TPP, Agriculture, and Elections

For those of you who think that the need to drum up the agricultural vote for the upcoming Lower House election will complicate things for Abenomics with regard to TPP, I have a questionnaire:

1) How many rice farmers are there in the United States?

2) How many dairy farmers and stockbreeders are there in Japan?

3) What would happen to Japan’s dairy and meat imports if there is no TPP deal with Japan? (Hint: The Japan-Australia FTA is likely to go into force by the end of the year.)

4) What are the alternatives for dairy farmers and stockbreeders in the upcoming election?

There’s talk emanating from the LDP that it can lose 30 seats in the next election and still have a simple majority on its own. I think that’s called setting the bar low, in order to claim anything as victory and mandate. Dairy farmers and stockbreeders, with the most to lose, will be the last among the agricultural interests to bet on a losing horse.

Go figure.

The Chinese Poachers: A Good Source of Red Coral – and Information

For TheDiplomat. I’ll post another notice when the Japanese translation goes up on the MIGA website.

Was thinking of writing about how the Abe administration and the LDP are supposed to get away with collective self-defense, nuclear start-ups, consumption tax hike (and now postponement) and the like in the upcoming Lower House election, using the Obama administration and the Democrats as a counterexample. But not tonight.

Addendum: Sorry, bad link, now repaired.

If You’ve Been Looking for a Korean Electronic Violinist Playing “Enka”…

Look no further.

What I Say? The Increasingly Inevitable Snap Election

An alcohol-fueled self-commentary follows:

There has been a lot of talk out there that says Abe should call a snap election if he decides to postpone the consumption tax hike. They’ve got it ass-backwards. Abe decides to go to the polls, then he decides to postpone. Think about it. Postponement is tantamount to an implicit admission that Abenomics isn’t working, and that’s why Abe would dissolve the House of Representatives? Look, the number appear to be mixed enough to justify either conclusion, and it was not quite rational, if otherwise impractical, to allow the 2014Q3 numbers to dictate a decision on a tax hike for 2015Q4 in the first place. The reason for a snap election must be something else, something less publicly mentionable, if all too understandable.

Now, the Abe administration’s public poll numbers aren’t all that bad, and should get a modest boost from the Abe-Xi summit, while the opposition is in no shape to fight one. The more time goes by, the more uncertainty there is, with an accordingly growing downside risk. That’s reason enough for many members of the ruling coalition to want to get it over with now, so that the winners can get an extra two years tacked on to their terms.

Abe, of course, needs a fig leaf. Since losing two newly-appointed cabinet ministers to political financing scandals and retaining two more as a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils won’t work, seeking a public mandate on the consumption tax hike postponement turns out to be the best available excuse.

Other than that, this SCMP article is a reasonable abbreviation of my thoughts around the now-almost certain snap election.

Yes, There Will Be a Second Time, President Xi

President Xi Jinping said that “people may be strangers when they first meet, but they become friends from the second time,” Prime Minister Abe reports on his November 10 bilateral meeting on his meeting with the Chinese leader. What Xi meant, of course, was that Abe shouldn’t go to Yasukuni. And Abe openly talked about it, which must be his also-coded answer.

Heads Talk of “End” in TPP Negotiations in Non-News Story of the Day

The heads of the TPP negotiating members met on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Beijing to pretend to hammer out differences and issued a hopeful statement with “the end coming into focus.”

Well, yes, it must be at least a year since it became obvious that the Obama administration could never offer a done deal before a) he got trade promotion authority (TPA) and b) the November 4 midterm elections were over and done with, which meant that none of the negotiating parties would reveal anything like its bottom line until it was time for the US Congress to convene for its lame-duck session; and several months since conventional wisdom pushed the US showdown to the new year, when the new Congress would convene (so yes, with the new Congress coming into acute focus, we would expect the “end” would “come into focus” too, barring a case of severe temporal myopia). This meant, though, that what the negotiating parties told us were increasingly do-or-die negotiations were little more than negotiators going through a lengthy bird-of-paradise mating dancing act (a birds-of-paradise mating dance, mind you, that is supposed to end in an atypical 12-member clusterfu…) until the moment of truth arrived. And the media and some analysts dutifully played along—while other were completely taken in, oohing and aahing at every twist and turn in the costume play that the negotiators put on.

Mind you, the process has not been without value. Far from it. The mating dance of the bird-of-paradise reveals something very important: the Darwinian fitness of the individual specimens—a very important consideration for procreation purposes. In the case of trade negotiations, it reveals the true concerns of the negotiators and the countries and constituencies that they represent, and builds the trust that make the mutual accommodation of these concerns possible. Moreover, the various permutations of a final agreement will have been examined in excruciating technical details so that the final sprint, once the fundamental blocs of the deal is in place, will be over and done with in a geological nanosecond.

So it goes with the TPP. There is no assurance that the deal will actually go through, though I am (as usual) cautiously optimistic. But for those of you who have been gyrating, knowingly or unknowingly with every twist and turn in the get-togethers of the trade ministers and their minions, I have one message for you: Relax, the wait is over. And for the negotiators: Thank you for providing us with entertainment over the past…oh, say, the past year, at least.

Of All the Tennessee Waltz Covers Out There…

This one wins hands down. The Tiffany Lamp dress, the cheaped-out special effects; I don’t think Lady Gaga could do better.

That said, I think she captures the 1950s slicked-up production feel better in this rendition.

Meandering Thru the Media: “Who Gave Ground? China, Japan Tweak Translations to Claim Victory”

Yuka Hayashi at WSJ has done a good job of parsing the various versions—two English, one Japanese and one Chinese—each of the parallel announcements of the Japan-China agreement-to-disagree-sort-of in “Who Gave Ground? China, Japan Tweak Translations to Claim Victory.” I have looked at both English versions and the Japanese version, and I tentatively agree with what the article says. It’s a very clever, alert mini-scoop.

Addendum: I say "mini"-scoop because a) it is a fascinating piece of diplomatic arcana illuminating the difficult task of papering over fundamental differences but b) adopting one translation over the other makes no material difference going forward. Specifically, the two parties will be able to move on, but the Chinese surveillance vessels will keep entering the Senkaku territorial waters and the issue will never be taken to the International Court of Justice regardless of which translation they choose.

The Candid Camera: Abe-Xi Meet-and-Greet

(Photo 1)

Abe: Don't you think we can let the folks out there think that we’re warming up to each other?

Xi:

(Photo 2)

Abe: Okay, have it your way then.

Xi: Good.

Meandering Thru the Media: "North Korea Still Holds Sway Somewhere: These Japanese Schools"

It’s a slow news day in Japan when the top Bloomberg political story coming out of Tokyo is entitled “North Korea Still Holds Sway Somewhere: These Japanese Schools.” I mean, Bloomberg is a wire service, not a Slate or Salon, right? Anyway, since it’s a slow work day for me, I’m going to critique this report because—well, just because.

Overall, I think that the writer made a conscious effort to treat all parties fairly. I don’t see any particular agenda being promoted here—the hate speech segment could have easily been sensationalized—and both sides of the issue are given voices. Does the fact that I am on good terms with the writer affected my judgment on her work? I like to think that it’s working the other way around. Now, some details:

Like many students in Japan, Kim Yang Sun cycles to school each morning. Unlike most, she then changes into a traditional Korean outfit and studies under portraits of former North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.

That’s the opening paragraph, which caught my eye because I thought the writer was setting us up here. The tell? “…she then changes into a traditional Korean outfit…” But the writer never goes there later on, despite the appearance of the Zaitokukai and hate speech issues. Perhaps she knew about it but thought that it would be too much of a digression on a story largely about the predicament of the schools and the students trapped at the center of a historical and political crossroads, or the editors dropped it for that or some other reason. But I suspect that Norimitsu Onishi or fashion-conscious Martin Fackler would have dwelt on it at length.

The schools were set up after World War II by Koreans who came to Japan during its 35-year occupation of Korea and stayed on as the instability that led to the Korean War and division of their country deterred them from returning. Barred from learning their own language under colonial rule, these Koreans set up schools to prepare their children for eventual repatriation, relying on North Korea for textbooks and cash.

I’m sure that’s what the North Korean schools told the writer, but it’s wrong. Korean was part of the Korean primary and secondary school curricula, until at least 1938, when the parallel school systems were unified. Compulsory education introduced under Japanese rule actually raised Hangul literacy rates—the kind of thing that Japanese nationalists like to boast about and Koreans prefer to ignore. In any case, moral of the story: don’t trust, and verify.

Japan now has about 70 such establishments offering education for 8,000 or so students from kindergarten through university. While numbers have slumped from more than 40,000 in 1961 because of the falling birthrate and some ethnic Koreans taking Japanese nationality, that compares with only four schools backed by South Korea.

This is striking. The two Koreas were engaged in a Cold War battle for the hearts and minds and nationalities of the special-status permanent residence Koreans in Japan. Yet if there are only four South Korean schools now, there couldn’t have been that many back in the 1950s and 60s either. I can make some conjectures, but I’m not going to put them out there without some research. If anyone wants some ideas for an MA thesis, you know where to find my email address. Incidentally, in addition to “the falling birthrate and some ethnic Koreans taking Japanese nationality,” could it be that proportionally more of these Koreans short of taking up Japanese citizenship are going to Japanese schools, now that North Korea-oriented schools no longer have the allure of the halcyon days of “Great Leader”?

While the schools had been tolerated for decades, anger over North Korea’s failure to return the abductees has bubbled over into discrimination against teachers and pupils.

A quibble here. Not that I agree with the Education Minister’s decision to bring the abductees issue into the picture—I disagree, as a matter of fact—but to the best of my knowledge, it is the schools that are being discriminated against; the teachers and pupils are collateral damage. It is the schools that receive the per-student subsidies, not the students themselves.

The curriculum is largely based on that of Japanese high schools, enabling 40 percent of graduates to go on to local universities.

This is an interesting figure. The national figure has hovered around 50% for some time. Do graduates matriculating at the Korean “college” make up the 10 percentage point difference?  

No, No Abe-Putin Kiss-Cam; No, No Peace Agreement in Sight

So here I am with a group of Japanese that includes a few prominent middle-of-the-road public figures—vastly more prominent, and public than me—and somehow the talk turns to Ukraine, so I let loose with a very much edited version of the following conjecture:

Abe is right, Russia should be condemned for using force against Ukraine, but it’s Europe’s problem, they helped break it, and we’re only helping pay for it because we need to maintain appearances as a member of the G7. That’s why we are always one or two steps behind the US and Europe with our sanctions—and why South Korea steadfastly refuse to sign up despite reported US pressure—and Putin gets it.

Nobody demurred. Actually, nobody does. Put together any group of Japanese journalists, politicians, businessmen, what have you, and they’ll agree with me. And now, out of Beijing, Bloomberg reports, “Abe, Putin Vow Better Ties in First Summit in 8 Months.”

Putin: Relations have been developing rather successfully both in the economic and political spheres…When I mention the political sphere, I also mean the resumption of our talks about concluding a peace agreement.”

Abe: Your knowledge of Japanese martial arts as a judo fighter, which also means a deeper understanding of Japan itself, I think is a big plus for further development and further strengthening of Russia-Japan relations,

Abe and Putin called each other on their birthdays in September and October…

…Aww….

Actually, there will be no peace agreement in the foreseeable future because a) no Russian president, much less Putin, is going to give up more than the two by far the smallest of the four islands in the Northern Territories and hope to weather the domestic backlash, and b) no Japanese prime minister can settle for such a deal and hope to weather the domestic backlash.

There’s no need for one. Contrary to what some commentators will tell you, any deal that makes economic sense can be made—and would be made but for the Ukraine-related sanctions. And Japan is not going to pay through the nose for anything less than half the geographical cake.

The More I Look, the Less I See in the "Joint Statement"

“Regarding Discussions toward Improving Japan-China Relations” is one of if not the most sobering joint statements (or better, perhaps, “simultaneous announcement”) that I’ve seen. Phrases like “some recognition” and “gradually resume” are more the reluctant recognition of the need to work together and if that’s impossible to at least coexist than the expression of expectations of a better relationship going forward. The establishment (fingers crossed) of “a crisis management mechanism and avert the rise of unforeseen circumstances” is a tacit recognition that the tensions around the Senkaku Islands and otherwise in the East China Sea will continue.

Two more takeaways for the foreseeable future. First, any bilateral meetings between the two heads will be held on the sidelines of a multilateral setting—no state visits. Second, there will be no similar efforts or outcome between Japan and South Korea. The embattled president of a democracy does not have the kind of elbow room to negotiate a political truce that her counterpart in an authoritarian state has. Patching up things with Prime Minister Abe has little potential economic value. It’s not as if South Korea could coax, say, Toyota into building a factory there even if the folks there wanted to. President Park would be strongly incented to behave differently if the statement had been less equivocal and the prospective summit more cordial than it is likely to be. As it is, there’s no need to play catch-up-to-China.

Abe and Xi Meet and I Eat Crow

The Japanese and Chinese governments issued an extraordinary joint statement that all but ensures that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Xi Jinping will hold an official meeting on the occasion of the upcoming APEC summit in Shanghai. Frankly, I did not think that it could be done. Even when Ambassador Shotaro Yachi arrived in Beijing to make last-minute arrangements, I continued to believe that it was for an unofficial chat on the sidelines—which explains why Mr. Yachi is the diplomat and I am merely a blogger.

The benefits of an agreement and a Japan-China summit for Abe are the following. First, for Abe, it provides a welcome boost in the polls in the wake of the political financing scandals that have so far taken out two cabinet ministers and casting doubt on his political competence, and adds credibility to the unspoken threat of an early snap election before a) the prime minister’s popularity drops further and b) the opposition parties can get their acts together to offer a credible threat to the LDP-Komeito coalition. I still believe that the election talk is a bluff to make the opposition more cooperative in the ongoing extraordinary Diet session, but I am less certain now.

Second, for Xi, it is an important step in reversing the consequences of its aggressive acts regarding sovereignty issues that have driven its neighbors into closer cooperation with each other as well as the United States. It may be true that it is better to be feared than loved, but not when that fear drives its neighbors into the welcoming arms of the global hegemon in the  process of a “pivot”/”rebalancing act. Try instead for respect, which is exactly what I think that the Chinese authorities are aiming at.

Third, it improves the background against which economic activities take place, which is a benefit for both men, particularly for Xi, since his authority, indeed the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party that he leads, turns on the outcome of his management of the domestic economy.  The first clear evidence of this should be an uptick in Japanese tourism in China next spring. Chinese tourism in Japan will also be up, but the effect of the new relationship will be hard to recognize, as it is already well on the road to recovery from the hit that it took as the bilateral relationship deteriorated, perhaps because most of the overt anger in Japan remained within the confines of the populist-conservative media and internet forums and only rarely and narrowly ever spilled over into the streets, storefronts and the like. But the effect of the improvement can easily be overstated. The rapprochement will not make Chinese consumer products feel any safer for the Japanese consumer, and there are no meaningful Chinese brands to stop boycotting. At the other end, it is hard to make out how much the summit meeting will move the needle as far as the Chinese consumer’s mindset is concerned. The somber tone of the statement clearly indicates to the Chinese that all is far from well as far as the political relationship is concerned.

And this brings me to my fourth point, which is the effect it may or may not have on Japanese investment in China. Japanese FDI into China has fallen significantly this year, which is surely one significant factor affecting Xi’s appetite for political compromise. But it is notable that Japanese investment kept rising in 2013, after the bilateral relationship had taken a dramatic turn for the worse and while US and European investment into China was falling. Given the typical last-in, last-out behavior with which Japanese corporations respond to changes in the investment climate, it is highly likely that much of the 2014 drop has been a form of delayed reaction to the economic slow-down and diminished future prospects affecting all foreign businesses. Japanese investment in China may rise next year, but it could merely be a dead cat’s bounce back from a bad delayed-reaction off year. At the same time, the positive effect of the rapprochement may be masked by a generally negative investment climate affecting all businesses, foreign corporations in particular.

Finally, let’s take a look at how the two main issues, Yasukuni and the Senkaku Islands, were treated.

First, with regard to the Yasukuni Shrine, the Chinese side demanded that the Japanese side promise that Abe would not visit Yasukuni while he was prime minister, while Abe was not going to do such a thing. However, there was no way that a post-summit visit would fail to plunge the bilateral relationship into an even deeper abyss than the one that it had fallen into after Abe’s December visit, and there was no way that Abe could have been unaware of this. So a de facto guarantee was issued in the form of the following bullet:

2. Both sides shared some recognition that, following the spirit of squarely facing history and advancing toward the future, they would overcome political difficulties that affect their bilateral relations.

Somewhat cryptic and only “some” recognition that “they would overcome political difficulties” “following the spirit of squarely facing history,” it was still enough in the wake of repeated assurances from Masahiko Komura Yasuo Fukuda that Abe would not indeed visit Yasukuni again as prime minister to go ahead with the bilateral summit. nyway...

The Senkaku Islands and more broadly the East China Sea receive their own dedicated bullet, which

is an indication of the more dangerous and imminent nature of the issue. The Chinese side reportedly demanded that the Japanese government recognize that there was a dispute, while there was no way that the Japanese government could be seen to be making a concession in the face of highly aggressive actions by the Chinese side.

3. Both sides recognized that they had different views as to the emergence of tense situations in recent years in the waters of the East China Sea, including those around the Senkaku Islands, and shared the view that, through dialogue and consultation, they would prevent the deterioration of the situation, establish a crisis management mechanism and avert the rise of unforeseen circumstances.

What made this recognition of “the emergence of tense situations” and the “different views” that they held possible was the fact that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the Japanese government had never denied the existence of a “dispute.” Instead, it had provided much narrow grounds for refusing to engage the Chinese government on the matter; namely that “[t]here exists no issue of territorial sovereignty to be resolved concerning the Senkaku Islands.”  This is a legal statement, which can be challenged in the forum of public opinion or in the International Court of Justice, and about which the Chinese obviously have “different views,” regarding the very real on-the-ground (if you will) dispute. But that dispute itself is not going anywhere. So the Chinese incursions into Senkaku territorial waters will continue, which is one reason why a “crisis management system” will be needed. Any who thinks that the Chinese side will provide any show of good will on this point should remember Xi Jinping’s September state visit to India, when the People’s Liberation Army chose that occasion to push soldiers into a region contested between China and India. The new normal is the new normal, and so it will remain. Abe has no illusions here or anywhere else for that matter. And neither does Xi. That is why the fourth bullet is couched in such cautious tones, stating that the two sides will only “gradually resume dialogue.”

Too Many People Have Problems Blow Up in Their Faces Because They Thought They Were Taking the Easy Way Out

The moderator of a certain forum (no, not yours, John) apparently thinks that I’ll go away if he/she ignores me. I don’t blame him/her for not getting it on the first try, but could someone tell him/her how wrong he/she is and that he/she should just post my comment and let the others take their own potshots at me and see how I fare? (Or meet my counter-demand for making me meet his/her demand?)

Next Stop for Chinese Nouveau Riche; New Zealand

My golden rule: Never blog/tweet while intoxicated. But you know what, rules are made to be broken. So here it is.

My Australian friend has further informed me that Chinese purchases of Australian real estate are down. Abbott effect? Perhaps. But the question is, as ever: What is the next hedge for the Chinese nouveau riche (technically speaking everybody in China remotely riche)? Poaching red corals from Ogasawara waters? Russian oil-and-gas equity?

…Meh…

I nominate New Zealand real estate. After all, NZ is to Australia what Canada is to the United States, and you know how popular Canada has been with Asian immigrants. There are, gorgeous post-glacial landscape (Exhibit A AWESOMELY CUTESY-POO PROMOTION VIDEO*, exhibit B AWESOMELY CUTESY-POO MAKING OF-PROMOTION VIDEO*)…, no persistent African-American underclass—and a serious aborigine problem swept under the rug with the help of a smattering of aborigine world-class athletes.

* Seriously, was the Lord of the Rings trilogy one of the most racist works of fantasy of the last century or not, even with a discount for the Nazi domination across the pond? Mind you, I read it and enjoyed it nonetheless. As for the xenophobic Harry Potter series…

Mr. Abbott Could Teach Creationism to Australian Children and Mr. Abe Wouldn’t Bat an Eyelash

A friend of mine in Australia emailed me a link to a Nikkei Asian Review article that takes up the Abbott administration’s intention to “adopt a review of the school curriculum that will severely cut back content about Asia and explicitly celebrate what it calls the nation's ‘Judeo-Christian heritage, values and beliefs’” and wondered what that might do the Abe-Abbott bromance. I wonder what Gough Whitlam would say if he were alive today. Anyway, I’m posting my response lightly edited here, since it might be of interest to anyone else in Australia that reads my blog.

Not much. Neither Putin's increasing tightness with the Russian Orthodox Church and tacit acceptance of ethnic intolerance and anti-semitism nor Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian rule under Islamist influence has stood in the way of Abe's dalliance with these two strongmen (not to mention Modi and his (what I believe is overplayed) Hindu nationalist background). No big deal. Hey, if Abbott doesn't care if Abe goes to Yasukuni, why should Abe care about Abbot teaching Australian schoolchildren that same-sex marriages are an abomination?

What Abe should not do is to get too infatuated with the Australian policy swing from Redd/Gillard to Abbott. The important thing for him is to keep an eye on what has been constant in Australian foreign and regional security policy and to make sure to nail down any gains that have been made (from Abe's perspective) so that they will survive a pro-China regime change, possibly from the Labor Party returning to power*.

* For starters, I would do my best to ensure that the submarine deal is done and well on its way by way of implementation by the time Australia’s next general election rolls around.

Creative Accounting at GM Undetected—Business as Usual?

The QUOMODOCUOMQUE blog caught GM cooking its books by pushing losses back to the previous half-year and getting “a sunny headline in the New York Times saying they ‘doubled their profit’.” This reminded me of the time that I noticed in what I think was some Nissan PR material about 30 billion yen that Nissan took an early charge for through what must have been a change in accounting rules, an income boost of 30 billion yen and a 60 billion yen year-on-year turnaround without selling a single extra car. This was important because Carlos Ghosn had said that he would resign if he could not return Nissan to profits in a year, so every little 30 billion yen helped. It was so obvious that even a person like me, who knew next to nothing about corporate accounting, could detect, yet I don’t recall any media accounts cricicizing Nissan or Ghosn on this point. So I wonder, what other gimmicks were used to make sure that Ghosn did lose his job?

Or so I remember; it’s been a long time, and this is not exactly my cup of tea. I’ll be happy to issue a correction if someone can show me otherwise. Until then, I’ll keep on suspecting that creative accounting is pretty common but that the mainstream media rarely catches it.

BOJ/Abe Administration Double Play Trivia and a Few words on Consumption Tax Hike

“In addition to the BoJ's decision to expand its already massive monetary stimulus plan, an announcement by the country's government pension fund that it would increase its holdings of foreign and domestic shares added to yen selling.”

Reuters, Oct. 31, 2014

The surprise BOJ call—no “trick-or-treat” headlines? Disappointing—got me a phone call for a radio interview, which I politely declined because: I a) I had nothing to say beyond the obvious (ex. equities up, bonds down) or something that I’d have to swipe off comments by financial analysts or BOJ-watchers and deliver with feigned conviction; and b) would be drunk by 8PM, when the interview would be scheduled.

The 5 to 4 split among the Board members seemed too close for comfort, that’s for sure. It was a safe bet that Kuroda, and Deputy-Governors Hiroshi Nakaso (BOJ lifer) and Kikuo Iwata (a long-time go-to-academic for the government) voted for the expansion, as thy have staked their reputations (and potential reappointment) on the first Abenomics arrow, and I was almost as certain that Nobuhisa Morimoto (business representative from TEPCO, easily the financially most challenged among the long-term debt-heavy power companies) voted along with them. Not so. Morimoto had apparently voted his conscience. My bad, Mr. Moromoto*.

The timing of the decision to expand equity purchases Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) was a little forced. Yasuhisa Shiozaki, the Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare, had talked about the need to improve governance at GPIF (for all its size, it only has a handful of investment experts) in order to take on more risk, but that was obviously going to take time. Maybe it’s just me, but the decision looks a little ass-backward.

Beyond the immediate market impact of all this, the consumption tax hike decision in December has become even more likely, particularly in light of the BOJ action. That said, it’s not a total given that the rate will go from 8% to 10% eleven months to the day from now. The only reason the decision must be made in December is that the FY 2015 budget bill cannot be drafted by the year’s end (or not too long after that) otherwise. If the economy tanks between now and next October, you can be sure that there will be cries for postponement, in an extraordinary Diet session if necessary.

* That said, Morimoto reportedly voted against the measure because he was confident that the 2% inflation target would be achieved—which would make him a super-fan?

Note also that three out of the six “independent” Board members voted against the measure because they had misgivings about the ability to achieve the inflation target in its current form.

Pew “POLITICAL POLARIZATION & MEDIA HABITS” Survey Results Distorted by Skewed Questions

According to the “Ideological Placement of Each Source’s Audience” graph, the “[a]verage ideological placement on a 10-point scale of ideological consistency of those who got news from each source in the past week….” for Fox News on the conservative side and MSNBC and CNN on the liberal side are roughly equal, which feels intuitively okay. But Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh Show, The Blaze, Sean Hannity Show, and Glenn Beck Program equidistant from ground zero with New Yorker and Slate? This led me to look at the questions, and this is what I found.

But if the Conservative position is “Government is almost always wasteful and inefficient,” shouldn’t the liberal position be “Government is almost always useful and efficient” or something of the sort? If the Conservative position is “Government regulation of business usually does more harm than good,” shouldn’t the liberal position be “Government regulation of business usually does more good than harm”?

And so on. You can modify the conservative positions to make them symmetrical with the liberal positions, but the point remains the same: Maybe I’m missing something or making a huge mistake here, but the dividing line between “conservative” and “liberal” in the Pew survey seems to be clearly skewed to the right. Now, I do not think that Pew has a hidden ideological agenda here. Rather, this is a reflection of public discourse landscape in the United States today.

In any case, it’s always useful to look at the data behind the graph, and how that data is collected.

Abe-Xi Jinping Meet-and-Greet on Track?

I’ve been pushing the line for a while with regard to Japan-China summitry that a) the two sides have been building towards a handshake and a chat between Shinzo Abe and Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the upcoming APEC summit in Shanghai which the Japanese side will talk up as constructive and encouraging and the Chinese side will deny being a bilateral meeting as Xi was merely being polite as the host for the APEC heads, but that b) there was the risk that the Chinese side will consider the buildup process sufficient to put the bilateral relationship on an even keel without the one-on-one meet-and-greet, an unconditional (as demanded by Abe) exchange that would entail domestic fallout for Xi. Well according to today’s Nikkei (Oct. 30), as former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda met Xi Jinping yet again, this time together with the other board members of the Boao Forum for Asia, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated in in a press conference with regard to a possible Japan-China summit meeting that “there is the custom amongst the Chinese that ‘all who come are guests,’ and we as the host country shall fulfill the duties necessary as hosts to welcome all the guests.” It’s possible that the Nikkei reporter read too much into Wang Yi’s statement—it happens—but a) looks more likely than ever and risk b) significantly diminished.

I know it’s silly, but it makes me happy just to know that things are going the way of my call. I wonder how I would feel if I predicted the end of the world and Skynet suddenly got smart.

Latest Drop in Polls Serious for Abe, but By No Means Fatal

When the approval rate in the public opinion polls for the Abe administration took a hit in for the decision to reinterpret the Japanese Constitution to allow collective self-defense, I predicted that it would soon bounce back up unless something else happened to knock it down again. And that was exactly what happened. I am less certain about the latest drop that resulted from the political financing scandals that forced the resignation of two cabinet ministers and are giving rise to LDP rumblings about a possible snap Lower House election later in the year.

When an administration makes an unpopular decision, it will see its support drop in the next public opinion poll, but it will usually recover lost ground until it makes its next unpopular decision. This cycle will be repeated until the administration reaches the end of its line and another administration takes over. This is because these unpopular decisions usually do not materially affect our daily lives, in which case it is of fleeting interest. Media attention wanes, and the polls revert to the respective trend-lines until the next issue of political consequence hits the front pages. Think, collective defense, sending troops to Iraq for peacekeeping operations, introducing the ill-named Late-term Elderly Medical Care Insurance… Of course a policy decision sometimes has visible, lasting effects, like the introduction of the consumption tax, with greater long-term political impact.

But unpopular decisions are not the only cause of an administration’s misfortunes. It can be the mishandling of a major policy issue, like the Hatoyama administration spending most of its political capital on a wild goose chase for an alternative solution to the Futenma question. It can be a series of mishaps small and not so small, like those that befell the Mori administration. Or, it can be a series of political scandals that claim the heads of multiple cabinet ministers. What these and other things in this category have in common is that they all reflect badly on governance—be it a matter of competence, legitimacy, or both—under that administration. This invites attack from the entire media and the general public regardless of their policy preferences, as well as grumbling within the parties supporting the administration. In short, the administration becomes fair game.

The latter should be fatal when it reflects a true character flaw on the part of the prime minister. On a more lethal level, my suspicion is that it still has a more long-lasting effect because it affects public perception, although it is more of a hunch than the result of a detailed historical observation. In any case, there are a few factors running counter to Prime Minister Abe’s interests. The scandals have not stopped with the two resignations. In fact, one of the replacements has been embarrassed with a couple of scandals of his own at the very beginning of his tenure. This promises that the issue will linger for much longer than Abe likes, regardless of the ultimate outcome. Moreover, the Diet is in (not so) extraordinary session, which gives the opposition a) a media-friendly venue for attacking the Abe administration and b) opportunity to stall the Abe administration’s legislative initiatives with knock-on effects on the legislative agenda well into the regular session that should begin in January, the latter generating a competence issue of its own.

The saving grace for Abe is that the poll numbers are still pretty good compared to the nadirs of the other post-Koizumi administrations. This means that the Abe administration has a long ways to fall before Abe must yield the prime minister’s office to an LDP replacement, who would then promptly seek a renewed mandate through a general election. For the same reason, I do not lend much credence to LDP whisperings around an early snap election. I believe that this is more an attempt to bluff the unprepared opposition into yielding on the legislative process than a real desire for a showdown, particularly since a snap election would be deeply upsetting to the budgetary and legislative cycles, not to mention the political uncertainty that would be generated by the presence of the final decision on the consumption tax right around such an election.

In sum, the political scandal is more damaging than the collective self-defense decision or even the national secrecy legislation, which even the Sankei group failed to give explicit support, but the Abe administration will survive with room to spare.

Afterthoughts on two things that currently complicate my thinking. First, there was the outlier rise in support for the Abe cabinet in the Asahi poll of all things. Can someone explain that?  Otherwise, I’ll just have to ignore it as a random piece of anomaly. Second, there is the upcoming December decision on the next consumption tax hike. My guess is that Abe will go through with it unless the Japanese economy stalls completely. After all, it’s only going to kick in a year from now, and the next LDP leadership election will be over by then. In any case, the LDP will obviously prefer not to contest an election right after a decision either way, nor should it want to contest one while that question is still hanging in the air.

Sankei Shimbun (Yes, Sankei Shimbun) Protecting Privacy of Liberal Journalist

Here’s the Sankei story about a male “45 year-old Japanese-Canadian journalist who entered Liberia on August 18 to collect material on the Ebola hemorrhagic fever. He stayed in Monrovia, the capital, and left the country on the 18th of this month.” He arrived at Narita on the 27th with a slight fever and was immediately sent to the National Center for Global Health and Medicine (NCGM). An overnight blood test proved that he was free of the Ebola virus. Sankei on the same case here, here, here, here, and here. Now, I don’t know of many male, 45 year-old Japanese-Canadian journalists on the African beat whose connections to Japan are still strong enough to bring here. In fact, I could think of only one, and he’s the Abe-hating, history issues-loving kind of “liberal” that Sankei loves to hate. (I don’t like him either, as anyone who has followed this blog over the years will know. But I digress.)  Yet Sankei steadfastly withholds his name, a practice that holds true throughout the mainstream media. This is unlike anything that you are seeing in the US media, where Thomas Eric Duncan and Kaci Hickox have become instant household names, with photos of visages all over the front pages and news programs.

This stark difference is seen across the board. An 18, 19 year-old can be charged with murder, convicted, and sentenced to death in Japan—all anonymously. And the protection will continue in principle even after that person comes of age. In the US—well, in Texas at least—a 16, 17 year-old can be charged with murder, convicted, and sentenced to death, and his/her face and life story will be plastered all over the mainstream media from the moment that he/she is identified.

This was not always the case in Japan. Many years ago, when I went through the pre-1945.8.15 newspapers to research the media’s behavior before and during the War, I came across stories identifying people by name that would never make it to the mainstream media today, like the wife of a Todai professor running away with another man—okay, adultery was a crime then. Nor is it apparent that it stems from our strong cultural preference for privacy, assuming that such a thing exists. Well into my professional career, there would be at least one book published for each ministry that listed all its bureaucrats by name and position—and gave their personal phone numbers and addresses. (This was very useful for sending New Year’s postcards—and other purposes, I’m sure.) That said, it also well predates the privacy protection legislation that we have seen in recent years. In short, I don’t have a good answer.

 I do expect the Japanese media to become more forthcoming over time in the face of competition from the free-for-all that is the internet—where the Japanese-American journalist has been identified by name many times over. (I also believe that we private individuals will become more public, indeed more shameless, as more and more of the intimate details of our lives spill out into cyberspace.) In the meantime, though, we in Japan remain in this information purgatory, where we must turn to the alternative media and, increasingly, the internet to connect the mainstream dots.

What Happens When Two Self-Confident, Willful Men Find a Problem They Don’t Understand? Wait, Make It Three. No, Four.

This is what happens. With the two, that is, with Cuomo looking a little more sensible, if ruthless (leaving Christie holding the bag.

Reminds me of Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s behavior during the Fukushima disaster, actually. No hard feelings, and it’s unlikely that the onsite outcome would have been any better, but if he’d immediately made a 9.11 George Bush bullhorn speech, let CCS Yukio Edano assemble a crack team of bureaucrats to run the government side of the operation, and appeared on stage periodically to assure the public that the government was on top of things, I believe that the DPJ administration would have been well-positioned to blame the whole affair on what it could have plausibly portrayed as 40 years of LDP and MITI/METI kowtowing to the power industry. To put it another way, what if Yoshihiko Noda had been the first DPJ prime minister?

Would that have kept the DPJ in power? Who knows? But the media narrative would have been very different, the economy recovered quite quickly, and hey, do you think Metropolitan Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara would have provoked the hawkish Noda, the son of an SDF soldier to boot? (That’s Four.) Note also that Noda would not have wasted all that time and political capital in a futile search for a non-Henoko alternative to the Futenma question.  The three arguably most damaging issues would have turned out very differently, at least in political terms.

Think about that

Japanese Version of “Kobani, or Ayn al-Arab? That is the Question” Now Online

Here, or click through from the Globaltalk MIGA page, right next to the English “original.” 

Governors Cuomo and Christie Must Know Something I that I Don’t Know

How are they're going to deal with healthcare workers who fly back from Liberia, Sierra Leone, or Guinea to DC, pass customs and inspection there, then fly on to NY/NJ? Let's face it, you'd be a fool to fly in directly to NY/NJ unless you're a slacker who'd like nothing better than to spend three weeks in your pajamas with your Xbox.

I know it’s three (Illinois, NY, NJ) down and two (DC, Georgia) to go, and the governor of Georgia may have no political choice but to panic as well. But the federal government is the arbiter in DC, right?

Why Am I Talking About the War against Islam State?

Because it’s there.

Actually, it grew out of the idea about something that I’ve noticed about how the Western media and governments make their choices regarding disputed geographical nomenclature. The digressions just got out of hand, is all. I haven’t had the time to do the Japanese translation. Tomorrow, maybe.

No TPP Breakthrough until after the US Midterm Elections

Was there anyone who had been following US politics who thought that there would be a breakthrough at the October round of TPP negotiations between Japan and the US less than a month before the November 3 US mid-term elections? Anything less than total capitulation from the Japanese side and the US meat and dairy industries would have been all over the deal demanding more and the Republicans would have used the issue to bludgeon the already unpopular Obama administration and by association all the Democratic candidates in the meat-and/or-dairy states. That could have killed the deal there and then, or at least forced the parties to go back to renegotiate the deal, which in turn could have caused the negotiations to collapse.

So why all the fuss? Well, they couldn’t just mothball the whole thing until the post-election, lame-duck Congress or, more likely, the new Congress could deal with the matter, could they? The two governments would have looked ridiculous, and, more seriously, invited criticism that they were trying to bypass the electorate, making any eventual deal susceptible to complications in seeking Congressional approval. So the Japanese authorities produced a proposal just for show. Remember, eventual single-digit tariffs was an idea that had been already floated from the Japanese side in an earlier phase of the negotiations if media reports are to be believed. (I’m too lazy to dig up and reference the Japanese media reports.) Everybody is running in place until the midterms go by.

So do I think that there will be a deal? Or more important, will it stick? Yes, and yes, Australia (and to a lesser extent New Zealand) essentially replaced the United States in the Japanese beef market when the mad cow disease scare broke out. U.S. beef has been clawing back much of their market share as Japanese restrictions were relaxed, but not all of it. Now, if there is no TPP deal, US beef will be at a cost disadvantage that will grow over the coming years unless there’s deal in place with TPP. Pork is a somewhat different story because there was no mad pig disease to disrupt trade and the tariff schemes are different, and both stories are more complicated than I’ve made them out to be here, but the conclusion is the same: Any deal is better than no deal for US producers.

Of course no deal will be one hot mess for Abenomics and negative fallout on the Japan-US bilateral relationship and more generally on the geopolitical circumstances of the respective states.(China will love that.) So both sides have a very real stake in cutting a deal. Which is why I believe that there will be a deal—unless one side or other overestimates the other side’s need for a deal and they wind up falling short, possible, but not likely when both sides have spent so much time felling each other out.

Just wanted to get this out because there’s been a lot of posturing going on, and a lot of what I think is misguided commentary building up around that.

Connecting the Dots in My Comments on Mrs. Obuchi’s Downfall

Every LDP politician with seniority over her ... probably hates her guts

Japanese academic Jun Okumura, on Yuko Obuchi, who has resigned from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's cabinet

—South China Morning Post, October 20, 2014

The question (more or less):

Do you think rightwing members of the LDP who think that all that stuff about promoting women is rubbish and their proper place is in the home are happy to see Mrs. Obuchi’s downfall?

My answer:

No. But, every LDP Diet member with seniority over her but have yet to serve as a cabinet minister probably hates her guts—except those in her faction, which currently has no other Diet member seen as potential prime minister material, at least as far as I can see.

Notes:

1. In retrospect, “every” LDP member is an exaggeration, and “hates her guts” is on average probably too strong; she’s very personable. And I should have said “Lower House,” since the LDP Diet members compete for cabinet assignments only within the respective Houses. But you see my point. To a politician, it’s not about “women,” it’s not about “her,” it’s about “me.”

2. By “seniority,” I mean the number of times the Diet member has been elected, not biological age. Each House of Councillors (Upper House) election is roughly equal to two House of Representatives (Lower House) elections.

3. All of that goes out the window if it takes going against the grain to stay in power and, more importantly, get yourself reelected. If need be, everyone will happily to let, say, Koizumi Jr. lead the way.

Womepolitics? Since You Asked

“I know. I thought that Matsushima would survive, but the Abe administration apparently couldn't let the matter keep the ongoing Diet session focused on the scandals for another week minimum and away from the legislative agenda. Plus, she was Minister of Justice of all things.”

Also, the gist of my response in a phone call that I took:

No, I don’t think that Obuchi knew about the irregularities. Politicians typically shield themselves from indictment by having a trusted majordomo handle money matters. Plausible deniability, and I don’t see Obuchi having been otherwise. As long as she is not charged with a crime, this is a temporary setback in her career—say, five, ten years? And she is only 41.

No, I don’t think that there is any satisfaction being felt by right-wing members of the LDP who have a beef over the promotion of women under Abenomics seeing Obuchi’s fall. If there is schadenfreude here, it is coming from Diet members with more seniority who have failed to secure cabinet appointments for themselves—except members of the faction to which she belongs, since the faction does not have anyone else considered a post-Abe prime minister candidate.

(No, there was little talk about Matsushima. I just reminded the caller that the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Trade is a stepping stone; the Ministry of Justice is a reward.)

Kishida and Obuchi Snapshots

Fumio Kishida: He inherited the leadership of his faction from Makoto Koga, his mentor. Koga, now retired, was one of the most prominent members of the LDP’s left wing and has strong China ties. Kishida is a self-professed moderate with no particular ties to China. This generational shift as well as the passing of the China/Taiwan schism can be seen across the LDP, and can be broadly summarized as the consequence of the passing of the generation with personal wartime experience—Koga never knew his father, who is enshrined at Yasukuni—and the economic and military rise of China. I could not find any specific ties to particular industries, but this is not surprising for a third-generation Diet member.

Yuko Obuchi: Obuchi, like her father, is actively pro-China, and criticized Prime Minister Abe’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine. She cannot be tied to any particular strand of economic, fiscal or national security thought within the LDP, but she is a social liberal. I could not find any specific ties to particular industries, but this is not surprising for a third-generation Diet member. She is pretty much finished as METI Minister, given her inability in the Thursday committee session to come up with a coherent story for the political financing irregularities even though she had several days to question her staff and construct an apology-defense. This will set her political career back a decade.

Abe Cabinet 2.0? Since You Asked…

“…the reshuffle of the cabinet, the relation between the PM and the LDP, and the new cabinet members (and their background)…”

There are two kinds of major cabinet reshuffles executed by an LDP-led administration: 1) the Hail Mary (football pass), an attempt to revive fading public support, sometimes accompanied by the resignation of the prime minister himself and/or a subsequent call on a snap election; and 2) the Jimmy Carter (WH tennis court time management), a semi-regular reassignment, say, at a couple of years’ intervals, to contain restlessness among the non-cabinet/sub-cabinet parliamentarians.  The Abe administration’s latest is obviously the latter. The evidence: high poll numbers nearly two years after the inauguration, and the retention of his chief cabinet secretary, minister of finance, and minister of foreign affairs.

The relationship between the PM and the LDP used to be simple. Barring impending disaster, faction leaders fought it out, and the winner became PM. But a variety of reasons, including losing to the opposition, changed this. Faction members now vote for whom they like with near-impunity. From Junichiro Koizumi on, only the disastrous Taro Aso has assumed the PM’s office while the head of a faction—one of the weakest ones at that—while faction leader Nobutaka Machimura suffered the indignity of losing to Abe, a member of his own faction. Although open rebellion outside of the regular triennial LDP presidential election is rare, there should be significant pressure on the PM to resign if his poll numbers threatens to dip into the twenties—the thirties if a national election looms on the horizon—and a successful challenge is likely to be mounted at the regular leadership election if the PM decides to stay the course.

There are people who claim that this is a right-wing cabinet that reflects Abe’s nationalist revisionist proclivities. Those people are idiots. Don’t listen to them. I do not pretend to know the cabinet and sub-cabinet appointees well enough to pass judgment on them individually. But they average out to a very solid and moderate mean. Abe is not the sharpest quill on the proverbial porcupine. But he comes across as an astute and ideology-free judge of character and administrative talent.

If you have the stomach for more, I am usually available at … on Thursdays, 2-5PM, and lunch before that if you like. But call ahead just to be sure.

Addendum: The Jimmy Carter analogy doesn’t work. Must keep working on my writing skills.

"The Meaning of Robots," on the MIGA Website

Originally meant to be posted it as a Japanese-only column elsewhere on the MIGA website, I'm roasting an old chestnut from the "Japan as Number One" days.  Frankly, I was surprised that this particular old culturalist take on robots was still thriving. The conclusion is a little forced, and that is reflected in the even more unsatisfactory title "The Meaning of Robots," but there it is.

Japan Conference OMG/WTFBBQ

Members of a certain Japan-themed forum is up in arms because a good number of Prime Minister Abe’s new batch of cabinet appointees include a large number of Japan Conference members. As a genetically hardwired skeptic and descendent of the peasant farmer class (although my paternal grandfather claimed that we Okumuras could trace our lineage to a samurai family that exchanged swords for ploughshares after finding themselves on the wrong side of the Battle of Sekigahara), I laugh at the claims made on behalf of the right of the Japanese state to force every couple to choose a single surname, in effect demanding mostly women to change their legal names on marriage, and also have no love for many other trappings of the largely top-down nationalism that Western liberals have abandoned that Japan Conference may be advocating. I am also appalled at the groundswell of radical nationalism, both state-sponsored and populist, that has been sweeping much of East Asia. Folks, this is the 21^st Century!

Still, you have to be skeptical of the allegedly recidivist tendencies of the Abe cabinet when the culprits include (according to Wikipedia) Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, an avowed moderate on good terms with China, and Chief Cabinet Secretary Takehide Suga, a moderate who counseled Mr. Abe against visiting Yasukuni last December. Then there is Finance Minister Taro Aso, an advocate of segregating the Class-A war criminals enshrined at Yasukuni so that the emperor can pay his respects there in good conscience, a “special advisor” to the Japan Conference. Looking beyond the cabinet, there is Sadakazu Tanigaki, the new LDP Secretary-General and notable dove, counselor to the Japan Conference. Takeshi Noda, the chairman of the powerful LDP Tax Committee, is even further to the “left.” The ultimately irony, though, turns out to be a non-political connection: The only identifiable Japan Conference member turns out to be the chairwoman of an Asahi Shimbun subsidiary.

Japan Conference members appear to bear more than a passing resemblance to American Catholics. You know, contraception, Papal infallibility… in fact, Mr. Aso is a Roman Catholic.