Yukio Hatoyama appeared on Sōichirō Tawara’s Sunday Project and defended the DPJ against the accusation that it was playing politics with the replacement for the current BOJ Governor, Toshirō Mutō, whose term expires on 19 March. Never mind, though; he endorsed Haruhiko Kuroda and Hiroshi Watanabe, two former MOF Vice Ministers for International Affairs, as the next BOJ Governor. He did not come out and say it outright － it’s not his decision to make － but he responded to Mr. Tawara’s questioning and stated that it was his understanding that the two men were highly regarded, superior to Mr. Mutō in their international backgrounds, and did not come with the kind of MOF baggage that comes with a former Administrative Vice Minister like Mr. Mutō. In fact, the two men were so carried away by the prospects for a compromise that they forgot about Yutaka Yamaguchi, a third possible candidate whose image was prominently displayed in the background together with Mr. Kuroda and Mr. Watanabe’s. One of the regular panelists, an Asahi editorial writer*, pointed that out, but Mr. Hatoyama didn’t bother responding. Go figure.
I still think that it’s going to be Mr. Kuroda. Mr. Watanabe is easier to move, but he lacks seniority. I believe that the foreign press will give either one (or Mr. Yamaguchi, for that matter) a warm welcome, and the domestic press will also show their immediate relief over the resolution of the impasse. The problem with these men, though, is that they lack experience in fiscal policy and more broadly in economic management. Also, their domestic networks are bound to be very different from people from the MOF mainstream. So Mr. Kuroda (or Mr. Watanabe) must give the media a good honeymoon, or they will quickly show their disrespect.
The gasoline taxes took up a lot of Sunday Project time too, but I didn’t hear anything new from Mr. Hatoyama.
Former Mie Governor Masayasu Kitagawa and Kanagawa Governor Shigefumi Matsuzawa, founding figures of Sentaku as well as the Yamazaki faction transplant Nobuteru Ishihara and DPJ Ozawa-hater Yukio Edano, two key members from its political win, appeared on the show to discuss their objectives. They denied that the Sentaku was aimed at seikai saihen, or reorganization of the political parties, but it was clear that Governor Matsuzawa, for one, would love to see that happen. I’ve been working on an argument that something different is likely to happen and the reasons for that (I briefly touched on the subject here, at the end, and in the first footnote here), but I think that it’s going to be too long for a post. If you can help me get it into print, you will receive my undying gratitude.
* Incidentally, it’s my impression that Asahi editorial writers usually come across individually as more moderate than the editorials that they actually write. I assume that it’s the same thing with Yomiuri editorial writers, only in the opposite direction ideology-wise. What do you think?
Showing posts with label Sentaku. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sentaku. Show all posts
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Sentaku Addendum
Shisaku (here too), Observing Japan and this blog have all been holding forth on Sentaku. It somehow reminded me of how TIME and Newsweek would wind up having the same subject － one that comes to mind is Michael Jackson － for their feature stories in the same week. Beyond the obvious cases like major catastrophes or US presidential election votes, does that still happen?
Anyway, I’ll post something here that may shed some light on Shisaku’s “existential point”.
I mentioned in a footnote that the group has a Koizumi-Abe air. Indeed, they include several Koizumi kids and Upper House Koizumi recruits, as well as some important friends of Mr. Abe like Nobuteru Ishihara and Yoshide Suga. None of them can be said to be faring particularly well under the Fukuda administration, which relies on more traditional sources of LDP power. On the other hand, because of the DPJ's overall youthfulness, the list of its participants does include two former leaders in Katsuya Okada and Seiji Maehara. Mr. Okada bolted the LDP as a rookie Diet member with Ichirō Ozawa, but now appears to be maintaining a healthy distance from him (not that that is an unusual event for so many of Mr. Ozawa’s once-close associates). Mr. Maehara, of course, has even more reasons to avoid Mr. Ozawa. Thus, although a thorough review of the list may review otherwise, the list as a whole appears to reflect to at least some extent the more modernist elements of the discontents of the two major parties.
It is also notable that Dr. Sasaki － if I remember correctly － in the press conference gave in explaining the reasons for re-launching a manifest-oriented initiative admitted that the manifest process that the 21st Century Rinchō had succeeded in persuading the political parties to adopt had been degenerating into a pro forma act. I like to think that this dovetails nicely with my oft-voiced complaint that the DPJ under Mr. Ozawa has been adopting positions that aim to please only or even focusing on matters that have no place in the manifest that it claims to have received the public mandate for. As for the LDP, who even cares anymore?
Does this portend a possible move towards a new coalition in the middle － including the New Kōmeitō, a far more cohesive political party that is also represented in the political Sentaku? My answer remains: no. Given the wide range of choices in leadership that the two antagonists have made in their bid to pleasure the electorate and the policy shifts that the chosen have been able to impose on their respective parties, it is my belief that it makes far more sense for aspirants within the political Sentaku to work to seize power within their respective parties than to take their chances that they can grow a cross-party coalition into a viable power base in its own right.
Anyway, I’ll post something here that may shed some light on Shisaku’s “existential point”.
I mentioned in a footnote that the group has a Koizumi-Abe air. Indeed, they include several Koizumi kids and Upper House Koizumi recruits, as well as some important friends of Mr. Abe like Nobuteru Ishihara and Yoshide Suga. None of them can be said to be faring particularly well under the Fukuda administration, which relies on more traditional sources of LDP power. On the other hand, because of the DPJ's overall youthfulness, the list of its participants does include two former leaders in Katsuya Okada and Seiji Maehara. Mr. Okada bolted the LDP as a rookie Diet member with Ichirō Ozawa, but now appears to be maintaining a healthy distance from him (not that that is an unusual event for so many of Mr. Ozawa’s once-close associates). Mr. Maehara, of course, has even more reasons to avoid Mr. Ozawa. Thus, although a thorough review of the list may review otherwise, the list as a whole appears to reflect to at least some extent the more modernist elements of the discontents of the two major parties.
It is also notable that Dr. Sasaki － if I remember correctly － in the press conference gave in explaining the reasons for re-launching a manifest-oriented initiative admitted that the manifest process that the 21st Century Rinchō had succeeded in persuading the political parties to adopt had been degenerating into a pro forma act. I like to think that this dovetails nicely with my oft-voiced complaint that the DPJ under Mr. Ozawa has been adopting positions that aim to please only or even focusing on matters that have no place in the manifest that it claims to have received the public mandate for. As for the LDP, who even cares anymore?
Does this portend a possible move towards a new coalition in the middle － including the New Kōmeitō, a far more cohesive political party that is also represented in the political Sentaku? My answer remains: no. Given the wide range of choices in leadership that the two antagonists have made in their bid to pleasure the electorate and the policy shifts that the chosen have been able to impose on their respective parties, it is my belief that it makes far more sense for aspirants within the political Sentaku to work to seize power within their respective parties than to take their chances that they can grow a cross-party coalition into a viable power base in its own right.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Sentaku Unfurls Both Wings on Dolls Festival Day
… for what it’s worth…
The Sentaku movement and its Diet member counterpart held their joint inaugural meeting on March 3, just in time for the Dolls Festival. I’ve already posted on the main movement here. (does this count too?) This is my report on the Diet member Sentaku.
Bipartisan and nonpartisan movements involving Diet members keep coming and (rarely completely) going, but they’ve been getting more attention from the media in the Twisted Diet era. That’s natural, since nothing will attract more eyeballs than a political Big Bang. And some of the also have their own private-sector counterpart initiatives. But the Diet member Sentaku is in many ways different from the others.
First of all, the leadership is carefully divided between the LDP and the DPJ, from the two co-chairmen to the eight members each (including the co-chairman) in the standing committee (New Kōmeitō has two seats). The 107-strong membership is also deliberately balanced between the LDP with 51, DPJ with 47, NK with eight, and the tiny Japan New Party with a single member. In principle, seven terms for a Lower House members － the point in the old days when you began to feel more than due for your first Cabinet appointment － appears in principle to be the upper limit for membership*. Perhaps partly because of this, it appears that none of the people currently holding key LDP party positions or Cabinet or serious sub-Cabinet positions are included**.
Second, membership is skewed towards the Lower House, particularly in the case of the LDP. The Lower House-Upper House breakdown is (LDP 44-7; DPJ 31-16;NK 5-3; and NPP 1-0). This is related to the next point...
Third, the Diet member Sentaku is likely to have a very limited shelf life. To quote from the main Sentaku statement, “Sentakuwill conduct its activities in order to make the next [Lower House] general election*** a fruitful one for the electorate and will end its role with the announcement of the general election.” The Diet member Sentaku is a separate entity and need not mirror the lifecycle of the movement itself. But it does give as one of its two objectives the following:
“Make the next [Lower House] general election a historical “election for regime choice” that has significance for the nation by “reinvigorating policy debate” and “improving [policy] manifests while engaging in dialogue with Sentaku, as formed by volunteers from various fields.”
The other objective lists the main policy issues that the Diet member Sentaku covers, and basically repeats the main Sentaku’s objectives. It does not give any indication that the Diet member Sentaku will go beyond the procedural timeline given in the first objective. Thus I will be surprised if the Diet member Sentaku does outlive the main body, at least in its current form. Sankei, for one, agrees that it is only supposed to last until the general election.
To sum up, the Sentaku process has been set up explicitly to conduct a public dialogue within and between the general and political leaderships in order to force the political parties to come up with meaningful policy manifests to fight the next election. The leading members attending the inaugural press conference, posted in its entirety on the 21 Seiki Rinchō website as a video clip below the documents, also made it explicitly clear that the non-partisan dialogue is not intended in any way to promote a cross-party coalition of any sorts.
I won’t rule out the possibility of long-term ramifications. If I were to characterize the Diet members congregating in the Diet member Sentaku, I would say that it brings many elements of the (relatively speaking) conservative-modernist elements of the DPJ and the (relatively speaking) moderate-modernist elements of the LDP. To that extent, there is a certain loose affinity in their approach to the issues. So it’s plausible that they may enjoy working with each other so much that they may come to form the core of a broader coalition in the context of a major realignment.
However, a Big Bang will be a long time in coming, if ever. There’s too much crisscrossing between all the worthy causes and special interests, not to mention the persistence of factions as launch pads for candidacies (see Nobuteru Ishihara for the LDP****), for Diet members not to think twice, count to ten, twiddle their thumbs, etc. before they jump ship. The LDP has long lived with these differences. The ideological and personal fault lines are even deeper in the DPJ, if such a thing is possible. But the big prize, plus the transaction costs of a political musical chairs game, should strill keep both sides going.
The LDP and DPJ are poised somewhere between 21st Century meta-habatsu and a Japanese version of the Dem.-Rep. matchup. The main value of the two Sentakus will likely consist in the potential for a larger, more serious dialogue that they bring to the policy formation process on the two sides. Given the formless, inertia-laden approach that the LDP is in danger of reverting to and the lurching cakewalk of a DPJ buffeted between the williwaw of public opinion and the mood swings of its enigmatic leader, that will be no mean feat － certainly much more than anything that most of the other cross-faction, non-partisan study groups that have been cropping up since time immemorial have ever achieved.
* 11-term LDP member Kōji Yasuoka is listed, but as komon, or “advisor”, a title usually conferred in Japan on retired political and business leaders. 6-term DPJ member Katsuya Okada and 5-term Seiji Maehara are also listed as komon, likely for that very reason. There are, of course, many other uses for the word, but life is too short to go into that unless someone is willing to pay me to write it.
** This gives the LDP membership something of a Koizumi/Abe air.
*** The term used here is 総選挙, which specifically refers to the Lower House election.
**** I’d always regarded Mr. Ishihara as a pleasant, intelligent, but somewhat lightweight figure that the LDP has allowed to punch significantly above his weight because of the looming presence of his father Shintarō Ishihara, the popular Tokyo Governor, and former Prime Minister aspirant. But his accession to the large Yamazaki faction puts him in place as a contender himself, perhaps even as Yasuo Fukuda’s successor. The Yamazaki faction does not have any other visible candidates, least of all Taku Yamazaki himself.
The Sentaku movement and its Diet member counterpart held their joint inaugural meeting on March 3, just in time for the Dolls Festival. I’ve already posted on the main movement here. (does this count too?) This is my report on the Diet member Sentaku.
Bipartisan and nonpartisan movements involving Diet members keep coming and (rarely completely) going, but they’ve been getting more attention from the media in the Twisted Diet era. That’s natural, since nothing will attract more eyeballs than a political Big Bang. And some of the also have their own private-sector counterpart initiatives. But the Diet member Sentaku is in many ways different from the others.
First of all, the leadership is carefully divided between the LDP and the DPJ, from the two co-chairmen to the eight members each (including the co-chairman) in the standing committee (New Kōmeitō has two seats). The 107-strong membership is also deliberately balanced between the LDP with 51, DPJ with 47, NK with eight, and the tiny Japan New Party with a single member. In principle, seven terms for a Lower House members － the point in the old days when you began to feel more than due for your first Cabinet appointment － appears in principle to be the upper limit for membership*. Perhaps partly because of this, it appears that none of the people currently holding key LDP party positions or Cabinet or serious sub-Cabinet positions are included**.
Second, membership is skewed towards the Lower House, particularly in the case of the LDP. The Lower House-Upper House breakdown is (LDP 44-7; DPJ 31-16;NK 5-3; and NPP 1-0). This is related to the next point...
Third, the Diet member Sentaku is likely to have a very limited shelf life. To quote from the main Sentaku statement, “Sentakuwill conduct its activities in order to make the next [Lower House] general election*** a fruitful one for the electorate and will end its role with the announcement of the general election.” The Diet member Sentaku is a separate entity and need not mirror the lifecycle of the movement itself. But it does give as one of its two objectives the following:
“Make the next [Lower House] general election a historical “election for regime choice” that has significance for the nation by “reinvigorating policy debate” and “improving [policy] manifests while engaging in dialogue with Sentaku, as formed by volunteers from various fields.”
The other objective lists the main policy issues that the Diet member Sentaku covers, and basically repeats the main Sentaku’s objectives. It does not give any indication that the Diet member Sentaku will go beyond the procedural timeline given in the first objective. Thus I will be surprised if the Diet member Sentaku does outlive the main body, at least in its current form. Sankei, for one, agrees that it is only supposed to last until the general election.
To sum up, the Sentaku process has been set up explicitly to conduct a public dialogue within and between the general and political leaderships in order to force the political parties to come up with meaningful policy manifests to fight the next election. The leading members attending the inaugural press conference, posted in its entirety on the 21 Seiki Rinchō website as a video clip below the documents, also made it explicitly clear that the non-partisan dialogue is not intended in any way to promote a cross-party coalition of any sorts.
I won’t rule out the possibility of long-term ramifications. If I were to characterize the Diet members congregating in the Diet member Sentaku, I would say that it brings many elements of the (relatively speaking) conservative-modernist elements of the DPJ and the (relatively speaking) moderate-modernist elements of the LDP. To that extent, there is a certain loose affinity in their approach to the issues. So it’s plausible that they may enjoy working with each other so much that they may come to form the core of a broader coalition in the context of a major realignment.
However, a Big Bang will be a long time in coming, if ever. There’s too much crisscrossing between all the worthy causes and special interests, not to mention the persistence of factions as launch pads for candidacies (see Nobuteru Ishihara for the LDP****), for Diet members not to think twice, count to ten, twiddle their thumbs, etc. before they jump ship. The LDP has long lived with these differences. The ideological and personal fault lines are even deeper in the DPJ, if such a thing is possible. But the big prize, plus the transaction costs of a political musical chairs game, should strill keep both sides going.
The LDP and DPJ are poised somewhere between 21st Century meta-habatsu and a Japanese version of the Dem.-Rep. matchup. The main value of the two Sentakus will likely consist in the potential for a larger, more serious dialogue that they bring to the policy formation process on the two sides. Given the formless, inertia-laden approach that the LDP is in danger of reverting to and the lurching cakewalk of a DPJ buffeted between the williwaw of public opinion and the mood swings of its enigmatic leader, that will be no mean feat － certainly much more than anything that most of the other cross-faction, non-partisan study groups that have been cropping up since time immemorial have ever achieved.
* 11-term LDP member Kōji Yasuoka is listed, but as komon, or “advisor”, a title usually conferred in Japan on retired political and business leaders. 6-term DPJ member Katsuya Okada and 5-term Seiji Maehara are also listed as komon, likely for that very reason. There are, of course, many other uses for the word, but life is too short to go into that unless someone is willing to pay me to write it.
** This gives the LDP membership something of a Koizumi/Abe air.
*** The term used here is 総選挙, which specifically refers to the Lower House election.
**** I’d always regarded Mr. Ishihara as a pleasant, intelligent, but somewhat lightweight figure that the LDP has allowed to punch significantly above his weight because of the looming presence of his father Shintarō Ishihara, the popular Tokyo Governor, and former Prime Minister aspirant. But his accession to the large Yamazaki faction puts him in place as a contender himself, perhaps even as Yasuo Fukuda’s successor. The Yamazaki faction does not have any other visible candidates, least of all Taku Yamazaki himself.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Japanese Establishment Launches Bottom up Political Reform, Seeks Diet Member Takers; Call Back in February
This is what I was talking about here, at the end, off-topic. It turned out to be a little less overwhelming than I had hoped for, but the jury is out.
The Sunday inauguration of the *Chīki, Seikatsusya* Kiten de Nihon wo Sentaku(Sentaku) suru Kokumin Rengō (「地域・生活者起点で日本を洗濯（選択）する国民連合」. People’s Union to Launder/Choose Japan from the Standpoint of the Regions and the People; my translation) or Sentaku for short, was duly noted in all the major dailies; Asahi, Mainichi, Yomiuri, and most notably Sankei, whose website also carried articles here, here, and here.
The Sentaku prospectus decries the political passivity on the part of the public and the reliance on the central bureaucracy and seeks to launch a thoroughgoing reform in the way we live and work by way of a new bottom-up, people’s rights movement.
The promoters of Sentaku, however, are not some wild-eyed radicals or woolly-headed New Agers. For Sentaku has been launched by an elite group of five academics including Masataka Kitagawa, the highly regarded ex-governor of Mie Prefecture and Tsuyoshi Sasaki, former President of Tokyo University; two business leaders, four incumbent governors including Hideo Higashikokubaru, comedian turned politician; one mayor; one prefectural assembly chairman; one moderate trade union leader; and one ex-Vice Minister of METI and former head of the Dentsu Institute. Mr. Kitagawa heads the 15-man (no women!) team, which is calling on Diet members who sympathize with their objectives to establish a parallel, nonpartisan Diet caucus that would work with Sentaku to develop a common understanding and make sure that the next Lower House general election will be “a truly historical election for the sentaku (in the “choose” sense) between [alternative] administrations”.
Sentaku is a direct outgrowth of the Atarashī Nihon wo Tsukuru Kokuminkaigi (The People’s Conference to Create a New Japan; my translation), which also goes by the name of “21 Seiki Rinchō” (21st Century Extraordinary Advisory Council for the Promotion of Administrative Reform; my translation). Although 21 Seiki Rinchō is not a government advisory council like its namesake**, it marshals an impressive selection from the A-list of the Japanese establishment, including the incumbent Keidanren Chairman (formerly Toyota’s Okuda, now Canon’s Mitarai) as the head of its 23-member Board of Special Advisors, which brings together an impressive array of business leaders, academics, a former head of the Japanese Federation of Bar Associations, and Nobuo Ishihara, Prime Minister Koizumi’s bureaucratic majordomo. It is headed by four “Joint Representatives”, four “Deputy Representatives”, two “Chief Examiners”, 152 “Managing Council Members” and 28 members of a “Joint Conference of Governors and Mayors of Cities, Towns and Villages”. The major media groups (those with major dailies) are well-represented in the Managing Council. All in all, it is a moderate***, centrist, establishment movement that, together with its two earlier incarnations since 1992, has sought to influence the political changes that have shaken but only partially transformed the post-1955 regime. In fact, the 15-member promotion group draws most of its members from the 21 Seiki Rinchō leadership, with the only two non-21 Seiki Rinchō additions being the newly elected Governor Higashikokubaru and the Mie Prefecture Assembly President.
Why the need for a new organization? Many other nonpartisan efforts to influence the political process (the Shintō Seiji Renmei; or Shinto Association of Spiritual Leadership, comes to mind) establish parallel nonpartisan Diet member caucuses to further their cause. But 21 Seiki Rinchō and its predecessors have never done so, preferring to work through ad hoc exchanges as well as proposals addressed to the Diet and the general public. Another difference is the inclusion of a Prefecture Assemblyman in the list of Sentaku promoters. In fact, 21 Seiki Rinchō appears to have studiously avoided any institutionalized involvement with the legislative branch at any level. In contrast, 21 Seiki Rinchō has a Joint Conference of Governors and Mayors.
It may have been possible to alter the direction of 21 Seiki Rinchō instead of starting a new organization. But organizations take on lives of their own, and it could have required too much effort to change a practice that had continued since the early 90s. Perhaps just as important, a milestone event must have been considered desirable in drawing the attention of the media and calling on Diet members to sign on. And in the interests of nonpartisanship, it may have been considered unavoidable to let the Keidanren Chairman off the hook, in view of the Keidanren’s close association with the LDP****.
Will this actually have an effect on the political process? The jury is out. The group seeks to have the Diet member group up and running in February, but nothing in the media gives even a hint as to the extent of nemawashi among potential participants. If it manages to bring together a substantial number of Diet members from both sides by then, then it will thrive. If not, it will flop. Media coverage will no doubt play a role*****. In this respect, the absence of any media representation in the promoting group is a little disappointing. I’ll file a report when I know for sure. I’ll let you know if there are significant new developments in the meantime as well.
* This is one of the most difficult things to translate that I’ve ever come across. First, there is the awful pun with “sentaku 洗濯（選択）”, which I translated literally as Launder/Choose. They’ve decided to call it “Sentaku” ( せんたく in hiragana) for short. More illuminating is “seikatsusha 生活者”, which means roughly “people as individuals in their daily roles as family, workplace and community members”. In fact “seikatsu 生活” itself is difficult to describe without resorting to the same lengthy explanation. I copped out, writing “people” and putting it in italics to order to indicate that I did not mean “kokumin 国民 (which is commonly translated as “the people” but strictly speaking excludes non-citizens)” or 人々 (literally, “people”). This is not as trivial as you might think, since words by themselves shape and alter our thoughts. More specifically, it presents a problem in understanding the Japanese political environment, now that the LDP and DPJ are placing top priority on 生活 and 生活者 － forget about constitutional amendment, forget about the war on terror, etc. － and littering their policy platforms and speeches with those words. It also highlights the difference between American and Japanese politicalspeak (or more broadly social and cultural mindsets), since “individual” would usually be the word of choice in an American setting, when the word seikatsusya is used in Japanese.
Note that the translation of Prime Minister Fukuda’s January 18th policy speech also goes with “the people”. “The people” is used profusely in the translation for kokumin as well, although these are two quite distinct concepts.
** The self-appropriated nickname channels previous administrative reforms, no doubt in particular the Second Rinchō (1981-86), which propelled the ascetic Keidanren Chairman Toshimitsu Dokō to national hero status and played a significant role in Yasuhiro Nakasone gaining the Prime Minister’s seat (1982-87).
*** Tarō Yayama, one of Prime Minister Koizumi’s closer advisors, is the only recognizable figure in 21 Seiki Rinchō that is associated with the political right.
**** Keidanren members do give some money to the DPJ, but the amount is dwarfed by their contributions to theDPJLDP. In fact, one of the reasons the DPJ is hesitant about an early general election is the need for time to replenish their coffers after the July House election.
***** Tsuneo Watanabe is not involved with 21 Seiki Rinchō, though the Yomiuri group itself is well-represented. Perhaps this has something to do with the relatively small Yomiuri coverage, on the left upper corner of page two in its hardcopy version. 21 Seiki Rinchō, with its emphasis on change through political choice and the need for a bottom-up approach to national reform, does not look conducive to an LDP-DPJ handshake any time soon.
The Sunday inauguration of the *Chīki, Seikatsusya* Kiten de Nihon wo Sentaku(Sentaku) suru Kokumin Rengō (「地域・生活者起点で日本を洗濯（選択）する国民連合」. People’s Union to Launder/Choose Japan from the Standpoint of the Regions and the People; my translation) or Sentaku for short, was duly noted in all the major dailies; Asahi, Mainichi, Yomiuri, and most notably Sankei, whose website also carried articles here, here, and here.
The Sentaku prospectus decries the political passivity on the part of the public and the reliance on the central bureaucracy and seeks to launch a thoroughgoing reform in the way we live and work by way of a new bottom-up, people’s rights movement.
The promoters of Sentaku, however, are not some wild-eyed radicals or woolly-headed New Agers. For Sentaku has been launched by an elite group of five academics including Masataka Kitagawa, the highly regarded ex-governor of Mie Prefecture and Tsuyoshi Sasaki, former President of Tokyo University; two business leaders, four incumbent governors including Hideo Higashikokubaru, comedian turned politician; one mayor; one prefectural assembly chairman; one moderate trade union leader; and one ex-Vice Minister of METI and former head of the Dentsu Institute. Mr. Kitagawa heads the 15-man (no women!) team, which is calling on Diet members who sympathize with their objectives to establish a parallel, nonpartisan Diet caucus that would work with Sentaku to develop a common understanding and make sure that the next Lower House general election will be “a truly historical election for the sentaku (in the “choose” sense) between [alternative] administrations”.
Sentaku is a direct outgrowth of the Atarashī Nihon wo Tsukuru Kokuminkaigi (The People’s Conference to Create a New Japan; my translation), which also goes by the name of “21 Seiki Rinchō” (21st Century Extraordinary Advisory Council for the Promotion of Administrative Reform; my translation). Although 21 Seiki Rinchō is not a government advisory council like its namesake**, it marshals an impressive selection from the A-list of the Japanese establishment, including the incumbent Keidanren Chairman (formerly Toyota’s Okuda, now Canon’s Mitarai) as the head of its 23-member Board of Special Advisors, which brings together an impressive array of business leaders, academics, a former head of the Japanese Federation of Bar Associations, and Nobuo Ishihara, Prime Minister Koizumi’s bureaucratic majordomo. It is headed by four “Joint Representatives”, four “Deputy Representatives”, two “Chief Examiners”, 152 “Managing Council Members” and 28 members of a “Joint Conference of Governors and Mayors of Cities, Towns and Villages”. The major media groups (those with major dailies) are well-represented in the Managing Council. All in all, it is a moderate***, centrist, establishment movement that, together with its two earlier incarnations since 1992, has sought to influence the political changes that have shaken but only partially transformed the post-1955 regime. In fact, the 15-member promotion group draws most of its members from the 21 Seiki Rinchō leadership, with the only two non-21 Seiki Rinchō additions being the newly elected Governor Higashikokubaru and the Mie Prefecture Assembly President.
Why the need for a new organization? Many other nonpartisan efforts to influence the political process (the Shintō Seiji Renmei; or Shinto Association of Spiritual Leadership, comes to mind) establish parallel nonpartisan Diet member caucuses to further their cause. But 21 Seiki Rinchō and its predecessors have never done so, preferring to work through ad hoc exchanges as well as proposals addressed to the Diet and the general public. Another difference is the inclusion of a Prefecture Assemblyman in the list of Sentaku promoters. In fact, 21 Seiki Rinchō appears to have studiously avoided any institutionalized involvement with the legislative branch at any level. In contrast, 21 Seiki Rinchō has a Joint Conference of Governors and Mayors.
It may have been possible to alter the direction of 21 Seiki Rinchō instead of starting a new organization. But organizations take on lives of their own, and it could have required too much effort to change a practice that had continued since the early 90s. Perhaps just as important, a milestone event must have been considered desirable in drawing the attention of the media and calling on Diet members to sign on. And in the interests of nonpartisanship, it may have been considered unavoidable to let the Keidanren Chairman off the hook, in view of the Keidanren’s close association with the LDP****.
Will this actually have an effect on the political process? The jury is out. The group seeks to have the Diet member group up and running in February, but nothing in the media gives even a hint as to the extent of nemawashi among potential participants. If it manages to bring together a substantial number of Diet members from both sides by then, then it will thrive. If not, it will flop. Media coverage will no doubt play a role*****. In this respect, the absence of any media representation in the promoting group is a little disappointing. I’ll file a report when I know for sure. I’ll let you know if there are significant new developments in the meantime as well.
* This is one of the most difficult things to translate that I’ve ever come across. First, there is the awful pun with “sentaku 洗濯（選択）”, which I translated literally as Launder/Choose. They’ve decided to call it “Sentaku” ( せんたく in hiragana) for short. More illuminating is “seikatsusha 生活者”, which means roughly “people as individuals in their daily roles as family, workplace and community members”. In fact “seikatsu 生活” itself is difficult to describe without resorting to the same lengthy explanation. I copped out, writing “people” and putting it in italics to order to indicate that I did not mean “kokumin 国民 (which is commonly translated as “the people” but strictly speaking excludes non-citizens)” or 人々 (literally, “people”). This is not as trivial as you might think, since words by themselves shape and alter our thoughts. More specifically, it presents a problem in understanding the Japanese political environment, now that the LDP and DPJ are placing top priority on 生活 and 生活者 － forget about constitutional amendment, forget about the war on terror, etc. － and littering their policy platforms and speeches with those words. It also highlights the difference between American and Japanese politicalspeak (or more broadly social and cultural mindsets), since “individual” would usually be the word of choice in an American setting, when the word seikatsusya is used in Japanese.
Note that the translation of Prime Minister Fukuda’s January 18th policy speech also goes with “the people”. “The people” is used profusely in the translation for kokumin as well, although these are two quite distinct concepts.
** The self-appropriated nickname channels previous administrative reforms, no doubt in particular the Second Rinchō (1981-86), which propelled the ascetic Keidanren Chairman Toshimitsu Dokō to national hero status and played a significant role in Yasuhiro Nakasone gaining the Prime Minister’s seat (1982-87).
*** Tarō Yayama, one of Prime Minister Koizumi’s closer advisors, is the only recognizable figure in 21 Seiki Rinchō that is associated with the political right.
**** Keidanren members do give some money to the DPJ, but the amount is dwarfed by their contributions to the
***** Tsuneo Watanabe is not involved with 21 Seiki Rinchō, though the Yomiuri group itself is well-represented. Perhaps this has something to do with the relatively small Yomiuri coverage, on the left upper corner of page two in its hardcopy version. 21 Seiki Rinchō, with its emphasis on change through political choice and the need for a bottom-up approach to national reform, does not look conducive to an LDP-DPJ handshake any time soon.
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