Reproduced below with two minor edits are the relevant paragraphs in a memo that I prepared for an interview earlier in the week. Essentially a footnote to the previous post.
As for the consumption tax hike, beyond the conflict between the public's acceptance of higher rates in the abstract and its dislike for a tax in the specific--part of human nature, like the acceptance of mortality and the fear of death; no wonder they say “death and taxes”—there are basically two competing views of experts. The cons say that raising taxes will depress spending and push Japan into a vicious cycle of recession and declining tax revenues, while the pros say that the market for government bonds will collapse from the ever-growing debt overhang and take the Japanese economy down with them. The first argument is the Keynesian while the second one is more institutional, historical [and] behavioral and is generally preferred by administrators and central bankers. Actually, they are mutually compatible. No government can keep borrowing more and more each year forever and no national government has managed to build and maintain a sustainable social safety net at VAT rates like Japan's or has maintained borrowing at such high levels without serious consequences. I'm not an economist so I don't have an opinion on the appropriate timing, but if you cannot decide that you will raise tax rates two years from now unless the economy is going south then and you're going to pump more money into the economy to try to make sure that won't happen, then I'm not sure you ever can.
Compounding the public's unhappiness is the fact that most of the annual 16.8 trillion yen in savings and renewable buried treasures that the DPJ promised that was going to be used to finance the social safety net and other worthy ventures before the government asked for a tax hike never materialized. But that point is moot because it's going to happen. Noda will have enough votes in both houses to pass the bill even if Ozawa manages to have all 30 of his upper house allies vote against it. Yes, Noda's popularity is likely to take a hit, but it'll be much smaller than if he gave up and drifted. And the LDP and Komeito will also take hits. Remember the story about the two hikers accosted by a hungry? One of them changes into sneaker and the other one says, “Why bother, you're not going to outrun the bear.” so the first one says, “No, but I only have to outrun you.”
PS: Paul Sracic, whom I referred to in the previous post, has a CNN op-ed addressing the SCOTUS decision on Obamacare. America is increasingly polarized if Sracic is correct, while we in Japan have the opposite problem, which is the political urge to leave no constituency unsatisfied and leaves half the constituency undecided.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Friday, June 29, 2012
Toru Hashimoto Not Answer to Peter Tasker’s Hopes for Radical Solution to Japan’s Economic Woes
Paul Sracic, good friend of Japan since his Tokyo sojourn as a Fulbright Lecturer, shot me this link to a Financial Times op-ed by Peter Tasker. Tasker argues that the result of raising the consumption tax “is likely to be politically and economically disastrous” and instead suggests “more radical measures.” He says that “central bank could go beyond merely increasing its holdings of government bonds and cancel them, too. The target for tax hikes could shift from household spending to corporate savings.”
Broadly speaking, Tasker lines up on the Keynesian side of the never-ending debate between the Keynesian and the institutional, historical [and] behavioral perspectives pitting reputable economists on both sides, though fiscal and monetary authorities in advanced economies mostly line up on the latter. I’m not suggesting that I can settle this debate, but I do know that he is looking to the wrong political figure in Toru Hashimoto as the populist to carry out his proposals. Hashimoto may oppose the consumption tax hike deal between the DPJ, (PNP,) LDP and Komeito, but he’s a small-government neoliberal supported by similarly-minded policy advisers steeped in the Koizumi-Takenaka reforms.
Broadly speaking, Tasker lines up on the Keynesian side of the never-ending debate between the Keynesian and the institutional, historical [and] behavioral perspectives pitting reputable economists on both sides, though fiscal and monetary authorities in advanced economies mostly line up on the latter. I’m not suggesting that I can settle this debate, but I do know that he is looking to the wrong political figure in Toru Hashimoto as the populist to carry out his proposals. Hashimoto may oppose the consumption tax hike deal between the DPJ, (PNP,) LDP and Komeito, but he’s a small-government neoliberal supported by similarly-minded policy advisers steeped in the Koizumi-Takenaka reforms.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
I Think I Misunderestimated (Now) Mayor Hashimoto
The consumption tax hike and the politics around it have been dominating headlines (while the political decision to restart Units 3 and 4 at the Ohi Nuclear Power Plant quickly faded from view, a matter that I intend to take up briefly later), and Ozawa is at the center of attention. What will Ozawa do? What will Noda do to Ozawa? And what will the opposition have to say about it? However, when the dust settles, it will be Toru Hashimoto, the Osaka governor-turned-mayor—not Ozawa—who will be the center of speculation in the lead-up to what looks like a near-inevitable snap election and beyond.
Ozawa and Hashimoto have both positioned themselves in opposition to Noda on the consumption tax hike and the nuclear resets—two of the three major policy issues (a prospective bid to join the ongoing TPP negotiations is the other) that Noda has set his sights on as potential landmark achievements of his regime. Ozawa’s opposition to the tax hike is seen as opportunistic, but it’s hard to reject the argument that it violates the manifesto is a legitimate one, especially when you consider the fact that only a fraction of the multitrillion-yen fiscal savings that was supposed to precede any such talk materialized. Ozawa’s criticism of the nuclear restarts has been an out-of-nowhere revelation and viewed as a typically opportunistic maneuver, but Hashimoto’s last-minute acceptance—a flip-flop with a toothless summer-months-only caveat as fig leaf—is far from the first case where he has made very public turnabouts. Yet Hashimoto is the one that the DPJ, LDP, Komeito and, lest we forget, Your Party are all courting while Ozawa, if he bolts, will struggle just to gain control over the other DPJ dissidents that leave/are forced to leave and, in the case of many of them, will be hard put to win reelection. Hashimoto is all upside while Ozawa is all downside. Why?
Most Japanese voters do not know these two men personally. It’s probably safe to say that most Japanese voters have never even met them*. In fact, we know them almost purely through the media filter. So it is to the media coverage and its background that we should look to for an answer in the first instance. I took a whack at this question during a multiparty email discussion when I addressed a point in an Economist blog post**. I’m reproducing my take below, which essentially formed itself when I watched, at first reluctantly, a recording of a press briefing in the course of my work. And yes, I’ll get back to “ex-Mrs. Ozawa”’s letter. But not now.
*I haven’t, though I worked for a government ministry for years, and Hashimoto and I went to the same high school—many years apart, but there are annual alumni conferences. **I continue to have great respect for The Economist’s published articles but sometimes find blogposts there at fault—no, not yours, my friend—for misunderstandings and/or excessive hedging.
“The public standing of the prime minister’s other foe, Mr Hashimoto, may have also peaked.” (from the Economist blogpost)
You know, “may” is the key word that renders the entire paragraph--like so much of media reports--worthless unless you have some understanding of the facts of the case. I wouldn't bet either way either, but one thing that the report doesn’t mention is that he has a much wider room for error than any other politician in sight, as can be seen from the way he goes from one position to another like...but let’s skip the simile...on issue after issue without visible harm. The media loves him, not just because he makes great copy, though he does, lots more than Ishihara. Unlike Ishihara, he engages reporters directly. He never evades a question (though he can go on and on, which sometimes should have the same effect), he's never condescending (though he may call you an idiot, or at least your question stupid, if he thinks you are/it is), and never gets testy when he's cornered (though he can lash out furiously when he's frustrated). He's not a bully; essentially, he treats people, politicians, garbage collectors, teachers, and yes reporters as members of civil society who have specific roles to play. He obviously has strong views about what those roles are and how those roles should be played. But he certainly respects the media, from Asahi Shinbun to NicoNico Doga,* and the media respect back. He'll have to change his style if and when he goes directly and personally into national politics, but till then, I think that the love affair will endure, because it's based on mutual respect.
* You should go watch one of his press briefings if you understand Japanese. I don’t think that I’ve ever managed to pay attention to a long—1.5 hours in this case—press briefing mostly uninterrupted by anyone else.
Ozawa and Hashimoto have both positioned themselves in opposition to Noda on the consumption tax hike and the nuclear resets—two of the three major policy issues (a prospective bid to join the ongoing TPP negotiations is the other) that Noda has set his sights on as potential landmark achievements of his regime. Ozawa’s opposition to the tax hike is seen as opportunistic, but it’s hard to reject the argument that it violates the manifesto is a legitimate one, especially when you consider the fact that only a fraction of the multitrillion-yen fiscal savings that was supposed to precede any such talk materialized. Ozawa’s criticism of the nuclear restarts has been an out-of-nowhere revelation and viewed as a typically opportunistic maneuver, but Hashimoto’s last-minute acceptance—a flip-flop with a toothless summer-months-only caveat as fig leaf—is far from the first case where he has made very public turnabouts. Yet Hashimoto is the one that the DPJ, LDP, Komeito and, lest we forget, Your Party are all courting while Ozawa, if he bolts, will struggle just to gain control over the other DPJ dissidents that leave/are forced to leave and, in the case of many of them, will be hard put to win reelection. Hashimoto is all upside while Ozawa is all downside. Why?
Most Japanese voters do not know these two men personally. It’s probably safe to say that most Japanese voters have never even met them*. In fact, we know them almost purely through the media filter. So it is to the media coverage and its background that we should look to for an answer in the first instance. I took a whack at this question during a multiparty email discussion when I addressed a point in an Economist blog post**. I’m reproducing my take below, which essentially formed itself when I watched, at first reluctantly, a recording of a press briefing in the course of my work. And yes, I’ll get back to “ex-Mrs. Ozawa”’s letter. But not now.
*I haven’t, though I worked for a government ministry for years, and Hashimoto and I went to the same high school—many years apart, but there are annual alumni conferences. **I continue to have great respect for The Economist’s published articles but sometimes find blogposts there at fault—no, not yours, my friend—for misunderstandings and/or excessive hedging.
“The public standing of the prime minister’s other foe, Mr Hashimoto, may have also peaked.” (from the Economist blogpost)
You know, “may” is the key word that renders the entire paragraph--like so much of media reports--worthless unless you have some understanding of the facts of the case. I wouldn't bet either way either, but one thing that the report doesn’t mention is that he has a much wider room for error than any other politician in sight, as can be seen from the way he goes from one position to another like...but let’s skip the simile...on issue after issue without visible harm. The media loves him, not just because he makes great copy, though he does, lots more than Ishihara. Unlike Ishihara, he engages reporters directly. He never evades a question (though he can go on and on, which sometimes should have the same effect), he's never condescending (though he may call you an idiot, or at least your question stupid, if he thinks you are/it is), and never gets testy when he's cornered (though he can lash out furiously when he's frustrated). He's not a bully; essentially, he treats people, politicians, garbage collectors, teachers, and yes reporters as members of civil society who have specific roles to play. He obviously has strong views about what those roles are and how those roles should be played. But he certainly respects the media, from Asahi Shinbun to NicoNico Doga,* and the media respect back. He'll have to change his style if and when he goes directly and personally into national politics, but till then, I think that the love affair will endure, because it's based on mutual respect.
* You should go watch one of his press briefings if you understand Japanese. I don’t think that I’ve ever managed to pay attention to a long—1.5 hours in this case—press briefing mostly uninterrupted by anyone else.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Fleeting Thoughts about Ozawa’s Possible Loss of Control over His Own Fate
57 DPJ members of the House of Representatives—enough to deny the ruling coalition a majority in the lower house if they leave the DPJ en masse—voted against the tax hike bill today. I now suspect that Ozawa will act sooner rather than later regardless of the severity of the sanctions or their timing, not because he really wants to but because many anti-tax hike Diet members will bolt without waiting for him, like nine lower house representatives did in April when the DPJ agreed to let the Noda administration adopt the tax hike. Any more significant and unscheduled defections like that, and his sway over his allies and followers could dwindle rapidly. His hold over his minions has never been as strong as we (myself included) sometimes assume, and the April show of independence was not the first nor last evidence of such.
I think this will remind some of Saigo Takamori’s fate. Sometimes, the mikoshi is at the mercy of its bearers.
That’s all for now. Back to work.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Very Brief Assessment of Noda’s Performance
This is it.
“[Noda]'s done a pretty good job, all things considered. He's done two very important things: set priorities, then stick to them. The Noda administration could have done a much better job of managing the restart process after it took over and it surely could have caved more quickly on the Article 3 Commission impasse, but some of the blame has to go to Edano, Hosono, and to a lesser extent their bureaucracies. It's also mostly missing in action on TPP, but I can totally understand the political need to underplay this while the other two priorities are yet to be settled. You could say that two years of reconciling the manifesto pot pourri and the exigencies of the coalition with reality set the table for prioritization while Hatoyama and Kan in their own ways made prioritization a necessity. Still, it could have been much, much worse. And the Noda administration now seems to be trending upwards even as it pushes restarts and tax hikes. He's giving the public something specific that it wants that is distinct from the actual policies that he pushes.”
That’s it for now.
An Addendum of Sorts to the “Post-election” Post
The latest from the off-blog online discussions:
“Ozawa's plan seems to be to get as many people lined up against the tax hike bill--the nuclear restarts are a useful throw-in--or at least on the sidelines and dare Noda to kick the nays out. Normally, a compromise can be worked out; after all, the DPJ has no precedent for doing a Koizumi on anyone, let alone enough HORs to lose the house majority. Moreover, Maehara is the most vocal and unequivocal voice on this, and he's been faced down too often on party and policy issues to be taken too seriously. Does a three month suspension for the ringleader, a shorter one for the other nays, and a verbal tongue lash for the abstainers allow everyone to save face and give Ozawa an excuse not to run in the September leadership election or what? Two problems, though. First, it'll be much easier PR-wise for the LDP and Komeito to force a snap election anyway by holding the deficit bond authorization bill hostage. Second, the DPJ won't be able to put together a coherent election platform.
“All in all, it looks like a split, with Ozawa taking a good number of people with him--though many of the non-zombies won't bother to make a serious bid for office when the snap election rolls around. Given what I've seen of Noda's modus operandi, I think that he'll make a show of trying to maintain party unity but make the conditions for staying so onerous--three month suspensions minimum for all nays for starters--that Ozawa has no choice but to pick up stakes and leave. I'm not betting the farm on this because I've seen too often people with skin in the game come up with unforeseen solutions, but that is for me the most likely scenario.”
There’s more to follow…
Sunday, June 24, 2012
It’s a Post-election Grand Coalition… or Instability/Gridlock Followed by Party Realignment
Most of the attention from the media, political analysts and other pundits has been focused on the number of lower house DPJ members that Ozawa can muster to oppose the upcoming lower house vote on the consumption tax hike bill and whether or not the Noda administration will expel them from the DPJ when they do. There is also some talk around the number of DPJ abstentions, which is relevant to the numbers game if the Noda administration decides to kick out the nays but let the abstainers off with a suspension or less*.
The actual numbers—51/54 defections in the lower house mean that the DPJ/coalition turns into a minority there. Such a near-term outcome will certainly be significant politically, and opposition parties. The media will milk it for all it’s worth, and the consequent perceptions may very well affect the outcome of the next general election and its aftermath. However, it is near-irrelevant from an immediate legislative perspective since no legislative bills will be passed before the election without acquiescence from the LDP-Komeito tag team in the upper house.
I am surprised at how little attention is being paid to the parallel political crisis in the upper house, where one MSM report has an anonymous Ozawa capo claiming that the Ozawa group has 18 of its 30 upper members lined up to oppose the consumption tax hike when the time comes for that house to vote on the bill. Again, it is true that this will have little effect on the pre-election legislative agenda for the same reason as the defections in the lower house. But Ozawa only needs 6 upper house defectors to deny an upper house majority to a hypothetical post-election DPJ-People’s New Party-Komeito coalition. And the problem to adding more non-LDP partners to this ménage-a-trois is that most of the non-Komeito, non-LDP opposition will be running fiercely anti-consumption tax hike campaigns (and are irrelevant, as in the case of the Socialists and Communists, and/or insane, as in the case of the Happiness Realization Party). Thus, any coalition for an upper house majority that does not involve the LDP will be exceedingly hard to form—or maintain in the unlikely event that it can be done. This upper house situation will be the one known factor around the post-election circumstances that should drive a Grand Coalition—or legislative instability and gridlock, and precipitous political realignment**. There are too many moving parts in the lead-up to the lower house election to narrow the scope of possibilities. But the upper house situation lends more certainty to the likely outcomes and therefore deserves more attention.
Of course the Noda administration could as a matter of logic do a Koizumi and try to keep the upper house nays in the DPJ. But this will fail since the upper house dissidents will surely follow their lower house sibling exiles into the wilderness.
* From a purely housekeeping point of view, it makes sense for Prime Minister Noda administration hand out, say, a three-month suspension to the defectors—thus keeping them in the tent but out of the September leadership election and letting the abstainers off with a wrist slap. I don’t think that this will happen; the media fallout will be significant. Besides, the nays are likely to bolt anyway, making the Noda administration even more pathetic.
** I have an email exchange on the likely dissidents that I’ve shared with a group of academic friends and their colleagues. I may brush up my end of the exchange for later posting. I also made some observations about the MSM’s treatment of an alleged letter from Ozawa’s ex-wife containing damaging claims about his post-3.11 cowardice, which I may post later.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Memo on the Consumption Tax
Nothing says Happy New Year like talk of a (consumption) tax hike. Noda got the DPJ to go along by pushing the initial raise to 8% back six months from the original proposal to April 2014, and what’s a few months this way or that, no? Ozawa’s Plan A must be to get acquitted in time to mount a challenge in the DPR leadership election next September against a weakened Noda. Must get busy now; in the meantime, the following is a memo that I wrote a little over a week ago around the issue. I hope that you find it relevant. Finally, I wish you all nothing but happiness and joy in the year to come and thereafter.
1. A majority of the Japanese public believes that a consumption tax hike is inevitable. The 1988 introduction of the consumption tax was highly unpopular with the Japanese public.
2. Big business generally supports a consumption tax hike. There is no overt opposition from SMEs, who, like big business, a) do not like the government's idea of shifting the growing burden of the social safety net on the shoulders of businesses (pushing 20-30 hour workweek employees into the Kosei Nenkin hurts big and small business alike) and b) would like to see the corporate tax instead. The 1988 introduction of the consumption tax was fiercely opposed by SMEs and many other businesses
3. The MSM generally supports a consumption tax hike. The MSM was split in 1988.
4. The LDP has supported a consumption tax hike. The opposition parties were strongly opposed in 1988.
5. Public disgust over the Recruit scandal that contaminated virtually the entire LDP leadership likely had some effect on the1990 election results. Besides, the 1986 election results were exceptional, making the 1990 results look worse that it is in a historical context. The 3% to 5% hike did not keep Hashimoto and the LDP from winning in the 1996 election, already well into the post-bubble decade.
So what's the problem?
1. Public mistrust of the conventional political class. The lack of political leadership and policy consistency has sapped the credibility of both major parties in asking the public to pony up. (That is why the largely symbolic (in fiscal terms) value of a notional downsized Diet is taking on significance.) The DPJ has had a longer distance to fall, which they did because only a small fraction of the promised savings materialized in its first three years in power. (There were of course Hatoyama's Futenma debacle and incoherence and Kan's inability to articulate and execute. Noda has so far proved (sic) pedestrian, though his persistence should prove useful in getting a compromise on the consumption tax.)
2. Poor economy. The argument is that this is not the time to put the brakes on consumption. That's a reasonable argument, although a trigger for 2013, BTW the more likely arrangement, should take care of it. (Economists and analysts argue over the effect on consumption and savings. I'm not competent to go into that; suffice to say that opponents bring up this argument and many of them no doubt believe it.)
3. The battle for the periphery. The DPJ won the (upper house) 2007 and 2009 elections in part by capturing seats in the periphery, many in districts in traditional LDP strongholds--with low-income, elderly demographics, who will feel relatively more pain from the tax hike. (To be fair, the DPJ also win in the metropolitan districts.) The LDP wants those voters back in their fold, while DPJ parliamentarians with insecure seats (presumably skewed heavily toward Ozawa allies and dependents) will be tempted to vote for their constituents' purses.
2012 should be a good year for the economy, while economists largely agree that it will be less so in 2013. Arguably, it's now or never for the Noda administration. But it can't do anything about the mistrust. But neither can the LDP. Public perception that the LDP is opposing a tax hike--and that's only if they actually manage to cohere around a clear position in opposition--for purely tactical reasons will cause significant damage to the LDP as well. One possibility lies in ganging up on the smaller parties and place the bulk of the consequences of downsizing on the proportional seats, make a compromise on a trigger-equipped consumption tax bill, then let Diet members vote their conscience. There is a huge upside/downside risk here, though. The likelihood of lopsided results become much higher with a smaller proportional-seat cushion. And voting their conscience may only delay the onset of thoroughgoing realignment. Also militating against the compromise that I suggest would be the LDP-Komeito campaign alliance, which the LDP would be loath to give up.
Those are my thoughts as of now. I know there is no convincingly overriding scenario here; all I'm sure of is that the LDP can't let Noda have his consumption tax and declare victory, nor can Noda drop the consumption tax hike and go on as if the whole series of events had never happened.
1. A majority of the Japanese public believes that a consumption tax hike is inevitable. The 1988 introduction of the consumption tax was highly unpopular with the Japanese public.
2. Big business generally supports a consumption tax hike. There is no overt opposition from SMEs, who, like big business, a) do not like the government's idea of shifting the growing burden of the social safety net on the shoulders of businesses (pushing 20-30 hour workweek employees into the Kosei Nenkin hurts big and small business alike) and b) would like to see the corporate tax instead. The 1988 introduction of the consumption tax was fiercely opposed by SMEs and many other businesses
3. The MSM generally supports a consumption tax hike. The MSM was split in 1988.
4. The LDP has supported a consumption tax hike. The opposition parties were strongly opposed in 1988.
5. Public disgust over the Recruit scandal that contaminated virtually the entire LDP leadership likely had some effect on the1990 election results. Besides, the 1986 election results were exceptional, making the 1990 results look worse that it is in a historical context. The 3% to 5% hike did not keep Hashimoto and the LDP from winning in the 1996 election, already well into the post-bubble decade.
So what's the problem?
1. Public mistrust of the conventional political class. The lack of political leadership and policy consistency has sapped the credibility of both major parties in asking the public to pony up. (That is why the largely symbolic (in fiscal terms) value of a notional downsized Diet is taking on significance.) The DPJ has had a longer distance to fall, which they did because only a small fraction of the promised savings materialized in its first three years in power. (There were of course Hatoyama's Futenma debacle and incoherence and Kan's inability to articulate and execute. Noda has so far proved (sic) pedestrian, though his persistence should prove useful in getting a compromise on the consumption tax.)
2. Poor economy. The argument is that this is not the time to put the brakes on consumption. That's a reasonable argument, although a trigger for 2013, BTW the more likely arrangement, should take care of it. (Economists and analysts argue over the effect on consumption and savings. I'm not competent to go into that; suffice to say that opponents bring up this argument and many of them no doubt believe it.)
3. The battle for the periphery. The DPJ won the (upper house) 2007 and 2009 elections in part by capturing seats in the periphery, many in districts in traditional LDP strongholds--with low-income, elderly demographics, who will feel relatively more pain from the tax hike. (To be fair, the DPJ also win in the metropolitan districts.) The LDP wants those voters back in their fold, while DPJ parliamentarians with insecure seats (presumably skewed heavily toward Ozawa allies and dependents) will be tempted to vote for their constituents' purses.
2012 should be a good year for the economy, while economists largely agree that it will be less so in 2013. Arguably, it's now or never for the Noda administration. But it can't do anything about the mistrust. But neither can the LDP. Public perception that the LDP is opposing a tax hike--and that's only if they actually manage to cohere around a clear position in opposition--for purely tactical reasons will cause significant damage to the LDP as well. One possibility lies in ganging up on the smaller parties and place the bulk of the consequences of downsizing on the proportional seats, make a compromise on a trigger-equipped consumption tax bill, then let Diet members vote their conscience. There is a huge upside/downside risk here, though. The likelihood of lopsided results become much higher with a smaller proportional-seat cushion. And voting their conscience may only delay the onset of thoroughgoing realignment. Also militating against the compromise that I suggest would be the LDP-Komeito campaign alliance, which the LDP would be loath to give up.
Those are my thoughts as of now. I know there is no convincingly overriding scenario here; all I'm sure of is that the LDP can't let Noda have his consumption tax and declare victory, nor can Noda drop the consumption tax hike and go on as if the whole series of events had never happened.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
My Thoughts around the Nine Defectors and Beyond
It was more like minutes than hours, wasn’t it? So what kind of people bolted the DPJ today over the prospective consumption tax hike to form a new party? Mainly proportional-only candidates, most of whose prospects of reelection in anything but a landslide by the DPJ are nil, that’s who*. For these people, their best chances would lie in running as bi-candidates in a new party and hope that the new party wins enough votes (and they lose by small enough margins) to allow them to make it back as zombies.
Beyond that, my guesstimate says that the DPJ could win 180 out of the 304 first-past-the-post districts—the DPJ won 227 in 2009—and the DPJ’s 45 proportional-only incumbents would still be in danger of being wiped out**. It’s not a good time to be a DPJ Diet member who doesn’t have a single-seat district to hedge his/her bet and be eligible to compete with all the other bi-candidates for zombie status. But running in a single-seat district will cost you, so it’s not a viable option unless you’re deep-pocketed or willing to bet the farm.
There was another DPJ defector today, but that’s more the subject of comedy. I might go back to it tomorrow.
* Akira Uchiyama(3rd term) South Kanto ranked 1st, among DPJ proportionals; lost Chiba 7th; Ozawa group
Koichiro Wtanabe (2nd) Tokyo 29th among DPJ proportionals, of whom 23rd-29th got in; Ozawa; habitual loser
Juntaro Toyoda (2nd) Kinki 51st, 45th-52nd; Ozawa; repeat loser (one win in 1993)
Mitsuji Ishida (1st) South Kanto 37th, 37-39th; Ozawa; one-time prefectural assembly election loser
Masae Kobayashi (1st) Tokai 39th; 34th-41st; Ozawa; mayoral election loser
Yoshinori Saito (1st) (斎藤恭紀〈１〉（宮城２区）鳩山
Atsushi Chugo (1st) South Kanto 1st , lost Chiba 12th; Ozawa; two-time municipal assembly winner
Nobuki Miwa (1st) Tokai 38th, 34th-41st; Ozawa; four-time prefectural assembly winner
Yoshihiko Watanabe (1st) Kinki 48th, 45th-52nd; Ozawa; two-time loser, hid bankruptcy procedures to remain on DPJ list
** There are ways to develop more detailed estimates, but I’m not sure it’s worth my time unless I’m getting paid for it.
Beyond that, my guesstimate says that the DPJ could win 180 out of the 304 first-past-the-post districts—the DPJ won 227 in 2009—and the DPJ’s 45 proportional-only incumbents would still be in danger of being wiped out**. It’s not a good time to be a DPJ Diet member who doesn’t have a single-seat district to hedge his/her bet and be eligible to compete with all the other bi-candidates for zombie status. But running in a single-seat district will cost you, so it’s not a viable option unless you’re deep-pocketed or willing to bet the farm.
There was another DPJ defector today, but that’s more the subject of comedy. I might go back to it tomorrow.
* Akira Uchiyama(3rd term) South Kanto ranked 1st, among DPJ proportionals; lost Chiba 7th; Ozawa group
Koichiro Wtanabe (2nd) Tokyo 29th among DPJ proportionals, of whom 23rd-29th got in; Ozawa; habitual loser
Juntaro Toyoda (2nd) Kinki 51st, 45th-52nd; Ozawa; repeat loser (one win in 1993)
Mitsuji Ishida (1st) South Kanto 37th, 37-39th; Ozawa; one-time prefectural assembly election loser
Masae Kobayashi (1st) Tokai 39th; 34th-41st; Ozawa; mayoral election loser
Yoshinori Saito (1st) (斎藤恭紀〈１〉（宮城２区）鳩山
Atsushi Chugo (1st) South Kanto 1st , lost Chiba 12th; Ozawa; two-time municipal assembly winner
Nobuki Miwa (1st) Tokai 38th, 34th-41st; Ozawa; four-time prefectural assembly winner
Yoshihiko Watanabe (1st) Kinki 48th, 45th-52nd; Ozawa; two-time loser, hid bankruptcy procedures to remain on DPJ list
** There are ways to develop more detailed estimates, but I’m not sure it’s worth my time unless I’m getting paid for it.
Who Will Jump the DPJ Ship over a Consumption Tax Hike?
For now, only a couple of handfuls, if the Asahi is to be believed. We’ll know in a matter of hours, if not days, but in the meantime, here are a few thoughts around the report that may be useful beyond the immediate future.
So far, prospective defectors are small in number and are mainly (but not exclusively) first-term Ozawa children (Miwa is a ripe old 69) in the lower house representing the urban expanse between the true outback and the Tokyo/Nagoya/Osaka metropolitan. No upper house names have emerged.
How will they fare in a snap election? Intuitively, not so good. They will have to share the anti-consumption tax hike vote with Your Party, who will also be able to 1) run candidates in more districts, which will help it gather proportional votes, and 2) position itself as the reformist alternative. There are many other factors to be considered, some positive (Yasunori Saito, who has local celebrity status, will rake in votes outside his district; people like Nobuaki Miwa, who have independent political capital, maybe able to wrest away a larger part of the local DPJ chapter than otherwise possible), some negative (political novice rookies may not be able to take much of the local DPJ party machine away with him). All things considered, expect a few other multi-term Diet members as well a rookie or two that have strong local assembly backgrounds to make the leap, calculating that, at worst, they can slip back in on the proportional tickets. Conversely, pure political rookies will not jump ship unless Ozawa jumps with them.
So far, prospective defectors are small in number and are mainly (but not exclusively) first-term Ozawa children (Miwa is a ripe old 69) in the lower house representing the urban expanse between the true outback and the Tokyo/Nagoya/Osaka metropolitan. No upper house names have emerged.
How will they fare in a snap election? Intuitively, not so good. They will have to share the anti-consumption tax hike vote with Your Party, who will also be able to 1) run candidates in more districts, which will help it gather proportional votes, and 2) position itself as the reformist alternative. There are many other factors to be considered, some positive (Yasunori Saito, who has local celebrity status, will rake in votes outside his district; people like Nobuaki Miwa, who have independent political capital, maybe able to wrest away a larger part of the local DPJ chapter than otherwise possible), some negative (political novice rookies may not be able to take much of the local DPJ party machine away with him). All things considered, expect a few other multi-term Diet members as well a rookie or two that have strong local assembly backgrounds to make the leap, calculating that, at worst, they can slip back in on the proportional tickets. Conversely, pure political rookies will not jump ship unless Ozawa jumps with them.
Friday, December 02, 2011
From My Email: Pop Culture, and a Discovery about AKB 48 (What Else?)
A couple of people and I got to talking about W. David Marx and Cool Japan, which got me to thinking about Japanese pop culture. The following is the relevant part of an email, uncensored, with one word corrected, one punctuation mark removed, font changed, and, oh yes, a hyperlink added. Otherwise, RAW. I think that I’ve picked up on something that no one, anywhere, has noticed.
Also, I’m seriously thinking about posting something mean-spirited about Ronald Dore. What do you think?
The best way to kill off One Piece (which I never liked BTW) would be to have the MEXT political team do a public announcement endorsing it. (On the other hand, PM Noda is a dead ringer for Komawari-kun, if they ever get around to doing a live-action version...)
Speaking of popular culture, look at the following list of AKB 48 members who have finished in the top 10 in voting, with their top finishes.
O Ohshima Yuko 大島優子 1
O Maeda Atsuko 前田敦子 1
O Shinoda Mariko 篠田麻里子 3
O Itano Tomomi 板野友美 4
C Watanabe Mayu 渡辺麻夕 4
C Takahashi Minami 高橋みなみ 5
C Kojima Haruna 小嶋陽菜 6
C Satoh Amina 佐藤亜美菜 8
VO Miyazawa Sae 宮澤佐江 9
O Kasai Tomomi 河西智美 10
"O" as in old-fashioned, "C" as in contemporary, "VO" as in...very old. Old-fashioned means that they would have been the kind of names that were predominant as I was growing up. Let me also note that "Tomomi" is gender-free (岩倉具視, haha）, although most three-syllable "-mi" names are more likely to be conferred on females. Contemporary means the kind of names that girls in their teens and twenties typically have. Very old means Meiji-, Taisho-old. As further proof of how name preferences have changed, there is only one other "-ko" in the whole bunch. (To be fair, her top finish so far has been 38. Next AKB member to bare all?) In fact, beyond these nine most popular members, contemporary namespredominate the list. Is this all just coincidence? I think not.
Finally, as an example of: Japan Cool (not Cool Japan) influence .
Personally, I miss the old version . I must be growing old.
Have a nice weekend.
Also, I’m seriously thinking about posting something mean-spirited about Ronald Dore. What do you think?
The best way to kill off One Piece (which I never liked BTW) would be to have the MEXT political team do a public announcement endorsing it. (On the other hand, PM Noda is a dead ringer for Komawari-kun, if they ever get around to doing a live-action version...)
Speaking of popular culture, look at the following list of AKB 48 members who have finished in the top 10 in voting, with their top finishes.
O Ohshima Yuko 大島優子 1
O Maeda Atsuko 前田敦子 1
O Shinoda Mariko 篠田麻里子 3
O Itano Tomomi 板野友美 4
C Watanabe Mayu 渡辺麻夕 4
C Takahashi Minami 高橋みなみ 5
C Kojima Haruna 小嶋陽菜 6
C Satoh Amina 佐藤亜美菜 8
VO Miyazawa Sae 宮澤佐江 9
O Kasai Tomomi 河西智美 10
"O" as in old-fashioned, "C" as in contemporary, "VO" as in...very old. Old-fashioned means that they would have been the kind of names that were predominant as I was growing up. Let me also note that "Tomomi" is gender-free (岩倉具視, haha）, although most three-syllable "-mi" names are more likely to be conferred on females. Contemporary means the kind of names that girls in their teens and twenties typically have. Very old means Meiji-, Taisho-old. As further proof of how name preferences have changed, there is only one other "-ko" in the whole bunch. (To be fair, her top finish so far has been 38. Next AKB member to bare all?) In fact, beyond these nine most popular members, contemporary names
Finally, as an example of: Japan Cool (not Cool Japan) influence .
Personally, I miss the old version . I must be growing old.
Have a nice weekend.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Message Management Missing in Noda’s Honolulu Trade Initiative
I’d been telling everyone who would listen that Noda would take Japan into the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) FTA negotiations if only because there was no way that he could back down without becoming the third lame-duck prime minister in the first three years of the Democratic Party of Japan’s hold on power. He made me a little nervous with his one-day delay of the announcement, but he did came through and the threat of secession from DPJ dissidents proved to be a bluff…for now. The TPP negotiations should take another year or more, which means that Noda does not have any related legislative action to worry about during the 2012 regular Diet session. However, the opposition will have a couple of matters with which it will test the prime minister to see if they can erode public trust in his governance. And his DPJ opponents will not be happy about them either.
First, he reportedly gave favorable notice regarding Japanese import restrictions on U.S. beef. Actually I’ve been bewildered by recent talk regarding the Noda administration’s willingness to revisit this issue, specifically to raise the import eligibility of U.C. cattle from 20 months old to 30. Leaving aside my personal views on the issue itself, it seemed odd to me that the Noda administration would make a valuable concession even before the TPP negotiations had started. I can think of no other explanation than that it was an “omiyage,” a present, to make the Noda-Obama go smoothly. Maybe it helped, maybe it didn’t, who knows. I’ve always believed that this tactic, long favored by the Japanese authorities, is demeaning and serves mainly to keep the Japanese political masters happy—whee, I got a lot of applause when I addressed the plenary!, President So-and-So shook my hand! that kind of thing—but that’s beside the point. The problem here is that the Noda administration has so far given no official indication that the beef issue is in play. In fact, the news that Noda notified Obama took the Japanese media by surprise. There’s a good political, if unscientific, reason that Japan is one of the few countries to maintain a 30-month age limit on properly processed U.S. beef. The Japanese public was scared out of its wits by the mad cow disease breakout and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries had to go well beyond what the science around the issue required. (In our defense, we are no more (or less) irrational than our American/British/Chinese/…Luxembourgian/…/South Korean/…/Zimbabwean friends. It’s just that we each care insanely about different things. Okay, maybe Luxembourgers don’t, though who knows…) This will cause problems. After all, this is a food safety issue. It has obvious international ramifications, but first and foremost, it’s a matter of domestic regulation. I think that Noda got it ass backwards, and the media, the opposition and his DPJ opponents are going to (rightfully in my opinion) take him to task for it.
Second, the White House announced that President Obama “welcomed Prime Minister Noda's statement that he would put all goods, as well as services, on the negotiating table for trade liberalization.” Now this may seem to you mere recognition of reality. After all, if Noda had said that agriculture, or anything else for that matter, was off the table, his bid to take Japan into the TPP negotiations would have collapsed on the dry dock. However, lobbies and Congress feed off trade issues, so the White House in its press secretary readout obviously did what it could to ensure smooth sailings as far as officially accepting Japan as a TPP negotiating member with as few domestic strings as possible. (A negotiator always looks to expand his/her mandate.) The Japanese side, incredibly, not only failed to anticipate the White House spin but did not put out any statement regarding the bilateral meeting except a bland, all-points-covered summary from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). The prime minister’s team—Kantei?—missing in action. (See if you can find anything at the Kantei website.) It wound up issuing a denial that Noda had said any such thing. Bad for relations with the White House, and fodder for opposition guns when the Diet resumes operations on the Prime Minister’s return from Honolulu.
First, he reportedly gave favorable notice regarding Japanese import restrictions on U.S. beef. Actually I’ve been bewildered by recent talk regarding the Noda administration’s willingness to revisit this issue, specifically to raise the import eligibility of U.C. cattle from 20 months old to 30. Leaving aside my personal views on the issue itself, it seemed odd to me that the Noda administration would make a valuable concession even before the TPP negotiations had started. I can think of no other explanation than that it was an “omiyage,” a present, to make the Noda-Obama go smoothly. Maybe it helped, maybe it didn’t, who knows. I’ve always believed that this tactic, long favored by the Japanese authorities, is demeaning and serves mainly to keep the Japanese political masters happy—whee, I got a lot of applause when I addressed the plenary!, President So-and-So shook my hand! that kind of thing—but that’s beside the point. The problem here is that the Noda administration has so far given no official indication that the beef issue is in play. In fact, the news that Noda notified Obama took the Japanese media by surprise. There’s a good political, if unscientific, reason that Japan is one of the few countries to maintain a 30-month age limit on properly processed U.S. beef. The Japanese public was scared out of its wits by the mad cow disease breakout and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries had to go well beyond what the science around the issue required. (In our defense, we are no more (or less) irrational than our American/British/Chinese/…Luxembourgian/…/South Korean/…/Zimbabwean friends. It’s just that we each care insanely about different things. Okay, maybe Luxembourgers don’t, though who knows…) This will cause problems. After all, this is a food safety issue. It has obvious international ramifications, but first and foremost, it’s a matter of domestic regulation. I think that Noda got it ass backwards, and the media, the opposition and his DPJ opponents are going to (rightfully in my opinion) take him to task for it.
Second, the White House announced that President Obama “welcomed Prime Minister Noda's statement that he would put all goods, as well as services, on the negotiating table for trade liberalization.” Now this may seem to you mere recognition of reality. After all, if Noda had said that agriculture, or anything else for that matter, was off the table, his bid to take Japan into the TPP negotiations would have collapsed on the dry dock. However, lobbies and Congress feed off trade issues, so the White House in its press secretary readout obviously did what it could to ensure smooth sailings as far as officially accepting Japan as a TPP negotiating member with as few domestic strings as possible. (A negotiator always looks to expand his/her mandate.) The Japanese side, incredibly, not only failed to anticipate the White House spin but did not put out any statement regarding the bilateral meeting except a bland, all-points-covered summary from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). The prime minister’s team—Kantei?—missing in action. (See if you can find anything at the Kantei website.) It wound up issuing a denial that Noda had said any such thing. Bad for relations with the White House, and fodder for opposition guns when the Diet resumes operations on the Prime Minister’s return from Honolulu.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Rumble at the Yomiuri Giants and Most (But Definitely Not All) of the Media Goes Bananas
…It’s about time, so why not reboot here…
You know that anyone who's looking for proof of Japanese media bias need only look at the Yomiuri sports pages and how they basically serve as the baseball powerhouse Yomiuri Giants’ fanzine. (Actually, I welcome media bias because it takes less time to go through them when you more or less know where they are coming from. They also give you media-driven baselines from which to make guesses at how public opinion will be trending, particularly on those rare moments—say, Kim Jong Il's admissions regarding the abductees—when Yomiuri and Asahi angles converge.) Well today, there was an incredible diatribe released by the representative/GM of the Yomiuri Giants (a former Yomiuri reporter proving that not all amakudari’s are necessarily handpuppets), who, if his lengthy statement (full text starts here is to be believed, apparently refused a bribe from powermonger and all-around meddler Tsuneo Watanabe in the form of more power and a promise of eventual elevation to CEO in exchange for going along with Watanabe's lies—not the rep/GMs words, but there’s no other way to put it—around his attempt to overturn Giants personnel decisions to which he had already given consent.
The late afternoon-early evening news broadcasts all appear to be featuring the story prominently—all, that is, except Nippon TV. I’ll give you one guess which media group owns Nippon TV.
But what am I doing watching TV when the rest of the Japanese world is working? Actually, this is relevant to my line of work, as it should spell the end of Watanabe's role as political fixer—anything fixer, really. If Ichiro Ozawa had held any hope that Watanabe could reprise anything like his 2007 role as go-between for an aborted deal between Ozawa and then Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda for a Grand Coalition, it’s gone now. This diminishes the LDP's old guard as well, since Ozawa was their most familiar and likeminded interlocutor. An era is passing, and this incident is part of it.
Let’s see what if literally anything tomorrow’s Yomiuri has to say about this.
You know that anyone who's looking for proof of Japanese media bias need only look at the Yomiuri sports pages and how they basically serve as the baseball powerhouse Yomiuri Giants’ fanzine. (Actually, I welcome media bias because it takes less time to go through them when you more or less know where they are coming from. They also give you media-driven baselines from which to make guesses at how public opinion will be trending, particularly on those rare moments—say, Kim Jong Il's admissions regarding the abductees—when Yomiuri and Asahi angles converge.) Well today, there was an incredible diatribe released by the representative/GM of the Yomiuri Giants (a former Yomiuri reporter proving that not all amakudari’s are necessarily handpuppets), who, if his lengthy statement (full text starts here is to be believed, apparently refused a bribe from powermonger and all-around meddler Tsuneo Watanabe in the form of more power and a promise of eventual elevation to CEO in exchange for going along with Watanabe's lies—not the rep/GMs words, but there’s no other way to put it—around his attempt to overturn Giants personnel decisions to which he had already given consent.
The late afternoon-early evening news broadcasts all appear to be featuring the story prominently—all, that is, except Nippon TV. I’ll give you one guess which media group owns Nippon TV.
But what am I doing watching TV when the rest of the Japanese world is working? Actually, this is relevant to my line of work, as it should spell the end of Watanabe's role as political fixer—anything fixer, really. If Ichiro Ozawa had held any hope that Watanabe could reprise anything like his 2007 role as go-between for an aborted deal between Ozawa and then Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda for a Grand Coalition, it’s gone now. This diminishes the LDP's old guard as well, since Ozawa was their most familiar and likeminded interlocutor. An era is passing, and this incident is part of it.
Let’s see what if literally anything tomorrow’s Yomiuri has to say about this.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Are Japan’s Days of Overseas Adventures Over?
The following is my email response to an inquiry from a friend in the academia, verbatim but with personal details edited out.
[F]:
Foreign relations in the abstract are of little concern to most voters. Instead, they respond to specific issues such as the North Korean abductions or a mad cow disease breakout in a beef exporting country. Politicians as well as the MSM are inclined to think differently, since statecraft is a far more amusing endeavor than making sure that the private sector keeps the trains running on time, i.e. leaving them alone as much as possible. Still, in a democracy, it is a luxury to be indulged in at one’s peril unless one has dotted and crossed all the more significant I’s and T’s at home. Specifically in Japan’s case, it does not have geopolitical interests that diverge significantly from those of the United States (and to a lesser extent the EU). This means that Japan can largely free-ride on global public goods (and to a lesser extent regional public goods) that the United provides for the rest of the world (including China, though the Chinese authorities would be loathe to admit it).
Much attention was given in the mid-90 and early 2000s to the LDP regime’s interest in permanent UNSC membership and a larger international profile for the Japanese military, propelled in the latter case by the perception of humiliation on the occasion of the Gulf War. However, the first floundered because of the lack of support from non-permanent members that were not part of the push for inclusion in the Council and ill-concealed antipathy from China; the second was always destined to be limited because of fiscal constraints. Meanwhile, on the economic front, the Doha Round is now in its death throes while post-Kyoto Protocol climate change talks are going nowhere fast, leaving little room—or need—for Japanese authorities to spend whatever political capital it has on the issues. The triple disaster has certainly forced the Kan administration to take its eyes off the rest of the world, but, as you say, it only accelerated, albeit dramatically, a trend that had already been in the making.
What will happen when the Japanese economy recovers from the disasters? First of all, the fiscal circumstances will continue to demand the attention of the Japanese government and its constituencies. That means that there will be little political room for expensive overseas adventures excepting FTAs and other economically advantageous undertakings. (Prime Minister Kan gave lip service to foreign ambassadors in Tokyo by promising that the 100 billion yen cut that Japanese ODA took to finance the relief and recovery efforts would be restored many times over. But that’s a canard, really, since the cuts will last only a couple of years—fingers crossed—while Japanese ODA will last many decades beyond that, if significant numbers of developing countries remain just that: developing.) And that leads to my second point: Japan needs socioeconomic reform. This will demand most of the Japanese government’s attention, as well as the expenditure of considerable political capital for more sweeping FTAs with Japan’s major trading partners. Any efforts outside of support for socioeconomic reform will be largely reactive, responding to events and circumstances as they unfold. (A violent endgame on the Korean Peninsula would be a good example.) Third and finally, Japan will emerge out of the disasters’ aftermath older and, in relative terms, economically diminished if BRICS and other developing countries maintain their most recent historical growth trends. This will diminish further the Japanese government’s ability to act proactively on the regional and global theater and the willingness of the Japanese public to support any such adventures.
There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that the younger post-online generation has a different outlook on the rest of the world, domestic and overseas, than their elders. The drift away from hardcopy print media to the less judgmental visual media and the vastly more fragmented online sources of information and public (for want of a better word) discourse could be a contributory cause. The consequences of a post-industrial society—the difficulties that the less skilled have in finding secure, well-paid jobs; complacency settling in with general affluence; aging demographics creating a societal background that discourages risk-taking across the board—could also be behind what I suspect is a more global phenomenon. 35 would be as good a point as any to find an Internet-driven divergence if there is one. But all this is speculation on my part and is not based on personal observation. The Japanese under 35 generally do not speak to me.
I hope that helps. And congratulations on your [book] contract. I understand that any academic career will be well-served by that hardcopy publication.
Jun
PS: The following are fragments of an earlier attempt at responding. They don’t quite fit into the main narrative, but I include them here since they might add more substance to my arguments there.
“The last point is true of all democratic nations (and, over the long run, in all others as well) but particularly so in Japan. I see two reasons for this. First, Japan is not one of the main protagonists in any regional issue that has existential consequences. This means that regional issues will only be in the forefront of voters’ minds in the case of an acute incident—which will be of electoral consequence only if it changes voters’ perception of the administration’s competence. Second, Japan’s interests regarding global issues are mostly consonant with the countries in that of the United States, ROK, and to a somewhat lesser extent with the EU. This creates massive incentives for any conventional administration to ride the US hegemony’s wake to the maximum possible, i.e. do the moistest with the leastest. You have heard of the Yoshida Doctrine?
“So unless there are specific issues that demand political attention—to give two examples, 1) DPRK developing nuclear weapons and firing ballistic missiles in our direction and 2) the US pushing us to do more to provide regional and/or global public goods—an administration is well advised to…”
[F]:
Foreign relations in the abstract are of little concern to most voters. Instead, they respond to specific issues such as the North Korean abductions or a mad cow disease breakout in a beef exporting country. Politicians as well as the MSM are inclined to think differently, since statecraft is a far more amusing endeavor than making sure that the private sector keeps the trains running on time, i.e. leaving them alone as much as possible. Still, in a democracy, it is a luxury to be indulged in at one’s peril unless one has dotted and crossed all the more significant I’s and T’s at home. Specifically in Japan’s case, it does not have geopolitical interests that diverge significantly from those of the United States (and to a lesser extent the EU). This means that Japan can largely free-ride on global public goods (and to a lesser extent regional public goods) that the United provides for the rest of the world (including China, though the Chinese authorities would be loathe to admit it).
Much attention was given in the mid-90 and early 2000s to the LDP regime’s interest in permanent UNSC membership and a larger international profile for the Japanese military, propelled in the latter case by the perception of humiliation on the occasion of the Gulf War. However, the first floundered because of the lack of support from non-permanent members that were not part of the push for inclusion in the Council and ill-concealed antipathy from China; the second was always destined to be limited because of fiscal constraints. Meanwhile, on the economic front, the Doha Round is now in its death throes while post-Kyoto Protocol climate change talks are going nowhere fast, leaving little room—or need—for Japanese authorities to spend whatever political capital it has on the issues. The triple disaster has certainly forced the Kan administration to take its eyes off the rest of the world, but, as you say, it only accelerated, albeit dramatically, a trend that had already been in the making.
What will happen when the Japanese economy recovers from the disasters? First of all, the fiscal circumstances will continue to demand the attention of the Japanese government and its constituencies. That means that there will be little political room for expensive overseas adventures excepting FTAs and other economically advantageous undertakings. (Prime Minister Kan gave lip service to foreign ambassadors in Tokyo by promising that the 100 billion yen cut that Japanese ODA took to finance the relief and recovery efforts would be restored many times over. But that’s a canard, really, since the cuts will last only a couple of years—fingers crossed—while Japanese ODA will last many decades beyond that, if significant numbers of developing countries remain just that: developing.) And that leads to my second point: Japan needs socioeconomic reform. This will demand most of the Japanese government’s attention, as well as the expenditure of considerable political capital for more sweeping FTAs with Japan’s major trading partners. Any efforts outside of support for socioeconomic reform will be largely reactive, responding to events and circumstances as they unfold. (A violent endgame on the Korean Peninsula would be a good example.) Third and finally, Japan will emerge out of the disasters’ aftermath older and, in relative terms, economically diminished if BRICS and other developing countries maintain their most recent historical growth trends. This will diminish further the Japanese government’s ability to act proactively on the regional and global theater and the willingness of the Japanese public to support any such adventures.
There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that the younger post-online generation has a different outlook on the rest of the world, domestic and overseas, than their elders. The drift away from hardcopy print media to the less judgmental visual media and the vastly more fragmented online sources of information and public (for want of a better word) discourse could be a contributory cause. The consequences of a post-industrial society—the difficulties that the less skilled have in finding secure, well-paid jobs; complacency settling in with general affluence; aging demographics creating a societal background that discourages risk-taking across the board—could also be behind what I suspect is a more global phenomenon. 35 would be as good a point as any to find an Internet-driven divergence if there is one. But all this is speculation on my part and is not based on personal observation. The Japanese under 35 generally do not speak to me.
I hope that helps. And congratulations on your [book] contract. I understand that any academic career will be well-served by that hardcopy publication.
Jun
PS: The following are fragments of an earlier attempt at responding. They don’t quite fit into the main narrative, but I include them here since they might add more substance to my arguments there.
“The last point is true of all democratic nations (and, over the long run, in all others as well) but particularly so in Japan. I see two reasons for this. First, Japan is not one of the main protagonists in any regional issue that has existential consequences. This means that regional issues will only be in the forefront of voters’ minds in the case of an acute incident—which will be of electoral consequence only if it changes voters’ perception of the administration’s competence. Second, Japan’s interests regarding global issues are mostly consonant with the countries in that of the United States, ROK, and to a somewhat lesser extent with the EU. This creates massive incentives for any conventional administration to ride the US hegemony’s wake to the maximum possible, i.e. do the moistest with the leastest. You have heard of the Yoshida Doctrine?
“So unless there are specific issues that demand political attention—to give two examples, 1) DPRK developing nuclear weapons and firing ballistic missiles in our direction and 2) the US pushing us to do more to provide regional and/or global public goods—an administration is well advised to…”
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Kruel Kan Going after TEPCO Pensioners? So Surprise Me
I’ve been getting a few inquiries on the government’s (so far) successful decision to essentially force TEPCO’s private-sector stakeholders—employees, shareholders, creditors, sister regional (de facto) monopolies, and yes, consumers—to foot the entire bill while remaining for the time being for practical purposes the guarantor of TEPCO’s solvency and viability. The following is my written response, unedited, to an email that refers to a Nikkei report that Prime Minister Kan is asking TEPCO pensioners to join the rest of the stakeholders lining up for haircuts. I relied solely on my memory to write it and I’m not a lawyer, so some of the facts being used may be a little off, but I’m pretty confident that the overall narrative is pretty sound. I’ll also add here, as I told one of the inquirers on the phone, that the SOB that (I think) he is, he puts policy ahead of politics, not the other way around as more conservative parts of the Japanese mainstream media suggests.
I’ll meet you half way. I agree that Kan is an SOB. Anecdotes in the media and on the grapevine suggest that he’s been that way all along. But “political” SOB? I’m not so sure, at least in this case. True, TEPCO pensioners are not legally responsible for the mess barring the individual TEPCO pensioner whose individual contributory negligence is proven. However, if the government does not step in beyond the 120 billion yen and keep TEPCO solvent, creditors (or TEPCO) would have no recourse but to enter into one of the bankruptcy procedures and take significant haircuts. The no-doubt very generous discretionary portion (上乗せ部分) of the corporate pension plan will be in jeopardy, as TEPCO payments into the pension fund will be slashed, affecting TEPCO pensioners present and future. So, if it’s not unreasonable to demand that if the government is going to step in to save TEPCO, all stakeholders—and that includes the sister regional monopolies if you think about it—must chip in with a portion of their potential losses in the event of bankruptcy, then it’s not unreasonable to demand that TEPCO pensioners pitch in too. If this story sounds familiar, it is. It’s the parable of the JAL pensioners.
So much for Kan’s jerkhood. Or is it? Are we carrying strict liability too far? After all, one of the concessions that the government made to convince Chubu Electric Power to stop its one currently operating nuclear unit was to agree that CEP had done nothing wrong and was shutting the unit down purely as a matter of government policy. Now TEPCO stakeholders must be wondering: What does CEP have that TEPCO doesn’t? One journalist reminded me, “The accident.” True. And the Nuclear Power Indemnification Act (NPIA) demands strict liability. But Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano has on at least one occasion stated that TEPCO and the government are jointly and separately liable (不真性連帯責任), and a couple days after that the responsibility was a 50-50 split. Legally, that means that TEPCO can sue the government to shoulder its prorated-for-responsibility part of the damages. Moreover, there’s a plausible case to be made—I won’t bother with my reasoning here—that Article 3, paragraph 1, of NPIA should be invoked, putting the entire damages squarely on the government’s shoulders and the government’s alone.
The government has been doing a pretty good job of bluffing TEPCO into submission, and the TEPCO board of directors would have to move to the Caymans or someplace else where right-wing megaphone vans and firebombs cannot reach their dwellings before they could make a stand. Still, there’s no reason to believe that overseas shareholders and creditors—say, some hedge fund in Connecticut that happened to have been holding a chunk of TEPCO shares before the tsunami inundated Fukushima 1 might have reason to bring a shareholders suit on behalf of TEPCO against the government—it would be an administrative lawsuit in the case of Article 3, paragraph 1 and a civil lawsuit in the case of recovery of prorated damages—or TEPCO board members for damages.
In fact, the alternative that I present here would be a very real one if this occurred in a different socio-political environment. (Say, Delaware?) So, barring the odd US hedge fund—and there’s probably a legal minimum proportional holding required to bring shareholder lawsuits; you can look it up—the saga is likely to unfold more or less according to the government’s storyline,although there will be political bumps along the road. But no one seems to have a better alternative, and no one appears willing to contemplate an formal bankruptcy whose ramifications for the immediate stakeholders and more broadly the Japanese economy itself are unknown. In the meantime, though, it is only fair in my view that TEPCO pensioners, like any other group of stakeholders, shoulder its proportional share of the full financial burden.
BTW it is useful to keep in mind that TEPCO is likely to be allowed to more or less pass on the 1 trillion yen/yr in extra fuel costs and the write-down for at least four nuclear power units, and all the regional monopolies should also be allowed to include their payments into the newly proposed sinking fund in calculating their tariffs. So we the electricity consumers will also be sharing the costs of the disaster.
I’ll meet you half way. I agree that Kan is an SOB. Anecdotes in the media and on the grapevine suggest that he’s been that way all along. But “political” SOB? I’m not so sure, at least in this case. True, TEPCO pensioners are not legally responsible for the mess barring the individual TEPCO pensioner whose individual contributory negligence is proven. However, if the government does not step in beyond the 120 billion yen and keep TEPCO solvent, creditors (or TEPCO) would have no recourse but to enter into one of the bankruptcy procedures and take significant haircuts. The no-doubt very generous discretionary portion (上乗せ部分) of the corporate pension plan will be in jeopardy, as TEPCO payments into the pension fund will be slashed, affecting TEPCO pensioners present and future. So, if it’s not unreasonable to demand that if the government is going to step in to save TEPCO, all stakeholders—and that includes the sister regional monopolies if you think about it—must chip in with a portion of their potential losses in the event of bankruptcy, then it’s not unreasonable to demand that TEPCO pensioners pitch in too. If this story sounds familiar, it is. It’s the parable of the JAL pensioners.
So much for Kan’s jerkhood. Or is it? Are we carrying strict liability too far? After all, one of the concessions that the government made to convince Chubu Electric Power to stop its one currently operating nuclear unit was to agree that CEP had done nothing wrong and was shutting the unit down purely as a matter of government policy. Now TEPCO stakeholders must be wondering: What does CEP have that TEPCO doesn’t? One journalist reminded me, “The accident.” True. And the Nuclear Power Indemnification Act (NPIA) demands strict liability. But Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano has on at least one occasion stated that TEPCO and the government are jointly and separately liable (不真性連帯責任), and a couple days after that the responsibility was a 50-50 split. Legally, that means that TEPCO can sue the government to shoulder its prorated-for-responsibility part of the damages. Moreover, there’s a plausible case to be made—I won’t bother with my reasoning here—that Article 3, paragraph 1, of NPIA should be invoked, putting the entire damages squarely on the government’s shoulders and the government’s alone.
The government has been doing a pretty good job of bluffing TEPCO into submission, and the TEPCO board of directors would have to move to the Caymans or someplace else where right-wing megaphone vans and firebombs cannot reach their dwellings before they could make a stand. Still, there’s no reason to believe that overseas shareholders and creditors—say, some hedge fund in Connecticut that happened to have been holding a chunk of TEPCO shares before the tsunami inundated Fukushima 1 might have reason to bring a shareholders suit on behalf of TEPCO against the government—it would be an administrative lawsuit in the case of Article 3, paragraph 1 and a civil lawsuit in the case of recovery of prorated damages—or TEPCO board members for damages.
In fact, the alternative that I present here would be a very real one if this occurred in a different socio-political environment. (Say, Delaware?) So, barring the odd US hedge fund—and there’s probably a legal minimum proportional holding required to bring shareholder lawsuits; you can look it up—the saga is likely to unfold more or less according to the government’s storyline,although there will be political bumps along the road. But no one seems to have a better alternative, and no one appears willing to contemplate an formal bankruptcy whose ramifications for the immediate stakeholders and more broadly the Japanese economy itself are unknown. In the meantime, though, it is only fair in my view that TEPCO pensioners, like any other group of stakeholders, shoulder its proportional share of the full financial burden.
BTW it is useful to keep in mind that TEPCO is likely to be allowed to more or less pass on the 1 trillion yen/yr in extra fuel costs and the write-down for at least four nuclear power units, and all the regional monopolies should also be allowed to include their payments into the newly proposed sinking fund in calculating their tariffs. So we the electricity consumers will also be sharing the costs of the disaster.
Thursday, May 05, 2011
My Take on the Asahi/Wikileaks, Mostly Focused on the Nuclear Disaster
Another stateside friend New York tossed this NYT report my way. The following is my response, lightly edited here with a sentence tacked on at the end.
The bits and pieces mostly jibe with what we've been seeing and hearing in the media since the DPJ took over. That's what's remarkable about the US wikileaks in general. It's like, tell me something we hadn't known or suspected. That said:
That said, I suspect that most of the things that came to pass were driven by science and engineering and that most of the mistakes came in the public communications process. Note, though, that the human response to any nuclear disaster tends to be deeply irrational, unscientific, and apocalyptic. This means that the margin of error for managing the figurative—if not the physical—fallout is very small compared to other disasters, such as massive toxic chemical spills—or the tsunami itself.
The bits and pieces mostly jibe with what we've been seeing and hearing in the media since the DPJ took over. That's what's remarkable about the US wikileaks in general. It's like, tell me something we hadn't known or suspected. That said:
..."Compartmentalization and risk aversion within the bureaucracy, however, could increase Japan's vulnerability to threats for which it is less prepared,"Note that the first sentence appears to refer to the response to a threat for which it has not prepared for, while the subsequent paragraph appears to be referring to the lack of preparedness itself. These are two connected but logically distinct propositions. Confuse the two, and you get a narrative that is literally nonsense. A bureaucracy, of course, is by nature compartmentalized and risk-averse, so, left to its own resources, will always respond poorly to the unforeseen. Case in point: Hurricane Katrina. That is why leadership is so important. Case in point: Hurricane Katrina. And leadership is where the Japanese public is pinning the blame on. In my conversations on this subject, I've insisted that the typical response under the LDP regime to a nuclear disaster--any disaster--would have been to put the administrative deputy chief cabinet secretary in charge of crack bureaucrats assembled from the responsible ministries, team him up with a parliamentary DCCS, and have chief cabinet secretary preside over the entire process. The CCS could share the chores of public communications with the prime minister. Basically, put the people who know how the parts work, to minimize on-the-job learning. Instead, Kan approached the task as if a car broke down in the middle of the road, tried to repair it himself, then ignored the manual and started asking passers-by for advice.
Bureaucratic decision making has been cited as a factor in Japan's lack of preparedness, almost exactly three years later, for the record-breaking tsunami that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and set off the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. While the cable offers few specifics about the weaknesses in Japan's disaster planning, it does go on to warn that a blow that disables the country could have catastrophic consequences for global trade and finance.
That said, I suspect that most of the things that came to pass were driven by science and engineering and that most of the mistakes came in the public communications process. Note, though, that the human response to any nuclear disaster tends to be deeply irrational, unscientific, and apocalyptic. This means that the margin of error for managing the figurative—if not the physical—fallout is very small compared to other disasters, such as massive toxic chemical spills—or the tsunami itself.
More on My Take on TEPCO’s Post-Nuclear Disaster Liability
A friend of mine wrote in to tell me that according to a media report, plans are afoot for a 50/50 split between TEPCO and the government for liability stemming from the nuclear disaster under Article 16 of the Act on Compensation for Nuclear Damage. However, he’s looked at the TEPCO website and thinks that it’s still looking to be absolved altogether somewhere down the line under Article 3, paragraph 1 of the Act. The following is my response, lightly edited. I left a couple of embarrassing details visibly edits because I thought it was funny that I’d totally forgotten that I’d blogged it. At least I didn’t imagine it all in the still of the night.
It’s about time.
I made the argument early on—the SSJ Forum, where predictably no one picked up on it—that TEPCO directors could face shareholder lawsuits if they did not pursue the Article 3.1 route. And if I were a hedge fund holding TEPCO shares, I would be afraid of being sued by my investors if I didn't file that lawsuit against the TEPCO directors. Now, if I were a shareholder of that little old bank in Illinois that had put some of its money in that hedge fund... Remember how those little old banks would hold the entire deal in ransom during the 90s bailout negotiations?
As for the 50/50 split, it's been at least acouple of weeks since Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano said that the government and TEPCO were jointly and severally liable (I think that's essentially what he meant by 真正連帯債務) and maybe a week[couple of days] (ed. HAHA I’d forgotten that I’d blogged it two nights ago) since he mentioned, almost in passing, that it would be a 50/50 split. I was surprised on both occasions when the media failed to take note. It's probably hard for people who don't go to the source to realize that the power utility that everyone loves to vilify is facing strict liability. It would be difficult IMHO to prove negligence, since TEPCO had jumped all the legal hoops up to the Fukushima disaster. Government negligence should be easier to prove, since it was the one who decided not to require more precautions despite some expert opinion to the contrary. With power comes responsibility. But 50/50? I wonder where that came from. Surprising to hear a lawyer—Edano—make that concession before the inevitable negotiations with TEPCO. I wonder if the fix is already in.
All in all, I'd go for Article 3, paragraph 1; it heals you, whereas Article 16 only keeps you alive, and who wants to be on life support for the next 20 years…Oh, Dr. Kerkevorian...
It’s about time.
I made the argument early on—the SSJ Forum, where predictably no one picked up on it—that TEPCO directors could face shareholder lawsuits if they did not pursue the Article 3.1 route. And if I were a hedge fund holding TEPCO shares, I would be afraid of being sued by my investors if I didn't file that lawsuit against the TEPCO directors. Now, if I were a shareholder of that little old bank in Illinois that had put some of its money in that hedge fund... Remember how those little old banks would hold the entire deal in ransom during the 90s bailout negotiations?
As for the 50/50 split, it's been at least a
All in all, I'd go for Article 3, paragraph 1; it heals you, whereas Article 16 only keeps you alive, and who wants to be on life support for the next 20 years…Oh, Dr. Kerkevorian...
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
The Japanese Government’s Liability around the Nuclear Disaster: or, Edano Got Game
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano has quietly but firmly made it clear that the Japanese government is jointly and severally liable (he apparently invented what appears to be a retronym—真正連帯債務—to emphasize the point) for damages arising from the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Yesterday (? Monday), he went on record as saying that the government and Tepco would be responsible for half each of the (according to the latest estimates) 4 trillion yen tab. When everybody is finding it convenient to dump on Tepco, he’s injecting a little lawyerly reality into the process without being called a Tepco lackey. That’s quite a feat.
Sunday, May 01, 2011
The Ebb and Flow of the Anti-Kan Forces
Some headlines from the online Yomiuiri:
The MSM is still taking at face value the LDP and Komeito’s claim that they want Kan out. But I think that my assessment in my previous post (29 April) makes more sense in the light of this sequence of events. Note also that Ozawa’s bark as passed along by mostly anonymous associates and illustrated by the poor attendance at his anti-Kan rally is proving to be worse than his bite.
23 April: “Diet Members Aligned with Ozawa to Step Up Efforts to ‘Depose Kan’ When New Week Begins (小沢系議員、週明けから「菅降ろし」本格化)”In the meantime, on 29 April, the DPJ, LDP and Komeito—but no PNP, which fact being totally ignored in the MSM—come to an agreement on the first supplemental budget that allows the Kan administration to finance it mostly with “buried treasures” initially allocated in the FY2011 budget to subsidize the national pension fund. The reallocation as well as the child allowance and toll-free highways—two items in the DPJ manifesto that are being scaled back to finance the supplemental budget—and other expenditure items will be revisited when the second supplemental budget is formulated. This will be the basis on which the three parties will work to formulate and enact the FY2011 deficit bond authorization bill.
26 April: “Prime Minister: ‘Must Be Candid in Admitting Loss’ in [Nationwide] Local Elections (統一選「率直に敗北と認めざるを得ない」…首相)”
27 April: “60 [Diet Members Show Up] at Study Group to ‘Depose Kan’…Heavy Ozawa Influence (民主「菅降ろし」勉強会に６０人…濃い小沢色)”
29 April: “[National Labor Union] Rengo Chairman Koga: ‘Ceaseless Conflict within DPJ Regrettable(連合・古賀会長「民主党の絶えぬ対立は遺憾」)”
01 May: “Will Refrain from Efforts to Depose Kan for the Time Being…Ozawa, Hatoyama Agree菅降ろし、当面控える…小沢・鳩山両氏が一致)”
The MSM is still taking at face value the LDP and Komeito’s claim that they want Kan out. But I think that my assessment in my previous post (29 April) makes more sense in the light of this sequence of events. Note also that Ozawa’s bark as passed along by mostly anonymous associates and illustrated by the poor attendance at his anti-Kan rally is proving to be worse than his bite.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Let’s Be Nice to Our Prime Minister; It’s a National Holiday, for God’s Sake
Kaoto Kan, currently Japan’s prime minister, is not exactly my favorite politician, but surely he deserves some credit for what he is trying to do. He does have a policy agenda that is relatively coherent and more consonant with the pre-Ozawa manifesto as well as the post-3.11 realities. Moreover, the opposition parties as well as Ozawa’s allies in the DPJ are not well-positioned to force him out. That doesn’t mean that he’s in the clear until the DPJ leadership election in 2012, but I think that reports of his imminent demise are very much premature. If you’re interested, please read on.
He continues to push ahead on social safety network reform coupled to a consumption tax hike despite last year’s upper house election setback. This is a reversion to the DPJ’s pre-Ozawa manifesto. Scaling back the child allowance also brings it more in line with the pre-Ozawa manifesto. Add the reduction in scope for agricultural income subsidies—remember that the DPJ linked the money to trade liberalization—and it’s pretty clear that Kan is trying to pull the DPJ back toward the urban orientation of its pre-Ozawa/Hatoyama days. From this perspective, I see no reason to think that he won’t revive his TPP initiative, once the relief and recovery process is fully on track and the nuclear situation is stabilized so he won’t look like he’s kicking the Tohoku and Kanto farmers while they’re down. Toll-free highways—another big ticket item—had already been scaled back substantially by Seiji Maehara as Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism when he was forced to cough up gasoline tax revenue to finance Ozawa’s old-school politics road-building plans, but the majority of the Japanese public won’t be sorry to see that experiment die.
So Kan certainly does have a policy program, though it is poorly articulated. Perhaps that is by design; he doesn’t want to completely alienate the DPJ’s pro-Ozawa wing, which has pretty much been frozen out of the policymaking process and is using the manifesto as a rallying cry. There’s also the matter of his surprising—to me at least—lack of communication instincts judging from his performance as prime minister. Still, if you look beyond the headlines in the media and the criticism from his DPJ detractors, his policy agenda in my view is both more coherent and more consonant with the PDJ policy agenda before Ozawa altered it, likely for electoral purposes.
But what are his political prospects? A few things to keep in mind. First, the LDP calls for Kan’s resignation are not to be believed. The last thing that they want is to go into an election against a DPJ under rejuvenated leadership. Second, Komeito does not want to lean on the Sokagakkai troops again so soon after the “nationwide” local elections. Besides, it currently has enormous leverage over the DPJ now because of its ability to deliver an upper house majority by itself. Komeito can marginally increase its leverage through a lower house election if it results in a near-equal DPJ-LDP split, allowing Komeito to give a lower house majority to either of the two major parties. I say “marginally” because choosing the LDP would mean that the administration would have to work with an upper house minority. Why upset the political cart for a new lower house configuration that could trigger further political realignment? On this side of the aisle, the SDP has lost just about every general election since it sold its pacifist soul to buy the prime minister’s office for Tomiichi Murayama. There is no reason to believe that the next election will be any different. And the formal coalition partner PNP is what it is. The DPJ loses one seat and there goes the DPJ-PNP-SDP’s joint lower house supermajority, and with it what remains of the PNP’s (and SDP’s) leverage. As for Ozawa’s DPJ allies, if they manage to secure enough breakaways to pass a lower house vote of no confidence in the Kan cabinet, their lower house members will have to fight a three- or four-way battle against the DPJ, LDP, and Your Party. And many of them are first-termers, who will surely be at least as vulnerable as the Koizumi Kids. All this does not mean that
This does not mean that Kan’s path leading up to (but not including) the 2012 DPJ leadership election is clear. There is always the chance that the opposition parties and Ozawa’s allies will wind up pushing Kan too hard, with results that at least some of them do not want at all. Wars have been started that way. More plausibly, if Kan looks so bad that his DPJ supporters start abandoning him, that’s the end for him. He may be stubborn, he may have a massive ego, but he’s not so selfish that he’ll take the DPJ down with him by calling a snap election. He’ll step down, leaving it to someone more articulate and telegenic to lead that charge. Don’t even rule out Ozawa’s arch DPJ nemesis Yukio Edano in that case; politics makes strange bedfellows.
And beyond all the politics, there is the matter of genuine policy differences. Kan does have a policy agenda that is significantly at odds with what Ozawa and his DPJ allies profess, never mind their motives. This chasm also exists within the LDP as well. And reform is afoot in the upper house, although the next election there is not due until 2013. Feel free to make your own inferences here.
He continues to push ahead on social safety network reform coupled to a consumption tax hike despite last year’s upper house election setback. This is a reversion to the DPJ’s pre-Ozawa manifesto. Scaling back the child allowance also brings it more in line with the pre-Ozawa manifesto. Add the reduction in scope for agricultural income subsidies—remember that the DPJ linked the money to trade liberalization—and it’s pretty clear that Kan is trying to pull the DPJ back toward the urban orientation of its pre-Ozawa/Hatoyama days. From this perspective, I see no reason to think that he won’t revive his TPP initiative, once the relief and recovery process is fully on track and the nuclear situation is stabilized so he won’t look like he’s kicking the Tohoku and Kanto farmers while they’re down. Toll-free highways—another big ticket item—had already been scaled back substantially by Seiji Maehara as Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism when he was forced to cough up gasoline tax revenue to finance Ozawa’s old-school politics road-building plans, but the majority of the Japanese public won’t be sorry to see that experiment die.
So Kan certainly does have a policy program, though it is poorly articulated. Perhaps that is by design; he doesn’t want to completely alienate the DPJ’s pro-Ozawa wing, which has pretty much been frozen out of the policymaking process and is using the manifesto as a rallying cry. There’s also the matter of his surprising—to me at least—lack of communication instincts judging from his performance as prime minister. Still, if you look beyond the headlines in the media and the criticism from his DPJ detractors, his policy agenda in my view is both more coherent and more consonant with the PDJ policy agenda before Ozawa altered it, likely for electoral purposes.
But what are his political prospects? A few things to keep in mind. First, the LDP calls for Kan’s resignation are not to be believed. The last thing that they want is to go into an election against a DPJ under rejuvenated leadership. Second, Komeito does not want to lean on the Sokagakkai troops again so soon after the “nationwide” local elections. Besides, it currently has enormous leverage over the DPJ now because of its ability to deliver an upper house majority by itself. Komeito can marginally increase its leverage through a lower house election if it results in a near-equal DPJ-LDP split, allowing Komeito to give a lower house majority to either of the two major parties. I say “marginally” because choosing the LDP would mean that the administration would have to work with an upper house minority. Why upset the political cart for a new lower house configuration that could trigger further political realignment? On this side of the aisle, the SDP has lost just about every general election since it sold its pacifist soul to buy the prime minister’s office for Tomiichi Murayama. There is no reason to believe that the next election will be any different. And the formal coalition partner PNP is what it is. The DPJ loses one seat and there goes the DPJ-PNP-SDP’s joint lower house supermajority, and with it what remains of the PNP’s (and SDP’s) leverage. As for Ozawa’s DPJ allies, if they manage to secure enough breakaways to pass a lower house vote of no confidence in the Kan cabinet, their lower house members will have to fight a three- or four-way battle against the DPJ, LDP, and Your Party. And many of them are first-termers, who will surely be at least as vulnerable as the Koizumi Kids. All this does not mean that
This does not mean that Kan’s path leading up to (but not including) the 2012 DPJ leadership election is clear. There is always the chance that the opposition parties and Ozawa’s allies will wind up pushing Kan too hard, with results that at least some of them do not want at all. Wars have been started that way. More plausibly, if Kan looks so bad that his DPJ supporters start abandoning him, that’s the end for him. He may be stubborn, he may have a massive ego, but he’s not so selfish that he’ll take the DPJ down with him by calling a snap election. He’ll step down, leaving it to someone more articulate and telegenic to lead that charge. Don’t even rule out Ozawa’s arch DPJ nemesis Yukio Edano in that case; politics makes strange bedfellows.
And beyond all the politics, there is the matter of genuine policy differences. Kan does have a policy agenda that is significantly at odds with what Ozawa and his DPJ allies profess, never mind their motives. This chasm also exists within the LDP as well. And reform is afoot in the upper house, although the next election there is not due until 2013. Feel free to make your own inferences here.
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