. As long as everything’s on the up and up, I’m cool with that; the electorate seems to have a way of separating the Bloombergs from the Forbeses. Ans if it doesn’t, tough sh!t. That being said, the law is the law, and Hatoyama is no different from me in that he is not allowed to donate more than 10 million yen each year to any personal political finance organization****.
* The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications website carries all available political finances reports as PDF files on this sub-portal. Enjoy.
** Although a local newspaper, it prints more copies than Sankei and leapfrogs ahead of Nikkei into fourth place (behind Yomiuri, Asahi, and Mainichi, I that order) if you add Tokyo Shinbun and two other affiliates.
*** This, as I explained in my previous post, is a dubious claim. I believe that it would be disallowed in bankruptcy proceedings.
**** Of course if you lift the ceiling, you also must close the massive gift-tax/inheritance-tax loophole that allows politicians to pass the political organization with its money and all to their heirs tax-free.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Yukio Hatoyama’s Political Financing Troubles
Reporter: Exactly what kind of correction was made with regard to the political financing report? Since Mr. Hatoyama is already donating 9 million yen annually, if he surpasses 10 million yen [as he obviously will with the additional 21.77 million yen over the last 4 years], he’s over the quantitative limit for personal donations, isn’t he?The Hatoyama camp had been using his personal funds in recent years to cover shortfalls in his political financing organization. It came to light when it was revealed that the money had been reported as donations from individuals in the names of Hatoyama friends and acquaintances—without their permission. (Sometimes, the Hatoyama camp had no choice; in a life-imitates-satire version of Gogol’s Dead Souls, some of them were already dead.) As the above excerpt from Hatoyama’s press conference shows, the aide resorted to the ruse because the money would have put Hatoyama over the annual 10 million yen limit for donations by an individual to political organizations other than a political party*. Hatoyama denied any knowledge of the cover-up and blamed it on a top aide, who allegedly had been diverting funds entrusted to him to cover expenditures that should properly be attributed to Hatoyama personally and putting the money into Hatoyama’s political financed management organization. In the press conference, Hatoyama offered the conjecture that the aide may have resorted to such extraordinary measures because the latter had been too embarrassed to admit that he had not been able to secure enough individual donations in recent years. Hatoyama accepted responsibility and promised to clean up his operation. With this, Hatoyama wishes to move on; I suspect the legal problems have only begun.
Yoichi Ioroi, Esq.: I [as the lawyer employed to conduct a third-party investigation of the matter] will answer that question. With regard to the issue of quantitative limitations, we think that the money should be correctly treated as loans. We made the necessary corrections [in a supplementary report].
30 June press conference by Yukio Hatoyama and the lead lawyer for his investigation
Post facto corrections to the annual reports that political financing organizations file with the authorities are fairly commonplace. But can the underlying facts themselves be corrected, i.e. transform what could very well have been straightforward donations into loans? After all, the lawyer responsible for the investigation admitted in the press conference that the aide had no idea of using “loans” as a legal (and therefore infinitely better) means to circumvent the 10 million yen ceiling. In other words, it is at least plausible that the aide, being at both ends of the transactions as Hatoyama’s agent (by way of power-of-attorney over a Hatoyama bank account) and an employee of Hatoyama’s political finance organization, had intended to irrecoverably transfer said funds from the former to the latter.
If that is indeed the case, the aide maybe charged with two separate infractions as an employee of a political finance organization: A) making a false entry in a report , which is punishable under Article 25, paragraph 1, item (iii) by imprisonment of not more than 5 years and/or fine of not more than 1 million yen; and B) receiving a donation in violation of the 10 million yen ceiling, which is punishable under Article 26, item (i), by imprisonment of not more than 1 year and/or fine of not more than 500,000 yen. The excess donation is subject to forfeiture under Article 28-2. Theoretically, Hatoyama himself could be held charged with two separate infractions: C) as head of the political finance organization, negligence in appointing and supervising the CFO, which is punishable by a fine of not more than 500,000 yen (Article 25, paragraph 1); and D) making a donation in violation of the 10 million yen ceiling, which is punishable by imprisonment of not more than 1 year and/or fine of not more than 500,000 yen (Article 26, item (i)).
It’s hard to believe that the aide will not go down for A). Recasting the donation as a loan appears designed to avoid B), but that’s difficult to do when it is revealed Hatoyama’s agent—the aide—had nothing of the sort in mind at the time. Thus, I think that the lawyer’s admission during the press conference was a tactical error from a legal viewpoint, though understandable from a political perspective. If the aide goes down for B), forfeiture ensues. I have no particular views about C), though at least one former public prosecutor has repeatedly stated in public that this particular negligence clause is near-impossible to invoke and I have no reason to doubt that. I am even more doubtful about the possibilities of the Public Prosecutors Office charging Hatoyama with D), since the aide’s story and Hatoyama’s denial of any knowledge ring true to me**. In any case, you can be sure that the PPO is is the last of all institutions to overlook these possibilities.
In conclusion, as far as indictments are concerned, the yen will stop at the aide. However, recasting the donation as loans is likely to put the Hatoyama camp at odds with the PPO, with the case dragging out publicly over the coming months, possibly years, in a legal dispute over B)—instead of a quick guilty plea by the aide and a suspended sentence, plus forfeiture of the excess money. In the process, further attention will be drawn to Hatoyama’s “personal” fund—a substantial sum by his own admission—and its real purpose, seeing as it has been controlled by the same aide.
* Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that, but this is close enough for our purposes here.
** Article 21-3, paragraph 3, bans personal donations over 10 million yen while Article 26, item (i) defines its criminality. They do not appear to have taken a case like this, where an agent makes the offending donations without the principal’s knowledge. There’s a chance that the PPO may try to push the envelope on this one and charge the aide at both ends of the donations.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
The Prime Minister Appoints Two New Ministers and the Nation Yawns
Yoshimasa Hayashi and Motoo Hayashi joined the Fukuda administration on 2 August 2008 as Minister of Defense and Director-General of the National Public Safety Commission respectively. Sadly, they had to give up their cabinet post seven weeks later when Yasuo Fukuda abruptly resigned as Prime Minister, opening the way for the more campaign-ready (or so they thought) Taro Aso to take up the mantle and call an early snap election. (We all know how that scenario turned out.) Now, as his grandiose plans for a wholesale overhaul of his administration and party leadership has, like so many of his political initiatives, fizzle out, Aso is satisfying himself with appointing Y. Hayashi to take up the Economic and Fiscal Minister’s portfolio while M. Hayashi is being tapped to assume his old NPSA post.
The logic behind Y. Hayashi’s appointment is sound, since Kaoru Yosano had been doing triple duty in charge of the heavy-duty Finance Ministry, financial regulation, and economic and fiscal portfolios. Moreover, Y. Hayashi, though a 4th-generation heirloom turkey, happens to be an accomplished policy wonk in his own right. The NPSC job, though, needs little more than a warm fanny to fill the minister’s chair. Taking it away from the Internal Affairs and Communications Minister does little to ease his not inconsiderable burdens.
I guess the two Hayashis can at least claim that they did manage to grab a chair each when the music stopped. And Aso’s soul can rest easy, having expiated its sins for abruptly terminating the cabinet tenures of these two men to ultimately no political use as the Prime Minister frittered away political capital that he should have devoted to an early snap election.
I think there are some legal complications to Yukio Hatoyama’s financial contributions to his own political finance organization that are not being discussed in the mainstream media yet. The Public Prosecutors Office can give him a hard time with this, I think. I hope to write about that and what that means politically (and respond to recent comments on my posts) after I sober up—sometime tomorrow, I think.
The logic behind Y. Hayashi’s appointment is sound, since Kaoru Yosano had been doing triple duty in charge of the heavy-duty Finance Ministry, financial regulation, and economic and fiscal portfolios. Moreover, Y. Hayashi, though a 4th-generation heirloom turk
I guess the two Hayashis can at least claim that they did manage to grab a chair each when the music stopped. And Aso’s soul can rest easy, having expiated its sins for abruptly terminating the cabinet tenures of these two men to ultimately no political use as the Prime Minister frittered away political capital that he should have devoted to an early snap election.
I think there are some legal complications to Yukio Hatoyama’s financial contributions to his own political finance organization that are not being discussed in the mainstream media yet. The Public Prosecutors Office can give him a hard time with this, I think. I hope to write about that and what that means politically (and respond to recent comments on my posts) after I sober up—sometime tomorrow, I think.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Message from Yokosuka: None of the Above
Recent local elections have tended to reinforce the dominant message from the public opinion polls: the Japanese electorate doesn’t like the LDP. The Sunday mayoral election in Yokosuka confirmed a less prominent but equally potent finding in the polls: the powerful pull of none of the above. The 64 year-old incumbent had everything going for him: the LDP and DPJ both supported him—likewise the New Komeito—and local-boy-made-good Koizumi campaigned hard for him. The winner? Yuto Yoshida, a 33 year-old municipal assemblyman. The Communist-Social Democrat candidate, with less than 2% of the votes, was not a factor. There does not seem to have been any single outstanding issue except the evils of incumbency.
Yoshida has a good chance of joining the ranks of the mayors and governors—Governor Hashimoto in Osaka and Mayor Nakata in Yokohama for starters—recent past and present to whom the Japanese electorate will look to for national leadership if it finds a DPJ-led administration lacking in inspiration. In which case the mainstream media is sure to pile on.
Incidentally, this is very bad news for Koizumi’s son, who wants to take over his father’s seat.
Yoshida has a good chance of joining the ranks of the mayors and governors—Governor Hashimoto in Osaka and Mayor Nakata in Yokohama for starters—recent past and present to whom the Japanese electorate will look to for national leadership if it finds a DPJ-led administration lacking in inspiration. In which case the mainstream media is sure to pile on.
Incidentally, this is very bad news for Koizumi’s son, who wants to take over his father’s seat.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Of Factions, Faction Leaders…and the SSJ Forum
As part of a new wrinkle for this blog, I am answering some questions from Mark about LDP factions, the DPJ, and political leaders. Now, I’m aware that there are at least two people (and probably a few more) who read this blog and happen to be far more competent to answer them. Message to those people: Please feel free to embarrass me.The other day, the Japan Times wrote an interesting article on the factional politics in Japan. The article discussed the origins of the current factions. But I would like to know more about the evolution of the policies, thinking, and philosophies of the factions.
My take is that ideology was of only secondary interest to the factions in the first place, except perhaps Ikeda’s group, and has diminished dramatically in importance even from those modest beginnings. (That’s my excuse for not knowing much about the subject.)
According to the article, the Ibuki faction used to belong to Nakasone. How would you compare the thinking of Bunmei Ibuki to Yasuhiro Nakasone? The article also notes that Yukio Hatoyama and Ichiro Ozawa came from the Tanaka faction. The media often compares Ozawa to Tanaka. How does the thinking of Kakuei Tanaka differ from that of Ichiro Ozawa and Yukio Hatoyama?
The occasional, politically incorrect statements aside, Ibuki is far more intelligent and thoughtful than many people out there give him credit for. He also shares some of Nakasone’s nationalist leanings. But beyond that, I know little about his political philosophy or his policy preferences. But I’m not really embarrassed about that. For Ibuki has nothing of Nakasone’s vision, drive, or ambition, the last of which is symbolized by his unkempt, graying hair. This is not accidental in my view; given the drastically altered role of LDP factions, Ibuki is more the amicable manager of an intramural flag football team, where Nakasone was the head coach of an NCAA Division I varsity football team. More caretaker than leader, faction leaders have severely limited influence over their nominal subordinates, and if they harbor Prime Ministerial ambitions, they are no more than marginally advantaged over the others. In sum, Ibuki as faction leader is more comparable to his generational peers; likewise Nakasone.
It’s all about winning for Ozawa, winning big, winning it all. In that respect, he is Tanaka’s true disciple. His old school ways with money matters also reminds us of Tanaka. Where he differs most from Tanaka is a certain joylessness, an aversion to the spotlight and the winner’s podium. Tanaka’s political philosophy, if you can call it that, appears to have been: Make everyone rich, make my constituency rich, and make myself really, really rich. Ozawa comes across as someone who is even less interested in the substance of domestic policy. Making everyone rich also colored his interests, what there was of it, in foreign policy; he harbored none of Ozawa’s resentment of Japan’s second-class status in its relationship with the U.S. or desire to project the Japanese military in the near and far abroad.
I have no thoughts about Yukio Hatoyama other than that he’s a dutiful conciliator with few if any enemies but even less charisma. But then, given the quality of the enemy… Oh, he’s a foreign policy dove by inclination, which probably suits the majority of DPJ members and supporters just fine.
Apparently, the Aso faction and the Koga faction will merge. The article says Ikeda and Miyazawa used to lead the Koga faction. How would you compare the philosophies of Aso and Koga to Ikeda, Miyazawa, and Yoshida?
Koga is closer to the Ikeda-Miyazawa(-Koichi Kato) lineage of true, post-WW II doves, while Aso is much, much closer to the nationalist-conservative wing that includes such luminaries as Shinzo Abe and Shoichi Nakagawa. Perhaps that’s what made it easier for Koga to merge/swallow Sadakazu Tangachi’s group. But, as you can see from the fact that Aso inherited his 20-band of parliamentary warriors from Yohei “Kohno Statement” Kohno, love transcends ideology.
The two ends of the ideological spectrum of the rich-nation, weak-army values underlying the Yoshida Doctrine were: a genuine aversion to the profligate expansionism of the inter-war decades; and the sense that Japan was biding its time until it could emerge glorious once again as a Great Power in its own right. Koga, who lost his father to the war, and Aso, descended from a pre-war magnate whose children married up in socially, are the metaphor for the two poles. As for Ikeda and Miyazawa, they can loosely be included in the aversion school.
But seriously, are they going to merge? Finally? Well, Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni got married, so why not, eh?
Also, I would like you to comment a little on the inter-faction politics. In a separate article, the Asahi Shimbun interviewed Yasuhiro Nakasone. The interviewer made the point that Tanaka had a great deal of power over Nakasone. But he didn't mention the specific issues in which Tanaka manipulated Nakasone. Could you help me out here? Furthermore, both Nakasone and the interviewer thought the relationship between Yukio Hatoyama and Ichiro Ozawa might be similar to the relationship between Nakasone and Tanaka. But the article didn't say how the relationship was similar. Do you have any idea on what the those similarities might be? Lastly, the interviewer said that Ozawa would probably have a harder time influencing Hatoyama than Tanaka had with Nakasone. He did not say why that might be the case. Do you have any idea on why that might be true?
I’m not aware of any substantive issue on which Tanaka forced his views on Nakasone (except, likely, where his personal interests and those of his supporters and constituency lay). I suspect for Tanaka that it was mostly about rewarding his allies with cabinet posts and other political appointments. In that sense and that sense only, I think that Ozawa will wind up reminding all of us of Tanaka, although he displays little of Tanaka’s visceral need for personal gratification.
Nakasone, of course, served at the pleasure of Tanaka. It is also clear that Hatoyama would not have won without Ozawa’s support. (Indeed, he may not even have run without it.) But Tanaka could pull the rug out from under Nakasone any time he chose to, because he had the troops and the control over political funds for it. That Ozawa cannot do, partly because (for now) there are at least as many people in the PDJ who hate him as those who love him, partly because the bulk of the DPJ money consists of government subsidies, which Ozawa is no longer in a position to control, and partly because the competition with the LDP takes the decision out of any kingmakers’ hands and into those of public opinion (including the media).
Did that work for you, Mark? Incidentally, I’ve begun subscribing to the SSJ Forum. The Japan-U.S. Discussion Forum has many distinguished commenters, but I had a somewhat unpleasant experience there, and the talk there can get pretty cranky, so I haven’t gone there for quite some time now. SSJ Forum appears to be a youthful, nimble alternative.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Taro Aso Speaks Out on the Merits of Heirloom Turkeys
I try not to shoot fish in a barrel; it’s too cruel. On the other hand, I’m too busy/bored to…oh, what the hell…
One-third of LDP Diet members have inherited their seats from close relatives (mostly dads). This proportion is sure to rise after the upcoming Lower House election, as vulnerable first-term Koizumi Kids bear the brunt of the voters’ ire. The “merely” one–fifth heirloom DPJ has promised to bar heirloom turkeys from swooping in after the upcoming election, and the more fearful LDP folks are making similar noises. So leave it to our Prime Minister to weigh in on behalf of his fellow Tokyo courtiers holding sway over their distant fiefdoms:
Sorry, MTC, for stealing what’s obviously your kind of material. In the meantime, let’s all watch our own backsides in the upcoming election, so we don’t…but let’s not go there.
One-third of LDP Diet members have inherited their seats from close relatives (mostly dads). This proportion is sure to rise after the upcoming Lower House election, as vulnerable first-term Koizumi Kids bear the brunt of the voters’ ire. The “merely” one–fifth heirloom DPJ has promised to bar heirloom turk
”A frog’s offspring are frogs, as they say. It is important to grow up looking at your parents’ backside. One becomes a farmer, a carpenter, a plasterer, following in one’s father’s footsteps. That should be properly evaluated.”Let’s see:
Exhibit A: Shinzo AbeI rest my case.
Exhibit B: Yasuo Fukuda
Exhibit C: Taro Aso
Sorry, MTC, for stealing what’s obviously your kind of material. In the meantime, let’s all watch our own backsides in the upcoming election, so we don’t…but let’s not go there.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
A Couple of Reponses
I just can’t seem to get back to regular blogging, but I’ve responded to a couple of comments, here on Japan, its Northeast Asia neighbors and the United States; and here, on Japan and Ukraine of all things. I’ll try to resume in a couple of days. In the meantime, if you have any questions, I’ll do my best to take them on. That’s actually easier.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Back to Blogging
Back to blogging after a hard week’s work. First, some long past due responses to comments on this post.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Starch, Lily Corms, and Potatoes Revisited
Actually, just a few new comments from “William” and yours truly on this week-old post. I think that you will enjoy them—if you have any interest in 8th Century Japanese poetry in general and Otomo no Yakamochi in particular. Or more generally, language.
They took up so much of my time that, what with the rest of my life what it is, I won’t be able to finish my reply to Matt’s new comment here today. Later.
They took up so much of my time that, what with the rest of my life what it is, I won’t be able to finish my reply to Matt’s new comment here today. Later.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Is Japan a Client State of the United States? And What of It?
The following is my response to a comment from Matt Dioguardi, with whom I had other enjoyable disagreements in the past, on this post. The blog rejected it as being too long—it only accepts up to 4,096 characters—so I’m posting it here as a separate post.Matt: Always good to hear from you, although—because?—we hold very different views on many things. I think that the notion that major policy changes will not occur in Japan until something happens to drastically alter the U.S.-Japan relationship is certainly a defensible one, but unless properly defined and qualified, it throws out most of severely limits the notion of “major” on the economic front. Moreover, I don’t read anything that McCormack writes since I made it half way through a talk that he gave on North Korea and concluded that he was nuts; we can agree to disagree here. That said, let’s see if I have anything meaningful to say on the points that you raise.
“Japan exports to America, and reinvests in American Treasury bonds.”
Rephrase it “America borrows from Japan and uses the money to buy things from Japan”, and you begin to wonder which one is really the client. Actually, both statements put a highly simplified, anthropomorphic gloss on what is a complex phenomenon with a very large number of actors driven by many factors from both within and outside of the relationship. Moreover, there are so many policy decisions that must be made that have no direct bearing on the relationship (although many if not all of them are bound to affect our external balance in ways that produces changes in our foreign currency reserves) and yet are so momentous.
Incidentally, defined more precisely, there is a conscious choice that the Japanese government could make that would drastically alter the situation that is described in your statement. Namely, the Japanese government could decide not hold currency reserves and leave everything to market forces. Now, to engage in my own anthropomorphism, “Japan” still could run a trade surplus and “reinvest” the proceeds in American Treasury bonds, but this is one road that few countries running trade surpluses if any will ever take.
“Japan keeps a fairly vague stance (with meaningless rumblings of nationalism), while America does the heavy lifting diplomatically for Japan.”
This is a sweeping statement that could be said of every liberal democracy that does not have a) a nuclear arsenal; b) the capacity to project a serious military force beyond its borders (conduct major landing operations, dispatch multiple aircraft carrier fleets); and c) a permanent seat with veto powers on the UN Security Council. Also note that Japan is a regional power. It has played a meaningful role in Asian (defined as east of Bangladesh) politics that has usually but not always been consonant with the interests and values of the government or the majority of the public of the United States. The Middle East is just not our bailiwick, though events there do seriously affect our economy. But then, do France and the U.K. do any “heavy lifting”? Or to put it another way, do their opinions matter to the governments and increasingly the public of Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia and other states in the region? The United States is the sole global superpower; as such, “America does the heavy lifting [militarily and almost ipso facto] diplomatically for all of us. There is some change afoot, which does not bode well for the rest of us, but there things stand for the moment. There are paradigms and paradigms; that fact that one cannot—should not?—be changed of our own volition does not render all other meaningless. Or is that not the point of your rhetorical flourish?
Note also that for both statements, you could insert “China” in place of “Jaan” and still end up with coherent, defensible statements. So would McCormack consider China to be a “client state” of the United States? Are we all “client states”? Just askin’.
“There's a speech on-line where Abe praises Japan's new two party system, and indirectly the growing opposition. Strange, if he were really ideologically driven, who cares about how many parties there are? Oh, well, gee, America has a two party system, so that must be good.”
Let’s face it, Abe, is only saying the right thing. Anything else would sound pretty gauche. Of course he is not the only one who is calling for a two-party system. The LDP has had a nice 55-year run, but it has gone stale and many serious problems are piling up that cannot all be blamed on the bureaucracy—I think that the idea is, If the bureaucracy is at fault, then what were you guys in the Diet doing on our munificent payroll?—there’s a widely held public desire for an alternative. It’s more a vote against a mono-party system than a vote for a two-party system. Also, note that the United States is not the only two-party democracy on this planet. In fact, at first glance, nations lacking serious social/cultural/ethnic divides and/or powerful regional rivalries tend to drift towards political systems with one or two dominant parties and a smattering of smaller, special-interest or ideology-driven parties. Even the United States has a socialist Senator. So no, nobody wants it just because America has one. If that were the case, it would happened long ago, when U.S. influence was much stronger here.
“We won't see seismic changes in Japan until the relationship with America seriously stumbles and/or collapses.”
I am unable to address this point unless I know what you mean by “seismic.” I have very limited power to think about economic and political matters in purely metaphorical terms.
”Say if the dollar suddenly dropped to about 40 yen to the dollar. That would make Japanese politics very lively over night.”
Hard to argue with that statement.
“Until something happens, well, not much is gonna happen. Of course, you knew that, didn't you?”
No, I don’t, honestly. I don’t know until it actually doesn’t happen. The political inertia is pretty strong though, that I’ll certainly agree to. Is that somehow a side effect of being a “client state”? I know that there are political commentators and academics who will write reams of stuff from such perspectives. Some are entertaining, a few can even be insightful, but it’s not my cup of tea. I prefer sturdy, fact-based logic.
There you are, Matt
Monday, June 08, 2009
Komajo?
No, it’s not a Jumanji sequel, it’s short for Komazawa Joshi Dai(gaku), a women’s college. It’s a relatively new thing, certainly post-WW II, but we have this thing where we turn every foreign word and phrase from MacDonald’s to Mister Donuts to celebrities into three syllable words—ma-ku-do, mi-su-do and se-re-bu respectively. I think it’s our version of the acronym; you know, NATO, NORAD, WTO WTF…
Advice for a Mass Media Blogger and His Firm
If I were advising your firm, I would call for a dual-identity system that superficially resembles the TIME blogs. You firm should establish franchises into which the lot of you will be drafted according to your current assignments. You will switch franchises as you are reassigned on your day job. Alternatively, your firm could adopt the pro tour system and allow you to play the various events (Asia, Environment, Technology, Finance, etc. etc.) as you see fit. Either way, you avoid the professional journalist’s dilemma: How do you maintain a steady stream of content against the demands of your day job? Asian Exile has resolved that by basically giving up on his blog. I suggest a collective solution that nevertheless allows you to maintain your individual identities. You could even get fans of individual bloggers to open themselves up to new areas of interest as they follow you around the corporate blogosphere.
Expecting Low Voter Turnout in Upcoming General Election
In the first decades of the 1955 System, voter turnout hovered in the low 70s to the high 60s. It gradually declined, falling to the low 60s, high 50s, and the Koizumi years brought no exceptions. I expect the upcoming Lower House general election to follow suit. The vast number of undecideds this close to the event (as well as the high number of people who reject Yukio Hatayama even before he’s had a chance) is a measure of the lack of public enthusiasm for the DPJ. No matter; the rumored campaign slogan for the DPJ—Regime Change (政権交代)—can only reinforce the impression that the Japanese electorate is so fed up that it will accept change for change’s sake, and that the DPJ is well aware of this fact. It’s let the bear catch the hindmost.
I expect to wait another election cycle or two before I see a real paradigm shift in the Japanese body politic at the policy end.
I expect to wait another election cycle or two before I see a real paradigm shift in the Japanese body politic at the policy end.
Do You Know Tadamori Oshima?
I shared a most informative afternoon with a foreign correspondent today. I was supposed to sing for my lunch and I did, but I got as good as I gave. I also got a half bottle of nice red wine, so today, I’ll dispense with my usual fact-checking and just do a run-through of the thoughts that I had…while I sleep off the alcohol in bits and pieces.Tadamori Oshima is one of those unsung LDP lifers, a competent 60-something who toils in the trenches on party chores and is rewarded with the less glamorous cabinet assignments in between. As Diet Affairs Committee Chairman, he goes up every day against his opposition counterpart Kenji Yamaoka, the closest thing to a lifer that the DPJ has, with whom he obviously shares a mutual, if grudging, admiration. And he’s earning it, as First Mate on a sinking ship.
Sunday, June 07, 2009
An Apology to Tinter and a Correction
Most of the stuff I’ve been working on this weekend has been work-related material so I can post them here. Instead, let me note that Tinter, in a comment to this post gives a very persuasive explanation of why the British MP expenses scandal unfolded the way it did—specifically, why Prime Minister Brown could not respond anywhere near decisively as his Tory nemesis David Cameron. In the process, Tinter most properly chastises me for denigrating his beloved Liberal Democrats—no, not this one, that one.
Saturday, June 06, 2009
For Want of Better Things to Do, I Talk about a Northeast Asia Security Forum (Not)
Intergovernmental forums lacking legislative, executive, or judicial functions show a distressing tendency to devolve into talk fests that produce ineffectual announcements and thick reports that only lead to more announcements, studies and, if they are particularly productive, more intergovernmental forums. Their subjects range far and wide, but the one common feature of such a venue is its staying power. Lacking true governmental functions, it is rapidly mined out of any value that it ever possessed. But once established, it is hard to kill off, so the principals keep showing up, if only for appearance’s sake, like a relationship that has long lost its magic. Thus it is that the world is littered with secretariats bearing acronyms—too frequently sponsored by the letters U and N—that only enter the layperson’s consciousness when a google search turns up an obscure document therefrom or a reference thereto.
That is why I am very skeptical about any suggestions of a Northeast Asia security forum growing out of the Six-Party Talks. For starters, what the hell are they going to even talk about? China’s military buildup? Territorial and quasi-territorial issues? Taiwan-China? North Korea? (Come to think of it, are we going to include North Korea at all?) Some people believe that talk is its own reward. But how can we talk about China’s military without India—assuming that China acquiesces to being subjected to plurilateral scrutiny? How does, for example, bringing Russia and the United States (or even South Korea) into the picture on the Japan-China give-and-take on the East China Seas gas fields help? The Senkaku Islnds? As for Taiwan, the day China is willing to talk about its relations with its “province” in an international forum is the day the sun rises from the west. As for North Korea…well, what about it?
Some people no doubt want to see it as a confidence-building measure. But if there is any danger that it will deteriorate into a talk show where the principals show up only because they can’t quite come around to kicking the relationship and whose main headline value sometimes comes from the skits those principals perform or the funny clothes that they wear for the group photos, then the governments should think twice and more before they set us on such a course.
That is why I am very skeptical about any suggestions of a Northeast Asia security forum growing out of the Six-Party Talks. For starters, what the hell are they going to even talk about? China’s military buildup? Territorial and quasi-territorial issues? Taiwan-China? North Korea? (Come to think of it, are we going to include North Korea at all?) Some people believe that talk is its own reward. But how can we talk about China’s military without India—assuming that China acquiesces to being subjected to plurilateral scrutiny? How does, for example, bringing Russia and the United States (or even South Korea) into the picture on the Japan-China give-and-take on the East China Seas gas fields help? The Senkaku Islnds? As for Taiwan, the day China is willing to talk about its relations with its “province” in an international forum is the day the sun rises from the west. As for North Korea…well, what about it?
Some people no doubt want to see it as a confidence-building measure. But if there is any danger that it will deteriorate into a talk show where the principals show up only because they can’t quite come around to kicking the relationship and whose main headline value sometimes comes from the skits those principals perform or the funny clothes that they wear for the group photos, then the governments should think twice and more before they set us on such a course.
Friday, June 05, 2009
The Hatoyama Caper in Perspective
There’s really not much to write about Japanese politics these days. The Hatoyama caper (I’ve written a brief explanation at the bottom of this post) would have been a major political story if it had occurred last year, when the Aso administration and the LDP still had a good chance of retaining a Lower House majority. Now, it’s a mere side show. If this were chess, the LDP would be a queen down; losing a bishop would be the least of its worries.
That being said, I am sure that this incident—off-beat appointee causes incident; hands-off Prime Minister allows matters to fester; situation blows up, leaving egg on Prime Minister’s face—will be recorded in the post mortem as symptomatic of Taro Aso’s personal failings. Most recently, one of his Upper House friends that he appointed as one of three Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretaries—the most important sub-cabinet political appointments available—lost his job after he used an official JR pass on a sleep-over golfing trip with a married woman*. Aso’s behavior followed more or less the same pattern then. In fact, he initially pretended to accept the DCCS’s claims of “health reasons” for his resignation. More broadly, I’ve talked before about how his bureaucratic appointments were not paying off. (Yes, I still owe LB (or was it T. Greer?) an explanation about that.) Aso is just not a good judge of talent, nor does he have the ruthlessness to chop heads when they do not measure up.
But is this merely a personal problem? I also believe, as I briefly referred to at the end of this post, is that it will be remembered as a common thread that ran through the last three, short-lived, administrations of the post-1955 LDP era. It all seems to spell the end of an era, showing up as the writing on the wall.
* Let’s call it: Woodgate! DCCS Yoshitada Konoike, not coincidentally, had already been reprimanded early in the year for giving the same woman a key to his Tokyo apartment provided by the Diet.
Kunio Hatoyama is a well-travelled politician, having migrated from the New Liberal Club to the LDP (the mighty Takeshita faction) to the New Frontier Party (Ozawa et al) to the Democratic Party (with his brother Yukio), and back to the LDP again, where he now resides. There have been a couple of stints in between as an independent. He is definitely one who marches to his own drum. In his latest incarnation as Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications, he has gone after Japan Post, currently on the road to privatization, and its CEO Yoshifumi Nishikawa for a bundled real estate sale to ORIX, whose chairman had been Prime Minister Koizumi’s private-sector point man on his privatization drive, as well as the partial demolition of its Taisho-era Tokyo headquarters. (It’s actually a drab, unimaginative specimen of mostly historic value.) He has vowed that he will not authorize Nishikawa’s reappointment as CEO. This has pitted him against Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano, who will exercise the government’s right as the sole shareholder to appoint the CEO, as well the Prime Minister himself, who is reportedly in favor of reappointment. The majority of the LDP probably also supports reappointment, if only to avoid offending big business—which offered up Nishikawa for the job in the first place and is generally in favor of the Koizumi reform process.
I expect a face-saving resolution that keeps Nishikawa on while allowing Hatoyama to claim partial victory by requiring Japan Post to amend its ways. But that’s just me sayin’.
That being said, I am sure that this incident—off-beat appointee causes incident; hands-off Prime Minister allows matters to fester; situation blows up, leaving egg on Prime Minister’s face—will be recorded in the post mortem as symptomatic of Taro Aso’s personal failings. Most recently, one of his Upper House friends that he appointed as one of three Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretaries—the most important sub-cabinet political appointments available—lost his job after he used an official JR pass on a sleep-over golfing trip with a married woman*. Aso’s behavior followed more or less the same pattern then. In fact, he initially pretended to accept the DCCS’s claims of “health reasons” for his resignation. More broadly, I’ve talked before about how his bureaucratic appointments were not paying off. (Yes, I still owe LB (or was it T. Greer?) an explanation about that.) Aso is just not a good judge of talent, nor does he have the ruthlessness to chop heads when they do not measure up.
But is this merely a personal problem? I also believe, as I briefly referred to at the end of this post, is that it will be remembered as a common thread that ran through the last three, short-lived, administrations of the post-1955 LDP era. It all seems to spell the end of an era, showing up as the writing on the wall.
* Let’s call it: Woodgate! DCCS Yoshitada Konoike, not coincidentally, had already been reprimanded early in the year for giving the same woman a key to his Tokyo apartment provided by the Diet.
Kunio Hatoyama is a well-travelled politician, having migrated from the New Liberal Club to the LDP (the mighty Takeshita faction) to the New Frontier Party (Ozawa et al) to the Democratic Party (with his brother Yukio), and back to the LDP again, where he now resides. There have been a couple of stints in between as an independent. He is definitely one who marches to his own drum. In his latest incarnation as Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications, he has gone after Japan Post, currently on the road to privatization, and its CEO Yoshifumi Nishikawa for a bundled real estate sale to ORIX, whose chairman had been Prime Minister Koizumi’s private-sector point man on his privatization drive, as well as the partial demolition of its Taisho-era Tokyo headquarters. (It’s actually a drab, unimaginative specimen of mostly historic value.) He has vowed that he will not authorize Nishikawa’s reappointment as CEO. This has pitted him against Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano, who will exercise the government’s right as the sole shareholder to appoint the CEO, as well the Prime Minister himself, who is reportedly in favor of reappointment. The majority of the LDP probably also supports reappointment, if only to avoid offending big business—which offered up Nishikawa for the job in the first place and is generally in favor of the Koizumi reform process.
I expect a face-saving resolution that keeps Nishikawa on while allowing Hatoyama to claim partial victory by requiring Japan Post to amend its ways. But that’s just me sayin’.
Containing Novel Influenza (A/H1N1): A Success Story Buried under the Rubble
A rare success story for the beleaguered Aso administration has been its response to the Novel Influenza (A/H1N1). When the news of the virus broke, the authorities quickly set up border checkpoints (it helps that entry points are limited, Japan being an archipelago) and bought time with them while they geared up the domestic response mechanism. When they detected the first domestic human-to-human transmission cases, they quickly wound down border control operations and turned the resource savings over to domestic containment tasks. In the meantime, they did a good job at keeping the public well-informed, giving the latter the public to drop their facemasks almost as quickly as they had put them on*. The trickle of new cases continues (4 June, 15 newly confirmed), but it’s a non-story now—which is probably a problem for Aso. Success in this case is a process leading to normalcy. There are few tangible “kills” to highlight, so the story fades out of the headlines.
Don’t feel too sorry for the Aso administration though; there are big elements of luck to this. For one, there is no doubt that the experience both national and international from the SARS and bird flu outbreaks aided the Japanese authorities enormously in setting up the necessary framework, then forming and executing effective plans to contain the virus. They had in effect dress rehearsals. Moreover, the relative mildness of the symptoms helped maintain public order; there was less urgency, and available resources could be stretched more easily.
This leads me to wonder: How prepared is Japan—any nation, actually—to face an onslaught of a more lethal strain of the virus returning later in the year, which is exactly what happened in 1918 with the Spanish flu? Even if the number of cases will turn out be as limited as they have been in the current outbreak, they will require far more resources for isolation and treatment. They are likely to force more and longer closures of schools and other establishments where they are discovered. The impact will go beyond the pathological, as economic activities world-round take a major hit.
Of course the chances of a lethal mutation are as good as one that works in reverse, making the virus more benign. And nothing guarantees that the virus will come back either. That being said, under the bad-case scenario, a serious flu epidemic will be one of the earliest major political tests, if not the earliest, that the post-election government will face. The danger for a DPJ-led administration is that, coming in to confront large parts of the bureaucracy—the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare with it its national pension system troubles has been a particularly popular target of DPJ criticism—it may have difficulties changing gear so that it can take control of the situation, lest it works the other way around.
* The facemask is part our national costume. We’ll whip them out at the slightest sign of a cold, much the way we unfurl our umbrellas at the slightest hint of rain.
Don’t feel too sorry for the Aso administration though; there are big elements of luck to this. For one, there is no doubt that the experience both national and international from the SARS and bird flu outbreaks aided the Japanese authorities enormously in setting up the necessary framework, then forming and executing effective plans to contain the virus. They had in effect dress rehearsals. Moreover, the relative mildness of the symptoms helped maintain public order; there was less urgency, and available resources could be stretched more easily.
This leads me to wonder: How prepared is Japan—any nation, actually—to face an onslaught of a more lethal strain of the virus returning later in the year, which is exactly what happened in 1918 with the Spanish flu? Even if the number of cases will turn out be as limited as they have been in the current outbreak, they will require far more resources for isolation and treatment. They are likely to force more and longer closures of schools and other establishments where they are discovered. The impact will go beyond the pathological, as economic activities world-round take a major hit.
Of course the chances of a lethal mutation are as good as one that works in reverse, making the virus more benign. And nothing guarantees that the virus will come back either. That being said, under the bad-case scenario, a serious flu epidemic will be one of the earliest major political tests, if not the earliest, that the post-election government will face. The danger for a DPJ-led administration is that, coming in to confront large parts of the bureaucracy—the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare with it its national pension system troubles has been a particularly popular target of DPJ criticism—it may have difficulties changing gear so that it can take control of the situation, lest it works the other way around.
* The facemask is part our national costume. We’ll whip them out at the slightest sign of a cold, much the way we unfurl our umbrellas at the slightest hint of rain.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
The MP Expenses Scandal in the U.K. Highlights the Difficulty of Cutting Losses
The fallout from the British scandal over improper expenses claimed by MPs* provides lessons in how not to manage risk.
The cash value of improperly claimed expenses appears to be quite modest. The amount returned so far by the MPs on improper expense claims as related by this NYT report—$500,000 from 50 MPs, incurred between 2004-2008 as far as I can gather from the lists at the Daily Telegraph MPs’ expenses portal—averages out to about $10,000 per MP, that is, $2,000 per year, or $167 per month. (That’s peanuts compared to the Y5,000,000 that Toshikatsu Matsuoka claimed in 2005 alone for alkali ion water and other unmentionables at his tiny two-room office provided by the Diet. Hint: it does not have a sink.) Yet the British public is furious, offending MPs are being forced to retire, and incumbents are expected to suffer across the board in the upcoming general election.
But that’s not all. A cursory look at the lists of PMs at the Telegraph portal shows that Labor Party MPs had been no more complicit than their Tory counterparts. Bu the Labor Party has fallen behind thepuny Liberal Democratic Party in the public polls and is sure to lose badly in the upcoming European Parliamentary and local elections. It is also expected to be thrown out in the next general election regardless of who winds up leading the Labor Party. Sure, the Tories have been discredited as well. But they only have to outrun the other side when the hungry bear comes a-chasing.
So what went wrong?
It takes no leap of the imagination to see that the issue was magnified beyond anything its numbers—the MPs and the money—would have warranted if those MPs and their protective colleagues had not pursued every legal and political means available in what turned out to be a futile, five-year bid to avoid disclosure. In the process, they also forfeited any excuse that that their expense claims had been made in good faith, if poor judgment. The global economic crisis and the hardships that it has caused, unfolding just as the parliamentary turmoil lurched through its end game, merely provided an unsightly backdrop to the spectacle of MPs feeding from the public trough. The entire political class had been dealt a blow.
Turning to the Labor Party, once the dam broke, the Prime Minister tried to wave it off as a trifle. This turned out to be a big mistake. David Cameron as leader of the Tories managed to get ahead of the curve, forcing the offenders to step down when the general election comes around. Although the Prime Minister soon followed suit, it was too late; he’d lost the race when the hungry bear came charging.
So, misunderestimate the problem and hope it will blow away, protecting your friends until they’re beyond salvation: That’s a scenario that has been played out too many times over in Japanese politics, not least by Prime Minister Aso and his two immediate predecessors as they dithered over political crises precipitated by wayward cabinet ministers and sub-cabinet appointees. And you know how they’ve turned out**.
* For those of you who want a quick overview of the whole affair, there’s this Wikipedia entry.
** To be fair, even Prime Minister Koizumi had his share of mishaps. He almost allowed Makiko Tanaka threatened to ruin his administration almost as soon as it had gotten underway by letting the woefully unprepared Foreign Minister to run amok. In his defense, Tanaka had much of the public behind her in her feud with the MOFA diplomats.
The cash value of improperly claimed expenses appears to be quite modest. The amount returned so far by the MPs on improper expense claims as related by this NYT report—$500,000 from 50 MPs, incurred between 2004-2008 as far as I can gather from the lists at the Daily Telegraph MPs’ expenses portal—averages out to about $10,000 per MP, that is, $2,000 per year, or $167 per month. (That’s peanuts compared to the Y5,000,000 that Toshikatsu Matsuoka claimed in 2005 alone for alkali ion water and other unmentionables at his tiny two-room office provided by the Diet. Hint: it does not have a sink.) Yet the British public is furious, offending MPs are being forced to retire, and incumbents are expected to suffer across the board in the upcoming general election.
But that’s not all. A cursory look at the lists of PMs at the Telegraph portal shows that Labor Party MPs had been no more complicit than their Tory counterparts. Bu the Labor Party has fallen behind the
So what went wrong?
It takes no leap of the imagination to see that the issue was magnified beyond anything its numbers—the MPs and the money—would have warranted if those MPs and their protective colleagues had not pursued every legal and political means available in what turned out to be a futile, five-year bid to avoid disclosure. In the process, they also forfeited any excuse that that their expense claims had been made in good faith, if poor judgment. The global economic crisis and the hardships that it has caused, unfolding just as the parliamentary turmoil lurched through its end game, merely provided an unsightly backdrop to the spectacle of MPs feeding from the public trough. The entire political class had been dealt a blow.
Turning to the Labor Party, once the dam broke, the Prime Minister tried to wave it off as a trifle. This turned out to be a big mistake. David Cameron as leader of the Tories managed to get ahead of the curve, forcing the offenders to step down when the general election comes around. Although the Prime Minister soon followed suit, it was too late; he’d lost the race when the hungry bear came charging.
So, misunderestimate the problem and hope it will blow away, protecting your friends until they’re beyond salvation: That’s a scenario that has been played out too many times over in Japanese politics, not least by Prime Minister Aso and his two immediate predecessors as they dithered over political crises precipitated by wayward cabinet ministers and sub-cabinet appointees. And you know how they’ve turned out**.
* For those of you who want a quick overview of the whole affair, there’s this Wikipedia entry.
** To be fair, even Prime Minister Koizumi had his share of mishaps. He almost allowed Makiko Tanaka threatened to ruin his administration almost as soon as it had gotten underway by letting the woefully unprepared Foreign Minister to run amok. In his defense, Tanaka had much of the public behind her in her feud with the MOFA diplomats.
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Of Starch, Lily Corms, and Potatoes Are Memories Made
This post is dedicated to the day I spent with my then high-school classmate on Ponpon-yama, where the katakuri lilies were in full bloom, looking for eggs of the Japanese Luehdorfia on wild ginger plants.
One of the most charming poems in the first imperially-commissioned anthology—the 8th-Century Manyoshu— a tanka penned by Ōtomo no Yakamochi, one of the greatest and most innovative poets in Japanese history:
Mono no fu no/ yaso-otome-ra ga/ kumimagou/ terai no ue no/ katakago no hana.I regret that I do not have the literary skills to give you any sense of how Yakamochi deftly uses grammatical features of the Japanese language and the 5-7-5, 7-7 syllabic structure of the tanka (as well as its literary conventions) to create an visual and aural tableau of fleeting, timeless, beauty. It’s been so many years since I first came across the poem, but I can never remember it without seeing the dappled sunlight falling on the girls and the flowers and the well, hearing the chatter and splashing—all of it implied, in the best tradition of Japanese poetry. The sensations that come back to me are as vivid and real as any of my best (and worst) memories from my real life.
A bustling throng of young women drawing water from the temple well, where bloom the katakuri lilies. (my translation)
So what caused me to relive my memories of the katakuri lily? The fact that the katakuri-ko, a starch so convenient in making Chinese dishes (it soaks up the liquid escaping from the meat and vegetable and wraps it around the latter as a savory sauce of your preferred texture) and tatsuta-age, the Japanese-style fried chicken—it works for fish too—that retains its deliciousness long after it has cooled, is no longer produced for general consumption from the katakuri lily corm. Instead, the katakuri-ko sold in stores today consists solely of potato starch.
Of which I was reminded of when I read the news report to which I refer to in this post.
What Aso Can Do to Turn It Around
A look at two last-minute reversals of fortune that saved LDP administrations from devastating election losses gives us some idea of what Prime Minister Aso is up against.
(Case 1: The 2005 Koizumi Theater Election)
It’s all too easy to forget that by 2005, a lousy economy and an ascendant DPJ had the LDP-led administration on the ropes. The Upper House election loss to the DPJ the year before hadn’t helped either. Thus, when Prime Minister Koizumi expelled Lower House members who had voted against Post Office privatization from the LDO and called a snap election, most experts predicted yet another devastating LDP defeat. Instead, Koizumi ran as the candidate standing up to vested interests and led the LDP to a resounding victory that ensured a Lower House supermajority for the ruling coalition.
Moral of the story: It helps to be the good guys.
Strategic advice for Aso: Cast yourself as the antiestablishment candidate. The problem here, of course, is that Aso is the establishment candidate. He has made it clear that he only reluctantly went along with Post Office privatization. He has defanged the initiative pushed by Prime Minister Fukuda (fils) to take gasoline tax money away from the road construction tribe, and quickly backed off from proposals to shake up the social safety net bureaucracy. In fact, he has shown none of the flair and stubbornness that Koizumi drew on as he bucked his party and the opinion polls to victory.
(Case 2: The 1980 Double Election)
In 1978, Masayoshi Ohira succeeded Takeo Fukuda as Prime Minister by wresting the LDP Presidency away from the latter in a bitterly fought election. This was the beginning of a feud between the two and their supporters that saw a devastating general election the following year that took away the LDP’s majority in the Lower House, the subsequent LDP election between the two mortal rivals that Ohira barely won, and the 1980 Lower House vote of no-confidence against the Ohira Cabinet that unexpectedly passed when Fukuda’s allies in the LDP decided to sit it out. The civil war ended only when Ohira died of a heart attack during the subsequent election campaign for the snap election that Ohira called. Ohira’s death not only united the LDP but also managed drew a huge sympathy vote, resulting in landslide victories in both Houses*. It also brought to power new Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki, one of the less effective prime ministers of the post-WW II era.
Moral of the story: Mourning becomes the LDP.
Strategic advice for Aso: Die. This doomsday option, though, has some obvious shortcomings of its own.
* Ohira timed the snap Lower House election to coincide with the Upper House election scheduled to be held every three years.
(Case 1: The 2005 Koizumi Theater Election)
It’s all too easy to forget that by 2005, a lousy economy and an ascendant DPJ had the LDP-led administration on the ropes. The Upper House election loss to the DPJ the year before hadn’t helped either. Thus, when Prime Minister Koizumi expelled Lower House members who had voted against Post Office privatization from the LDO and called a snap election, most experts predicted yet another devastating LDP defeat. Instead, Koizumi ran as the candidate standing up to vested interests and led the LDP to a resounding victory that ensured a Lower House supermajority for the ruling coalition.
Moral of the story: It helps to be the good guys.
Strategic advice for Aso: Cast yourself as the antiestablishment candidate. The problem here, of course, is that Aso is the establishment candidate. He has made it clear that he only reluctantly went along with Post Office privatization. He has defanged the initiative pushed by Prime Minister Fukuda (fils) to take gasoline tax money away from the road construction tribe, and quickly backed off from proposals to shake up the social safety net bureaucracy. In fact, he has shown none of the flair and stubbornness that Koizumi drew on as he bucked his party and the opinion polls to victory.
(Case 2: The 1980 Double Election)
In 1978, Masayoshi Ohira succeeded Takeo Fukuda as Prime Minister by wresting the LDP Presidency away from the latter in a bitterly fought election. This was the beginning of a feud between the two and their supporters that saw a devastating general election the following year that took away the LDP’s majority in the Lower House, the subsequent LDP election between the two mortal rivals that Ohira barely won, and the 1980 Lower House vote of no-confidence against the Ohira Cabinet that unexpectedly passed when Fukuda’s allies in the LDP decided to sit it out. The civil war ended only when Ohira died of a heart attack during the subsequent election campaign for the snap election that Ohira called. Ohira’s death not only united the LDP but also managed drew a huge sympathy vote, resulting in landslide victories in both Houses*. It also brought to power new Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki, one of the less effective prime ministers of the post-WW II era.
Moral of the story: Mourning becomes the LDP.
Strategic advice for Aso: Die. This doomsday option, though, has some obvious shortcomings of its own.
* Ohira timed the snap Lower House election to coincide with the Upper House election scheduled to be held every three years.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
If The Economist Can Be a Newspaper…
I rest my case.
The real question of course is: What does the U.K. have against potatoes? Tortillas (corn) VAT-free, Kappa Ebisen (wheat) VAT-free, but Pringles (potatoes) not? Is this by any chance a British/Irish thing?
The real question of course is: What does the U.K. have against potatoes? Tortillas (corn) VAT-free, Kappa Ebisen (wheat) VAT-free, but Pringles (potatoes) not? Is this by any chance a British/Irish thing?
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Hatoyama’s Seoul Train Proof “I” in “Winning” Doesn’t Count
Sixty or so members out of the ninety-five on the losing side of the DPJ leadership election, including Katsuya Okada himself, held a party on the day after. This sparked media hopes for a friends-of-Okada alliance in the making. Maybe, maybe not; the new party leader Yukio Hatoyama’s call on South Korean President Lee Myung-bak says not.
The key members of Hatoyama’s South Korea entourage are Seiji Maehara and Akihisa Nagashima. Ex-party leader Maehara, you may recall, is a pro-U.S. member of the bipartisan defense tribe, and Nagashima is even further to the right where national security is concerned. Thus, Hatoyama would have had a hard time picking better companions in paying respects to President Lee, the conservative Kim Jong Il nemesis who has done much to repair strained relations with South Korea’s Western allies. More significant from a domestic perspective, Maehara was one of the principals of the anti-Ozawa movement that supported Okada in the DPJ election, and Nagashima one of his closer allies.
Teamwork may be essential to winning, but the Hatoyama-Maehara(-Nagashima) package tour shows that it works the other way around too.
The key members of Hatoyama’s South Korea entourage are Seiji Maehara and Akihisa Nagashima. Ex-party leader Maehara, you may recall, is a pro-U.S. member of the bipartisan defense tribe, and Nagashima is even further to the right where national security is concerned. Thus, Hatoyama would have had a hard time picking better companions in paying respects to President Lee, the conservative Kim Jong Il nemesis who has done much to repair strained relations with South Korea’s Western allies. More significant from a domestic perspective, Maehara was one of the principals of the anti-Ozawa movement that supported Okada in the DPJ election, and Nagashima one of his closer allies.
Teamwork may be essential to winning, but the Hatoyama-Maehara(-Nagashima) package tour shows that it works the other way around too.
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