The FY2007 political financing report from the Seiwa-kai,, currently the largest LDP faction, which has not totally coincidentally produced four successive Prime Ministers—Mori, Koizumi, Abe and Fukuda—between 2000-2008 and has also stood behind incumbent Taro Aso’s “successful” bid, can be found here.
As with Prime Minister Aso’s Ikou-kai, some Seiwa-kai members are more equal than others. Rank-and-file Diet members paid 600,000 in dues, but senior members gave up 1,200,000 and ex-Diet members still in play got a discount rate of 350,000*. Mori’s Seifu-kai contributed 20,000,000—as did newly anointed faction head Nobutaka Machimura’s Shinyu-kai. Hidenao Nakagawa (now persona non grata) coughed up 10,000,000. arank-and-file Diet member received 2,000,000 in return. Now, this is only half of the 4,000,000 that Aso’s faction members received in the same year. But Upper House Seiwa-kai members who faced election that year received 5,000,000, while losers (and past losers who were still active) got as little extra at 7,000,000 or 10,000,000. Overall, the much larger Seiwa-kai appears to have taken a tailor-made approach in contrast to the Aso faction’s one-size-fits-all system, and was moreover able to help, indeed give an extra boost to, its less fortunate members. Size matters, it seems. But how different is that from any other business?
There are some variations, but that’s the general idea.
Showing posts with label habatsu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label habatsu. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Monday, July 06, 2009
Nakasone, LDP Elders, etc., etc…
My dialogue with Mark the Techie continues:
Why do you like Nakasone? And what do you think of his son, Hirofumi?
The elder Nakasone had—still has—a clear vision of his objectives as a statesman and held to it as best he could throughout his political life. For him, the political game was secondary. He understood the need to set his priorities accordingly, as can be seen from his handling of the Yasukuni controversy. He matched this purposeful approach with an eloquence that is sorely missing otherwise from post-WW II politics in Japan. He also put his personal stamp on administrative reform. He was a worthy representative of the LDP at the high watermark of the 1955 regime. His son appears to be an amicable, inoffensive representative of the more conservative elements of the LDP, nothing more, nothing less. He’s the son of a Prime Minister, yet has spent all his political life in the Upper House; go figure. I’d love to have him as a neighbor though.
In your original post, you seem to discount the power of the faction heads. But in your first reply, you claim that many younger politicians obey their elders. Who are these elders that have control of the younger politicians?
I haven’t done a good job of explaining myself, have I? Let me take another crack at this theme.
I am sorely disappointed with the genteel fifty-somethings who have failed to step up in the post-Koizumi years and instead allowed their elders to play the political game with the Prime Minister’s chair and senior party posts. (Remember that the generally untested Abe essentially had the Prime Minister’s job dropped in his lap by Koizumi.) Don’t they understand that politics is a blood sport? Yoshimi Watanabe id leave the LDP, but his new movement (with Kenji Eda) is unlikely to emerge as significant focal point in any post-electoral search for realignment. Pockets of youthful dissidence do flare up as the party leadership lurches from one crisis to another, but ultimately come to naught as their elders preach unity, leaving the impression of aimlessness and disarray in the face of pending disaster. The junior varsity for the opposition has an excuse; Ozawa, Hatoyama, and Kan are, after all, the founding fathers of the DPJ and its predecessors. Besides, Okada and—even more significantly—Maehara have taken their turns.
Faction heads and their deputies are not totally powerless, insofar as parliamentarians continue to see value in their faction membership. But Yoshiro Mori appears to maintain substantial influence over his faction although it has been some years since he yielded formal leadership. Within the same faction and possibly beyond, Yoshinao Nakagawa has emerged as a focal point for diehard reformists, precipitating a bitter intra-faction schism.
By the way, I find it curious that you separate foreign policy from economic policy. Based on the success of Japan during the post war period, I'd say a successful economic policy is the most integral part of a successful foreign policy. After the Iraq war, and after nearly a decade of a botched reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, it seems funny for an ex-MITI bureaucrat to split foreign policy and economic policy like that.
If your point is that a strong domestic economy is essential to achieving ambitious foreign policy goals, I can’t agree with you more.
Globalization? Is that what it's called? Interesting. But for the West, I think another word is more applicable. I think it's called de-globalization. Think of Gordon Brown and his "British jobs for British workers" spiel. Or think of Sarkozy and his admonition against exporting jobs to eastern Europe. Or think of the Buy American provision. But most importantly, think of GE. Nearly three decades ago, Jack Welch unleashed his shareholder value ideology. Good for shareholders. Not good for the current account. About a week ago, Jeff Immelt said the U.S. had outsourced too much, and needed to have a stronger manufacturing base. Quite a difference, wouldn't you say?
The economic downturn has created a backlash. Let’s see what happens other than Buy American provisions in Obama’s economic package (which the other OECD member countries are opposing) that goes beyond rhetoric. For example, will Sarkozy propose limitations on the free movement of labor and capital within the EU? Suspend Poland’s membership?
I'm sure Japan's continued support for the IMF gives some relief to the U.S. and Europe, but I would note that since the crisis began, it seems like Japan has been most active through the institutions it controls - the ADB, JBIC, etc.
Japan was the first to extend a substantial amount of money to the IMF during the current crisis. JBIC is basically the lender of last resorts for Japanese exports and foreign investment. It’s going into action as part of the government-sponsored emergency financing efforts. Nothing unusual in that. I don’t know what we’re doing with regard to ADB right now, but I doubt there’s anything new there as well.
I don't know what happened in Australia for most of the 20th century and I don't really see why Australia's switch to the Asian Football Federation is particularly important. On the other hand, I would note that Kevin Rudd seems to be a big advocate for this Asia-Pacific thingy. I wonder why? Also, I believe his budget calls for buying lots of military equipment for defense against China. Presumably, he will buy this equipment from the U.S. In addition, Australia continues to pester Japan on whaling. Furthermore, it recently killed the Rio Tinto deal with Chinalco. Throughout that process, I heard many voices in Australia who expressed concern about Chinese investment. Frankly, his recent actions have made me wonder if Kevin Rudd's professed affection for China was more a stunt to attempt to panic Japan - a stunt that backfired because Japan itself wants to get closer to China.
In 1972 Gough Whitlam came to power and started the process that transformed Australia, which till then had drawn a neat racial parallel with the far more malignant regime in South Africa. Essentially, White Australia decided to become Asia(-Pacific) Australia. Australia’s switch to the Asian Football Federation is a cultural symbol of this transformation.
As for relations with China, remember that when Rudd came to power, China was still the new black. I don’t think it had anything to do with Japan, a mature market as far as Australia’s natural resources and agricultural industry were concerned. But it’s easy to get worked up over natural resources when they’re still in the ground. I think that’s silly—unlike factories, no one can dismantle a mine and cart it off out of your national jurisdiction—but that’s the way the world works. In any case, China national champions and state investment vehicles, unlike say Norwegian or Qatar sovereign wealth funds, are more likely to follow the dictates of non-commercial interests. Connect this to the not unrelated authoritarian nature of China’s political regime and more or less inchoate fears about rising Chinese dominance, and I can understand where the public outcry was coming from.
I don’t know what exactly triggered the perceived shift in Australia’s defense posture. Maybe the strategic implications of a growing Chinese blue-water navy pushed the Australia’s national security establishment past the tipping point. I happen to think that the threat is greatly overestimated, but I can see how things might look quite different from a Southeast Asia/South Pacific perspective. I’ll believe it when I see an Australian aircraft carrier.
The “research” whaling issue, if I understand it correctly, addressed a highly emotive concern of a particular Labor Party constituency. I believe that the Rudd administration has become considerably more subdued since the kangaroo slaughter controversy—total nonsense in my view, but I don’t have a vote on this.
I agree that the U.S. is becoming less white, though I think the financial crisis could alter that trend somewhat. You say this will have powerful cultural and social implications. What are they? What changes will result? I am very interested in hearing what you have to say on this issue.
Note that I wrote in the present tense. There’s a natural progression from blackface vaudeville routines to the Jack Benny Show to I Spy to Eddie Murphy. Then there’s the greatly expanded role of Hispanics in pop music. These are just a couple of examples of profound changes in U.S. popular culture. (And what high culture exists that was once not popular?) Social change: public acceptance of mixed race couples. Basically, cultural and social barriers of all sorts are coming down in a browning of America.
Since America is by far the greatest post-WW II exporter of cultural and social constructs, this change affects the rest of the world—a world where Al Qaeda uses rap video to recruit terrorists. In a thousand years, unless humanity fcuks up royally (there’s a not insignificant chance of that happening), they’ll all be subscribing to variations of a global culture using variations of a language vaguely resembling English—and it’ll be America’s fault.
Why do you like Nakasone? And what do you think of his son, Hirofumi?
The elder Nakasone had—still has—a clear vision of his objectives as a statesman and held to it as best he could throughout his political life. For him, the political game was secondary. He understood the need to set his priorities accordingly, as can be seen from his handling of the Yasukuni controversy. He matched this purposeful approach with an eloquence that is sorely missing otherwise from post-WW II politics in Japan. He also put his personal stamp on administrative reform. He was a worthy representative of the LDP at the high watermark of the 1955 regime. His son appears to be an amicable, inoffensive representative of the more conservative elements of the LDP, nothing more, nothing less. He’s the son of a Prime Minister, yet has spent all his political life in the Upper House; go figure. I’d love to have him as a neighbor though.
In your original post, you seem to discount the power of the faction heads. But in your first reply, you claim that many younger politicians obey their elders. Who are these elders that have control of the younger politicians?
I haven’t done a good job of explaining myself, have I? Let me take another crack at this theme.
I am sorely disappointed with the genteel fifty-somethings who have failed to step up in the post-Koizumi years and instead allowed their elders to play the political game with the Prime Minister’s chair and senior party posts. (Remember that the generally untested Abe essentially had the Prime Minister’s job dropped in his lap by Koizumi.) Don’t they understand that politics is a blood sport? Yoshimi Watanabe id leave the LDP, but his new movement (with Kenji Eda) is unlikely to emerge as significant focal point in any post-electoral search for realignment. Pockets of youthful dissidence do flare up as the party leadership lurches from one crisis to another, but ultimately come to naught as their elders preach unity, leaving the impression of aimlessness and disarray in the face of pending disaster. The junior varsity for the opposition has an excuse; Ozawa, Hatoyama, and Kan are, after all, the founding fathers of the DPJ and its predecessors. Besides, Okada and—even more significantly—Maehara have taken their turns.
Faction heads and their deputies are not totally powerless, insofar as parliamentarians continue to see value in their faction membership. But Yoshiro Mori appears to maintain substantial influence over his faction although it has been some years since he yielded formal leadership. Within the same faction and possibly beyond, Yoshinao Nakagawa has emerged as a focal point for diehard reformists, precipitating a bitter intra-faction schism.
By the way, I find it curious that you separate foreign policy from economic policy. Based on the success of Japan during the post war period, I'd say a successful economic policy is the most integral part of a successful foreign policy. After the Iraq war, and after nearly a decade of a botched reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, it seems funny for an ex-MITI bureaucrat to split foreign policy and economic policy like that.
If your point is that a strong domestic economy is essential to achieving ambitious foreign policy goals, I can’t agree with you more.
Globalization? Is that what it's called? Interesting. But for the West, I think another word is more applicable. I think it's called de-globalization. Think of Gordon Brown and his "British jobs for British workers" spiel. Or think of Sarkozy and his admonition against exporting jobs to eastern Europe. Or think of the Buy American provision. But most importantly, think of GE. Nearly three decades ago, Jack Welch unleashed his shareholder value ideology. Good for shareholders. Not good for the current account. About a week ago, Jeff Immelt said the U.S. had outsourced too much, and needed to have a stronger manufacturing base. Quite a difference, wouldn't you say?
The economic downturn has created a backlash. Let’s see what happens other than Buy American provisions in Obama’s economic package (which the other OECD member countries are opposing) that goes beyond rhetoric. For example, will Sarkozy propose limitations on the free movement of labor and capital within the EU? Suspend Poland’s membership?
I'm sure Japan's continued support for the IMF gives some relief to the U.S. and Europe, but I would note that since the crisis began, it seems like Japan has been most active through the institutions it controls - the ADB, JBIC, etc.
Japan was the first to extend a substantial amount of money to the IMF during the current crisis. JBIC is basically the lender of last resorts for Japanese exports and foreign investment. It’s going into action as part of the government-sponsored emergency financing efforts. Nothing unusual in that. I don’t know what we’re doing with regard to ADB right now, but I doubt there’s anything new there as well.
I don't know what happened in Australia for most of the 20th century and I don't really see why Australia's switch to the Asian Football Federation is particularly important. On the other hand, I would note that Kevin Rudd seems to be a big advocate for this Asia-Pacific thingy. I wonder why? Also, I believe his budget calls for buying lots of military equipment for defense against China. Presumably, he will buy this equipment from the U.S. In addition, Australia continues to pester Japan on whaling. Furthermore, it recently killed the Rio Tinto deal with Chinalco. Throughout that process, I heard many voices in Australia who expressed concern about Chinese investment. Frankly, his recent actions have made me wonder if Kevin Rudd's professed affection for China was more a stunt to attempt to panic Japan - a stunt that backfired because Japan itself wants to get closer to China.
In 1972 Gough Whitlam came to power and started the process that transformed Australia, which till then had drawn a neat racial parallel with the far more malignant regime in South Africa. Essentially, White Australia decided to become Asia(-Pacific) Australia. Australia’s switch to the Asian Football Federation is a cultural symbol of this transformation.
As for relations with China, remember that when Rudd came to power, China was still the new black. I don’t think it had anything to do with Japan, a mature market as far as Australia’s natural resources and agricultural industry were concerned. But it’s easy to get worked up over natural resources when they’re still in the ground. I think that’s silly—unlike factories, no one can dismantle a mine and cart it off out of your national jurisdiction—but that’s the way the world works. In any case, China national champions and state investment vehicles, unlike say Norwegian or Qatar sovereign wealth funds, are more likely to follow the dictates of non-commercial interests. Connect this to the not unrelated authoritarian nature of China’s political regime and more or less inchoate fears about rising Chinese dominance, and I can understand where the public outcry was coming from.
I don’t know what exactly triggered the perceived shift in Australia’s defense posture. Maybe the strategic implications of a growing Chinese blue-water navy pushed the Australia’s national security establishment past the tipping point. I happen to think that the threat is greatly overestimated, but I can see how things might look quite different from a Southeast Asia/South Pacific perspective. I’ll believe it when I see an Australian aircraft carrier.
The “research” whaling issue, if I understand it correctly, addressed a highly emotive concern of a particular Labor Party constituency. I believe that the Rudd administration has become considerably more subdued since the kangaroo slaughter controversy—total nonsense in my view, but I don’t have a vote on this.
I agree that the U.S. is becoming less white, though I think the financial crisis could alter that trend somewhat. You say this will have powerful cultural and social implications. What are they? What changes will result? I am very interested in hearing what you have to say on this issue.
Note that I wrote in the present tense. There’s a natural progression from blackface vaudeville routines to the Jack Benny Show to I Spy to Eddie Murphy. Then there’s the greatly expanded role of Hispanics in pop music. These are just a couple of examples of profound changes in U.S. popular culture. (And what high culture exists that was once not popular?) Social change: public acceptance of mixed race couples. Basically, cultural and social barriers of all sorts are coming down in a browning of America.
Since America is by far the greatest post-WW II exporter of cultural and social constructs, this change affects the rest of the world—a world where Al Qaeda uses rap video to recruit terrorists. In a thousand years, unless humanity fcuks up royally (there’s a not insignificant chance of that happening), they’ll all be subscribing to variations of a global culture using variations of a language vaguely resembling English—and it’ll be America’s fault.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Diet Couple Celebrate Wedding by Joining Habatsu
Tamayo Marukawa (House of Councilors, Tokyo District, ‘07) and Taku Otsuka (House of Representatives, proportional seat, Tokyo Bloc, ‘05) bookended the June 16-20 workweek by marrying on Monday and joining a habastsu on Friday. The Seiwa Seisaku-kenkyukai (better known as Seiwa-kai), the faction of choice, is to the best of my knowledge the only faction that has its own website.
Maybe the Marukawa-Otsuka couple wanted some advice on having a successful “political” marriage, if you’ll pardon the expression. They have become the third Seiwa-kai couple, after Mrs. Kyoko (House of Councilors) and Mr. Nariaki Nakayama (House of Representatives) and Ms. Sakae Takaichi and Mr. Taku Yamamoto (both House of Representatives). You may laugh, but a journalist who has spent more than thirty years observing the Prime Minister’s Office, the LDP, and the rest of the Tokyo political scene told me that factions still have two functions, and one of them is “the exchange of information”, oiled by once-a-week, all-member get-togethers. Tokyo, and the Diet, can be a lonely place—why not seek out people who will understand. There was one other, more famous couple, a non-Seiwa-kai one at that, but the Shisaku favorite Seiko Noda (HR) and Yosuke Tsuruyasu (HC) couple broke up recently.
Alas, the real reason for their choice appears to be less social, more political. Mr. Otsuka was chosen by the Koizumi team for the 2005 election (it must have helped that a scion of the Otsuka pharmaceutical magnate clan would not be having money problems in financing his electoral campaign), while Ms. Maruyama had been heavily recruited by then-Prime Minister Abe for the 2007 HC campaign. These two former Prime Ministers are sandwiched between Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and incumbent Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda; all four hail from the Seiwa-kai.
This is related to the other point that the veteran journalist raised as a key function of the post-modern faction: The habatsu still serves as a support system, especially when election time rolls around. Most important for newbies, it will dispatch its leaders and celebrity faction members to make speeches on your behalf and otherwise make gestures of endorsement. The Seiwa-kai boasts five Prime Ministers still alive and still in the LDP, including—as I already implied—the last four (the other is the venerable octogenarian Yasuhiro Nakasone), appealing to a wide range of ideological preferences and demographics. It is no wonder, then, that the Seiwa-kai is now hands-down the largest faction in the LDP.
If Ms. Marukawa and Mr. Otsuka—likewise Prime Minister aspirant Nobuteru Ishihara*—are any indication, the habatsu is very much alive, if not quite kickin’.
* See footnote ** here.
Seriously, though, isn’t this a rather high incidence of intermarriage between Diet members, especially given the scarcity of female Diet members? Does anything like this happen in your home country?
Maybe the Marukawa-Otsuka couple wanted some advice on having a successful “political” marriage, if you’ll pardon the expression. They have become the third Seiwa-kai couple, after Mrs. Kyoko (House of Councilors) and Mr. Nariaki Nakayama (House of Representatives) and Ms. Sakae Takaichi and Mr. Taku Yamamoto (both House of Representatives). You may laugh, but a journalist who has spent more than thirty years observing the Prime Minister’s Office, the LDP, and the rest of the Tokyo political scene told me that factions still have two functions, and one of them is “the exchange of information”, oiled by once-a-week, all-member get-togethers. Tokyo, and the Diet, can be a lonely place—why not seek out people who will understand. There was one other, more famous couple, a non-Seiwa-kai one at that, but the Shisaku favorite Seiko Noda (HR) and Yosuke Tsuruyasu (HC) couple broke up recently.
Alas, the real reason for their choice appears to be less social, more political. Mr. Otsuka was chosen by the Koizumi team for the 2005 election (it must have helped that a scion of the Otsuka pharmaceutical magnate clan would not be having money problems in financing his electoral campaign), while Ms. Maruyama had been heavily recruited by then-Prime Minister Abe for the 2007 HC campaign. These two former Prime Ministers are sandwiched between Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and incumbent Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda; all four hail from the Seiwa-kai.
This is related to the other point that the veteran journalist raised as a key function of the post-modern faction: The habatsu still serves as a support system, especially when election time rolls around. Most important for newbies, it will dispatch its leaders and celebrity faction members to make speeches on your behalf and otherwise make gestures of endorsement. The Seiwa-kai boasts five Prime Ministers still alive and still in the LDP, including—as I already implied—the last four (the other is the venerable octogenarian Yasuhiro Nakasone), appealing to a wide range of ideological preferences and demographics. It is no wonder, then, that the Seiwa-kai is now hands-down the largest faction in the LDP.
If Ms. Marukawa and Mr. Otsuka—likewise Prime Minister aspirant Nobuteru Ishihara*—are any indication, the habatsu is very much alive, if not quite kickin’.
* See footnote ** here.
Seriously, though, isn’t this a rather high incidence of intermarriage between Diet members, especially given the scarcity of female Diet members? Does anything like this happen in your home country?
Saturday, February 09, 2008
The Meaning of Habatsu
There must be hundreds of books written about the LDP, all of which surely have something to say about the habatsu, the party factions, for which it is justly famous. This post is for people who are too busy to read any of them, written by someone who is too lazy to.
You have been forewarned.
The 1993-94 electoral reforms that put first-past-the-post, single seat districts at the heart of the Lower House electoral system have steadily eroded the power of habastsu, the political factions in the LDP. The state subsidies to political parties, also part of the 1993-94 reforms, loosened the faction leaders’ financial grip over the rank-and-file. So are we going to see, as some people expect, a shift from the faction politics based on personal loyalty toward more policy- and ideology-consistent alliances, eventually leading to a realignment of the major parties? Not so fast.
Once upon a time, factions as a rule served as the vehicle for the political ambitions of their chiefs. No longer. The three most recent Prime Ministers have not been faction chiefs*, and the future does not look too promising for faction chiefs either. Of the current nine chiefs, only Sadakazu Tanigaki and Tarō Asō have run for the presidency of the LDP and by extension the Prime Ministership**, and Mr. Tanigaki will merge his micro-faction into the larger Koga faction later this year and give up his top faction role at least partly to enhance his chances for the top LDP job (but more on that later). And Nobutaka Machimura is the only other faction leader that has a credible shot at the LDP Presidency. In fact, faction leaders are increasingly looking like the political version of the stereotypical salaryman-manager presidents of Japanese companies.
The deterioration of the factions has been evident in the behavior of the individual Diet members. More LDP Diet members elect to stay out of factions and work as free agents. And the ones that remain are increasingly able to marching to their own music, as some of them openly defy the wishes of their respective faction leadership to vote for the party presidential candidate of their own choosing. The power of the faction leaders to punish the deviants is limited. I’ve already mentioned the money angle; and the party leadership has wrested much of the control over the selection of party candidates for Diet seats, and Junichirō Koizumi showed that a Prime Minister could get away with disregarding the wishes of faction chiefs and the imperatives of seniority in picking Cabinet members.
But the trend appears to have peaked with the election of 83 new Diet members, the so-called Koizumi Kids, in the 2005 election, the vast majority coming in as independents. Since then their ranks have been steadily depleted by defection, as it were, to one faction or other, until today, only 23 Lower House rookies remain as independent operators.
It’s not just rookies either. Nobuteru Ishihara, the hawkish son of Shintarō Ishihara and friend of Shinzō Abe, with two Cabinet appointments and a Big Three party post under his belt at the callow age of 50, fell in line under Taku Yamazaki, the Mother of All Doves, only last December. Kunio Hatoyama, of the Hatoyama clan, a 10-term Lower House member currently on his third (or fourth, depending on how you count) Cabinet appointment, joined the Tsushima faction, also last year. So what gives?
In fact, there are still some very good reasons for factions to prevail.
One good reason: Because it’s there. That’s the way they’ve conducted business. Old habits are hard to break. Institutional change, the informal ones at least, comes slowly. In the meantime, they’re a saving on transaction costs. Example: Imagine you’re a Prime Minister and you or your trusted deputies have to figure out how to choose all those political appointees － the Senior Vice-Ministers and Vice Ministers. You can’t expect to know (in the case of the Lower House) all the third- and second-termers well enough to make the right appointments. Over the long-run, administrations may stop treating these jobs as virtual internships and use them to better immediate effect, relegating, not incidentally, the rest of the rank-and-file Diet members to pure backbenchers. Until that happens though － I think it will be a long time in coming, if ever － the Prime Minister and his closest associates must have some viable means of allocating those posts.
Rookies have very good reasons of their own to join factions. A faction is a ready-made network to plug into, a good place to learn the ropes, find mentors, receive introductions***. There’s far less money available compared to the old days, but unless you are independently very wealthy, every million yen in political funds counts. And when a rookie’s first crack at reelection comes around, it’s good to have some nationally recognized figures come around to put in a good word with your constituents. And the bigger the faction, the greater the firepower; and vice versa. So I do not think that it is a coincidence that the Machimura faction has grown over its long hold on the Prime Minister’s seat to become the largest faction in the LDP. Tsutomu Takebe, who ran the party organization under Prime Minister Koizumi, has tried to keep the flame of independence alive by providing venues for training newbies. At least in the short-run, he is fighting a rearguard action.
As for better-established members, they will have accumulated a substantial amount of political capital within their factions. It doesn’t make political sense to throw that away and start anew as independents. Thus, once a faction member, (usually) always a member. Mr. Hatoyama is not really an exception to this rule. He has been in and out of the LDP, coming back again to stay in 2000. He joined the Tsushima faction, where he started out his political career when it was the almighty Tanaka faction****.
For those harboring ambitions for the top office, faction membership is highly helpful, perhaps essential. To file to run for the LDP Presidency, you need the signatures of at least 20 Diet members. A convenient place to start would be the member of your faction, where the smallest micro-faction has more than a baker’s dozen as a starter’s pack. A large faction would be even more convenient for aspirants. Mr. Tanigaki and Makoto Koga, the head of much larger Koga faction, have a natural affinity as foreign policy and history issue doves. But the Koga faction’s lack of a proximate candidate for the Prime Minister’s job must have figured just as importantly in the equation.
Kaoru Yasano, the affable policy wonk and behind-the-scenes operator, has seen much success as a troubleshooter and behind-the-scenes mediator. Most recently, he has been whispered as a potential successor to Prime Minister Koizumi, or replacement for Prime Minister Abe, but nothing really came of a that. Mr. Ishihara must have had this precedent in addition to his own experience in mind***** when he decided to fall in with his ideological and operational opposite, Mr. Yamazaki. It is telling that the Yamazaki faction had no viable for Prime Minister.
Policies and ideologies cut across faction lines; Mr. Ishihara alone is proof of that. However, Diet members do not fall into neat groups holding common positions on all or most of the important issues of the day******. This neccessitates the proliferation of an endless string of semi-permanent caucuses, many of them cutting across party lines. At the other end, no single issue is sufficiently powerful and divisive enough to force a realignment that severs permanently the communal relationships and the practical conveniences of the factions.
Thus, for the foreseeable future, factions should continue to thrive in the LDP. An important corollary of this conjecture is that a political realignment of the two major parties is not in the cards either.
Okay… not quite good enough, but I think I got it out of my system. And life is so short…
* Koizumi Junichirō, Shinzō Abe and Yasuo Fukuda all hailed from the Seiwakai. Mr. Koizumi was nominally the faction head while Yoshirō Mori, the faction head took him turn before him as Prime Minister.
** Yōhei Kōno, the current President of the Lower House, is the only LDP President in its 53-year history never to serve as Prime Minister.
*** This must have been particularly important for the Koizumi kids, since so many of them had little or no political experience or ties to their local political communities.
**** Mr. Hatoyama surely still harbors ambitions to be Prime Minister. Still only 59-years old, he is a 10-term Diet member with a pedigree better than Mr. Fukuda’s and at least as good as Mr. Abe’s. He displayed his ambitions when he tried but failed to stand for the election of the LDP President in 2006. I suspect that this experience was a strong motivation to go to the Tsushima faction, which conveniently does not have ready Prime Minister candidate. Tsushima faction member Fukushirō Nukaga has been seen my many as a potential candidate, but when he tried to stand in 2007, he had to give up because he could not even secure the support of his own faction.
***** I suspect that similar considerations entered into Mr. Hatoyama’s decision, but I couldn’t be sure about it, so I put it in footnote****.
****** To give an example, too many Western commentators regularly refer to Mr. Koizumi as a right-wing politician, a nationalist, because he antagonized the Chinese by insisting on going to Yasukuni Shrine, and also supported President Bush on the war in Iraq. To realize that those people slide beyond shaggy conventional wisdom into the realm of urban legend, you only have to look at his position on the Class A War Criminals and other hot-button history issues, as well as his support for MOF in holding the line against defense spending. And I haven’t even talked about the imperial succession. And North Korea. I’ll try to expand this point into a full post one of these days.
You have been forewarned.
The 1993-94 electoral reforms that put first-past-the-post, single seat districts at the heart of the Lower House electoral system have steadily eroded the power of habastsu, the political factions in the LDP. The state subsidies to political parties, also part of the 1993-94 reforms, loosened the faction leaders’ financial grip over the rank-and-file. So are we going to see, as some people expect, a shift from the faction politics based on personal loyalty toward more policy- and ideology-consistent alliances, eventually leading to a realignment of the major parties? Not so fast.
Once upon a time, factions as a rule served as the vehicle for the political ambitions of their chiefs. No longer. The three most recent Prime Ministers have not been faction chiefs*, and the future does not look too promising for faction chiefs either. Of the current nine chiefs, only Sadakazu Tanigaki and Tarō Asō have run for the presidency of the LDP and by extension the Prime Ministership**, and Mr. Tanigaki will merge his micro-faction into the larger Koga faction later this year and give up his top faction role at least partly to enhance his chances for the top LDP job (but more on that later). And Nobutaka Machimura is the only other faction leader that has a credible shot at the LDP Presidency. In fact, faction leaders are increasingly looking like the political version of the stereotypical salaryman-manager presidents of Japanese companies.
The deterioration of the factions has been evident in the behavior of the individual Diet members. More LDP Diet members elect to stay out of factions and work as free agents. And the ones that remain are increasingly able to marching to their own music, as some of them openly defy the wishes of their respective faction leadership to vote for the party presidential candidate of their own choosing. The power of the faction leaders to punish the deviants is limited. I’ve already mentioned the money angle; and the party leadership has wrested much of the control over the selection of party candidates for Diet seats, and Junichirō Koizumi showed that a Prime Minister could get away with disregarding the wishes of faction chiefs and the imperatives of seniority in picking Cabinet members.
But the trend appears to have peaked with the election of 83 new Diet members, the so-called Koizumi Kids, in the 2005 election, the vast majority coming in as independents. Since then their ranks have been steadily depleted by defection, as it were, to one faction or other, until today, only 23 Lower House rookies remain as independent operators.
It’s not just rookies either. Nobuteru Ishihara, the hawkish son of Shintarō Ishihara and friend of Shinzō Abe, with two Cabinet appointments and a Big Three party post under his belt at the callow age of 50, fell in line under Taku Yamazaki, the Mother of All Doves, only last December. Kunio Hatoyama, of the Hatoyama clan, a 10-term Lower House member currently on his third (or fourth, depending on how you count) Cabinet appointment, joined the Tsushima faction, also last year. So what gives?
In fact, there are still some very good reasons for factions to prevail.
One good reason: Because it’s there. That’s the way they’ve conducted business. Old habits are hard to break. Institutional change, the informal ones at least, comes slowly. In the meantime, they’re a saving on transaction costs. Example: Imagine you’re a Prime Minister and you or your trusted deputies have to figure out how to choose all those political appointees － the Senior Vice-Ministers and Vice Ministers. You can’t expect to know (in the case of the Lower House) all the third- and second-termers well enough to make the right appointments. Over the long-run, administrations may stop treating these jobs as virtual internships and use them to better immediate effect, relegating, not incidentally, the rest of the rank-and-file Diet members to pure backbenchers. Until that happens though － I think it will be a long time in coming, if ever － the Prime Minister and his closest associates must have some viable means of allocating those posts.
Rookies have very good reasons of their own to join factions. A faction is a ready-made network to plug into, a good place to learn the ropes, find mentors, receive introductions***. There’s far less money available compared to the old days, but unless you are independently very wealthy, every million yen in political funds counts. And when a rookie’s first crack at reelection comes around, it’s good to have some nationally recognized figures come around to put in a good word with your constituents. And the bigger the faction, the greater the firepower; and vice versa. So I do not think that it is a coincidence that the Machimura faction has grown over its long hold on the Prime Minister’s seat to become the largest faction in the LDP. Tsutomu Takebe, who ran the party organization under Prime Minister Koizumi, has tried to keep the flame of independence alive by providing venues for training newbies. At least in the short-run, he is fighting a rearguard action.
As for better-established members, they will have accumulated a substantial amount of political capital within their factions. It doesn’t make political sense to throw that away and start anew as independents. Thus, once a faction member, (usually) always a member. Mr. Hatoyama is not really an exception to this rule. He has been in and out of the LDP, coming back again to stay in 2000. He joined the Tsushima faction, where he started out his political career when it was the almighty Tanaka faction****.
For those harboring ambitions for the top office, faction membership is highly helpful, perhaps essential. To file to run for the LDP Presidency, you need the signatures of at least 20 Diet members. A convenient place to start would be the member of your faction, where the smallest micro-faction has more than a baker’s dozen as a starter’s pack. A large faction would be even more convenient for aspirants. Mr. Tanigaki and Makoto Koga, the head of much larger Koga faction, have a natural affinity as foreign policy and history issue doves. But the Koga faction’s lack of a proximate candidate for the Prime Minister’s job must have figured just as importantly in the equation.
Kaoru Yasano, the affable policy wonk and behind-the-scenes operator, has seen much success as a troubleshooter and behind-the-scenes mediator. Most recently, he has been whispered as a potential successor to Prime Minister Koizumi, or replacement for Prime Minister Abe, but nothing really came of a that. Mr. Ishihara must have had this precedent in addition to his own experience in mind***** when he decided to fall in with his ideological and operational opposite, Mr. Yamazaki. It is telling that the Yamazaki faction had no viable for Prime Minister.
Policies and ideologies cut across faction lines; Mr. Ishihara alone is proof of that. However, Diet members do not fall into neat groups holding common positions on all or most of the important issues of the day******. This neccessitates the proliferation of an endless string of semi-permanent caucuses, many of them cutting across party lines. At the other end, no single issue is sufficiently powerful and divisive enough to force a realignment that severs permanently the communal relationships and the practical conveniences of the factions.
Thus, for the foreseeable future, factions should continue to thrive in the LDP. An important corollary of this conjecture is that a political realignment of the two major parties is not in the cards either.
Okay… not quite good enough, but I think I got it out of my system. And life is so short…
* Koizumi Junichirō, Shinzō Abe and Yasuo Fukuda all hailed from the Seiwakai. Mr. Koizumi was nominally the faction head while Yoshirō Mori, the faction head took him turn before him as Prime Minister.
** Yōhei Kōno, the current President of the Lower House, is the only LDP President in its 53-year history never to serve as Prime Minister.
*** This must have been particularly important for the Koizumi kids, since so many of them had little or no political experience or ties to their local political communities.
**** Mr. Hatoyama surely still harbors ambitions to be Prime Minister. Still only 59-years old, he is a 10-term Diet member with a pedigree better than Mr. Fukuda’s and at least as good as Mr. Abe’s. He displayed his ambitions when he tried but failed to stand for the election of the LDP President in 2006. I suspect that this experience was a strong motivation to go to the Tsushima faction, which conveniently does not have ready Prime Minister candidate. Tsushima faction member Fukushirō Nukaga has been seen my many as a potential candidate, but when he tried to stand in 2007, he had to give up because he could not even secure the support of his own faction.
***** I suspect that similar considerations entered into Mr. Hatoyama’s decision, but I couldn’t be sure about it, so I put it in footnote****.
****** To give an example, too many Western commentators regularly refer to Mr. Koizumi as a right-wing politician, a nationalist, because he antagonized the Chinese by insisting on going to Yasukuni Shrine, and also supported President Bush on the war in Iraq. To realize that those people slide beyond shaggy conventional wisdom into the realm of urban legend, you only have to look at his position on the Class A War Criminals and other hot-button history issues, as well as his support for MOF in holding the line against defense spending. And I haven’t even talked about the imperial succession. And North Korea. I’ll try to expand this point into a full post one of these days.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Random Firings of the Synapses on the New Fukuda Cabinet, Factions, Reformist Prime Ministers and Stuff
Got a long email from Mentor, gave a shorter response. Lightly edited and excised of personal stuff, here it is:
- Yasuo Fukuda takes over from Shinzo Abe, and there's only one new face in the cabinet. Is there anything that better symbolizes the LDP? Shoichi Nakagawa could take over one year from now and, if he could stay away from the Yasukuni Shrine, I don't think we'd notice the difference.
- habatsu; or, faction: a Japanese sport, played mainly by LDP men. Most cognoscenti of the sport consider the heydays of the SanKakuDaiFuku League the Golden Age of competitive, full-contact habatsu, when the weakest teams usually had at least one superstar and a legitimate chance to win it all.
Contemporary habatsu is an intramural-recreation game. After the game is over, all the players on all the teams get together and throw a big karaoke party. What can I say, it serves a useful objective. If nothing else, it proves that man is a social animal.
The DPJ plays a more primitive, freestyle game, but the objectives seem to be converging. The DPJ players want a big fat karaoke party of their own, and are beginning to smell the fried chicken and beer.
The problem is, there's only one karaoke set, and the LDP and DPJ are now too big to fit into the one karaoke room at the same time. This, I think, is a variety of the two-party political system that allows small floaters to play both sides of the game. Let's call it, meta-habatsu.
Sorry, that's about all I can say now on habatsu. I'll see if I can come up with some meaningful thoughts on dissenters and discontents, and their effect on team cohesion.
- I've long believed that Ryutaro Hashimoto has been underrated. In terms of potential, I rank him up there with Yasuhiro Nakasone. And I'm not saying that because he came to love METI. But that's what happens when you lose. Twice. People think of Noboru Takeshita as a pol of pols. But he got the consumption tax done. Gave me hope for the entire LDP with that too.
A true reformer would have to overhaul the entire FILP from head to tail, and that means that he has to redo the Post Office thing. As for the highways – Junichiro Koizumi really botched that one; maybe he was no better than that – Mr. Fukuda has said stuff that suggests, hints, that he'll backtrack on that. Politically, it would make at least as much sense as throwing money at 90-year old small-plot farmers; as statecraft, it would leave something to be desired. But let's keep hoping.
- Yasuo Fukuda takes over from Shinzo Abe, and there's only one new face in the cabinet. Is there anything that better symbolizes the LDP? Shoichi Nakagawa could take over one year from now and, if he could stay away from the Yasukuni Shrine, I don't think we'd notice the difference.
- habatsu; or, faction: a Japanese sport, played mainly by LDP men. Most cognoscenti of the sport consider the heydays of the SanKakuDaiFuku League the Golden Age of competitive, full-contact habatsu, when the weakest teams usually had at least one superstar and a legitimate chance to win it all.
Contemporary habatsu is an intramural-recreation game. After the game is over, all the players on all the teams get together and throw a big karaoke party. What can I say, it serves a useful objective. If nothing else, it proves that man is a social animal.
The DPJ plays a more primitive, freestyle game, but the objectives seem to be converging. The DPJ players want a big fat karaoke party of their own, and are beginning to smell the fried chicken and beer.
The problem is, there's only one karaoke set, and the LDP and DPJ are now too big to fit into the one karaoke room at the same time. This, I think, is a variety of the two-party political system that allows small floaters to play both sides of the game. Let's call it, meta-habatsu.
Sorry, that's about all I can say now on habatsu. I'll see if I can come up with some meaningful thoughts on dissenters and discontents, and their effect on team cohesion.
- I've long believed that Ryutaro Hashimoto has been underrated. In terms of potential, I rank him up there with Yasuhiro Nakasone. And I'm not saying that because he came to love METI. But that's what happens when you lose. Twice. People think of Noboru Takeshita as a pol of pols. But he got the consumption tax done. Gave me hope for the entire LDP with that too.
A true reformer would have to overhaul the entire FILP from head to tail, and that means that he has to redo the Post Office thing. As for the highways – Junichiro Koizumi really botched that one; maybe he was no better than that – Mr. Fukuda has said stuff that suggests, hints, that he'll backtrack on that. Politically, it would make at least as much sense as throwing money at 90-year old small-plot farmers; as statecraft, it would leave something to be desired. But let's keep hoping.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
LDP Discontents Start a New Policy Group. Are the Factions on the Move?
It is not a major news item, but the main dailies are carrying the news. Seven LDP Lower House members got together on the 21st and agreed to found a study group to propose an alternative to what they see as the excessively market-oriented directions of the Koizumi-Abe .administrations. The policy proposals will be announced in early September, thus likely between the inauguration of the new Cabinet and the start of the Diet session. The eight founding members (one member was absent from the inaugural meeting due to a prior commitment) are actively seeking more participants from the rest of the LDP.
The Mainichi notes that the founding members all belong to three factions that have only one Cabinet member (from the Yamazaki faction) between them, and casts doubt on their claim that this is not an anti-Abe movement. So, could T be onto something? Are the factions on the move after all? Does the fact that the dovish heads of the two smaller factions, Sadakazu and Tanigaki and Taku Yamazaki, are openly critical of the prime minister mean anything? Is it significant that the Tsushima faction--by far the largest of the three, a close second in the LDP only to the Machimura faction, which has produced the last three prime ministers including Mr. Abe---has traditionally been very much pro-China (Prime Ministers Kakuei Tanaka, Noboru Takeshita, and Ryutaro Hashimoto, to name three Old Friends of China who have led the faction before Yuji Tsushima), whereas Mr. Abe's relationship with our neighbors is seen more as an arrangement of mutual convenience?
We'll know more after we see the definitive list of Diet members who sign on to this policy study group. (Will it include members from other factions, for instance?) Even more when the new Cabinet is announced. But it is important to remember that the Tsushima faction had started off with two Cabinet members. But Administrative Reform Minister Genichiro Sada and Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma, both Tsushima faction members in good standing, had to resign as the result of, respectively, a political financing scandal and inopportune words about the atomic bombs. In both cases, Mr. Abe promoted his sub-Cabinet level advisors (Yoshimi Watanabe and Yuriko Koike) with the corresponding portfolios, leaving the Tsushima faction out in the cold. My guess is that this imbalance will be corrected, as Mr. Abe seeks to broaden his support base within the LDP.
It is also notable that the eight founding members do not include the leadership of the three factions (arguably; I welcome any corrections). Though I do think that Mr. Mori (the true proprietor of the Machimura faction) will make sure that no one from his faction will up putting his/her name to the group manifesto, I don't see the other factions lining up en masse under the banners of this likely time-limited study group. Accordingly, it is unlikely that the new group is any harbinger of the three factions lining up against the Prime Minister, and the others in his support.
The Mainichi notes that the founding members all belong to three factions that have only one Cabinet member (from the Yamazaki faction) between them, and casts doubt on their claim that this is not an anti-Abe movement. So, could T be onto something? Are the factions on the move after all? Does the fact that the dovish heads of the two smaller factions, Sadakazu and Tanigaki and Taku Yamazaki, are openly critical of the prime minister mean anything? Is it significant that the Tsushima faction--by far the largest of the three, a close second in the LDP only to the Machimura faction, which has produced the last three prime ministers including Mr. Abe---has traditionally been very much pro-China (Prime Ministers Kakuei Tanaka, Noboru Takeshita, and Ryutaro Hashimoto, to name three Old Friends of China who have led the faction before Yuji Tsushima), whereas Mr. Abe's relationship with our neighbors is seen more as an arrangement of mutual convenience?
We'll know more after we see the definitive list of Diet members who sign on to this policy study group. (Will it include members from other factions, for instance?) Even more when the new Cabinet is announced. But it is important to remember that the Tsushima faction had started off with two Cabinet members. But Administrative Reform Minister Genichiro Sada and Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma, both Tsushima faction members in good standing, had to resign as the result of, respectively, a political financing scandal and inopportune words about the atomic bombs. In both cases, Mr. Abe promoted his sub-Cabinet level advisors (Yoshimi Watanabe and Yuriko Koike) with the corresponding portfolios, leaving the Tsushima faction out in the cold. My guess is that this imbalance will be corrected, as Mr. Abe seeks to broaden his support base within the LDP.
It is also notable that the eight founding members do not include the leadership of the three factions (arguably; I welcome any corrections). Though I do think that Mr. Mori (the true proprietor of the Machimura faction) will make sure that no one from his faction will up putting his/her name to the group manifesto, I don't see the other factions lining up en masse under the banners of this likely time-limited study group. Accordingly, it is unlikely that the new group is any harbinger of the three factions lining up against the Prime Minister, and the others in his support.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
On Factions and the Prime Minister's Decision to Stay on
This is my answer to a comment on this post. Since it's been nearly a week since the original post, I'm reposting it. I think that it has content that stands on its own.
T:
First, my apologies for not elaborating further on my habatsu comment. I'm easily distracted.
As for my response to your first question, I'm mildly surprised that there are still many first-term Diet members able to resist the call of the factions. Mr. Koizumi's support that they received in 2005 will have little to do with what kind of entry-level political appointee or party post they will get in, say, 2008, after they have their second Lower House election win under their belts. As for LDP HQ support, Tsutomu Takebe, the secretary-general who ran the 2005 election, launched an informal group of 24 junior Diet members consisting mostly of Koizumi Children. So, the real question is, do you stay on your own, cast your lot with a 66 year-old ex-SG who currrently has no formal role at party HQ, or join a faction? There is little political continuity at party HQ. In that sense, the LDP is closer to American political parties than ideological or religious parties.
Are factions lining up for/against Mr. Abe? I could have missed something, but could you be referring to Taku Yamzaki and Sadakazu Tanigaki's criticism's of the prime minister? Being at the other end of the LDP political spectrum, that's not surprising.. But they only have 51 Diet members between them out of 313 LDP faction member MPs (the rest are unaffiliated), and the others do not seem to be lining up along factions lines, except to secure cabinet, sub-cabinet, and party posts (with the Upper House members acting as a cross-factional faction of its own for cabinet posts).
It's little more than a guess, but I think it was Mr. Abe's decision, and his alone, to stay on. It was widely reported on the JMSM that Yoshiro Mori, ex-Prime Minister and Koizumi-Abe minder, Hidenao Nakagawa, then LDP SG, and Mikio Aoki, head of the LDP Upper House members, went to the prime minister to tell him that the LDP was likely to lose too badly for him to stay on. Mr. Nakagawa gave what must have been a heavily censored version of the visit on national TV, which still made it clear that resignation was at least one of the possibilities that they had broached. If the trio had been really encouraging, I am sure that Mr. Nakagawa would have mentioned it in his interview. Mr. Mori has given a decidedly anemic version of his role in the talks as well. (I suspect that Mr. Mori still has not completely reconciled himself to the fact that Mr. Abe declined to respect seniority and defer to Yasuo Fukuda in 2006).
Behind that diffident, hands-off demeanor is a self-contained, quietly insistent man of strong, if sometimes shallow, convictions.
T:
First, my apologies for not elaborating further on my habatsu comment. I'm easily distracted.
As for my response to your first question, I'm mildly surprised that there are still many first-term Diet members able to resist the call of the factions. Mr. Koizumi's support that they received in 2005 will have little to do with what kind of entry-level political appointee or party post they will get in, say, 2008, after they have their second Lower House election win under their belts. As for LDP HQ support, Tsutomu Takebe, the secretary-general who ran the 2005 election, launched an informal group of 24 junior Diet members consisting mostly of Koizumi Children. So, the real question is, do you stay on your own, cast your lot with a 66 year-old ex-SG who currrently has no formal role at party HQ, or join a faction? There is little political continuity at party HQ. In that sense, the LDP is closer to American political parties than ideological or religious parties.
Are factions lining up for/against Mr. Abe? I could have missed something, but could you be referring to Taku Yamzaki and Sadakazu Tanigaki's criticism's of the prime minister? Being at the other end of the LDP political spectrum, that's not surprising.. But they only have 51 Diet members between them out of 313 LDP faction member MPs (the rest are unaffiliated), and the others do not seem to be lining up along factions lines, except to secure cabinet, sub-cabinet, and party posts (with the Upper House members acting as a cross-factional faction of its own for cabinet posts).
It's little more than a guess, but I think it was Mr. Abe's decision, and his alone, to stay on. It was widely reported on the JMSM that Yoshiro Mori, ex-Prime Minister and Koizumi-Abe minder, Hidenao Nakagawa, then LDP SG, and Mikio Aoki, head of the LDP Upper House members, went to the prime minister to tell him that the LDP was likely to lose too badly for him to stay on. Mr. Nakagawa gave what must have been a heavily censored version of the visit on national TV, which still made it clear that resignation was at least one of the possibilities that they had broached. If the trio had been really encouraging, I am sure that Mr. Nakagawa would have mentioned it in his interview. Mr. Mori has given a decidedly anemic version of his role in the talks as well. (I suspect that Mr. Mori still has not completely reconciled himself to the fact that Mr. Abe declined to respect seniority and defer to Yasuo Fukuda in 2006).
Behind that diffident, hands-off demeanor is a self-contained, quietly insistent man of strong, if sometimes shallow, convictions.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
The Mainichi Says It's the Defense Minister Winning on Both Counts and Takes a Dig at the Prime Minister as Well
A Mainichi reporter has taken Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki's statement that "the procedures are the problem, and I am not taking issue with the substance", and claiming this as evidence that Defense Minister Yuriko Koike will get her way and replace Takemasa Moriya, the current vice minister, with the Policy Agency transfer Tetsuya Nishikawa. So much for my prophetic powers, though the possibility remains that this is spin from the Koike camp.
But going by the headline, the real story here is:
The Defense Vice Minister: "Inexperience" Again on Personnel Issue. Voices of Doubt Raised at the "Wait-and-See" Prime Minister"
All eyes will be on the fate of Ms. Koike come August 27. And the well-traveled defense minister has enemies of her own. But I don't think that the prime minister can afford to kick her out of the Cabinet. And you know how my guesses work out.
But going by the headline, the real story here is:
The Defense Vice Minister: "Inexperience" Again on Personnel Issue. Voices of Doubt Raised at the "Wait-and-See" Prime Minister"
All eyes will be on the fate of Ms. Koike come August 27. And the well-traveled defense minister has enemies of her own. But I don't think that the prime minister can afford to kick her out of the Cabinet. And you know how my guesses work out.
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