Abe Administration Wrongfoots Reporters on the Abductees Beat

Prime Minister Abe’s surprise May 29 afternoon announcement that North Korea had agreed to comprehensive survey on the abductees and specified missing persons suspected of being abducted came as a major surprise in its own right. No one, including me, had expected things to move so quickly, if at all. The surprise was compounded because

same-day media reports had the talks in Stockholm ending inconclusively, to the great disappointment of the families of the abductees.

Did a breakthrough occur between the perfunctory, apparently inconclusive report to Abe from the chief negotiator in the evening on the 28^th enabling the former to make that announcement? If so, the two parties moved with remarkable alacrity, with the two sides making simultaneous announcements in Tokyo and Pyongyang, the Abe administration orchestrating a carefully scripted two-part announcement, with a detailed announcement and extensive Q&A featuring Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga after the prime minister’s initial media splash. Or had the agreement actually been in place by the time that the negotiators left Stockholm but the media had been misled, leading to the initial negative reports? The latter explanation appears much more likely to me.

There’s a plausible explanation for the disconnect. There were the other two key cabinet ministers to be consulted, procedures to be followed, the families of the abductees to be notified, before the conclusions based on the phone calls and email and the negotiator’s report could be distilled into specific announcements.

That said, the public (the families, too) was misled, if only for a matter of hours, when “no comment” would have sufficed. More important to the Abe administration, the reporters covering the abductees issue, who had followed the negotiating team to Stockholm had been misled, to the benefit of the cling-on interview was conducted for the benefit of the reporters on the prime minister beat. Nothing will come of this if all goes well, but the Abe administration has narrowed its margin of error if and when things go wrong, as far as the reporters more focused on the abductees issue are concerned.

**********

A note on the pragmatism and irony evident in the cling-on interview format that Abe administration chose for the initial announcement. The pragmatism? A cling-on interview is in theory an impromptu that can be suspended or cut off at the convenience of the interviewee, a feature that Abe’s minders surely appreciate. The irony? Many of you will remember that the first Abe administration had tried to drop the twice-a-day event that Prime Minister Koizumi had used to great effect altogether, eventually settling for a once-a-day format.

Serves the Hanshin Tigers Right for Free-Rider X-Men Tie-in

On the other hand, it’s kind of a sad commentary on Japanese baseball.

…minor league indeed…

North Korea’s Bloody Succession Offers Cover for Possible Deal on Abductees

The sometimes on-again, most times off-again talks between the Japanese and North Korean authorities are now taking place in Stockholm, and the unspoken rhetorical question again is: Will anything come of it?

If my memory serves me correctly, the deal was that the North Korea would conduct a search to see if it could come up with new information regarding the missing abductees, and Japan would ease a little bit of its sanctions. The deal appeared to fall through, the Six-Party Talks themselves went south, but the Abe administration has been trying hard to revive the Six-Party Talks side deal, North Korea for whatever reason (money? leverage against South Korea and the United States? Leverage against China? All or none of the above?) is willing to talk, and here we are.

Few people believe that the North Korean authorities have been truthful. In fact, the only thing truthful that they could be telling about the still-missing abductees is that they are dead, in which case any new information that the North Korean authorities could produce is highly likely to be worse than the dubious explanations that they have given to date. That is not all. How could they credibly explain why new, no doubt dramatically different facts have turned up after all these years? And how would they assign blame for the oversight?

The problems are compounded for the North Koreans if some of all of the abductees are alive, since there must be a good reason for keeping their presence secret all those years ago. Given the purpose of the abductions, possession of highly sensitive information concerning North Korea’s national security operations is by far the most plausible explanation, and that situation is unlikely to have changed much.

Until now. For it is my view that there is an opportunity on this occasion for the North Korean authorities to come clean, or at least come forth with a more credible story, including, if available, some actual survivors. Specifically, blame it all on Chang Song Taek, Kim Jong Il’s brother-in-law, and other officials, named or unnamed, who were executed after Kim Jong Un inherited the dynasty. The system is opaque enough that the North Korean authorities can make its story stick as long as they can make sure that any survivors that they produce will toe the line—not so difficult to do if they now have family in North Korea.

It will still be an embarrassment for the North Korean authorities. I am worried that any asking price that they set will be too high for the Abe administration, or that they will not even be able to set one. Moreover, there is the matter of Japanese public opinion. Remember, it was the highly negative public reaction to the initial revelation that essentially forced Prime Minister Koizumi to switch to a hardline position after he returned with his entourage from his first trip to North Korea. Can the Abe administration give assurances that things will be any different this time around, if the North Korean authorities are unable to produce all, or most, of the still-missing abductees alive?

Still, there does seem to be genuine interest on the North Korean side in the process, and Prime Minister Abe’s personal commitment appears to be genuine. And North Korea’s bloody succession process can provide some coverage, assuming something actually something tangible is brought to the table. This time, I am staying tuned.

“Self-defense” and the Past that Prime Ministers Repeat Anyway

I received a “quick” question about “[t]he stories about a new ministerial portfolio specifically to deal with the use of force issue.” I’m putting my response (lightly edited) in the public domain in the hopes that others will find it useful too.

The question may be quick, but the answer is not. Where to start and, more important, where to stop?

Every reform-minded prime minister (and even those that aren’t) tries to transcend interagency rivalries by setting up HQs, offices and what have you for his pet policy initiatives around the prime minister’s office and putting political appointees—often cabinet ministers or, quite often, himself—in charge. But when a new prime minister arrives, he is likely to have his own priorities (or may share his predecessor’s but wants to put his personal stamp on it), usually resulting in yet more what-have-yous around the prime minister’s office. Over time, they accumulate until yet another reform-minded prime minister assumes power and decides to scrape away the barnacles of initiatives past, so that he can start anew and this time get it right… 

Prime ministers do this not necessarily out of mistrust of the bureaucracy or the ministers that lead them. In this case, MOFA as an institution has always favored a strong defense posture—do not think for a moment that Ambassador Yachi is one of those ex-MOFA outliers who are startlingly and openly critical of MOFA and more generally Japan’s foreign policy—and the MOD civilians and the JSDF leadership largely lean in the same direction, although they do not like to see their budget stretched because of the expanded demands. (Which reminds me of MOF, who is the major force on the sidelines. The Ministry of Justice is irrelevant.) But someone has to set the agenda and there are so many devils in the details, so it does make sense to put someone in charge—on paper. In practice, that person, even a cabinet minister, must rely on a bureaucracy consisting mostly of career bureaucrats, mostly seconded from those very ministries until their typical two-year assignments are up, after which they go back where they came from. In the meantime, that minister cannot issue orders directly to the ministries and other agencies to comply.

The more interesting question, if Mr. Abe does decide to assign a specific portfolio, is whom he assigns it to. If he puts himself or the chief cabinet secretary in charge, it won’t mean much beyond the initial agenda-setting phase, since each has too many other things to tend to on a day-to-day basis to give proper attention to the actual implementation phase. And do not imagine that even that limited role will survive past Mr. Abe’s tenure except in name. If he assigns it to a cabinet minister without ministerial portfolio, there will be a little more action, particularly if that minister is on good terms with the MOFA and MOD ministers and he/she has true expertise, neither of which is not a given. (Thought experiment: There’s huge competence gap even between the most ardent NASCAR fan and the most incompetent NASCAR driver.) However, the guarantee of whatever effectiveness this arrangement has lasts only as long as Abe’s tenure. The most interesting twist will come if Abe decides to anoint the head of MOFA or (less likely) MOD as the minister in charge of national security. For that minister will have been set up as the senior-most of the ministers with ministerial portfolio and can bring to bear the full force of a ministerial bureaucracy that will have an institutional interest in maintaining and reinforcing its newfound institutional superiority. That is, until a new prime minister comes in—Mr. Abe will not stay on forever, even with the new miracle drugn that has restored his health—and decides to do it, you know, his/her(?) way.

PS: Actually, only two current cabinet ministers really matter on this question: Prime Minister Abe, and Akihiro Ota, the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

Next Stop on the MIGA Trail, India (featuring Narendra Modi)

My second installment on the MIGA website. (Japanese version here.) The title “Narendra Modi Will Push Parliament Hard on Reform; and He Has the Votes to Do It” speaks for itself, I hope. An overlooked piece of information that explains so much and helps us gaze into the future: Is there an underlying theme developing in my posts there? I’ll know better as the posts (hopefully) pile up.

Note: All the links to the relevant articles of the Indian Constitution were dropped when the text was transposed to the online page. For your reference, here is the source that I used.

Oi No Go? Not So Fast

Today, on May 21, the Fukui District Court handed down a decision that forbids KEPCO from restarting the nuclear power units at the Oi Nuclear Power Station. It was momentous enough to warrant an extra from the always excitable Sankei Shimbun, it seems.

But there’s less than meets the eye here. The verdict will not affect the regulatory process for the Oi units one way or the other. There’s no hurry here since they were not fast-tracked by the Nuclear Regulatory Authority, and the Osaka High Court will overturn the verdict on appeal and everything will be as if nothing had happened.

You read it hear first.

And Previously, on Abe and Modi

And here’s the text email that spawned the text for the previous post:

...someone at another wire service looked at a Kyodo wire today that said that the Abe administration was hoping that Modi would make Japan his first overseas destination and got to wondering, “Does Modi's election potentially affect the current balance of power in East Asia?”

My response:

Funny you ask that; I’d just begun to write a piece for the MIGA website that began with the sentence: “2014 has most likely been a bad year for you if you happen to be a political analyst who specializes in the states that used to form the Soviet Union”, then gone on to talk about an equally disastrous outcome for India specialists, and what we could learn from such cases. But to your question…

In a nutshell, no, at least not in ways that would be different from what we’d already been seeing, which is a gradual but limited development of the bilateral security relationship. The youth vote propelled Modi and his BJP to a lower house majority, and to fix the hidebound, stalling domestic economy. For that, he needs more trade and more investment, and he’ll welcome all comers, including China. He’ll do his best to avoid being sidetracked by issues that have no upside in that direction. There’s always been a mutual attraction between the two nations that has been mostly free of geopolitical conflict—India’s nuclear weapons program has been a sticking point, but Japan has managed to mostly get over that—and Modi does appear to have a warm relationship with the Japanese political and economic leadership that is only set to grow, but it’s doubtful that he’ll go about that in a way that would look like a deliberate snub of China.

I’m sure that Abe and his handlers would like to see Modi make Japan his first diplomatic stop, but that occasion is likely reserved for the July BRICs Summit in Brazil. So how about a pair of stops on his way back from Fortaleza, Tokyo and Seoul, then a brief chat with Xi Jinping  at Beijing Airport before he finally heads back home? Long trip, but it’s the least-controversial way of arranging the itinerary that I can think of. If it happens, remember, you read it here first.

The one wild card in my view is the possibility that the Chinese PLA might decide to test a new Modi administration’s mettle through a clash around the territorial disputes. Or, to state the matter more plausibly, any clash, deliberate or accidental, would be correctly seen as a test of the Modi administration’s mettle. That would leave the Modi administration no choicebut to step up India’s geopolitical game—reach out more forcefully to China’s frenemies (I don’t think that China has “enemies”)—if only for the sake of domestic consumption, a move that the Abe administration would welcome and respond to with efforts to further enhance security ties.

And now I have to find the time to write the MIGA post…

Shinzo Abe and Narendra Modi—and Xi Jinping

My response to a query:

“I was wondering if Modi presents the US with another Abe. A popular conservative with some views (Hindu nationalist in Modi’s case) that will make America squirm, even while it tries to deepen ties to counter China?”

In a very broad sense, yes. But there are two major differences. First, the problem that the United States has with Abe is "history." Literally. So when Abe goes to Yasukuni, the Obama administration is "disappointed" because of the geopolitical repercussions. But the problem with Modi is in the here and now, specifically, his role in the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat, for which he is persona non grata in the United States. That's a real problem that Washington--the Obama administration and Congress--will have to resolve. Modi can't be treated like Castro.

Second, the contrast between the geopolitical implications of their conflicts with China could hardly be stronger. The standoff around the Senkaku Islands between the civil maritime services draws in a reluctant United States, the global hegemon and the region's greatest military power by far, by way of the bilateral treaty,, even as it excites the Chinese public no end (in contrast to the relatively small space that the issue occupies in the Japanese body politic). The India-China dispute is a far more serious one for the parties directly involved, given its military nature--it has spawned a land war, with sporadic clashes since--but it is a strictly bilateral dispute, with minimal geopolitical repercussions beyond the two parties involved. The BRICs Summits--a plurilateral framework spawned by a Goldman-Sachs sales pitch!; talk of life imitating art--also provide a convenient venue by which they can keep any animosity real or potential down to a manageable level.

That said, the relationship between the Chinese and Indian leadership has been relatively cordial of late (although there have been, will be, bumps along the road)and I am betting that Modi will do his best to keep it that way--BTW I also think that there will be a huge outreach to the Islamic community in his inaugural speech--while Xi Jinping would be hard put to distance himself further from Shintaro Abe than he now does. I'm sure that there are many Western liberals that blame this on his hardline stance against China. My response to that is: What hardline stance? The Abe administration is not the one setting preconditions on a bilateral summit. The Abe administration is not the one hurling invectives at its Chinese counterpart. The Abe administration is not the one moving its markers in the East (and South) China Sea.

My Thoughts around the Purported Chinese Contingency Plans for North Korean Collapse

…as leaked through a Kyodo wire that touched off a flurry of reports worldwide.

I am convinced of the authenticity of the plan; not so much its authority. Kyodo can produce some sketchy wires, but it has been around in Beijing too long to be taken in by a total fake. And people would be arrested for espionage/treason by now if the proper authorities hadn’t given a go-ahead. Besides, they—as well as South Korea, the United States and possibly even Japan—must have drafted contingency plans a couple of decades ago, when everyone thought/feared that North Korea would collapse under the weight of its economic woes. It wouldn’t hurt to update those plans from time to time. That said, you don’t know if this is the one and only legitimate plan certified by the CCP Central Committee, just one of multiple scenarios being drafted by a PLA think tank, or something in between.

What is the point of the leak? My guess is that it’s a reminder to the Kim Jong Un regime that China holds the lifeline to its survival, most likely a warning not to go ahead with a nuclear warhead test as feared. If I had to make a guess one way or the other, I would say that the North Koreans will take heed, although I have no confidence one way or the other.

Is a collapse imminent? It doesn’t look like it, but you know what they say about authoritarian/totalitarian regimes: The harder they come, the harder they fall. And it’s awfully hard to see it coming.

And the dangers of a sudden collapse? There’ll be much to do, such as managing the logistics of preventing a humanitarian disaster, avoiding armed conflict between all the players domestic and foreign, and securing control over the nuclear facilities and more generally the North Korean military. Ideally, China, South Korea and the United States would have protocols in place so that they will be able to work with each other, or at least not get in each other’s way. I’m afraid that’s probably not the case.

Japan does have some worries, such as an influx of refugees and wayward nuclear warhead or two. But the former is limited by the number of seaworthy North Korean boats, which would be swiftly impounded on arrival here, while the latter threat lacks a meaningful motive and a reliable weapons system. There will certainly be a huge bill to pay, but the Japanese government would already have had to pay at least a trillion yen or more in the event of normalized relations; this way, it would only have to pay once. 

Globaltalk MIGA, and the Impoundment of the Mitsui Cargo Vessel

I will be writing a column, hopefully regularly, for the Meiji Institute for Global Affairs (MIGA) website. My first installmenI will be writing a column, hopefully regularly, for the Meiji Institute for Global Affairs (MIGA) website. My first installment takes up “The Impoundment of the Mitsui Cargo Vessel” in China. When I first offered my take to a group of Japanese businessmen over lunch on April 26 and wrote it up later that day, it was going against the grain of virtually the entire Japanese media except Asahi (who else?), which in addition to the negative response carried the opinion of a Japanese expert who stated that the “‘[Shanghai Maritime] Court may not be seeing this case as a post-war reparation issue’ and that caution should be exercised in identifying the true intent of the Chinese side.” Unfortunately, bits and pieces of Golden Week apparently got in the way, and the draft lay in the editorial pipeline for a week, during which similar takes began emerging in the public sphere. I hope to be more topical next time.

I do intend to resume blogging, too. If you are interested, please stay tuned.

Off-the-Cuff: A Couple of Notes on the “Shunto” Wage Hikes

Is Abenomics working with regard to wages? Um, not so much when it comes to “core” wages. The following are a couple of memos that I whipped up for a friend/journalist.

“First of all, most of the reported base-rate hikes (other than the whopping, across-the-board 10,000 yen hike at Gyoza no Ohsho being the one exception—in the non-manufacturing sector to boot--that I’ve noticed) do not match the 2% inflation target that the Kuroda BOJ is shooting for. Since BOJ only needs to hit the 2% figure y-on-y after two years, let’s say that the base rate hikes should only have to match up to mid-year inflation rate of 1% (which is actually a reasonable concession since the Japanese “core” CPI is not really “core” by international standards.). Even then, only a small fraction of the companies being mentioned appear to be measuring up to that more modest if reasonable yardstick. And we haven’t even talked about the 3% VAT rate hike yet.

“So here’s the deal: If you’re a regular employee at a large, publicly-listed corporation that is not on the skids, your living standards have been protected by the deflationary environment. But here comes sustainable core inflation (hopes Abe) and the extra 3% and only some of all that is compensated at the salary base-rate level, the remainder being accounted for by the annual bonuses, which can be reeled back whenever the corporate balance sheets so demand. And of course, there’s always the annual scale-based raise, which has masked at the individual level the lack of base-rate hikes at the collective.

“But what about services? Construction (which in Japan counts as services)? Okay, construction employees are likely to get their dues, regular or irregular. But the others? Small businesses? Irregular workers?

“Looks uncertain at this point to me. But let’s say consumption is on the rise, employment is on the rise, although the bulk of the new employment will be in the form of irregular workers (analogous to bonuses with regard to compensation), creating the appearance of growing income disparities—hello, minimum wage is better than no wage if you need the money—so hopefully, consumption follows the May, post-VAT hike, dead-cat’s-bounce with a steady rise, on a lower trajectory but with a similar vector. Unless you absolutely hate Abe’s values agenda and want the economy to tank.

“But what do I know, I’m an arithmetist, not an economist. Thank you for the interruption; now, back to work.”

..and

“I've always believed that the unions are in cahoots with management. Corporate union leaders typically serves a few years, then goes back to work, having garnered invaluable experience and relationships with regard to labor relations. Or so it used to be at any big businesses when I was young. Please confirm with real experts, but there are inferences to be made about the numbers from this point.”

Which Comes First, TPA or TPP?

The assumption always has been that the Obama administration needs the fast-track Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) in order to secure conclusive concessions from the other parties in the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP) negotiations. Senator Baucus did table a TPA bill but promptly packed his bag for Beijing to take up the US ambassador’s office there, leaving no one of significance to push an already unpopular initiative back in Washington. Richard Katz reports as the latest round of ministerial negotiations get under way that the White House is now pushing the line that an acceptable TPP package is necessary to secure TPA—which was supposed to be the prerequisite to a conclusive TPP package. So what gives?

In fact, the alleged new White House line is not as absurd as it seems at first glance. There will surely be some senators, largely but not limited to Democrats, that will find themselves willing to let the negotiated TPA pass but unable to afford not to push an amendment or two on behalf of their respective favored lobbies and key constituencies. They could vote in favor of TPA, then cast a “principled” vote against the TPP in a losing cause. Yielding on a procedural supermajority so that the simple majority on the substance can come into play is a common feature of legislative action in the Senate, no? We most recently saw it with regard to Ted Cruz’s filibuster on lifting the debt ceiling. But try explaining all that to the other negotiating parties and their own sets of lobbies and constituencies and convincing them that it’ll actually work.

What If the Japanese Public Had Reacted Differently to the Koizumi Overtures to North Korea?

One of the great what-ifs of contemporary East Asian history is this: What if the Japanese public had reacted differently to the Koizumi overtures to North Korea? More specifically, what if the Japanese public’s response had been measured enough that the prime minister could negotiate for normalization of bilateral relations? He put a lot of political capital on that bet and managed to salvage some political dignity when he extracted the families of the surviving (according to North Korean claims) abductees with a tiny fraction of the cash that would have been forthcoming in the process of normalization.

Trolls in a forum that will go unnamed will argue that right-wingers killed any chances of following up on the North Korean admission when it insisted on keeping the families of the abductees in Japan. They will put the blame on Shinzo Abe, who as Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary argued against returning them to North Korea. I wonder if these are the same right wingers who, after more than a decade of steadily worsening relations with China and South Korea managed to raise 12.4% of the vote for their candidate of choice Toshio Tamogami in a Tokyo gubernatorial race with a historically low turnout. In any case, the Japanese public drove the media response, not the other way around, though the calloused brains of those trolls will never allow them to admit. It is also to be remembered that the Socialist Party (JSP) and Asahi Shimbun, who would normally have been expected to be sympathetic to North Korea, could not speak up on this matter because of their earlier dismissive attitude towards the existence of abductees (and the possible implication of the JSP in the liquidation in one of them). If nothing else, there was an extremely high price to be paid politically if Koizumi had decided to send them back.

The most significant effect of all this was that it hobbled Japan in the Six Party Talks, where it became more of a nuisance to the other four, who were trying to negotiate a deal on the nuclear weapons—not that in hindsight it had been a realistic goal in the first place. But when and where hasn’t domestic politics dictated diplomacy? Was it Yogi Berra who said that that diplomacy is domestic politics by other means?

The Obama “State Visit” Revisited

Just to wrap up a thread that I’d opened here, it looks like President Obama will stay only one night in Tokyo but the two sides will work together to cram the trappings of a full state visit—audience with the emperor and a state banquet hosted by the prime minister—into the time available. That means that there will be no side trip to Hiroshima and/or Nagasaki, the scene of America’s crime against humanity—or does the end justify the means?—which would be awkward, except the Japanese side, including the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has always been a good sport about it.

Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida telegraphed some such an outcome during his Feb. 7 talks with Secretary of State John Kerry when he stated: “And concerning President Obama’s upcoming visit to Japan, we are inviting the President as state guest. But when the United States makes its decision, the Japanese side will cooperate so that we will be able to make sure that President Obama’s visit to Japan is a great success.” Which is when I lost interest in this small matter except to note that a) in diplomacy, there will usually be a way as long as you obey the law of physics, and b) Japan does not get as worked up about these rivalry issues as much as South Korea or even China does. That is beginning to change on history issues with the Abe administration in charge. But not on matters like this.

The video of the February 7 remarks—no questions from the media—after the meeting between Japan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Fumio Kushida’s and US Secretary of State John Kerry got top billing on the State Department website. (The transcript can be found here.)

Now back to work.

The Might-Have-Been of the Tokyo Gubernatorial

…some doodling for which I find no immediate practical use…

The pro-nuclear media is taking Yoichi Masuzoe’s landslide victory over antinuclear candidates Kenji Utsunomiya and Morihiro Hosokawa as an endorsement of nuclear power by Tokyo voters. Not necessarily. In fact, the election appears to have had the potential of being even more of a toss-up than I had guessed. A few things turning out differently for Hosokawa, and he could have been another example of a governor of a key prefecture using his bully pulpit to affect an issue on the national agenda*.

First, the voting outcome.

Yoichi Masuzoe:       2,112,979 votes

Kenji Utsunomiya:    982,594.767** votes

Morihiro Hosokawa: 956,063 votes

Toshio Tamogami:    610,865 votes

(The most any of the other 12 candidates received was 88,936 votes.)

(982,594.767 + 956,063) ÷ 2,112,979 = 0.91749977969

Is an eight-percentage point difference—a four-point swing—that unlikely in a Japanese election? Remember that most pundits believed that the 2003 “postal reform” election would end in a decisive defeat for the LDP at the time that Prime Minister Koizumi called it. And gubernatorial and mayoral elections in metropolitan areas are even more volatile***. And look at the negatives that Hosokawa carried (in descending order of importance): the disastrous non-launch of his campaign, the moment of truth when the media and voters define the candidate and his candidacy; the failure to dispel the lingering clouds of the circumstances around the 100 million yen loan and his 1994 decision to resign as prime minister instead of fully accounting for it; and his opposition to the highly popular 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Yes. Change a few conditions, and the outcome of the election could have been very different even if the public’s support or lack thereof for nuclear power had been the same. A single-issue candidate can prevail even in an election where that issue is seen as secondary, especially when there is little perception of distinction on other issues between candidates.

What would have been the effect on the national debate on nuclear power? More to the point, how would that have affected the return of nuclear power units to the regional grids, commissioning of the units under construction, and the construction of others planned and yet-to-be planned? There would be even less practical use to any answers to that question. For now, I’m satisfied to have reached the conclusion that Hosokawa’s campaign would have had realistic hopes of winning with a better candidate and a better-prepared campaign.

A few caveats and/or unknowns.

First, we do not know enough to confidently say that Utsunomiya would have abandoned his campaign under strong public pressure. I believe that if the Communist and Social Democratic Parties had threatened to abandon him for Hosokawa, he would have gone along instead of hanging on as a true fringe candidate. I’m assuming that his idealism is leavened by a strong streak of pragmatism nurtured through a successful career as a leading member of the bar. But you never know.

Second, some of the Utsunomiya votes would have gone to candidates other than Hosokawa. Some of the progressives would have voted to the fifth-place candidate, a youthful internet entrepreneur/social activist, some would go for Masuzoe, and some with a maverick mindset would cast their votes for the hard-right (and only firmly pro-nuclear) candidate Tamogami. With the same voters, the real swing required was probably larger than four percentage points.

Second, we do not know what the effect on voter turnout, at 46.15% the third lowest in Tokyo history, a more competitive two-man race would have been. I suspect that interest and therefore turnout would have been higher. Moreover, obviously less committed, abstainers are more likely to be the “floaters,” who produce wild swings, particularly in urban districts. They would at least have injected a significant measure of uncertainty to the outcome.

Third, the Hosokawa camp puts part of the blame on the Sochi Olympics and the record snowstorm on the day before the election for the low turnout. Too busy watching the Olympics to vote? Perhaps. But I am of two minds about the Hosokawa camp’s spin on the weather. The sky had cleared up well before the voting stations opened, but any snow remaining—enough snow remained on some side streets to pose an obstacle to pedestrians—would have deterred some people from every voting bloc except Sokagakkai, which went overwhelmingly for the Komeito’s candidate of choice Masuzoe. Another point of note is that the elderly, presumably more inclined to support the conservative candidate, particularly someone like Masuzoe, who has a reputation as a social welfare expert and on a more personal level someone who cared for his aging mother, are more likely to be cautious in venturing out in the face of unfavorable weather or its aftereffects. All things considered, there is no way of gauging the impact of the voters who stayed home because of the effects of the weather the day before without detailed statistics.

Fourth, Masuzoe was lucky that this was Japan, not the United States. Masuzoe has some serious issues from his personal history—charges of domestic violence from his first wife, who now happens to be an LDP Diet member, and allegations of insufficient financial support for one of two children of his sired out of wedlock—that would have doomed him under American media rules, which consider such matters fair game as revelation of the candidate’s character. The tabloids are willing to venture into such territory, but the mainstream media ignores those stories unless they are relevant to policy issues or involve misuse of public office****.

Fifth, an argument could be made that Tamogami could have been convinced to give up his candidacy in favor of Masuzoe if Utsunomiya had thrown his support to Hosokawa. Possible, but unlikely. Masuzoe hedged his bets by saying that he wanted to minimize reliance on nuclear power. That surely did not go down well with Tamogami. More importantly, Tamogami would have been loath to support a pragmatist who, as drafter of the LDP proposal for a new constitution, eschewed most of the nationalist trappings that are so dear to nationalist conservatives. Tamogami may voice thoughts that many LDP politicians hold dear but are afraid to articulate, but Masuzoe does not appear to be one of them. Tamogami would have put the support from his constituency in jeopardy if he had held his nose and supported Masuzoe. A movement figure who is not angling for a political appointment cannot afford that.

*Case in point: Toru Hashimoto, whose domination over the Osaka electorate as Osaka governor and later as mayor of the city of Osaka, took the city to the brinks of dismemberment in line with his vision for an Osaka renaissance. Prospects for that outcome turned south, though, when he tried to take his local movement to center ring. Progressives also had some success in the 1960s and 70s in leveraging their prefectural and municipal footholds to influence the national agenda.

** The fraction .767 is the sum of Utsunomiya’s prorated share of the votes cast simply for “Kenji,” the given name he shared with another candidate.

*** Case in point: Yukio Aoshima, who entered the Tokyo governor’s race in 1995 with the promise to cancel the World City Expo Tokyo ’96 less than a year before it was scheduled to be held, and left Japan during the campaign period, only to return to realize that he had won. Ironically, his lackluster regime was seen as generally under the control of the bureaucracy.

**** For example, a governor can sleep around all he (or she) likes when off-duty, but must not use public property in doing so. Do not use the official car in tending to an assignation. And the governor’s mansion is off-limits for sex with anyone other than one’s spouse. 

So Which Is It Going to Be, The Kaiserreich, or the Third Reich?

While attending the annual Davos meeting, Prime Minister Abe caught some flak when he responded to a question about the possibility of military conflict between Japan and China when he raised the example of Great Britain and Germany as two nations that went to war with each other despite strong economic ties. He talked about it as an outcome that must be avoided, not to suggest that a similar outcome was possible*, but it was nevertheless, as most reasonable people would agree, an inappropriate example to raise as the sitting prime minister of one of the parties to the greater dispute. But the Philippines’ President Aquino more recently made a more specific reference to Nazi Germany and Hitler in an interview with the NYT.

Now really? Not really. But they do reflect the fact that the Chinese navy and maritime authorities are increasingly better-armed, increasingly aggressive, and have not pulled back on any of the moves that it has made in the disputed areas or on the undisputed open seas, and has refused the Philippines’ offer to settle their dispute in the UN tribunal.

* One journalist did use the incident to suggest more nefarious intentions. Specifically:

Title: “Abe Finds Jarring Parallel for China-Japan”

Lead: “Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe offered an ominous history lesson to crowds at the World Economic Forum in Davos Thursday.

End: “Mr. Abe said last year that historical interpretation should be left up to academics when he found himself in hot water after questioning the definition of the term “invasion” pertaining to Japan’s wartime aggression on the Asian continent. It seems the history buff prime minister is having a hard time taking his own advice.”

From this account, it’s hard to escape the impression that Prime Minister Abe is issuing a veiled threat, a threat of war. But this narrative omits the reason why he made the analogy(in my opinion inappropriately, though surely for different reasons than the journalist wants to suggest), according to FT (A more complete version of the exchanges can be found here):

Naturally enough, Mr. Abe also made it clear that he would regard any “inadvertent” conflict as a disaster – and he repeated his call for the opening of a military-to-military communication channel between China and Japan.

In other words, Abe raised the matter as something that he wanted to avoid, a point that the journalist’s article conspicuously ignores.

Tokyo Gubernatorial Election: A Pre-Postmortem

Between Yoichi Masuzoe’s victory as the foregone conclusion and the treacherous roads from yesterday’s snow, I am not going to cast a vote in today’s election for the governor’s office in Tokyo. Instead, I am offering a brief explanation of where I got wrong-footed with my idea that Morihiro Hosokawa, the former prime minister, had a fighting chance.

It became pretty clear only a couple of days, if that, after he threw his hat into the ring that Hosokawa was going to lose. His best, perhaps only, chance, lay in generating sympathetic and to the extent possible positive media coverage at the onset and sustaining it through the early stages of the campaign so that irresistible pressure would build up for the other substantive antinuclear candidate, Kanji Utsunomiya, to fold camp and throw his support behind him. Instead, he postponed his official announcement while he hastily cobbled together a platform that would go beyond his antinuclear message and backtrack on earlier comments reported in a book advocating the rejection of the vastly popular 2020 Tokyo Olympics. This made him come came across as indecisive and unprepared, an impression that was reinforced when he refused to take part in the customary debates featuring the main candidates. Yoichi Masuzoe, the favorite receiving the support of the LDP and Komeito, claiming that a debate without his purported main rival would be meaningless, also pulled out, causing the debates to be canceled, but Hosokawa deservedly took the blame for the turn of events that robbed the public of the opportunity to hear out the candidates and, most importantly to Hosokawa’s campaign, alienated the reporters covering the election. Hosokawa finally made it to the starting line five days behind schedule, but he’d lost most of his momentum by then. And the nuclear power industry and the Abe administration must have breathed a sigh of relief. And the DPJ, which had offered its support to Hosokawa, found that the pig in the poke that it had bought had for all practical purposes turned toes up.

Hosokawa was stunningly ill-prepared for his run, which in hindsight may have been more or less to be expected from a 76 year-old who had retired from politics when he turned 60 and largely spent his time since then making pottery with his own kiln. However, it is also instructive that it was also reminiscent of his 1994 announcement as prime minister that he would seek a consumption tax hike from 3% at the time to 7% with the proceeds to be spent for “national welfare” purposes. The problem was that he had essentially taken an idea from the Ministry of Finance and made it public with little concern over the possible response from the general public or the coalition parties supporting. Facing widespread opposition, he took his proposal off the table in a couple of days, but the damage was done.

This casual approach to policy issues reminds me of Yukio Hatoyama and to a lesser extent his brother Kunio Hatoyama, two other men born to privilege whose casual attitude towards the politician’s word and its consequences stands out. There is no reason to believe that a noble upbringing breeds irresponsibility. But it is difficult to imagine people with such obvious flaws having the kind of political careers that the three have enjoyed without their family backgrounds.

Off-the-Cuff: Some Thoughts around President Obama’s April Visit

The following are some of my thoughts around President Obama’s April visit to Japan, specifically regarding the new South Korean bid for its own Obama visit. I was quoted here, and I decided that I’d get my full views out there.

According to news reports, wedging the Blue House into the crowded presidential itinerary—Obama is visiting Malaysia and the Philippines—would like end up shortening the Tokyo leg with the result that the Japanese government will not be able to offer Obama the full state visit package, emperor, banquet and all. Stretching the itinerary is unlikely to be an option, given the intense domestic focus of the embattled White House.

You know what this reminds me of? South Korea swooping in with what seemed at the time like a hastily prepared bid and grabbing a half-share in the 1998 World Cup. And the bilateral relationship is much worse now.

I suspect that at the end of the day, Prime Minister Abe will have to just grin and bear it. It’s Obama’s decision to make and he does not want to disappoint either side, but President Park Geun-hye has significantly more to lose politically.

But that doesn’t mean that Abe has to like that. In fact, he and his advisors, and relevant cabinet and sub-cabinet members will resent it mightily. It will make him that much less fond of the Obama administration and more broadly the Democrats and inclined to long for what the LDP has traditionally seen as a more Japan-friendly Republican administration. It is likely to make him less inclined, if only slightly so, to be mindful of US desires when he is motivated to march to his own drum. 

Off-the-Cuff: Hosokawa, Abe…

A quickie, from a late-night, transpacific email exchange with a couple of people whom I deeply respect. (Yes, I’m the wiseguy.) Speaking of which, I’m going to catch this one if I can. Anyway…

# The Tokyo election? Hey, at least the Vasa sailed 1300 meters before it sank, much better than Hosokawa's candidacy.

# Abe making nice with Erdogan, Putin, and India's defacto lameduck prime minister? The real story here is that all this is taking that much time away from working on his third arrow.

# Abe's WW I analogy? Red herring. (See preceding bullet.)*

* I want to elaborate on what I mean by this.

Japan Catches, China “Asks/Demands,” Japan Releases—So What’s the Story Here?

A friend cites this Japan Times article (translated Kyodo wire) and finds it “very encouraging.” The story is that “Beijing asked Tokyo not to arrest a Chinese man who attempted to land on the Senkaku Islands in a hot air balloon on New Year’s Day and had to be rescued by the Japan Coast Guard in nearby waters” and the “(Japanese) he coast guard did not pursue criminal charges against the man for intruding into Japan’s territorial waters, saying the exact point of his attempted landing on the islets could not be determined.”

I would be careful in trying to read something into this report. First, it’s a Kyodo dispatch, and from Beijing to boot. Second, another Kyodo wire (for those of you who read Japanese) reminds us that in 2012, two years after the infamous 2010 collision, 14 Chinese activists were arrested in flagrante delicto upon landing on one of the Senkaku Islands but were eventually sent back to China without being charged. It appears to be established practice not to call ticktack fouls; there was no reason to believe that the Abe administration would depart from customary procedures. So far, the Chinese side appears to have been careful not to escalate the war of nerves beyond mere words despite Abe’s visit to Yasukuni, which he chose to depict as a visit of tribute and remorse. As for the “arrest” part of the procedures, there was a convenient cover story: it was unclear whether the air balloon actually alit in territorial waters.

The question, of course, is what will happen if and when there is no cover story available. Your guess is as good as mine, but is it my imagination, or have Chinese fishing boats been avoiding the territorial waters since the 2010 incident, leaving the incursions to their maritime authorities?

But there’s a meta- kind of angle to these reports in terms of the glimpse it gives you into the mindset of the Japan Times editors and, more importantly, the key reason why the Japan Times version appeared “very encouraging.” Specifically, the original Japanese version uses the word “要求,” meaning “demand,” which is much more assertive than “asked” and “request” used in the English one. In fact, the title of the truncated Kyodo website version—each paper is free to impose its own title but this is quite representative—is “中国、気球男の不逮捕要求　日中緊迫下、立件見送り,” or “China Demands Air Balloon Man Not Be Arrested; No Criminal Case Brought amid Japan-China Tensions.” By contrast, the Japan Times version is entitled “China secretly asked Japan not to snatch Senkakus hot air balloonist.” Go figure.