Hong Kong Madam on Shinzo Abe

The Hong Kong Madam appears to be a Chinese woman from a wealthy Hong Kong family who came to Japan to go to college, never left, and these days is among other things a near-native Japanese-language blogger. Here is an excerpt and translation from her 21 July 2006 post, on the eve of Shinzo Abe’s election as Prime Minister.

…形だけが選挙をしたとうこと。ならば国民投票で日本の総理大臣を選べばいいのではないか、きっとキムタクになってしまうかもね。
… an election in form only. In that case, why not choose the Prime Minister of Japan in a national referendum… it would probably be Kimutaku.

それにしても美容研究家の私はこの総理候補のルックスに是非いわせていただきたいことがある。５１歳の割にはつやもはりもなく、常に疲れた顔で、眉間に皺をよせ、どうみても一国のリーダーよりも単なる疲れきったブルドックしかみえない、なのに、街頭インタービューの貴婦人たちが口を揃って素敵な方ですねと絶賛する、なぜかしら？どうみても健康的にみえない、エネルーギも感じさせない、人相でもあのまゆと目とくちの組み合わせは非常にわがままで、主観的な人、自分の思い通りにならないときはすぐに顔に出るタイプです。けして人の意見を耳傾けることもなく、暴走する傾向もあり、抑えるにはどうしてもと姉さん女房が必要です。でないと 大変なことになってしまう。しかもあのたるみと艶のなさを見る限り、大変内臓の弱いひとで、腎臓と大腸は要注意です。

As a student of cosmetology, there is something that I insist on saying about this Prime Minister candidate’s looks. For someone who is only 51, he has a face that is lacking in luster and gloss and always tired, and wears a frown, and looks in every which way like a worn-out bulldog instead of a national leader; yet ladies interviewed on the streets all praise him highly, saying that he’s a wonderful man…why? No matter how you look at him, he doesn’t look healthy, he doesn’t look energetic, and, phrenology-wise, the combination of his eyebrows, eyes and mouth [indicates that] he is a very selfish and subjective person who’s feelings show immediately when things do not go his way. He never listens to people, and he tends to run amok, so he needs a wife who is older than him to keep him under control. Otherwise, terrible things will happen. Moreover, judging solely on the basis of his sagging skin and lack of luster, he has very weak body organs, and should worry about his kidneys and large intenstine.*

I think that she’s overly harsh with regard to his character, though I feel that she has captured Mr. Abe’s doggedness in his pursuit of his agenda, some of the most important of which were of obviously low priority for the Japanese public.

But she nailed it almost perfectly on Mr. Abe’s health issues, and did quite well on his odd mixture of boyish features superimposed on the complexion of an old man. I don’t think that the media paid any attention to potential health problems at the time. As a bonus, she delivered the Delphi Oracle for a Change, a TV drama that aired 20 months later, with Kimutaku in the leading role as a most unlikely Prime Minister-hero.

The More we Saw of Prime Minister Abe…

Correction (May 24, 17:28): I made a huge, huge mistake with this post. Somehow, I managed to misread Mr. Abe's comments on his website. In fact, he claims that Bunshun identified the wrong murder victim as the person Mr. Abe had in mind, and went to that victim's mother, took her comment, and wrote up the article. This undermines the fundamental premise of this post. My apologies to Mr. Abe. I'm leaving this here, though, since one of the worst kind of online experiences is coming back to an online source to find that it has been surreptitiously and substantively altered. That's intellectual fraud, a breach of online ethics. So my embarrassment needs no caching, as long as this bog exists.

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Julián Ortega Martínez gives us an off-topic heads-up (see comments) on Shinzo Abe’s trip to Columbia. A show of solidarity for a democracy pushing back what was once a leftist guerilla movement but has long since deteriorated into a massive criminal operation? Good thing, even if you have to go to President Uribe’s website to find out about the visit. Heaven knows it’s being ignored by the Japanese media too. I looked at Mr. Abe’s website, and it isn’t there either. Could it be that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to be too conspicuously out-of-town while the “twisted” Diet is in session?

Maybe, maybe not. For Mr. Abe’s website is somewhat unusual, even for a Seiwa-kai-related blog. Half the space on his home page is currently (May 23) taken up by an explanation of his complaint against a tabloid weekly over its treatment of his comments regarding crime victims’ rights—a decidedly proper subject of public discourse in its own right. Now he’s dead serious, but However, as far as his own complaint is concerned, as dead serious as he is about it, I don’t think that he would have a case in the courts; the way I see it, he’s splitting hairs as far as allegations of misrepresentations by the media go. More troubling, comparing the two sides of the story as scrupulously related in his commentary reminds me very much of his ill-fated efforts to parse the Kohno Statement on the comfort women.

The other major item on his home page happens to be an exposition on his reference to human rights in Tibet and Xinjiang-Uyghur. Over all, there’s little to no effort to proactively highlight his policy initiatives as well as his public activities. His latest “news” item dates back to January 7. My, the site does not have a blog.

And I used to wonder how he fell apart so quickly.

As you might have guessed, Mr. Abe's site does not have a blog.

May 24 edit in italics

Parallels between Mr. Fukuda and Mr. Abe in the Polls; Stargazing; and Lots of Footnotes on North Korea, Refueling Resumption Bill, Etc.

The Abe Cabinet’s public poll numbers* had slipped steadily since its inauguration in 2006 September until opposition outnumbered support for the first time in 2007 February. However, as the political financing scandal epidemic more or less subsided** and the ruling coalition managed to pass the budget and enact much of its legislative agenda, the Abe Cabinet’s numbers recovered in April and appeared to stabilize there. But then, the DPJ finally broke through with the 50 Million mislaid public pension accounts. The Abe Cabinet’s numbers took a huge hit, from which they never recovered. True, the DPJ’s numbers did not rise in similarly dramatic fashion, but the LDP’s numbers fell, and that’s what mattered. The pension accounts scandal devastated the ruling coalition in the July Upper House election and mortally wounded the Abe Cabinet (on life support, then clinically dead, for the last two months of its existence). Does the story sound familiar?

Some of the 15-16 December poll numbers in the latest Kyōdō Tsūshin wire service report can only be interpreted in light of the initial rage at the cavalier way in which the Prime Minister and his Chief Cabinet Secretary (charged jointly with the Health, Labor and Welfare Minister to clean up the management mess at the Social Insurance Agency) tried to brush off the latest revelations***. As the anger subsides and if nothing more occurs to further erode trust, the Fukuda Cabinet will recover a good portion of the support it dropped. But a sense of betrayal will linger in the public’s mind, bringing a new fragility to the Fukuda Cabinet. All innocence has been lost; with it, much of Mr. Fukuda’s margin of error.

What, then, are the factors that will have a major effect on the Fukuda administration’s fate?

You can forget about his 27-2829 December trip to China. There will be no surprises; the dispute over the East China Sea gas fields will be resolved, if ever, on the occasion of President Hu Jintao’s visit to Japan next spring****. If there is no solution available on that occasion, then Mr. Fukuda should be polite, but firm in rejecting Chinese claims.

ADD: On the other hand, if they do decide to settle it, there's no reason why they can't do it on this occasion. If they do, it will certainly be a nice feather in the Prime Minister's cap. Chinese leaders tend to gift tributaries... (20 December)

On North Korea, no meaningful progress will be made on the abductees, in the sense that no new information will surface from the North Korean side*****. This is unlikely to be a problem for Mr. Fukuda unless the Bush administration decides to take North Korea off the list of state sponsors of terrorism, which in turn is unlikely to happen unless North Korea comes clean on its uranium enrichment program and its plutonium and plutonium bomb stockpiles******.

You can forget about the refueling resumption bill, too, which will be adopted by a supermajority override on 12 January or thereabouts. What the Kyōdō Tsūshin poll says is that the public is angry at the Prime Minister and his Ministers’ handling of the pension accounts revelations and is taking it out on the refueling bill*******. It’s not about the bill itself. In fact, pushing the bill to its ultimate conclusion will not damage Mr. Fukuda in the public eye; to the contrary, it will be somewhat helpful, as a show of decisiveness.

National security brings me to the uglier face of the defense controversy: the Moriya and Co. scandals. I’ve said before that the coalition can weather the scandal if it is limited to Yamada Yōkō but that all bets are off if indictments spread to other businesses. I should have qualified that by saying that criminal proceedings against LDP members would cause problems commensurate with the number and statuses of such politicians. I think that the Fukuda administration can even weather the singular implication of Fukushirō Nukaga, his Finance Minister. But for that, he needs to act decisively in the face of a variety of contingencies. ********.

I had thought that the tax bill would be a major theater of contention on the chess board. Now, I am not quite so sure. There is open dissent in the DPJ on the most important and problematic item among the time-limited tax measures: the ten-year old “temporary” supercharge on the gasoline tax. Specifically, it has been revealed that some road-construction-happy DPJ Diet members are circulating an open letter opposing the DPJ pledge to eliminate the supercharge and to put the remainder in the general budget, and threatening to vote against a DPJ bill to that effect. But even if the threats prove hollow and the wayward DPJ road tribe toes the party line, it is my belief that the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of both sides coming to a compromise. It is important for the Fukuda administration not to lose its nerve as the deadline approaches.

So, as far as the major issues that come to my mind are concerned, Mr. Fukuda should be able to make his way to the Hokkaidō Summit. That alone should firm up support for his Cabinet. But this will more likely than not require a certain firmness and decisiveness － a ruthlessness, actually － that his predecessor Mr. Abe was not able to muster. Can he? That is essentially the point that Tobias raises here. So, will he or won’t he? Only God knows. And if another good friend (of mine, not Mr. Fukuda) Shisaku is God, then Mr. Fukuda is as good as dead.

* AKyōdō Tsūshin report is recovered here. The graph can be compared with the one in this report on the Fukuda Cabinet. The blue and red lines trace support and opposition respectively.

** It helped that some of the negative press spilled over to the DPJ side, most notably on party leader Ichirō Ozawa and his less-than transparent real estate transactions and other political financing mysteries.

*** I posted on it here, in case anyone needs a reminder. No? Oh well.

**** My best guess is a joint development agreement that covers areas beyond both edges of the disputed waters. That way, neither side compromises its position on the dispute, while allowing development of resources that should be commercially viable only for the Chinese market. If it happens, you read it here first.

***** The Japanese side is demanding the following:

1) Account for all the abductees.
2) Return remaining survivors.
3) Punish the people responsible.

Barring regime change, it is hard to imagine these demands being fulfilled. If the North Korean claims are true, then the Japanese side is demanding that the other side prove a negative. To do so to with any measure of satisfaction, the North Korean side would have to offer a degree of transparency and access that the North Korean regime cannot provide. If, as is likely, they are lying, they still face the accounting issue. Besides, there is no way that they can admit the truth now, since they would then have to proceed to the third Japanese demand, which in turn would raise the transparency and access issue all over again.

These are non-negotiable. Agreeing to anything that does not hold out hope for fulfillment of these demands means that you are grabbing the third rail with your bare hands. So you can see why the American authorities can’t get a coherent answer when they ask the Japanese administration to tell them what it means by “progress” with regard to the prospective delisting of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism.

****** In the unlikely event that North Korean side does declare its nuclear stockpile, I’m sure that the Bush administration will move to delist North Korea. The Japanese authorities will acknowledge the matter gracefully; they have no choice. It will be useful to remind the Japanese public that Japanese sanctions against North Korea were first linked to the abductees issue (to the best of my knowledge) in 2006 October, when restrictions were tightened in response to the North Korean nuclear test. Thus, if there is meaningful progress toward actual destruction of the stockpile (as opposed to mere declaration), Japan will be rightfully expected to begin rolling back those sanctions. But that is a bridge that will not be reached in the foreseeable future.

******* It is instructive that the Yomiuri poll, taken only a week before the Kyōdō Tsūshin poll, showed only a slight decline in support numbers for the refueling resumption bill. Some of the support must be casual and more a vote of overall confidence than an expression of a preference for that particular policy objective. I would rephrase this accordingly if I were to write it now.

******** Specifically, Mr. Fukuda needs a　color-coded contingency plan with a clear red line beyond which he will dismiss Mr. Nukaga.

Why the Public Pension Accounting Scandal Blew Up Again on Tuesday

If you are a Japan politics otaku, you will remember that it was the revelations over the 50 million public pension accounts that had not been traced to their owners that really pushed the LDP over the cliff in the July Upper House election, the cake under the icing, if you will, of all those lesser scandals and misstatements. When Prime Minister Abe went over and above what his administration was promising (consolidation of all accounts by computer by March, the end of the Japanese fiscal year) and vowed to go after every last account and restore it to its rightful owner, most people thought he was overreaching. When Yōichi Masuzoe, a social welfare expert and one of the smartest Diet members in the LDP, assumed the Health, Labor and Welfare portfolio in the post-election Cabinet, he surely knew that it would be impossible to fulfill Mr. Abe’s campaign promise. Yet when Yasuo Fukuda took over as Prime Minister in September, choosing to keep on most of Mr. Abe’s Cabinet members and other political appointees including MHLW Minister Masuzoe, neither individual did anything to back away from Mr. Abe campaign promise*. On 31 October, a Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare committee consisting of independent experts and other notables issued a report that included ballpark figures that gave a fairly good idea of the causes and magnitude of the hardcore, intractable cases. Yet Mr. Masuzoe waited and chose this point in time to officially own up to the fact that millions of accounts not only would remain unattributed by the March deadline but might never be restored to their rightful owners.

All this predictably caused a furor, and the opposition is on the attack, most notably with calls for a censure motion against Mr. Masuzoe, and Diet testimonies by Prime Minister Fukuda, Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura, and of course Mr. Masuzoe**. Clearly, the opposition hopes to have a field day during the expected month-long extension of the extraordinary Diet session into mid-January. And that, in my view, is exactly why the announcement was made on Tuesday.

It has been clear for some time that this Diet session will be re-extended, the Upper House will vote it down, the Lower House will override it by a supermajority vote, the Upper House will pass a censure motion against the Fukuda administration/Prime Minister Fukuda, Prime Minister Fukuda will not call a snap election, and life will go on. Now there will be several other bills remaining on the agenda at the current 15 December recess date, but the ruling coalition has no intention of forcing them through during the re-extension, much less allowing the opposition to enact its own agenda items. Thus, activities during the extension had promised to be mostly, if not exclusively, about the refueling bill and the opposition’s efforts to link them to the Ministry of Defense scandals. This meant that there would be a lot of Diet members in both Houses sitting on their hands with little to do but wait to vote in the plenaries. Given such prospects, what more could a hungry opposition have asked for, if not another juicy chunk of the ruling coalition to sink their teeth into?

Normally, of course, that would be a political disaster for the Fukuda administration. However, in the case of the pension accounts scandal, it was bound to blow up anyway in March, during the regular Diet session, the real deal, when the budget and the budget-related bills, particularly the time-limited special tax measures, would be facing crunch time. Unlike the refueling activities, the public pension accounts are a domestic issue, a money issue, fruits of our real blood, sweat and tears***. At a minimum, it would have a disastrous effect on the legislative agenda****. Secondly, the aura of haplessness that would be cast on the Fukuda administration by the accretion of successive scandals would be compounded by the fact that, with time, the problem would become less and less Mr. Abe’s and more and more Mr. Fukuda’s. These two elements are enough to convince me that the Fukuda administration and LDP strategists decided that it would be better to take their lumps now, than to wait for the regular Diet session.
Then why this particular moment? Over the previous couple of weeks, the LDP had finally managed to win over skittish coalition partner New Kōmeitō to re-extending the extraordinary Diet session. It achieved this by assuring them that Prime Minister Fukuda would not call a snap election even if the opposition passed a censure motion in the Upper House after the coalition supermajority in the Lower House overrode an Upper House rejection of the refueling resumption bill. With that final piece of the puzzle in place, the time to clear the air had finally come.

This is not to say that the ruling coalition is not taking a hit. I would be surprised if Fukuda administration’s poll numbers do not take a dip. I would only be mildly surprised if Mr. Masuzoe (unfairly, if prudently, in my view) is forced to resign. However, the coalition is putting the blame on a desperate Prime Minister Abe making a campaign promise that could not be kept. That, together with best efforts by the authorities and a full, clear accounting of the limits of the ongoing efforts to identify the account owners, will be enough to keep the scandal from derailing Mr. Fukuda’s desire to hold the next Lower House general election at his convenience, sometime after the next G8 Summit in Hokkaidō in 2008 July and the end of the current four-year Lower House tenure in 2009 September*****.


* When questioned, Mr. Masuzoe would come close to repudiating it, but would pull back, citing the need and his will to fulfill a political promise.

** There is a public communications angle to this, and it’s clear that the Fukuda regime bungled some aspects of it. Specifically, poor public communications efforts by the Mr. Masuzoe and the Chief Cabinet Secretary appeared to compound the problem. This was not been one of Mr. Fukuda’s shining moments either, but he appears to have escaped the brunt of the initial media assault, mostly because of the way they timed Mr. Masuzoe’s press conference. But more broadly, I think that they should have done more spadework, so that they could ease into the new narrative when the official revelations were made. I’ll try to address this as part of a separate post on the scandal.

*** In a way, Ichirō Ozawa’s decision to force a showdown on the refueling extension was a strategic error that is somewhat analogous to Mr. Abe’s highlighting constitutional amendment and patriotism in education. None of them were hot-button issues with the vast majority of the Japanese public. The two men overestimated the quality, if not the numbers, of the support that their proposals received.

**** Note that the public pension accounts scandal is handled by the Health, Labor and Welfare Committees in the two Houses, about as far as possible in terms of jurisdiction as you can get from defense issues. Thus, pulling it back to a re-extended extraordinary Diet session means that the opposition will have a hard time using the former to mess up the schedule on other work that must be done.

***** It is possible that the reluctance in some opposition quarters to force a re-extension (e.g. People’s New Party co-leader Tamisuke Watanuki) or even to oppose the measure in the first place (e.g. DPJ deputy leader Seiji Maehara) helped to force the LDP’s hand as well. Without a Diet in session as a platform to press the pension accounts issue, the opposition would have had no choice but to wait for the regular session to be opened. Conversely, the opposition could be wishing that they could save the pension accounts for the regular session.

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I stay away from these unverifiable conspiracy-type conjectures, which are usually no more than selective facts strung together with charming plausibilities. But in this case, the circumstantial evidence was too strong for me to resist. I am nevertheless more ready than usual to be proved the fool.

If Anyone Can Prolong the Honeymoon with the Media, It's Prime Minister Fukuda

I did not make it up when I wrote that "[Mr. Fukuda] had charmed the entire Kantei press into longing for his triumphant return." In fact, a member of the Asahi board of editorial writers said it on Sunday Project. So I am not surprised to see that the Prime Minister's multiple political financing embarrassments are not causing him much trouble. Likewise, the financial irregularities in, for example, Environment Minister Kamoshita's books provided a few headlines, but nothing more. Think of it, if Mr. Fukuda had been an Abe clone, he would have been inundated with "more-of-the-same" invectives by now, and never mind the legal distinctions between the intentional and the negligent. Of course the media would be obliged to maintain balance with these and other Ozawa money stories (it could be just a coincidence that this story does not appear on the Asahi website), and it remains to be seen if they are just sick and tired of flogging this same horse over and over again.

In any case, Mr. Fukuda is liked - by the media and the public alike - and likeable, so this may be as good a time as any for the media, as they do here and here, to let the Japanese people know something that they've been aware of for a long, long time: that is, short of regime change, North Korea is not going to give Japan any more meaningful information on the abductees issue, let alone 1) let all abductees come home; 2) give a full, satisfactory accounting of the abductees issue (for example, how did they die, if they did), and 3) hand over the culprits; and have the Fukuda administration deal with the consequences.

Now imagine the embarrassment if the Abe administration had to deal with the revelation, and the only answer it had was that it had not heard such a thing directly from the North Koreans. Wouldn't the media be saying that Mr. Abe should ask Mr. Roh what Mr. Kim actually said? But I'll be mildly surprised if the mainstream media put that same question to Mr. Fukuda.

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I found this while I was looking for my posts on the relationship between the media and Prime Ministers. I think that it has stood the test of time pretty well, including the time horizon for Mr. Abe.

And the Winner Is… Makoto Koga? and Other Post-LDP Election Trivia

"…When I requested a meeting with Ichiro Ozawa, head of the DPJ, I had decided to resign, in view of my health. On that basis, I had intended to ask him to build a relationship of trust."
- Shinzo Abe, Sept. 24 press conference

At first, I am thinking, is he nuts? Did he really think giving himself up would convince Mr. Ozawa to stop trying to knock the LDP out of power? Then I realize that Mr. Abe is channeling those medieval warlords and - dare I say it? - our previous Emperor, who offered their lives in order to save their people. Still, this is odd; The LDP may have lost the battle, but, with an overwhelming majority in the decisive Lower House, it certainly hasn't lost the war. President Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor seeking truce with Japan by offering to commit seppuku? Hmm, still doesn't quite work.

As new election czar, Makoto "I Am Prettier than Tamisuke Watanuki but Not as Cute as Shizuka Kamei" Koga wrests substantial power out of the hands of the Secretary-General, effectively making the LDP party leadership The Big Four instead of The Big Three. Post-Upper House election reports said that Mr. Koga had refused Prime Minister Abe's request to be the General Council Chairman, the least powerful among The Big Three. Asked by Yasuo Fukuda, he refused again, instead, asking for and getting the election portfolio.

Let's see: Secretary-General, Bunmei Ibuki, 69; Toshihiro Nikai, General Council Chairman, 62; Sadakazu Tanigaki, 62; Makoto Koga, 67. Well, at least they're all younger than the Prime Minister…

The LDP and the New Komeito leadership meet and agree to require receipts for all expenditures regardless of amount (there is currently a \50,000 floor for declaring individual expenditures). Prime Minister Abe had pushed the idea before the election, but had let it slip as his power continued to deteriorate. I thought that would be disastrous, tantamount to sticking out your neck, then giving Mr. Ozawa a sledgehammer. This is a smart, if obvious, move.

The Foreign Ministry looked like the only plausible place to put Taro Aso. Now it is opening up, as current Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura is switching to Chief Cabinet Secretary. True, there are philosophical differences between Mr. Fukuda and Mr. Aso, but exogenous constraints (make nice with China, make nice with the US, keep hands and eyes on abductees issue, etc.) will confine any dissonance to symbolic, not substantive, quarters. Besides, what did Lyndon B. Johnson say about Edger J. Hoover? Long-time readers of my blog know, of course, that my predictive powers are on a par with Sylvia Brown and Uri Geller…

ADD. You know, Tobias Harris makes a good point about Mr. Aso here. No, I mean here. Actually, I thought that there would be a very high likelihood that Mr. Fukuda would offer the post, but it appears from the Sankei link that Mr. Aso is saying that if offered, he will not serve We'll know soon.

Why I Think that Taro Aso Will Win and Will Not Call Elections until Next August at the Earliest

I said it yesterday and I'll say it again: Taro Aso is the next Prime Minister, and his administration will last beyond the next regular Diet session till next August at the earliest. (Actually, I said September, but I look up the law, and I changed my mind, okay?)

Why Mr. Aso, who did not get his own micro-faction until he was in his sixties? Why a moderately engaging public speaker but also one who has been known to come forth with multiple verbal gaffes of not-quite "baby-birthing machine" proportions? The purported hawk who, as Foreign Minister, talked openly about conceding half the Northern Territories to Russia as a negotiations starter? There are good reasons why people have had a hard time taking him seriously as head of government material, even as he has scaled the highest echelons of the coalition government and the LDP party hierarchy; and why they, including the media, are not quite ready to concede the race to him. (The media do have an added interest in making this a real race, but that's beside the point here.)

First of all, the race will be conducted among the usual suspects. No Koizumi-type outliers will emerge as a serious candidate. The truncated, emergency selection process bypasses the normal popular vote by registered party members and puts the decision squarely in the hands of regional ward chiefs and Diet members. Not exactly smoke-filled room, it nevertheless rules out any possibility of the likes of Yoichi Masuzoe (who has anyway been torched mercilessly by the tabloid media for his purportedly prolific sexual achievements of past) being crowned by popular acclaim.

So let's take a look at the usual suspects. Yasuo Fukuda, Kaoru Yosano, and Fukushiro Nukaga are the most frequently quoted names, other than Sadakazu Tanigaki, whom I will get to later. In fact, they are almost, though not quite, the only ones being talked about.

The three men are safe choices, and you may have noticed that I have a thing for Mr. Yosano's hobbit-like charm. I also have warm feelings for Mr. Fukuda, partly from a fleeting look I had that showed him at his unassuming, considerate best. I have little feel for what Mr. Nukaga is like, but he seems to be a steady if unspectacular personage himself. But it is notable that none of them, all in their mid- to late-sixties, lead a faction. (In fact, Mr. Yosano doesn't even belong to one, which means he won't have a institutional power base to help him round up votes.) Choose one of the three, and you choose safety. Yes, safety over leadership, which was so damagingly absent in Mr. Abe.

And then there's Sadakazu Tanigaki, with his own micro-faction. Which brings me to my second point. Mr. Tanigaki shares another distinction with Mr. Mr. Aso: the pair actually ran for LDP president last time around against impossible odds. Believe it or not, this confers a certain measure of political legitimacy that is missing in the three did-not-runs. This is a matter of no small importance as the now chaotic, drifting LDP looks for someone to take the helm. This gives the pair an edge over all other candidates. Unfortunately for Mr. Tanigaki, his combination of overtly MOF-friendly fiscal conservatism and soft-walk, small-stick diplomacy will not allow him to gather the necessary votes to overtake Mr. Aso.

As for other possibilities, Nobutaka Machimura is one of the smarter and nicer people I got to know in METI, where he is from. But he is more of a caretaker than leader as the nominal head of the Machimura faction, and he has never ran for LDP president either. Besides, four successive PMs seem a little too much for the other factions to bear. He will not stand, and will not be elected if he does. There's always the Koizumi card, but he won't run either. I can't quite put my finger on it; it just feels so wrong. On what basis can he run? And what about his many, very real enemies? It goes against his formidable sense of political theater.

And that leaves Mr. Aso.

Why do I think that an Aso administration will last through next summer? Simply put, I don't see any advantages for Mr. Aso in calling for an early election. Either the Aso administration will prove unpopular, which means that they'll lose at least a very goodly portion of their Lower House seats, which is a truly stupid thing to do; or it will prove mildly popular, in which case they will still lose some seats and still leave the Upper House in opposition hands. As a matter of pure logic, it is not impossible that the Aso administration will prove so popular that and Mr. Aso decides that he wants a renewed mandate through a new election. I don't see how that can come to pass. Still, he will need an incredibly successful regular Diet session that requires a substantial extension to get things done in a split Diet. This at a minimum will take it very deep into June and likely some point in July, before the Lower House can be dissolved, after which Mr. Abe will have to wait a minimum of 24 days before the ensuing general election can be held. that should take us to August.

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The problem with these predictions is that anything can happen in politics, as we have just seen in Mr. Abe's sudden resignation. Leaders fall ill, leaders die, and sex scandals explode, any of these of these things can happen to Mr. Aso as well within the month. Who knows, Mr. Koizumi might throw his hat in the ring after all. Beyond that, the economy might tank sooner rather than later.

And I could be just a plain, garden-variety of dead wrong. In which case, you'll understand why I'm not being paid to write this stuff. Unlike this precocious whippersnapper here.

Prime Minister Resigns

Boy, these … guys … are quick.

I think I hear a collective sigh of relief from the LDP. I have only one word to add: Unterschmuck!

Are Those an Arm and a Leg I See in the Seas Incarnadined? The Prime Minister Puts His Job on the Line.

The following are the main points of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's comments in the September 9 press conference [in Sydney, Australia, before his return to Japan].

(Opening statement) Japan, the US, and Australia held their first [trilateral] summit meeting, where the heads of the US and Australia expressed their high evaluation of and gratitude for Japan's contribution to the "War on Terror". On my side, I explained the [my? our?] will to continue the "War on Terror". I also explained it at the Japan-US summit meeting with President Bush. The Diet is in a very severe situation, but since this has become an international pledge, a big responsibility lies with me. I am determined that all efforts must be expended to continue the refueling activities of the Self-Defense Forces. I intend to put my job on the line in order to receive the understanding of the DPJ and other opposition parties.

Q. Are you submitting a revision bill that extends the counter-terrorism act, or are you submitting a new act from the beginning? Are you willing to hold a meeting of the party heads with the JPD and other opposition parties before submitting the bill?

A. We must submit a bill to continue refueling activities of the Self-Defense Forces and achieve its enactment. In submitting the bill, we must make the maximum effort to receive the understanding of the opposition parties, the DPJ in particular. For this purpose, I must seek their understanding by undertaking the matter with the thought of putting my job on the line. I would like to have the meeting of the heads with Representative (of the DPJ Ichiro) Ozawa as early as possible.

Q. You said, "put my job on the line." Are you prepared to have the Cabinet resign en masse if the continuation (of the refueling activities) is not able to be achieved?

A. What I said was that all efforts must be made to allow the continuation. Under my responsibility, the responsibilities of my office, I must fulfill the responsibilities of my office by expending every ounce of my powers. (He fell silent for a while, but interrupting the moderator, who tried to turn to the next questioner, "well then, next…") Obviously, I do not intend to cling to my seat of office.
- Translation from September 10 online Mainichi

Although many people in the LDP are trying to parse this statement as an expression of his determination rather than his willingness to resign his post or, worse, if improbably, dissolve the Lower House for a general election, figures like the Yoichi Masuzoe, the outspoken Health, Labor and Welfare Minister, and (even before Mr. Abe's earlier Sept. 8 statement) Yasuhiro Nakasone, the ex-Prime Minister, are openly pointing to or even demanding, in the case of Mr. Nakasone, such an outcome.

The ruling coalition is not going to let Prime Minister Abe go the electorate on this issue if they can help it, nor do I think will they let him eat his words and stay. The thought of a new Prime Minister makes rejecting a compromise that avoids a maximum two-month hiatus a little less delectable for the DPJ. Still., it's hard to see what kind of calculations went into the Prime Minister's September 9 statement.

Bereft of a political justification, the only bit of amateur psychology that I can come up with is something I (think I) went over before in this blog: A seasoned political reporter who had covered the Prime Minister for many years told me that Mr. Abe wanted to be Prime Minister once, to fulfill his deceased father's – unrequited desires in accordance with his mother's wishes, but did not want it for himself. If you can believe that, then it makes about as much sense in the current case as anything else

The Abe Adminstration: The Gift that Keeps on Giving

Some day - and the days are getting shorter - when the Abe Cabinet is only a fond memory, the Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association (what, no reporters?) will erect on their premises a shrine with the Abe Administration as the deity; and to which, on a particularly slow news day, they will gather to pray: Oh great god of political scandal, please render unto us a minister, a vice minister, anyone, anything, to spare us from the shame of soiling the tops of our front pages with the latest five-year MAFF proposal for subsidizing Japanese turnip farmers with less than 2/5 hectares in non-rice paddy acreage. And their wish shall be granted.

The latest beneficence has been incarnated in the form of Dr. Ichiro Kamoshita, M.D., who, according to Shisaku, "can't count". The powers that be want to play it as a "mistake", which under my Rule 2 is not a take-one-step-back card. Prime Minster Abe agrees with me. With my Rule 2, that is. He does seem to reserving judgment until he sees the public response. Which is par for the course for him.

In Shinto, anything can be deified, a rock, a river, an umbrella, traitor to the Emperor, whatever. In fact, there's an old Japanese saying that used to be inscribed on one of a set of Edo Era playing cards: "Iwashi no atama mo shinjin kara", or: "Even something trivial as the head of a sardine can be an object of worship".

Has the LDP Finished Cleaning House? Don't Ask the Party President

LDP leaders have convinced Yutaka Kobayashi to be a man and resign from his just-won, second-term Upper House seat and allow Akira Matsu, the runner-up and faithful member of the coalition-partner New Komeito to take over instead. He could stay on until the criminally indicted members of his campaign financing managers exhaust all appeals to any guilty verdicts, but at that point (any time beyond three months after the election to be exact), new elections would have to be called, one that could very likely be won by yet another DPJ candidate. Just as important, the LDP leadership clearly did not want to let this linger into the Diet session that convenes next week, where Mr. Kobayashi could have become yet another hugely distracting sideshow.

More surprising for the Japanese media was the sudden decision by Tokuichiro Tamazawa, a nine-term Lower House veteran, to leave the LDP (but not the Diet) as penitence because his political office had used the same receipts multiple times to account for expenditures (as befitting my Two Rules of LDP Diet Member Responsibility). No doubt the party leadership engineered this as well.

Party veteran Tamazawa's fate has irked some LDP members, who think this was harsh compared to Yukiko Sakamoto, who had lost her Vice Minister post in the Foreign Ministry to a similar sin but did not have to leave the party. Evidently, they are playing some kind of board game, where they've beach drawn a fake-receipts, take-one-step back card. Then of course there's Takehiko Endo, who took one giant step back from MAFF Minister. So that's my rule number three.

It is highly likely that the Prime Minister/party president had little to do with executing the latest demotion and exile; they have the look and feel of having been taken care of by the aconsiglieris. And normally, that would be that. However, in this case, they merely underscore the near-consensus in the JMSM that Prime Minister Abe had let Taro Aso, party Secretary-General, and Kaoru Yosano, the Chief Cabinet Secretary, take care of offing Mr. Endo and Ms. Sakamoto. In fact, one earlier news report had Mr. Abe allowing Mr. Aso to take care of all the Vice Minister selections.

Perhaps all the bad cards have been drawn, and no new crises in the HR department are imminent. But Mr. Abe's control is slipping badly, and the grown ups are taking over the ship. At least that is the perception, and that perception is created because everybody in the LDP is talking with impunity. And Mr. Aso and Mr. Yosano get the credit without talking the hits.

What seems like a long, long time ago, Prime Minister Koizumi brought the abductees and their family members home, but his Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary - later Secretary-General and Chief Cabinet Secretary - got all the credit. Perhaps it is only poetic justice that we are seeing the ascendancy of Secretary-General Aso and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yosano.

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This has serious implications for the succession. The one safeguard that has kept Mr. Abe away from the scaffold has been the lack of a better alternative to lead them to victory in the next Lower House election (no later than September 2009). If Mr. Aso and Mr. Yosano continue their rise in public esteem - no sure thing, but the media will likely build them up, if only to set them up for a fall at the nearest convenient opportunity - the party faithful will surely take a good look at the prospects of premiericide. Mr. Abe's margin of error is looking very, very thin.

Where Did the Abductees Issue Become Part of the Response to the WMDs?

The Japanese Government issues an annual report titled: Report on the Government's Undertaking Concerning the Tackling of the Abductees Issue and Other Issues of Human Rights Violations by the North Korean Authorities
The report states its purpose at the very beginning:

"This document reports on the Government's undertaking concerning the tackling of the abductees issue and other issues of human rights violations by the North Korean authorities pursuant to the provision of The Act Concerning the Tackling of the Abductees Issue and Other Issues of Human Rights Violations by the North Korean Authorities (Act No. 96, 2006 Jun. 23)."

The first section of: Part 2. Abductees Chapter 1, Section 1. Domestic Undertakings; in its entirety:

(1) Measures Implemented against North Korea

In light of the launching of a ballistic missile by North Korea on July 5, 2006, the Government announced a set of measures such as forbidding the Mangyongbong 92, a North Korean cargo-passenger ship to entering [Japanese] ports, and tightening examinations on entries from North Korea. Moreover, when North Korea announced on October 9 the implementation of a nuclear test, [the Government] decided to forbid all North Korea-registered ships from entering [Japanese] ports, and decided the implementation of measures including a ban on the import of all categories of products from North Korea. These measures decided by comprehensively considering the various aspects of the situation including the fact that North Korea is not showing any sincere response to the abductees issue.

The text leaves the impression that the Government took the abductees issue into consideration on both occasions in determining the measures to be taken. In fact, there is no other reasonable interpretation. However, according to the 2006.07.05 press announcement by the Chief Cabinet Secretary (Shinzo Abe):

The launching of the ballistic missile or flying object [I like that; launching of a flying object] by North Korea directly concerns our country's security and is to be greatly alarmed about. Moreover, this case violates the Japan-DPRK Pyongyang Declaration and is incompatible with the Joint Declaration at the Six-Party talks, and is to be greatly regretted as well from the viewpoint of peace and safety of the international society and the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. From this point of view, it is necessary to give a steadfast, severe response to North Korea and we have decided to take the following substantive measures".

On July 5, there was no mention of the abductees issue. For that, we must turn to the next set of sanctions, three months later, the occasion of the nuclear test. On October 11, the Chief Cabinet Secretary (Yasuhisa Shiozaki) gave a danwa, or "talk". Here's the text in its entirety:

The National Security Council was held from 21 hours for approximately 20 minutes. As the result, I would like to allowed to announce our country's response for the time being pertaining to the nuclear test by North Korea.

Concerning the nuclear test by North Korea, we already clarified the position of our country by a declaration by the Chief Cabinet Secretary on the 9th.

Subsequently, the Government had considered our country's response; and, comprehensively taking into consideration the various elements of the situation including the fact that the Japan Meteorological Agency detected seismic waves different from the shapes of waves from a normal natural earthquake, that it is recognized that, in conjunction with the development of missiles by North Korea, that the threat to our country's security has doubled, North Korea has not shown any sincere response to the abductees issue, and that talks are being conducted in the UN Security Council with a view to making a severe response by the international society as a whole; and based on the opinions of the relevant Cabinet members and on orders from the Prime Minister, we have decided to take the following severe measures against North Korea and to expeditiously take the measures necessary for their implementation, and to decide them at the Cabinet session on the 13th.

In other words, the abductees issue was inserted on the second occasion as one of the factors that determined the Japanese response to the nuclear test, and the 2006 report (issued in 2007) retroactively stamped the July measures with the abductees issue seal. Since the only significant change between July and October other than the nuclear test is that Shinzo Abe had replaced Junichiro Koizumi as Prime Minister, the logical conclusion is that the addition was made at the order of Prime Minister Abe or someone who understood his desires. (The text itself bears the marks of careful calibration by the bureaucracy, but the thought is clearly of political origin.)

I had – mistakenly, it turns out – assumed that the sanctions had been in response to the WMD and missile delivery system issues, But it turns out that, because of the decision to insert the abductees issues on the occasion of the response to the nuclear tests, if and when (a very, very big "if and when") the Six-Party talks move forward and lifting/easing sanctions becomes a prerequisite, the Abe administration (another, growing, "if") will have to openly admit - it has no choice - that the abductees issue must be subsumed to the greater good of national security.

The Revolving Door at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries

MAFF Minister	tenure	time served
Toshikatsu Matsuoka	06.09.26-07.05.28	245 days
Norihiko Akagi	07.06.01-08.01	62 days
Masatoshi Wakabayashi	07.08.01-07.08.27	27 days
Takehiko Endo	07.08.27-07.09.03	8 days
Masatoshi Wakabayashi	07.09.03-?	?

Note that the tenure is getting shorter and shorter. This trend should stop, barring extraordinary revelations, as Mr. Wakabayashi, the ex-Environment Minister, has been called back as MAFF Minister, this time "permanently".

Mr. Wabayashi also executed the MAFF minister's duties in the brief interregnum between Mr. Matsuoka and Mr. Akagi, but that routinely happens when ministers travel overseas and is not an appointment.

Also jettisoned was first-term Yukiko Sakamoto as the Upper House Vice Minister at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The local LDP branch, which she chairs, and her own support association had been using multiple copies of single receipts as evidence for cost related to "meetings". As for the others with "politics and money" issues, Fukushiro Nukaga (Minister of Finance), Mitsuhide Iwaki (Chief Cabinet Secretary; Upper House), and Kanji Hagiwara (Vice Minister; Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry; Upper House) have been spared the sword; likewise on the LDP party side Toshihiro Nikai (Chairman, General Council) and Nobuteru Ishihara (Chairman, Policy Research Council). Two points:

1) You are responsible for the actions of your subordinates.
2) Mistakes are forgiven but falsehoods are not.

The Secretary-General, the Chairman of the General Council, and the Chairman of the Policy Research Council are the Big Three of the LDP. Since the President of the LDP usually serves as Prime Minister (Yohei Kono is the only LDP President who failed to do so; he had to settle for Speaker of the Lower House), the Big Three are in charge of the day-to-day activities. The Secretary-General oversees the political machine and is the most powerful. The General Committee Chairman nominally outranks his counterpart at the Policy Research Council, but is usually seen as a less powerful figure. Thus, the position has often served as a political reward to long-serving and affable - if not quite top-shelf talent – party stalwarts. (PRC policy decisions must receive GC approval before it becomes official party policy but the GC almost unfailingly rubberstamps the PRC decision.

Seriously, there is a sliver lining for the LDP to this mess. Cabinet appointments and the length of such tenures are highly valued in determining who gets what in the twice-yearly Imperial Honors. If things have not changed since I was involved in the peripheries, tenure is tallied by the year regardless of the actual number of days served. In other words, one day as Cabinet Minister is just as valuable as the entire calendar year in determining your service to the nation. Thus, Mr. Akagi and Mr. Endo have already earned a year as Cabinet Minister towards whatever award that awaits them when they pass the age of 70. (Gaijins can and do receive them earlier.) Mr. Matsuoka should have no use for those two years regardless of where he is now. Still, together with the permanent replacement for MAFF Minister, the Abe administration will have used the one calendar year to help bestow Imperial favor on three – likely four, since Mr. Wakabayashi should be allowed to count his non-overlapping tenures at MOE and MAFF as one year each - worthies among the party faithful.

Turn Around and They're Two: Whither the Koizumi Children?

And ere he blew three notes (such sweet
Soft notes as yet musician's cunning
Never gave the enraptured air)
There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling,
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering
Little hands clapping and little tongues chattering,
And, like fowls in a farmyard when barley is scattering
Out came the children running.

- Robert Browning, from The Pied Piper of Hamelin

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Dear T:

It was very kind of you to inquire about the well-being of the Koizumi Children. I am sure they appreciate your concern. As it happens, today's Sankei has an article wrapped around the most recent meeting of Atarashii Kaze (New Wind) (est. 20 Dec. 2006), where Tsutomu Takebe, then-Prime Minister Koizumi's second-in-command for the LDP commissariat, brought together 24 first-term Upper House members and two second term members, all unaligned, under a gaggle of (actually, eight from five factions, including Mr. Takebe) seasoned backbenchers to promote "reform together with the people". The article, somewhat ominously, states that 17 of 21 first-term members attended the meeting. About to turn two (2006.09.11), the Koizumi children are being buffeted by the aftershocks from the Upper House election debacle.

The headline says it all:

Koizumi Children Fearful; Will Official [LDP] Candidates Be Replaced if Lower House is "Dissolved by Year End"?

According to the article, party HQ conducted an assessment of the electoral prospects of its 300 single-seat district Lower House members and found that only about 70 were favored to win, while the first-term members collectively projected as a near-total disaster. In order to maintain at least 240 seats (which, together with the New Komeito seats, should allow the ruling coalition to maintain its hold on the Lower House), Taro Aso, Secretary-General, and Yoshihide Suga, party election czar, intend to force Lower House members who have no hope of getting reelected to step down in favor of stronger candidates.

Normally, forcing out incumbents is not an easy task. Mr. Koizumi tried to do that for the last Upper House election; of the six, seven people targeted, only one stepped down. But these are not normal times, and first-term members lacking deep local roots who slipped in on Mr. Koizumi's sizeable coattails are particularly vulnerable. The article says that this policy is being met with approval from the majority of the LDP, and that second-fourth term members are particularly resentful of what they see as a bunch of pampered rookies whose careers had been promoted at their expense.

This is crunch time for the 66-year old Mr. Takebe as well, if he is to tighten ship with this motley crew in his efforts to build a durable power base of his own, if indeed that is his desire

Has Norimitsu Ohnishi Done It Again with His Take on Shinzo Abe's Visit to India?

Here is Norimitsu Ohnishi's latest take on Shinzo Abe's history issues.

Mr. Ohnishi points to the continued popularity in Japan of Radhabinod Pal, the Indian jurist and lone dissenting judge at the Tokyo Tribunals (he called for complete acquittal of all the defendants). The hook for his article is, of course, Mr. Abe's tribute to Judge Pal before the Indian Parliament and his meeting with the judge's 81 year-old son on his what-I-did-on-my-summer-vacation trip to India.

Mr. Ohnishi's point is that "many of postwar Japan’s nationalist leaders and thinkers have long upheld Judge Pal as a hero, seizing on — and often distorting — his dissenting opinion at the Tokyo trials to argue that Japan did not wage a war of aggression in Asia but one of self-defense and liberation. As nationalist politicians like Mr. Abe have gained power in recent years, and as like-minded academics and journalists have pushed forward a revisionist view of Japan’s wartime history, Judge Pal has stepped back into the spotlight, where he remains a touchstone of the culture wars surrounding the Tokyo trials." Although he does not say so explicitly, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that Mr. Ohnishi, by blurring the conceptual boundaries between the war and war crimes, is alleging that Mr. Abe is one of those people trying to argue that "Japan did not wage a war of aggression in Asia but one of self-defense and liberation."

But then, what to make of Mr. Abe's August 15 words of contrition on the occasion of the commemoration of the end of the war:

In WW II, Japan caused much loss and pain to the many countries, the people of the Asian nations in particular. As the representative of the people [of Japan], with a deep sense of regret, I sincerely express my feelings of sorrow to the people who became the victims.

This does not sound like the words of a man claiming "self-defense and liberation". In fact, it sounds very much like the words of a man who would knowingly pay tribute to a jurist who was convinced that "the evidence is still overwhelming that atrocities were perpetrated by the members of the Japanese armed forces against the civilian population of some of the territories occupied by them as also against the prisoners of war".

The war, most thinking Asians will tell you, had many faces, and all but the hard-core right-wing nationalists here will admit that, at a minimum, we – if not we alone - wronged the Chinese and Koreans. Mr. Ohnishi by insinuation conflates every dissenting Japanese voice – including, yes, Mr. Abe's - with the diehard denialists.

Unlike this case (of which NYT made what could be charitably called an invisible retraction), there is no obvious error on the facts. Perhaps he has wised up and decided to let the critique coalesce in the reader's mind. But I will elect to take a more accommodating view; that Mr. Ohnishi thought that Western readers, American ones in particular, would find Justice Pal's views on the war as a whole so unfamiliar and displeasing that they could be safely introduced only as background to that familiar and greatly exaggerated right-wing resurgence trope.

The First Casualty of the New Abe Administration?

Takehiko Endo, the new Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery, is the head of an agricultural mutual aid cooperative that illegally received an extra 1.15 million yen in government subsidies for its agricultural disaster mutual aid fund by inflating the number of subscribers to the fund. Of the 265 subscribers it claimed it had, 105 had not even been aware that their names had been used. The fraud was discovered in 2004 by the National Accounting Agency, but after three years, the money has yet to be returned.

Mr. Endo says that he is not resigning, claiming that the butler manager in charge did it and that he did not order it. Whichever; I think that this looks at least as bad as the political financing irregularities that took down Norihiko Akagi, for practical purposes the previous MAFF Minister, though not quite as serious as the influence peddling charges that likely led to the suicide of Toshikatsu Matsuoka, who in turn preceded Mr. Akagi at MAFF.

This reminds me of those Japanese ghost stories, where the ghost keeps coming back, again, and again, and again, until the main character goes insane and kills himself. He often manages to take down a lot of people around him in the process. A chilling summer staple of the mainlly humorous rakugo, the Japanese sit-down monologue genre.

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Incidentally, Chief Cabinet Secretary and everybody's favorite Kaoru Yosano is saying that they are reserving judgment until Mr. Endo explains himself. They are not interested in the explanation (if they don't know by now…), they want to know how it plays in the media. I think they ought to be more proactive, though they're damned if they do, and damned if they don't.

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ADD. In Japan, men sometimes shave their heads as a sign of atonement. Maybe that's what Mr. Endo has done. Or he doesn't have that option in the first place.

First Order of Business at the Cabinet Session? Balancing the Factions

The new Abe Cabinet held an extraordinary session today (Aug. 29, a Wednesday; the Cabinet meets twice a week on Tuesday and Friday) and appointed the 22 senior vice-ministers (LDP 19, New Komeito 3) in the respective ministries and the Cabinet Office. For the appointees - In the case of the LDP, third (or in rare cases fourth) term Lower House Members and second term Upper House members - this is an important step in building resumes, and they are expected to use the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the territory and the people who populate it, and the bureaucracy does its best to oblige. As a result, they tend to become close to their respective ministries and their jurisdiction.

You may have guessed that a senior vice-minister does not wield much real power. That is also evident from something Asahi points out quite baldly in its headline Deputy Vice-Minister Emphasis on Factional Balance, 22 Appointed as well as the text, which gives the following list:

Tsushima faction 4, Machimura faction 3, Koga faction 2, Yamazaki faction 2, Ibuki faction 2, Tanigaki faction 2, Komura faction 1, Aso faction 1, Nikai faction 1, Unaligned 1.

Note that the largest Machimura faction has one fewer than the next largest Tsushima faction. That is only appropriate, since the Prime Minister's faction is expected to show humility in dividing the spoils. Also significant is the fact that the Tanigaki faction is the only U-16 micro-faction to have two. Consider this an analgesic for being shut out (against Mr. Mori's advice) from the Cabinet and the main party posts.

For even more junior coalition Diet members, there are the parliamentary vice-minister appointments. Expect more of the same.

This Is Why We Play the Game: from the Abe Administration Poll Numbers

STATISTICS
Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Autobiography of Mark Twain

Here are the support/do not support poll figures for the Abe adminstration, post-election and post reshuffle:

Support Abe administration

	Jul.30-31	Aug.27-28
Asahi	26%	33%
Yomiuri	31.7%	44.2%
Kyodo Tsushin	29.0%	40.5%

Do not support Abe administration

	Jul.30-31	Aug.27-28
Asahi	60%	53%
Yomiuri	59.9%	36.1%
Kyodo Tsushin	59.0%	45.5%

For anyone who does not follow the Japanese media with regularity, the discrepancy between the poll numbers for Asahi and Yomiuri are par for the course and reflect their ideological and political leanings (left-center and center-right respectively). Kyodo Tsushin is a wire service and is considered more or less neutral

Now You Can Read the Extent of Mr. Yano's Anger

Here, on the Asahi website, if you can read Japanese. But hurry, because online Asahi articles are perishable products.

Asahi adds an interesting angle to earlier media reports of Mr. Yano's 30-minute phone call to Prime Minister Abe in protest of his omission from the new Cabinet. According to Asahi, the prime minister tried to placate Mr. Yano by telling him that he would appoint him the next time around.

Assuming that the substance of the phone call is emanating from Mr. Yano himself – the words of Mr. Yano and Mr. Abe are placed in quotation marks, indicating that the reporter talked to, at a minimum, a reliable source who could speak for Mr. Yano:

a) Making such a promise – not out of character for the conciliatory Mr. Abe – is not the best way to make a show of leadership.

b) Going public with the promise is not the best way to make Mr. Abe keep it.

Did Mr. Yano's anger make him speak too rashly? Or did he not think much of the chances of there being a "next time"? I suppose the former, seasoned, perhaps unconsciously, by the latter; though your guess is as good as mine. In any case, this kind of blood in the water does not bode well for Mr. Abe.

Post-Reshuffle Trivia and Speculation on the Counter-Terrorism Act Showdown

I expect a well-rounded English-language recap of the new Cabinet and it implications, past present and future from one of the weekly magazines. In the meantime, there are the bloggers, who provide the color commentary. As such, I offer you some things that caught my attention.

The Upper House LDP had feared that they would lose one of the two seats; they managed to keep both. But they are not happy. Rather, Upper House LDP member Tetsuro Yano is furious. Mr. Yano was widely assumed to have the inside track on one of the Cabinet posts usually reserved for the Upper House, but was shut out. Yomiuri reports that he called the Prime Minister to protest. No class act, true, but it's hard to believe that it was all in his mind and nowhere else.

What is it with the Prime Minister and his ex-faction chief and predecessor Yoshiro Mori? Mr. Mori criticized Mr. Abe for keeping Nobuteru Ishihara (Chairman, Policy Deliberation Commission), Yoshimi Watanabe (Minister for Financial Affairs, etc.) and Akira Amari (METI Minister), saying, "[The first Cabinet] included younger 'children' and was called the 'Friends Cabinet.' That was the 'first year class [of the three-year kindergarten]', but I feel that this one has become a little more 'second year class'. He came down especially hard on Mr. Ishihara (Lower House, Tokyo District No.8), claiming that the LDP needed a Policy Deliberation Commission Chairman (one of the Big Three party posts) from the peripheral provinces (地方chihou, usually - and somewhat misleadingly - referred to as "rural areas"). He had made specific suggestions (again publicly) in the make up of the Cabinet and LDP leadership in the week before the reshuffle. Last year, in the Koizumi succession race, He had openly lobbied for Mr. Abe to step aside in order to allow Yasuo Fukuda to get first crack, to no avail. Perhaps he has never gotten over that double show of disrespect for the natural order of things (leader-follower relationship, seniority).

Yomiuri says Makoto Koga was indeed tapped to be the Chairman of the General Council, on of the Big Three party posts, but had declined, opening the way for Toshihiro Nikai. Perhaps he felt offended at being asked to succeed Yuya Niwa his co-head of the Niwa-Koga faction. The two have a troubled relationship Think, Octavian and Mark Anthony, Stalin and Trotsky.

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If this were an action movie, the first climax comes over the extension of the counter-terrorism act. The Abe administration is giving every indication that they are willing to compromise on a deal that could include Iraq. It has the right people in the right places saying the right things. If there is no deal, the LDP should be able to pass a new law to its own liking, while bridging the gap between the old and new legislation by emergency logistical arrangements that have US and/or Australian vessels taking up the slack for a few months while the Japanese vessels dutifully shift out then back in to the Indian Ocean. I have no way of determining whether or not such a thing is possible, but it is at least conceivable, and the allied forces would be incredibly stupid not to have worked out such contingency plans. Faced with such a choice, my guess is that Ozawa/DPJ will take the deal that it can get and declare victory and claim – with justification - that it has acted responsibly.