What Asahi Readers Tell Us Random-Digit-Dialing Poll Has to Say about Aso et al (and What to Make of It All)

Today’s Asahi (online) has the results of its Second Consecutive Public Opinion Poll (telephone) taken on October 11-12. Here are some numbers:

Aso Cabinet: support 42% (41%) not support 38% (42%)
Lower House proportional voting intent: LDP 32% (33%), DPJ 32% (34%)

October 4-5 poll numbers in parentheses

These numbers predictably are not as good for Aso/LDP as the Yomiuri ones. Still, an Asahi poll that actually gives a positive rating to the Aso Cabinet and has the LDP in a dead heat with the DPJ is a reminder not to bet against the LDP-New Komeito coalition maintaining a majority in the upcoming Lower House election.

The financial crisis and the damage it is doing to the real economy has not hurt the LDP. Instead, it has turned public attention away from the nation’s future—the DPJ manifesto’s main subject—and its past—the wear and tear from 53 years of LDP in power—and instead is highlighting the here-and-now, where the administration has the advantage of being able to take the initiative by marshalling government resources to shore up the economy.

What about foreign policy? The Japanese public is very much focused on the domestic front. The Asahi poll did ask the respondents about the JMSDA refueling operations in the Indian Ocean—a point of contention that Ichiro Ozawa used to good effect against the Fukuda administration. The results were 42% in favor of an extension, 42% against—another dead heat. If this and the Yomiuri numbers are anything to go by, public opinion has softened, if only a shade, towards the operations. And the DPJ does not have a workable alternative. I do not think that North Korea—nuclear program, abductees—is going to be a major political issue either, once the disappointment over the U.S. action to delist North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism blows over. Unless something big happens in the Six-Party talks that puts Japan on the spot, but that’s a big if.

The Aso administration, with a little help from U.S. financial institutions, has stanched the bleeding for now. Nobody is ready to put a sell call on the DPJ yet, but it’s time to play some offense (or grab an LDP fumble or two, which is another thing that you should never bet against) if it is to deny the LDP-New-Komeito coalition and fellow-traveler independents a majority in the upcoming Lower House election—a modest goal for the LDP Secretary-General to be shooting for to be sure, and a measure of how far the DPJ has come..

On a related matter, the Asahi, alone among the major dailies, continues to focus on DPJ ties to the maruchi shoho industry. Today, it named names, including Kenji Yamaoka’s. (By comparison, yesterday’s evening Yomiuri tucked the story away on the antepenultimate page, where lesser scandals go to die (unless they’re spillover from the penultimate page). And that seems to the end of it for now as far as the Yomiuri is concerned.) There is no clear evidence of illegal activities; the DPJ should be able to put this behind it without serious harm. But it’s obviously an unwanted distraction going into the election. More immediately, it gives them something to think about when it decides what to do or not to do with the Yano-Sokagakkai-Komeito sideshow in the remaining days of the current Diet session.

What Yomiuri Readers Tell Us Random-Digit-Dialing Poll Has to Say about Aso et al

Today’s Yomiuri has the results of its monthly RDD poll taken between October 10-12. Here are some numbers:

Aso Cabinet: support 45.6% (49.5%) not support 38.2% (33.4%)
Lower House proportional voting intent: LDP 38.9% (37%), DPJ 31.4% (30%)
For Prime Minister: Taro Aso 55.9%, Ichiro Ozawa 23.4%

September 24-25 poll numbers in parentheses

So Prime Minister Aso’s inauguration bump was in the 4-5% range? Given the MLIT Minister’s resignation, the Yamato Life bankruptcy, the freefalling stock market, and ever-growing economic fears, it could be worse. In fact, if it were up to Yomiuri nation, the LDP-New Komeito coalition would win going away. Unfortunately for the Aso administration, there’s also Asahi nation and Mainichi nation; and Sankei and TV nations can be quirky. Still, I think the DPJ and its allies have their work cut out for them if they want to win a working majority without the Communists. For that, I think that Yukio Hatoyama snapping at the LDP at every turn just isn’t enough; Ichiro Ozawa needs to show face. Mr. Ozawa is the DPJ’s biggest asset, and biggest liability.

Regarding the timing of the election, 70.3% want economic stimulus before the election while only 24.5% say they want to have an election first. These must be more or less the same people—24.9%—who want an election immediately. 12.3% want it somewhere around the turn of the calendar year, 23.4% want a spring election, and 33.8% say they can wait all the way up to next September, when the Lower House term expires. The supplementary budget for the stimulus package that the Fukuda administration had prepared should pass the Upper House (with DPJ support no less) this week. The second tranche that Mr. Aso has promised should be ready by early next week. The going could be harder this time; the DPJ has more legal leverage on the second package, since providing tax relief and dipping into Special Account reserves(or just possibly issuing deficit bonds) both each need legislative bills, which unlike budget bills can be held up in the Upper House for up to 60 days before the Lower House can hold a revote. It’s highly unlikely that the public and the media will let that happen. In the unlikely event that the DPJ tries, Prime Minister Aso will surely call a snap election, casting Mr. Ozawa’s people as the villains putting politics first. Either way, the election will happen sooner rather than later. There has been talk in the LDP about delaying the election, given dismal returns on a private poll, but I don’t think that’s a real option. Once the second tranche is in the bag (or the DPJ can be blamed for a delay), there’s little else that help them and a lot more that can go wrong; the economic downturn, political scandals, more bad news about the public pension system—the list goes on.

Yomiuri also asked the respondents about the JMSDA refueling operations in the Indian Ocean. The results were 46.6% to 39.9% in favor of an extension. Again, the DPJ is willing to let it come to a quick Upper House vote (setting the stage for the Lower House override) if the LDP is willing to agree to an early election. In any case, the outcome will change the minds of few voters either way.

Given the timing of the poll, it does little to reflect the U.S. weekend decision to delist North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism despite Japanese pleas regarding the abduction issue. The action has been seen across the board here as a slap in the face for the Aso administration and the DPJ has been quick to seize on this point. Moreover, the nuclear deal itself is widely seen as incomplete and unsatisfactory. However, though I’m probably biased because of my own strong pessimism regarding the fate of the remaining abductees, I don’t think that a significant part of the Japanese public still believes that Japanese authorities have significant leverage over the U.S. administration where the Six-Party Talks are concerned. Thus, the issue should not have much of a bearing on the outcome of the upcoming election. Besides, the election is going to be very much about our economic worries; that is what both sides are going to try to capitalize on.

The Supplementary Budget: Remind Me Not to PUI, and Odds and Ends

I write a Most Likely Budget Scenario where the DPJ rejects the supplementary budget in the Upper House, so of course the next morning, the newspapers announce that the DPJ is going to vote in favor of the supplementary budget. Ichiro Ozawa apparently saw little harm in letting the LDP have their way on a measure that Prime Minister Aso and his people had already discounted as inadequate. Some parts of the media are also reporting that the DPJ is inclined to let the legislative bill to extend the JMSDF refueling operations in the Indian Ocean pass the Lower House quickly, but generally speaking, the media are all over the place on the ultimate outcome of this and other issues, including the timing of the Lower House election. This no doubt reflects the state of play.

Mr. Ozawa has been hospitalized. Given his long-standing health issues, this might have merited an inch on the front page on a slow news day. However, the three Japanese Nobel Prize winners—physics—has wiped everything but the supplementary budget off page one of the Yomiuri. In fact, they have been given five out of the 32-page edition, and that’s not counting the one-sheet extra Yomiuri handed out last night at major train stations. Most of the non-baseball sports news also got wiped out. Totally. I also saw someone with an Asahi extra on the train. We take our Nobel Prizes seriously. What’s it like in your country? Do U.S. winners, for example, receive invitations to the White House, like major team sports champions and Olympic Gold medalists?

But going back to Mr. Ozawa’s illness, this brings up the question hovering in the back of many people’s minds: Will he serve, if elected? Will he turn out to be the Moses of Japanese politics?

Most Likely Budget Scenario

The Lower House passes the supplementary budget this week, the Upper House rejects it next week, the two Houses meet and do not come to an agreement, and, under the Japanese Constitution, the budget becomes law. Beyond that, things get murky. The underlying situation is such that the more Prime Minister Aso delays, the worse it gets for the coalition, and the New Komeito cannot wait any longer than early January. That does give Mr. Aso enough time to pass legislation for the consumer protection agency and the refueling operations. But will the LDP let him?

My guess: Mr. Aso will fight a snap election with a second stimulus package on the line.

Most likely outcome: It The Lower House vote for the Prime Minister turns on the Communist vote. More to come later, hopefully. In the meantime, from my email a couple of hours and much alcohol ago:

There are so many scenarios for the Japanese scene: it may be 50-50, but it's not a Tunny-Dempsey 50-50, not even a Red Sox-Rays 50-50; it's an Antonio Inoki-Mohammed Ali 50-50.

Th-, th-, th,- that’s all, folks. For tonight.

Shoichi Nakagawa Most Plausible Heir to LDP Conservative Wing

I saw Shoichi Nakagawa—yes, that dyspeptic nemesis of Western liberals—this morning on TV, on the Sunday Project wide show featuring septuagenarian insult host Soichiro Tawara and one of the dumbest sidekick announcers on the planet. (No, not her, him. She’s a clear improvement over her clueless predecessor.) Always responsive, coherent and intelligent, if often morose and sometimes acidulous, Mr. Nakagawa looked fresh, rested and—dare I say it?—cheerful. Perhaps he slept well last night, perhaps it was a mild case of Schadenfreude—maybe it’s both; as Minister of both Finance and Financial Services, he cannot be unhappy that Japanese banks are sitting on only! 12 billion dollars (and counting, like their less-fortunate U.S. and European counterparts) in sub-prime losses and snapping up what they hope are juicy bits and more of Lehman, Morgan Stanley and (oops) Merrill Lynch. Unlike his predecessor, he can go to G-7 meetings with jurisdiction over financial services, a good thing to have in these troubled times—thanks to the wisdom of Prime Minister Aso, so he repeatedly points out.

There may be more to his (for him) sunny demeanor. Mr. Nakagawa is one of the smartest heirloom Diet members around; he now has Big Three (Policy Research Council Chair) and senior Cabinet (Finance) appointments under his belt, not to mention his competent tours as METI (once) and MAFF (twice) Minister. At 55, he is favorably positioned to become the Prime Minister Aso’s heir to the conservative wing of the LDP.* So, do not count on Mr. Nakagawa to split the party any time soon to join hands with Takeo Hiranuma, just to become the eternal Greek chorus to whatever middle-of-the-road coalition that will be administering Japan in the wake of a major realignment.

The LDP and DPJ Lower House whips, Tadamori Oshima and Kenji Yamaoka, followed Mr. Nakagawa. The LDP apparently wants to pass the Fukuda supplementary budget, show Prime Minister Aso’s second, expansionary tranche— the LDP is working on it, the New Komeito satisfied by the (2 trillion yen?) income-tax-plus-payout—and play the snap election by ear from there, with both eyes on the public. The DPJ would like to focus on the 53-years-and-counting LDP mess, of which the tainted rice and the latest public pension scandal are the latest examples. (I’m increasingly coming around to the view that the DPJ is bluffing where putting the screws on New Komeito is concerned.)

* There are two senior Cabinet appointments that an LDP Lower House member wants to test his mettle at before he is a Prime Minister candidate—Finance and Foreign Affairs. It is significant that Mr. Nakagawa has been enfranchised in Finance, where he would have little or no opportunities to talk about matters that could bring down international opprobrium on him. That he began his professional career as a banker and served in economic cabinet posts (and LDP policy chief) make his double portfolio all the more natural.

Update on the Aso-on-Ozawa, DPJ-on-LDP Battle

The Prime Minister’s Q&A continued in the Upper House, though without Ichiro Ozawa and his faithful deputy Yukio Hatoyama, it just wasn’t the same. Media reports are showing him even more eager to keep the Diet session running to push the stimulus package and the other two items on his agenda. What he says at this point doesn’t matter; public perception will drive his actions with regard to those items. Supermajority overrides on the consumer protection agency and the Indian Ocean refueling operations remain long shots.

Briefly, regarding Plenary Q&A on Prime Minister Aso’s Inaugural Speech

After the Prime Minister’s policy speech at the beginning of a Diet session, the two Houses each hold plenary Q&A sessions where party leaders get a chance to take a crack at the Prime Minister. The Lower House goes firs. Yesterday, on the first day, the DPJ and LDP took turns: for the DPJ, Ichiro Ozawa and his deputy Yukio Hatoyama; for the LDP, Mr. Aso’s party deputy Hiroyuki Hosoda.

The questions are always prefaced by statements. Mr. Ozawa did not even bother to ask a question. Instead, he demanded that the LDP vacate the Prime Minister’s chair to the opposition and open the way to an immediate election, then went on to give an exposition of the DPJ’s post-election plans—an outline of the new election manifesto in the works. So the Prime Minister opened with questions and the opposition leader countered with a policy statement. Fair is foul and foul is fair. The questions aside, Mr. Hatoyama also went after the LDP, while Mr. Hosoda went after Mr. Ozawa—an indication of where the DPJ and LDP each think that the weakness of its opponent lies.

In his response, Mr. Aso repeated his three-point agenda for this Diet session, that is, the fiscal stimulus/consumer protection agency/refueling operations package. On that, I’m changing my call: I see zero chance of bipartisan compromise on the consumer protection agency. The LDP-New Komeito coalition will have to use the Lower House supermajority override to get this one. The DPJ is not going to let Mr. Aso go into the Lower House general election as an outgoing, can-do leader against a destructive, old-school spendthrift politico if it can help it. The DPJ scenario has a reformist party working for you taking down a political bankrupt LDP beholden to the bureaucracy. Any bipartisan agreement will have to be on DPJ terms, not the Prime Minister’s.

Why Does Mr. Ozawa’s Electoral District Have to Be an Issue? Now?

In yet another manifestation of the enigmatic Ichiro Ozawa’s personal issues, possibly (thought increasingly less likely) as little as a month before the Lower House general election, we still don’t know—he still doesn’t know—where he’ll stand for election.

Mr. Ozawa makes John McCain look like the Rock of Ages.

How Far Can Prime Minister Aso Push Back the Lower House Election? Depends.

According to news reports as well as Prime Minister Aso’s inaugural September 29 policy speech to the Diet, the top three items on his policy agenda are: shoring up a sagging economy, establishing a consumer protection agency, and extending counter-terrorism refueling operations in the Indian Ocean. He has chosen a personalized Aso vs. Ozawa/LDP vs. DPJ, confrontational approach in sharp contrast to Mr. Fukuda, his predecessor. The already gloomy economic outlook has taken a turn for the worse with the explosion of the U.S. financial crisis. An economic package and a consumer protection agency are in principle not anathema to the DPJ. These developments raise the possibility that Mr. will delay the snap election to expand the economic package, (somewhat less likely) to pass legislation to establish the consumer protection agency, and (even less likely) to use the supermajority override to renew legislative authorization for the refueling operations.

The first item is for the time being covered by the 11.7/1.8 trillion yen fiscal package, with the bill for income tax relief and other legislative items to arrive after the Lower House election. The requisite budgetary bill becomes effective by a simple majority in the Lower House after a maximum 30-day wait in the Upper House. The DPJ is reportedly leaning toward a quick Upper House vote in exchange for a few days’ deliberations in the high-profile Budgetary Committees in the two Houses, where they can turn the klieglights on to the LDP’s multiple malfeasances over and beyond the stimulus package. The worsening economic circumstances have forced the LDP to give up the notion of avoiding this unwanted media attention by skipping directly to the election. Mr. Aso’s flatly-stated apologetic foreword on the swiftly disposed-of MAFF Minister Nakayama’s maledictions and the untimely administrative makeover is an indication that he intends to weather any criticism by apologizing and moving on, dismissing any attempt on the part of the opposition to further linger his administration as pure politics. Likewise in the address itself, Mr. Aso further apologized for the bureaucracy’s yet more public pension capers as well as the delinquent inspection of tainted rice that led to their intrusion into the human food chain. Long on apologies, short on substance, the two sides will it no doubt do their best to fill the public narrative with its own tropes and memes. But that’s where Mr. Aso intent appears to lie. But this willingness to take the heat has raised another possibility. Mr. Aso and Chief Cabinet Secretary Hosoda among others have been openly talking about an additional stimulus package. But if you are going to get slagged anyway, why not go for the whole hog? Thus, the most recent media reports have Mr. Aso and the party leadership looking at the possibility of passing a second package during this Diet session. Whence they cannot help but think, more electoral bang for more bucks.

A second package would significantly push back the timing of a Lower House election. Here, it gets interesting. More time on you hands means more time to take care of other things. The notion of a consumer protection agency has bipartisan support; the devil is in the not inconsiderable details. There may be room for compromise, or at least, from Mr. Aso’s point of view, show up the DPJ as diddling with the consumers’ interests for political gain. Who knows, the ruling coalition might even be able to avail itself of the Lower House supermajority to pass the necessary legislative bill. What happens here will depend very much on the way the issue, including the broader issue of bureaucratic incompetence and the LDP’s responsibility for that plays in public opinion.

The refueling operations are trickier, and harder to read. Public opinion polls show a majority/plurality (depending on who does the asking and when) opposing their continuation. However, no Japanese troops are dying on the Indian Ocean; this is not a hot-button issue for the Japanese public. My guess is that if Mr. Aso calls on the ruling coalition to override the opposition on the consumer protection agency, he will also insist that it exercise its Lower House prerogative on the refueling operations as well. First, this is in keeping with his confrontational approach and conducive to a decisive image. Second, there are undeniable diplomatic benefits that accrue to Japan. Imagine going into a snap election with (the increasingly likely) President Obama’s words of praise at your back for this: safe work in a dangerous place.

All this, of course, pushes the end of the current Diet session back as far as late December; the Lower House election would be held in early January, the limits of New Komeito’s patience. This is still not likely, but at least possible, and is, in my mind, Mr. Aso’s now best-case scenario.

Having said that, I’ll be looking for an opportunity to consider how the DPJ is going to play this. In short, I think it’s this: Look, those guys had 50-some years to do something about this mess; how often do they think they can fool you and me with yet another string of apologies and promises to do better.* And by the way, where’s the rest of the beef? That’s all for now.

Writing this reminds me of the old saying Eri wo tadasu, or straighten our collars, as an expression of remorse and the will to do better; and a political cartoon that had a politician (I think it was a Prime Minister; MTC probably remembers) stating this phrase—in a suit without a collar.

Prime Minister Aso’s Inaugural Speech Takes It to the Opposition

In a major strategic shift from the consensus-seeking Fukuda administration, Prime Minister decided to go on the attack in his inaugural policy statement address to the Diet. In an unprecedented move, Mr. Aso accused the DPJ of putting the political game ahead of the public interest and challenged them to respond to the following five points:

1. Is the DPJ ready to establish rules for consensus-building, or will it dare to betray its own beliefs by rejecting the decision-making process in the Diet and once again putting the livelihood of the people second?

2. I ask the DPJ, are you willing to agree to establishing a consumer [protection] agency or not? If not, are you willing to engage in a discussion quickly to reach an agreement? Thus do I pose the question.

3. The UN is currently swayed by the policies of a small number of countries and otherwise is not in a condition in which we can entrust the fate of our nation to it. So, the Japan-U.S. alliance and the UN: Which comes first and which comes after? The DPJ has the responsibility to make that clear to the people of Japan and the world. I would like to hear it, together with the reasoning behind it.

4. Other nations are about to increase their engagement in Afghanistan despite invaluable sacrifices [read fatal casualties]. At this point, Japan, as a member of the international society, does not have the option of washing its hands of operations there. Does the DPJ think that it’s alright to do so regardless? I seek their opinion.

5. On top of the economic downturn, financial uncertainties are spreading from the United States. Is it not our political responsibility to the people of Japan to enact the supplementary budget that substantiates the Emergency Comprehensive Measures and the legislative bills that compensates local governments for the lost road construction and maintenance funds?

Looking at these points—I’ve only slightly paraphrased them—1 and 4 in particular, I don’t think Mr. Aso is willing to take a yes for an answer. In fact, the media—and I agree—see the speech as an attempt to challenge the DPJ and push his own stimulus agenda, then take the resultant momentum into the snap election. Mr. Aso himself advocates a three-year recovery process that apparently tables for the time being the tight-fisted fiscal rebalancing program from the Koizumi era.

A couple of points that will not be mentioned in the media reports. First, the address arranges crisp, forceful sentences into a concise, rhythmical package. There is a nice touch of the familiar, even a hint of the vernacular; this is not the usual accretion of bureaucratese. Let me put it this way: this appears to be the easiest Prime Minister’s address to translate that I’ve ever seen.

Second, the speech focuses on the DPJ, totally ignoring the rest of the opposition. It also personalizes the coalition’s position by the perception of an “Aso” shift in economic policy. The LDP hopes that this sets the stage for an Aso-Ozawa showdown, one that the ruling coalition has a much better chance of winning than a battle between the LDP-New Komeito coalition and the opposition.

One speech does not an election victory make. But at least this one puts the ball in the ball in Ichiro Ozawa’s court, something of a feat for an inaugural address.

Nakayama Update

The media were full of reports about LDP and New Komeito members, including cabinet members Seiko Noda, Takeo Kawamura, Shigeru Ishiba, Takeo Kawamura, and OMGWTF (pardon my French) Kunio Hatoyama, dumping on the ex-Minister Nariaki Nakayama. Meanwhile, Mr. Nakayama remained unrepentant in his animosity towards the Teachers’ Union of Japan, appearing live on national TV the morning after—his resignation had been accepted at an emergency Cabinet meeting on Sunday—to once again vent his rage. He is clearly going to keep talking, and he intends to keep his Lower House seat in the upcoming election, so I expect him to pop up from time to time to the embarrassment of the LDP as the opposition uses him as a club to keep bludgeoning the Aso administration with throughout the election campaign.

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Sorry. The Fuji TV poll that I had been waiting for turned out to have been taken on September 25, the very day that Mr. Nakayama made those assertions. Thus, the effects of the uproar will only be reflected in the following week’s poll. I should have taken note of the usual three day delay.

Memo on DPJ’s New Election Manifest; Also, More Scrambling by LDP-New Komeito

I’d mentioned briefly that the DPJ was exploring the need for sequencing its multitrillion-yen election-manifest upgrade package. The DPJ had been working on an update for the 2007 election manifest for the last three weeks with exactly that in mind. Given all the fanfare around the LDP makeover and the most recent flap leading to the MLIT Minister Nakayama’s resignation, the media attention had not been giving much space to this process. But in recent days, the basic framework has emerged (25 September Asahi; Yomiuri, 27 September)). Asahi reports that party leaders have already agreed on the main features of the program scheduled to officially debut next month.

The manifest will be a four-year program, neatly fitting into the four-year Lower House term of office, and will be implemented in one-, two-, and four-year stages. According to the Yomiuri report, the main items to be implemented in the first year are: establishing a monthly 26,000 yen allowance per child (5.6 trillion per year), making highways toll-free (1.5 trillion yen), abolishing the gasoline tax surcharge (2.6 trillion), and reforming the medical care system (2 trillion; abolishing the late-term elderly medical care insurance system etc,). The second year will see income subsidies for individual farmers (1 trillion). A fully tax-funded public pension system—Prime Minister Aso himself has talked favorably about this idea—(5.8 trillion) is to be implemented in the fourth year. The program, costing 22 trillion in its final year—around 21 trillion according to Yukio Hatoyama today, but what’s a trillion more or less?—will be funded by savings of 12.6 trillion yen from downsizing national public works programs, savings on public procurement, 20% reduction of human resources costs for public servants (retirement pus pay cut?), and reducing subsidies to state-owned entities; 3 trillion from sales of state assets and elimination of business income tax benefits; 2.7 trillion from reducing personal income tax deductions; and 4 trillion yen from special account surpluses (the most fungible of the “buried treasures”, the Yomiuri report mentioned only the Foreign Exchange Special Account, but this figure appears to include the Fiscal Investment and Loans Program Special Account surplus as well). The figures in the Yomiuri report do not add up and the DPJ leadership have yet to grasp the full implications of the details—Mr. Hatoyama did not have a ready answer when Kazuo Kitagawa, the brainy no.2 man for the New Komeito, pointed out a major hole in the child allowance/income tax deduction exchange scheme—so I’ll leave the numbers at that for the time being. I hope to have more to say when the full program emerges.

An interesting development on the LDP-New Komeito side is that under the new Prime Minister and the prevailing economic circumstances, half-baked talk has broken loose about vastly expanding the 1.8/11.7 trillion stimulus package. True, it’s about short-term measures, but it does make their accusations against the DPJ of fiscal irresponsibility less convincing to public ears. The scrambling over Health, Welfare and Labor Minister Yoichi Masuzoe’s expressed intent to “fundamentally review the Late-term Elderly Medical Care Insurance System” and seconded by Mr. Aso—if I’m not mistaken, the ruling coalition has been frantically trying to scale back expectations—also has the feel of an administration calling audibles and not doing a very good job of it. Add to that Mr. Aso’s previously expressed sympathy for a fully tax-funded basic pension system, albeit shelved for the time being until the LDP can resume talk about a consumption tax hike—and it’s like having a new coach with a different offensive system coming in the day before the championship game.

Quo Vadis? The Communist Vote in the Unrepresented Districts

Ross has reminded me that the Japan Communist Party’s decision not to field candidates in half, likely more, of the 300 single-seat seat Lower House elections are likely to have substantial consequences, in the DPJ’s favor. True, but it’s the magnitude that is so hard to guess at.

The JCP announced 138 candidates to contest single-seat races. That leaves 162 without a JCP candidate. Reports say that the JCP will be naming a small number of additional candidates later, but that’ll be it. A rough, sample scan of Hokkaido districts shows that the JCP typically reaps votes at somewhere in the 10,000s to the 30,000s per district. If the DPJ can capture a big chunk of those votes, that will make the difference in close and possibly even some not-so-close races. The question is, how likely is this to happen?

For me, the difficulties in making a plausible guess at the actual impact are at least twofold. First, I do not have access to the kind of detailed polling data that enables me to understand how the JCP vote breaks down into hardcore socialist and plain-vanilla protesters against the status quo. The JCP vote fluctuates substantially from election to election—a swing of 10,000 votes or so between elections in a single-seat district is not unusual—so a detailed, district-by-district examination coupled with a more macro analysis may yield a clue here. Second, the DPJ has been taking a decidedly populist/politics-first turn under Mr. Ozawa. I have no idea how this much this works against it in wooing the protest vote. If I have to add a third, it is that I don’t yet know if the JCP will try to influence their supporters one way or the other. My guess is that it will stay neutral and its core supporters in the unrepresented districts will mostly abstain.

DPJ-PNP Merger Back to Square One

The merger talks between the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ; House of Councilors (upper house), House of Representatives (lower house) and the People’s New Party (PNP; HC, HR) fell through when the two sides could not agree on a way to enable a PNP lower house member to join the post-merger political party. A former top bureaucrat for the Postal Ministry*, Norimasa Hasegawa had been elected to a proportional seat in the House of Councilors in 2004 on the strength of the Post Office vote. The following year, he bolted the LDP and joined three HR exiles and a DPJ defector to form the People’s New Party. The election laws allow a HC member elected on a proportional ticket to switch to a party that was formed after the election but not to a party that had already been in existence at the time of the election.** To meet this requirement in the event of a merger, the DPJ would have to join either the PNP en masse or a new party to be formed by the members of the two parties. The DPJ was not willing to do either, so the two parties will continue to maintain the current relationship, at least until the HR election rolls by.

There will be no immediate consequences to the collapse, as long as the DOJ doesn’t field a candidate in a district where the PNP intends to field one. The agreement to freeze Post Office reform is in place regardless. The former alliance in the upper house all but ensures that the two parties will continue to vote in unison in the Diet.

The effect on the upcoming HR election is less certain. Assuming a merger does not affect voting behavior, a merger could mean at most one extra proportional seat for the post-merger party at the expense of another party not necessarily belonging to the LDP-DPJ coalition. A merger might have enabled to them to more effectively join forces in the electoral campaign, leading to more votes for mainly DPJ candidates, but many of the PNP supporters still feel a strong kinship with the LDP, so there could be downside. This highlights another important feature of the PNP. It is comprised of localized pockets of support, where it already has Diet members. In districts where it is not represented, it is highly unlikely to bring many votes to the table that is not already the DPJ’s for the asking.

No, what we really missed out on was an opportunity to see how cohesive the DPJ is going into the election. Dissolution and merger with the old-school PNP just might have been the last straw for dissidents who are dismayed at the highly politicized turn that party decision-making has taken under Ichiro Ozawa and/or just hate Mr. Ozawa. If the DPJ lost party members, particularly in the upper house, that would have dealt a devastating blow to the DPJ’s chances in the upcoming election. On the other hand, if it had withstood the merger test unharmed, it would have been a good show of party unity.

* Later merged into the newly created mega-Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

** It is not as absurd as it appears at first glance for a holder of an HC proportional seat to switch parties. Note that the number of seats that a party gains on the national, proportional vote is determined by the relative size of the total number of votes cast for the party and the individual candidates on the party proportional ticket. In other words, an HC proportional candidate must win enough votes to place among the top vote-getters up to the number of seats that is allocated to that party as the result of the overall proportional voting. In fact, proportional seat-holders winning more votes, say, than the average level of individualized votes for all the party’s proportional seat-holders can make the claim that below-average seat-holders rode their coattails to the HC.

Gaffe Minister Falls under Early-Election Juggernaut; Takes Deputy as “Travelling Companion on Road to Netherworld”

This morning, Seiichi Oota, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, heavily challenged where his political hearing is concerned*, took a hit for the team. I’ll spare you the details, but a series of misstatements and gaffes over a serious rice contamination scandal forced the MAFF Minister to go to the Prime Minister’s office and hand in his resignation papers to Mr. Fukuda.

Briefly for those of you who don’t follow the Japanese political scene as a matter of routine, unscrupulous businessmen bought imported rice contaminated by mold or pesticides (and thus suitable only for glue manufacture and other industrial use) at dirt-cheap prices and passed it on for human consumption at huge markups.** The matter appears to have been exposed by the kind of whistleblowers who had up till now had come up with a whole range of embarrassing but physically harmless fraudulent labeling cases. This one had potential health implications, and, unlike the poisoned Chinese dumplings, there was no third country to blame. Minister Oota made statements that were, with a little tweaking, easy to construe as belittling the problem, and a statement from the top MAFF bureaucrat, the administrative Vice Minister, ducking MAFF responsibility poured oil onto the fire. The public is charging the MAFF bureaucracy with gross negligence for overlooking the malfeasance. The misdeed likely could have been detected, but MAFF had always given prior notice weeks before mandated inspections, making it easy for the firms to have engineered a cover-up. It was obvious that once Mr. Oota went down, the Vice Minister had to go too, and he is.

The opposition had, quite properly, decided to initiate a thorough investigation in the Upper House, where they hold a majority, while the Lower House would be up to their elbows in a general election campaign. In fact, the opposition is likely to follow Ross’s suggestion and put it together with the other scandals—most recently the Social Insurance Agency conspiring (systemically, according to Minister Yoichi Masuzoe) with hard-up businesses to reduce pension premium payment delinquencies and consequently reduce eventual pension payments—to hold the LDP responsible for looking out for business interests and being at the mercy of the bureaucracy at the expense of the consumer and the general public. So, the investigation will still happen in the run-up to the Lower House election, though the resignations put something of a damper on the public outrage.

* First noted on this blog here.

** One businessman committed suicide.

Why Does the DPJ Continue Picking on the New Komeito?

I never understood why the DPJ would want an early Lower House election. After all, the Prime Minister would only be calling a snap election when coalition fortunes were looking up. Besides, the DPJ needed time to identify, nominate, and set up its candidates. Now, coalition prospects are better than they’ve been for some time, and it will be heading into the election, reportedly to be held on 26 October, less than two weeks after it has been proclaimed on the 14th.

Within the ruling coalition, New Komeito had been pushing for an early election, around the turn of the year. It places great importance on the Tokyo Prefectural Assembly elections, and the next one is scheduled for next July. It is heavily reliant on the Sokagakkai Buddhist sect for its foot soldiers and did not want to overtax those resources by holding another major election (in this case the Lower House election) in its vicinity—thus the desire for an early Lower House election. Besides, the New Komeito was only reluctantly supporting the refueling operations in the Indian Ocean, so it did not want to resort yet again to a supermajority override in the Lower House. A supermajority override would also prolong the upcoming extraordinary Diet session to the year’s end and possibly even early January.

Ichiro Ozawa decided to make sure that the New Komeito would put even more pressure on the LDP for a short session (thus ensuring an early election) by threatening to summon Junya Yano to the Diet for questioning. Mr. Yano is a former Komeito leader who later fell out with Komeito/New Komeito and Sokagakkai and is suing Sokagakkai for damages, claiming that it has tried to suppress his activities as a political analyst. He is very much willing to testify, presumably embarrassing both Sokagakkai and New Komeito. There is something sordid about hauling up a civil suit to the Diet as part of the political game, but a one-to-one connection between Sokagakkai and New Komeito does raise questions regarding the constitutional ban on state involvement in religious affairs.

In any case, the New Komeito has been running scared, just as Mr. Ozawa hoped. And with Prime Minister Fukuda’s surprise resignation and subsequent race for his LDP successor, an early election has been all but sealed and delivered.

Mr. Ozawa, however, is not letting up. When the DPJ announced the first batch of 187 candidates for the Lower House election, Mr. Ozawa’s name was left off the list, so that he could stand for election outside his Iwate Prefecture 4th District. It is widely believed that he is leaving himself the option to challenge New Komeito leader Akihiro Oota in his Tokyo Prefecture 12th District, where Mr. Oota hopes to be reelected, again with LDP support.

This looks like overkill to me. The early election is in the bag. An extra Lower House seat (assuming that whoever replaces Mr. Ozawa in his current district also is elected) could make the difference between any two of adjacent scenarios within the very wide range of possible outcomes. But assuming that the DPJ somehow wins a majority, there remains the task of gaining a majority in the Upper House. There, the DPJ has 108 out of 242 seats, 14 votes short of a majority. Since the nominally independent President (DPJ) and his Deputy (LDP) cancel each other out, five independents are affiliated with the DPJ, and one has received its support (as well as all the other opposition parties’ support) as an Upper House candidate, they might be able to make do with a minimum of seven more votes. Rule out the Communists (seven), the Reform Club (four; two DPJ outcasts and a couple of former conservative independents), and the DPJ is left to choose from leftish Social Democrats (five; the rump, unreconstructed Socialists), more-old-school-than-LDP People’s New Party (four), and the prickly New Party Nippon (one). In fact, the 21-strong Upper House New Komeito and its Lower House colleagues would be a better match for the DPJ than any of these other microparties. Not to mention the benefits of a bullet-proof, bicameral majority.

So isn’t it time for the DPJ to stop baiting the New Komeito? Or is the relationship between Mr. Ozawa and the New Komeito so beyond the pale that anything that the DPJ could do now would be useless?

* The State and its organs shall refrain from religious education or any other religious activity. (Japanese Constitution, Article 20, paragraph 3.)

Interviewed for Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio

Jonathan Gadir interviewed me today for ABC Radio. I hope that I managed to make the following points:

1) The differences within the LDP and the DPJ are much wider than the differences between the two. There are no powerfully compelling political issues that split the nation into ideologically opposed camps of significance.
2) The DPJ in the Ozawa era has disappointed me by moving away from a fiscally responsible position purely for tactical reasons. The media reports this political opportunism and blames it on Mr. Ozawa. The DPJ suffers in the polls for this, even as the LDP flounders.
3) Having said that, competition is a good thing in itself. Moreover, the DPJ, with fewer ties to the vested interests that have accumulated during more than 50 years of mostly LDP rule, may be a better agent of change.
4) A Prime Minister Taro Aso improves the ruling coalition’s chances for victory (which depends, of course, on how you define victory). We’ll see a bump in the opinion polls, which will help it in a early snap election. And as poorly as the LDP is doing in the polls, it still can put its votes together with the New Komeito’s 12-14 percentage point Sokagakkai votes in the 300 single-seat districts.
5) Take your mind off Mr. Aso’s bark and take a better look at his bite. You’ll find that his positions/statements on Yasukuni, the touchstone for Japan-China relations; the Northern Territories, the remaining obstacle to completing the normalization of Japan-Russia relations; and the refueling operations in the Indian Ocean, one of the two keystones in the projection of Japanese self-defense capabilities on the global stage, have been remarkably moderate. In any event, what passes for Japanese conservatism is often milquetoast by international standards.
6) Mr. Aso has insufficient gravitas for the Prime Minister’s job. He claims, rightly, economic credentials as a businessman. But a businessman’s perspective is not necessarily the right one for statecraft. Moreover, his policy preferences appear to lean more toward traditional remedies.
6) As for Yuriko Koike (the only other candidate that I was asked to comment on), her main interests were, are, international relations and national security. She has a substantial environment portfolio, but I suspect that it’s an acquired expertise, rather than something that comes from the heart.

I say “hope” because, frankly, I think it came out more like the incoherent ramblings of a couch-potato blogger. I’m not going to listen to it myself; I’m too self-conscious for that. But, in keeping in line with my past actions, I’ll post the link when it comes online in a few days, if only so that you can see if I actually did manage to make those points.

Finally, I offer my humble apology to Mr. Aso for claiming that he has insufficient gravitas for the Prime Minister’s job because he tends to think out loud. Imagine what he would say about my performance.