Observing Japan

Waiting for the reformists

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 08:42:00 +0000

The decision to delay the general election until 30 August means that there are weeks left for the LDP's warring policy groups to battle for the soul of the party.

It turns out that the twenty-seven days that will elapse between the dissolution of the lower house on 21 July and the start of the campaign on 18 August will be the longest such period under the postwar constitution. The 2005 election's twenty-one days is the current record.

In the meantime, Asō Tarō and the LDP will be tested. The first, and perhaps easiest, test will be the concurrent lower house no-confidence and upper house censure motions submitted by the opposition parties this evening. The DPJ and the other opposition parties presumably hope that they will present potential LDP rebels with an opportunity to break with the party. However, it will probably take more than a no-confidence motion for the DPJ to draw away potential LDP defectors. By acting immediately after the Tokyo election, Asō clearly knocked the intra-party anti-Asō movement off balance, which of course wanted to delay so that they might have a chance to unseat the prime minister and elevate a new leader. The reformists may simply not be ready to act so decisively against the prime minister, especially since the no-confidence motion will go to a vote in the House of Representatives Tuesday afternoon, followed by a censure vote in the upper house.

But Asō and the LDP could still face an exodus of reformists from the party. Is Nakagawa Hidenao truly ready to leave? Will other Koizumi children follow Nagasaki Kotaro out of the party, reasoning that they stand a better chance of reelection running independently? Will they join with Watanabe Yoshimi and his incipient party? Is Watanabe about to receive an influx of LDP members? If they do leave, it will force the LDP to debate borrowing from Koizumi and nominating "assassin" candidates to run against the reformists. At the same time, DPJ candidates would presumably have a harder time against independent reformist candidates who had broken away from the LDP than the same candidates struggling to distance themselves from Asō without leaving the party.

It is entirely possible that the reformists will stay and fight on within the LDP, perhaps issuing a policy document tantamount to a manifesto while still running as LDP candidates. As unpopular as Asō is, there are advantages to pursuing this course of action instead of breaking with the LDP outright, not least because it maximizes their post-election options.

There is a certain symmetry to this state of affairs, given that four years ago the reformists had the LDP's old guard on the defensive to the point of driving some of their number out of the party. The difference is that it is unlikely that the LDP leadership will actively seek to drive the reformists from the party, no matter what they do to distance themselves and undermine Asō.

Indeed, if this election is to spell the end of the LDP, there will also be a certain symmetry with the beginning of the LDP, which began with a merger among warring camps incapable of agreeing on a postwar conservative agenda. And, appropriately, once again a Hatoyama is poised to gain the premiership.

Celebrate the kaisan

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 04:30:00 +0000

Ken Worsley from Trans-Pacific Radio and I will be at the Cantina in Takadanobaba on Wednesday evening, when Guinness will be half price. Join us to talk politics or just to hoist a glass and celebrate the fact that we finally know when the election will be held.

And if you are interested in attending the July 25th bloggers party but haven't informed Ken and me yet, please send an email to observingjapan@gmail.com and japaneconomynews@gmail.com.

Aso pulls the trigger

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 02:29:00 +0000

Prime Minister Asō Tarō, facing open rebellion, has decided to exercise his nuclear option.

At an emergency meeting of LDP executives, the prime minister and the LDP agreed that the lower house will be dissolved on 21 July and the general election will be held on 30 August. Kōji will be on 18 August.

After two years of demanding a general election, the DPJ will finally get its chance to win control of the lower house.

Plenty will happen in the meantime, especially in the fight within the LDP. What will Nakagawa Hidenao and company do now that Asō has gone ahead and decided on an election, without the party's drafting a manifesto (as demanded by the Manifesto Association)? Nagasaki Kotaro, a Koizumi child from the South Kanto Block, announced Monday that he is leaving the LDP. Will others follow?

A decisive day?

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 14:57:00 +0000

Although the government parties rallied from behind as the night went on, the LDP and Komeitō failed to recapture a majority of the seats in the Tokyo metropolitan assembly, the goal set by the LDP.

NHK has called all but three seats, with the opposition parties currently holding sixty-five, one more than the sixty-four needed for a majority. With no DPJ candidates in contention for the remaining three, it's safe to conclude that the DPJ will finish the night with fifty-four seats, up twenty, making it the assembly's largest party. Komeitō came into the election with twenty-two seats, and may even gain one. The JCP came in with thirteen and will return either seven or eight. The LDP's loss may be as little as nine seats, but those are a huge nine seats.

A couple things of note:

Despite fears that Komeitō may struggle to get its voters out due to the government's unpopularity, they still turned out for Komeitō candidates. On a bad night, this result is good news for the coalition. Or not: just because they came out for Komeitō candidates does not mean that they will show up for LDP candidates in the general election (or that they showed up this time).
Communist boom? Not in Tokyo. Perhaps this result augurs well for the DPJ, which gained as much at the expense of other opposition parties as it did at the expense of the LDP.

The ball is in your court, Mr. Asō.

The LDP falls in Tokyo

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:05:00 +0000

As of this writing, the DPJ has surpassed the thirty-eight it held before the election, winning forty-two seats. It is twenty-two short of a majority, with seventy-six remaining. (Sankei is updating results here; Asahi is here.)

The DPJ will become the largest party in the Tokyo assembly, and given the disparity in the early results, it is hard to see how the LDP and Komeitō will retain a majority between them.

Ishihara Nobuteru, head of the Tokyo party, decided not to wait for all the results before apologizing to party supporters, attributing the results to "confusion" in the national party.

These are historic times.

Uh oh

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 11:22:00 +0000

NHK reports that turnout exceeded fifty percent. I can't imagine that's good news for the government.

On the eve of destruction?

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 03:23:00 +0000

The denizens of Tokyo have started voting for representatives to the metropolitan assembly, and the LDP is already explaining away a defeat. Turnout may be up compared with 2005, which, as Jun Okumura notes, bodes ill for the LDP and Komeitō.

Appearing on TV Saturday, Hosoda Hiroyuki, the LDP secretary general, said that the election will have no impact on national affairs, the LDP's refrain throughout the string of defeats in local and prefectural elections. Similarly, Prime Minister Asō, returning to Japan from the G-8 summit in Italy, stressed that of course he wouldn't resign if the coalition loses its majority in the Tokyo assembly.

I do not doubt Asō's resolution to stay. And he is far from friendless in the LDP — even Masuzoe Yoichi, dubbed his most likely challenger by the media, has backed off from open criticism, and Ishiba Shigeru, another potential challenger in his cabinet, recently voiced his support for the prime minister. Whatever unease the LDP's chieftains feel about having Asō as the face of the party in the general election, none seems to be excited at the prospect of a party leadership election before a general election. And why should they be? Rather than enabling the LDP to rid itself of Asō, a party election at this point would serve only to air the LDP's internal divisions even more than they are already being aired. There is some hope within the LDP that Asō will leave voluntarily, but it would strike me as uncharacteristic for the prime minister to bow out willingly.

And Asō still has his nuclear option, the power to call a general election. Yomiuri reports that the prime minister will base his decision regarding the general election on the returns in Tokyo. Regardless of whether the coalition wins or loses power in Tokyo, the election could impel Asō to call an early election. If the coalition wins, he may want to call an early election to take advantage of the temporary shift in the government's favor. If the coalition loses, he may want to call an early election to undercut the anti-Asō movement within the LDP. The question then is how the reformists will react to having no choice but to contest the election under Asō's leadership. Shukan Bunshun suggests that the reformists are thinking about contesting the election with their own manifesto, making them a virtual new party.

How likely is this outcome? I suppose we'll find out soon enough.

Who's afraid of the conservatives?

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:33:00 +0000

Yamasaki Taku, perhaps the leader of the LDP's remaining doves, spoke at a Genron NPO meeting Thursday afternoon at which he addressed Murata Ryohei's revelations of the secret deal between the US and Japan that permitted the US to "introduce" nuclear weapons to Japan. (Previously discussed in this post.)

"It is appropriate to approve this kind of action for US deterrent power," he said, in light of the nuclear standoff with North Korea, this kind of action being a revision of the non-nuclear principles to permit explicitly the introduction of US nuclear weapons into Japan as in the 1960 secret agreement.

Yamasaki is no pacifist, so this statement is not exactly a bombshell, but it does suggest that there is more to this debate than suggested in Armchair Asia's discussion of Murata's revelations. The anonymous author of Armchair Asia outlines Murata's conservative motives in this post, arguing, "In reality, it is part of a convoluted Rightist strategy to repeal Article 9 and create a military independent of the United States."

I do not disagree that Murata has a number of affiliations that strongly suggest his political leanings. The Shokun! article cited in the initial post — Shokun! obviously triggers various red flags — uses a number of conservative code words, "pride," "independent country," and the like. A subsequent post includes a translation of an op-ed by Okazaki Hisahiko, the notoriously hawkish Foreign Ministry OB who was once known as "Abe's brain," defending Murata's actions. (Available in Japanese here.)

But so what? Why should it matter that Murata is a conservative nationalist? And why should it matter why he decided to reveal the secret agreement (or why Okazaki has defended him)? After watching the Abe government blow up, it is hard to muster up the same concern about the influence of the conservatives. The author writes that of how Murata's remarks will be used by those "who want to use any means to repeal Article 9 and advance Japan's rearmament." Events seem to have taken care of both causes. As I have written previously, the economic crisis has greatly diminished the power of the conservatives even within the LDP, to the point that constitution revision might not even be included in the LDP's manifesto this year (if the LDP ever gets around to writing one).

Is Article 9 really at risk? Even in the best of times, it was unlikely that the conservatives would get what they wanted on Article 9. Oh sure, they could get the article revised, but the need to assemble two-thirds of the members of both houses plus fifty percent plus one of the Japanese public would guarantee that the article would be amended but not abandoned. Revision would likely shift the yardsticks, ratifying changes that have been made that appear to depart from the letter of the law, without removing all limitations on Japanese security policy. And, incidentally, I see no problems with revision of this sort. No document drafted by human hands is beyond revision. My problem is with those obsessed with revision, like Abe Shinzō, not revision itself.

In any case, with the LDP in its death throes, it bears mentioning that constitution revision is even less likely under a DPJ-led government in coalition with the SDPJ. A DPJ government is likely to take its cue from public opinion polls that show the percentage of respondents interested in constitution to be under five percent. Raising constitution revision would only serve to weaken the coalition and sow dissent within the LDP, while strengthening an opposition LDP.

The same goes for "rearmament," the second concern voiced by the author of Armchair Asia. The conservatives have been ascendant for roughly the same period that Japan has let its defense spending stagnate, which suggests, of course, that for all their rhetorical might their reach exceeds their grasp. Their reach will only decline further should the LDP lose power this year. They have allies in the DPJ, but if the DPJ is able to deliver on its plans for a government that unifies cabinet and party, conservatives like Maehara Seiji will find themselves straitjacketed by government service. And there is no chance that a DPJ government elected on a platform of Seikatsu dai-ichi would, upon taking power, proceed to channel significant sums of money into defense spending. Elected on a platform stressing butter, butter, butter and facing skyrocketing pensions costs, it is highly unlikely that the DPJ will decide to invest in guns once in office.

There may be more to rearmament than defense spending, but as with some limited form of constitution revision, what is the problem with Japan doing incrementally more without drastically increasing its spending?

To conclude a discussion that has run longer than I intended, the conservatives should be challenged but their strength and influence should not be exaggerated. And if Ambassador Okazaki wants an open debate, then someone in Japan ought to give him his debate.

Meanwhile, as I wrote in my original post on Murata, I think that whatever his motive, it is good that the Japanese government will be forced to address the role of nuclear weapons in the US-Japan relationship openly. It is entirely possible that the Japanese public — with a nuclear North Korea next door — will recognize a revision of the non-nuclear principles that explicitly permits the US to do what it has been doing all along will strengthen Japan's security. Despite the wishes of the conservatives, the public isn't exactly pressing for Japanese nuclear weapons as a substitute for US nuclear weapons.

It is encouraging that the two governments will hold a working-level meeting this month to discuss the nuclear umbrella, a discussion that is long overdue. One meeting will not resolve the paradox of Japan's trying to be the world's conscience on nuclear weapons while being defended by US nuclear weapons but it will at least help call attention to the paradox and force the Japanese public and their representatives to address it. The US should not be forced into a position where it would have to use nukes to defend Japan (at the behest of its elites) even as the Japanese public condemns the US. Explicitly permitting US nuclear weapons in Japan would certainly help make both countries responsible.

Observing Japan in Foreign Policy

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:14:00 +0000

My latest article, on the sinking ship that is Asō Tarō's LDP, is online at the Foreign Policy magazine website.

You can read it here.

(Alas, a mistake has been called to my attention, which I hope will be fixed soon.)

The LDP has exhausted its credit with the Japanese people

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:02:00 +0000

Asō Tarō and the LDP failed in the first of two electoral challenges that will precede the dissolution of the House of Representatives and the forthcoming general election.

Kawakatsu Heita, the DPJ-backed candidate in the Shizuoka gubernatorial election, defeated Sakamoto Yukiko, the LDP- and Komeitō-backed candidate, on Sunday, this despite a split in the DPJ vote in Shizuoka. The DPJ, of course, feels the wind at its back as it looks to Sunday's Tokyo assembly elections. Polls in advance of the Tokyo vote show that the DPJ may well succeed in becoming the largest party in the Tokyo assembly. Mainichi has the DPJ leading the LDP 26% to 13%, another 6% for Komeitō, and 43% undecided. But 55% of respondents said they would consider using their vote to judge the Asō government, which provides a hint to how those 43% might vote Sunday. Yomiuri finds that the DPJ enjoys a similar lead over the LDP, 29.4% to 16.9%, with another 5.1% for Komeitō. Asahi's poll also found undecideds leaning to the DPJ.

The DPJ has every reason to feel that its time has come.

Meanwhile, Asō, in Yomiuri's words, stands at the edge of a cliff. The prime minister, reacting to the news, said that the Shizuoka defeat does not mean that the LDP will lose in Tokyo Sunday — and once again stressed that regional elections have no import for national politics. The Shizuoka branch of the LDP thinks differently, blaming the defeat on the anti-government mood growing throughout Japan. What will be his excuse if the LDP and Komeitō lose Sunday? How many regional elections does the government have to lose before it has an impact on national politics? How many times do the voters have to opt for DPJ-backed candidates before the government will recognize these votes as directed at the LDP-Komeitō coalition? Perhaps Asō's excuse for an LDP defeat in Tokyo will be on account of his absence from the campaign trail, as he is now in Italy for the G8. (Although, come to think of it, his absence may give a bump to LDP candidates...)

We are, blow by blow, witnessing the end of LDP rule. The truce that was supposedly declared between the reformists and the traditionalists was remarkably short-lived: Nakagawa Hidenao was on TV Sunday calling once again for Asō's resignation. Resigning, Nakagawa maintains, is the honorable thing to do. Honor? What honor is there for the LDP in pushing Asō out of the way and elevating a new leader just in time to contest an election?

I think that Nakagawa and the reformists are increasingly beginning to recognize the position they are in: even with a change of leader their position within the LDP is likely to be greatly diminished. There are simply too many Koizumi children holding vulnerable seats (and often facing the DPJ candidates they bested in 2005, meaning that they are facing experienced challengers.) If they manage to influence the drafting to the manifesto, however, and the LDP manages to somehow scratch out a victory, the manifesto becomes a means to hold the LDP leadership accountable, even if the leadership does not come from the ranks of the reformists.

But more than that, the reformists are facing a situation in which they will lack bargaining power with the DPJ should they decide to leave the LDP after the election. If the DPJ wins a majority, it will have little need for LDP defectors. It presumably won't spurn them if they want to join the DPJ, but the defectors won't receive any special treatment from the DPJ. (I can imagine, though, that some DPJ members would be particularly reluctant to let a raft of LDP defectors join the party, thereby strengthening the Maehara group.)

Accordingly, it makes good political sense for the reformists to do what they can to improve the LDP's chances in the general election. Even if the LDP doesn't win, a better-than-expected LDP performance that deprives the DPJ of a majority gives the reformists bargaining power in case they decide to break loose from the LDP. I don't doubt that the reformists think they are sincere about changing the LDP, but how long will they continue to fight a losing struggle within the party? To what extent will they join with LDP members like Yosano Kaoru, who criticized the DPJ's manifesto as "virtually criminal" in its neglect of reality? If the reformists go to far in their criticism of the DPJ — and Nakagawa has certainly strayed in this direction already — they will make it that much harder to join the DPJ should they find the LDP inhospitable after an election.

But I think it is time for the reformists to drop the pretense that the way to change Japan is to change the LDP. Maybe Koizumi had it backwards: change Japan, change the LDP. In other words, it may take another party — for now the DPJ — to implement the political, economic, and administrative reforms that the LDP failed to enact, and in doing so the LDP will change as well in response to the new political environment.

Tokyo election open thread

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:17:00 +0000

I was walking in Takadanobaba this afternoon and noticed a keijiban for the Tokyo election. As I looked over the candidates, I was having trouble finding the poster for the LDP candidate, which struck me as odd. After looking carefully at the posters, I finally found him.

Why was it so hard to locate the LDP candidate?

Because the name "LDP" was written in the smallest possible font while still being visible. The tiny light blue writing in the lower right hand corner, beneath the "ichi" in the candidate's name, is the sole indicator of the candidate's party affiliation.

The logo on the DPJ candidate's poster was small, but was still recognizable as the DPJ's logo. Here are the two posters — conveniently next to one another — for comparison.

With that story for an introduction, I am making this an open thread for things seen and heard during the campaign for the Tokyo assembly. Post your stories in the comments. And if you have good pictures, send them along and I'll post them on the blog.

The Tokyo election truce

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:53:00 +0000

The campaign for the 12 July Tokyo assembly election officially began Friday, marking the beginning of what could be the Asō government's last stand.

The prime minister and his supporters are, of course, doing everything they can to dismiss the notion that Asō Tarō's fate somehow rests upon the party's performance in the Tokyo election, even while they lower the threshold for victory in the election to a simple majority for the LDP and Komeitō combined. Asō's refrain remains that the local is local, and the national is national, and never the twain shall meet — but given Asō's fragile position, the slightest blow can be what makes the difference in whether he survives to the LDP in a general election. The Tokyo party continues to insist that it is in control of the situation, that the national party's concerns are overblown. The LDP's majority in Tokyo, the local party maintains, rests on more than the position of the national leadership.

The DPJ has explicitly argued the opposite, making its slogan in the campaign "Change Tokyo, Change Japan."

Given the role played by the national party leaders and the national media in this campaign, it will clearly have ramifications beyond who controls the Tokyo assembly. This election is a crucial test of whether the Asō LDP has the slightest possibility of retaining the urban seats the LDP won in significant numbers in 2005, seats occupied largely by the reformist LDP members openly challenging the Asō government. If the LDP can win in Tokyo under Asō, it will go a long way to lifting the pressure on his leadership.

To that end, his reformist opponents have declared a truce in the war to overthrow the prime minister before he can call a general election. Representative Yamamoto Taku, collecting signatures within the LDP for a petition demanding that the party move its presidential election to before the general election, has announced that he will exercise self-restraint in the week leading up to the Tokyo election. Sankei reports that there is indeed a truce in the struggle, but suggests that it is nothing more than a truce — there is no hint that a lasting peace is in the works. The party's elders would of course love nothing more than a peace treaty before a general election, and are now working to delay a dissolution not only until after the Tokyo election and Asō's trip to Italy, but until after the Emperor and Empress return from a two-week trip to Hawaii and Canada that ends on 17 July. By then the party expects that remaining legislation will have passed the Diet. What is not clear to me, however, is why senior LDP leaders think that delaying the dissolution and the general election will be a cause for peace within the party. Presumably the more time the reformists have before an election, the more time they have to demand Asō's resignation and to make demands about the contents of the party's manifesto. In the best LDP fashion, the party has decided to postpone official discussion of the manifesto, pushing back the creation of a manifesto project team. The longer the delay, the more time the reformists will have to question the leadership. Nakagawa Hidenao has suggested the possibility of drafting a separate document, even as he said that he wouldn't leave the LDP (yet) — reinforcing the idea that the LDP is divided in all but name. Drafting an independent manifesto would of course help the reformists distance themselves from the prime minister, but even and especially if it helped more Koizumi children get reelected, it would only be setting the stage for a continuation of the intra-party fight after the general election.

The choice for Asō, in other words, is bleak. Win on the 12th and the pressure to delay the general election and accelerate the party election may recede, but the fight over the manifesto will intensify. Lose on the 12th and the pressure on Asō to resign or, failing that, on the party leadership to accelerate the LDP presidential election will grow inexorably. And to take Asō's own words, the local is the local. An LDP victory on 12 July will say little about the party's prospects in a general election.

There may be a truce in the LDP, but the worst fighting is yet to come.

Can the DPJ bring democracy to Japan?

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:58:00 +0000

My latest contribution to the Far Eastern Economic Review, co-authored with Colum Murphy, considers the possibilities of a DPJ government.

It is available online here, and will be the cover article in FEER's July/August issue.

Is it possible improve Japanese political financing?

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:21:00 +0000

Less than two months after succeeding the tainted Ozawa Ichirō as DPJ president, Hatoyama Yukio is mired in a scandal of his own, related to the use of fake contributions to cover for illegal transfers from Hatoyama's personal funds to his political support group.

Jun Okumura describes the scandal in painstaking detail here.

Asō Tarō naturally singled out Hatoyama for criticism, calling on the DPJ leader to provide a clearer explanation for what happened. This scandal, however, will not be the gift to the LDP that the Ozawa scandal was, which, after all, undermined the DPJ's promise that regime change would signify a dramatic change from LDP rule — covering up questionable contributions from a construction company being all too typical of business as usual under the LDP. Instead, the Hatoyama scandal looks like business of usual for all politicians under the current political financing system, the creative accounting that all political support groups appear to be both within the law and in the black. (With the added twist of the role played by Hatoyama's personal fortune in covering up for shortfalls.)

In hindsight, we should not be surprised that, given Hatoyama's wealth, the line between his personal funds and his political organization was blurred. But it's hard to get too worked up over a political funds scandal, not when the political funds control law appears to be honored more in the breach than in the observance.

I'd like to think that upon taking office the DPJ could fix the political financing system — which because it gives individual politicians a considerable degree of independence from their parties has certainly undermined the cohesiveness of the LDP — but it may be beyond reform. Short of banning kōenkai outright, which would be impossible and, beyond that, presumably unconstitutional, any reform at this point would be mere tinkering to refine the ability of authorities to uncover egregious abuses of the system.

What the government should do, however, is bring Japanese political activities into the twenty-first century. Make it easier for individuals to contribute to politicians, enable politicians to make more use of the Internet, a scalable method of reaching supporters and providing information compared with the labor-intensive and costly method of disseminating an endless stream of paper. It should also — as Ozawa has argued — lift the restriction on door-to-door campaigning, which is cheaper than distributing material.

If the DPJ and other parties are serious about political reform, they ought to lower the barriers to entry in Japanese politics, making it easier for outsiders, candidates without the "three ban", to enter politics. Doing so won't spell the end of corruption, but it would make it possible for candidates to be successful even without the cozy relationships with donors that lead to corruption.

Amano's election deepens Japan's nuclear paradox

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:38:00 +0000

After a long stalemate to choose a successor for outgoing director-general Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA's board of governors elected Japanese diplomat Amano Yukiya to the position by a single vote over the requisite two-thirds majority.

The prolonged dispute was the result of a split between developed and developing countries, the latter of which preferred South African candidate Abdul Samad Minty, who would have prioritized reducing the arsenals of the extant nuclear powers over preventing nuclear proliferation. Amano, meanwhile, is seen as the candidate of the developed world.

This image of Amano precisely captures the ambiguity in Japan's nuclear posture, namely the paradox whereby Japan often speaks as a moral arbiter on nuclear affairs due to its status as the sole victim of the atomic bomb while being defended by the one of the world's nuclear powers (and the sole country to use the atomic bomb in wartime). It is particularly ironic that Amano's election immediately followed revelations by former administrative vice minister for foreign affairs Murata Ryohei about the existence of a "secret" pact between the US and Japan permitting the introduction of US nuclear weapons into Japan without prior consultation.

Murata spoke of a "single sheet of paper," passed from administrative vice minister to administrative vice minister, which permitted the US to introduce nuclear weapons to Japan without prior consultation with the Japanese government, as was supposed to happen under the terms of a 1960 agreement concluded at the same time as the US-Japan mutual security treaty. Although it was already an open secret that the US introduced nuclear weapons into Japan abroad its warships despite the official bilateral agreement and later three non-nuclear principles (promulgated after the agreement), Murata's comments mark the first such admission by an administrative vice-minister. (Murata's remarks were preceded by the remarks of other former administrative vice-ministers last month, who spoke anonymously to Kyodo. Murata is the first on the record.)

Nevertheless, as a testament to how important the Japanese government finds it to downplay Japan's nuclear paradox before the public, Chief Cabinet Secretary Kawamura Takeo denied the existence of the secret agreement. Kawamura's denial of reality prompted criticism from Kono Tarō, chairman of the lower house foreign affairs committee, who said that the government's position contradicted the evidence (and common sense) and suggested that his committee would look into investigating the matter.

Clearing the air on the precise nature of the US-Japan nuclear relationship in the past would be an important first step in debating that relationship going forward. Should Japan formalize the secret agreement and revise the three non-nuclear principles to 2.5 principles, as some have suggested? Would doing so reinforce the nuclear umbrella, or would Japanese elites still voice doubts about the soundness of the US commitment to defend Japan?

Of course, at the same time Amano's selection as IAEA director-general may rule out major changes in Japan's nuclear posture for the duration of his term. It seems to me that it would be difficult for Japan to have the nuclear weapons debate desired by conservatives with a Japanese official the face of the global non-proliferation regime. Pressures to have that debate will no dout continue as North Korea and China continue to bolster their arsenals, meaning that rather than resolving Japan's schizophrenic relationship with the atomic bomb, Amano's elevation will only intensify the gap between Japan's aspirations to serve as the world's conscience on nuclear weapons and the reality of the role of nuclear deterrence in the defense of Japan.

Japan politics blogger party, the sequel

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:14:00 +0000

Following our successful nomikai in January of this year, some of us politics bloggers have decided to hold another party to give our readers an opportunity ~~to ply us with drinks~~ to put faces to blogs.

Once again we will be gathering at The Pink Cow in Shibuya, at 7pm on Saturday July 25th.

If you are interested in attending, please send an email — the sooner the better — to me (observingjapan@gmail.com) and Ken Worsley (japaneconomynews@gmail.com) so that we can get a rough sense of how many people to expect.

Along the same lines, if there is interest, I am considering doing a separate bar meet one night before the 25th. Anyone up for talking politics one night? Send me an email and I'll set something up.

Reaping the whirlwind

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 04:00:00 +0000

How can the LDP govern Japan when it can barely govern itself?

The war of attrition that has been waged between the Koizumian remnant in the LDP and the rest of the party since Koizumi stepped down as prime minister in 2006 has entered a particularly bloody phase as the Koizumians have decided to launch a final offensive in the hope of toppling Asō Tarō before he can call a general election.

Yamamoto Taku, the lower house member collecting signatures to "recall" Asō by forcing an early party election, has stepped up his effort in the hope of collecting the requisite 216 signatures (half the total number of LDP members of both houses and the chairs of the prefectural party chapters) by 13 July, the date of the general meeting of LDP members from both houses. Beyond Yamamoto's signature drive, on Tuesday afternoon a new study group — the Manifesto Association — held its first meeting. The association is a collection of nine different Diet members' leagues of the reformist stripe and plans to draft proposals for inclusion in the party's election manifesto. The association wants the party's manifesto drafted before the Diet is dissolved and an election called. Not surprisingly, many in the party suspect that this group has a not-so-ulterior motive of toppling Asō.

There is a certain symmetry to this explosion of open opposition to the Asō government and, by extension, the LDP establishment, which continues to back the prime minister. Four years ago it was the reformists who were in control of the party and the agenda. During the summer of postal reform, it was the reformists who were advancing, with the LDP establishment doing everything in its power to slow Koizumi's agenda — with the small band of postal rebels eventually emerging to challenge Koizumi openly. Indeed, it was around this time four years ago that the LDP establishment delivered a blow to Koizumi when the LDP's general council broke with precedent to hold a majority vote on proposed revisions to the government's postal privatization bills.

Since then of course the reformists have been in steady retreat against a resurgent party establishment, bringing us to this latest round of infighting, a last-ditch attempt by the reformists to steer the LDP in a new direction.

Whether by design or not, Koizumi appears to have destroyed the LDP. The reformist remnant that was supposed to be the vanguard of a new LDP appears to be better at destruction than creation, skilled at undermining governments deemed insufficiently committed to their reform plans but incapable of putting forward their own candidate for the party leadership or convincing other members of the party to embrace the reformist agenda as being beneficial for the party as a whole.

I am not questioning their policy ideas, which, after all are not altogether different from ideas being floated by the DPJ. The difference, however, is that the DPJ lacks the pathologies of LDP rule. The LDP has become ungovernable. No authority can bring recalcitrant members to heel. No leader can impose a unifying vision on a party home to fundamentally incompatible visions for what the LDP should be.

In some sense the decline of the factions is responsible for the anarchy within the LDP, in that conflict within the LDP used to be conducted among organized groups that obeyed certain basic rules and were fighting less over policy visions than they were fighting for control over party resources. Which is not to say that factional conflict was tame (cf. the Kaku-Fuku sensō), but that it lacked the ideological fervor that the Koizumians have brought to the LDP. Like the international system, a once orderly balance of power has given way to a unipolar factional system (with the Machimura faction playing the role of the US) sitting atop an unruly party in which factions exist alongside a myriad of study groups, non-partisan groups, policy zoku, and other smaller, less organized groups (much as nation-states and U.S. unipolarity exist alongside international organizations, terrorist groups and gangs, multinational corporations and the like).

Anarchy within the LDP has had severe consequences for Japan, having paralyzed the Japanese government just when Japan needed a government capable of assessing problems clearly and responding decisively.

And so we have the Asō government, which is fighting to the death for the privilege to lead the LDP to defeat. To save himself, Asō will say or do anything. The reformists, supposedly eager to save the LDP, will do anything to push their agenda and elevate another party leader, despite the obvious contempt such an act would show for the Japanese public. Asō still enjoys the upper hand in this fight, in that the reformists, while a vocal minority, are still a minority. They are making life difficult for the prime minister (while making life easier for the DPJ, which will face an LDP whose members have spent months fighting amongst themselves), but they cannot dictate terms to the LDP. Shiozaki Yasuhisa and company are deluding themselves if they think that the rest of the LDP will allow the reformists to dictate the party's manifesto, making this round of fighting especially futile. If the LDP were capable of drafting a manifesto that the whole party could accept — no matter how watered down its proposals — and agreeing to stand behind Asō, the party would at least make the DPJ fight for every seat and perhaps deprive it of a majority. As matters stand now, the DPJ stands a good chance of taking a simple majority on its own.

The question remains what will happen following an LDP electoral defeat. Will the reformists use the occasion to break from the LDP and form their own party? Will they continue the internecine fight for control of the LDP? With each act of rebellion against the Asō government, the reformists make it less likely that they will be a welcome part of a post-defeat LDP.

None of this is to say that Asō is an ideal leader or that there is a right side and a wrong side in the battle between the reformists and the party establishment. Rather, the problem is the LDP itself, that LDP government has meant brutal and ceaseless infighting within the ruling party, which has made for irregular and more often than not deeply ineffective government. That is reason enough for the LDP to be removed from power.

Asō makes a pun

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Speaking before the Upper House Budget Committee on Monday, Prime Minister Asō Tarō reached a new low for an LDP leader attacking the opposition DPJ.

Asō was addressing the debate regarding the DPJ's plans to finance new spending by cutting wasteful spending and tapping the so-called "buried treasure" of Kasumigaseki, surpluses in the government's numerous special account budgets. Calling upon the DPJ to be more specific about the sources for the 20.5 trillion yen in spending proposals in its manifesto, Asō then said the following:

"The DPJ is flying the flag of regime change, but if there is regime change, there will probably be a recession."

民主党は政権交代を旗印にしているが、政権交代は必ず景気後退になるだろう。

It seems that Asō, known for stumbling over words (like this recent gaffe), was trying to make a pun, connecting 政権交代 (seiken kōtai) to 景気後退 (keiki kōtai). Nicely played, Mr. Asō.

Except that I can think of at least two things wrong with this critique. First, it seems that Asō has forgotten that Japan is already in a recession. Perhaps someone could show him the latest labor survey released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, which found that the unemployment rate rose to 5.2% in May. Naturally Asō would wave off this complaint by repeating the refrain about the "once in a century economic crisis originating in America," but whatever the source, Asō is hardly in a position to be talking about recessions to come, not with Japan mired in a rather severe one under his own government.

Second, the causal logic in this statement is dubious. How exactly will the DPJ cause a recession by not offering a clear account for how it intends to pay for its programs? Is Asō is suggesting that LDP profligacy caused past recessions? How exactly will the DPJ's failure to outline in precise detail how it will pay for its programs trigger a recession? Or is Asō speaking in a general sense, that the DPJ is so clearly maladroit at governing that it will drag Japan done? If so, one need only ask about Asō's own party, or his own government, for that matter, which just loosened restraints on public spending. How is carefree spending under the LDP the mark of a "responsible party" but carefree spending under the DPJ the harbinger of recession?

In short, there is very little that the LDP can ask about the DPJ without having the DPJ turn around and ask the same question about the LDP.

Circling the drain

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:30:00 +0000

The dissolution of the House of Representatives, Prime Minister Asō Tarō tells us, is not far off.

It cannot come soon enough. Each day brings more news of Asō's loosening grasp on his own party. Yomiuri reports that from Monday, the effort to replace the prime minister will take on a new urgency. The movement to move up the LDP presidential election is growing apace, becoming the latest cause of the LDP's reformists, who seem to think that one final change of leadership will be able to make up for three years of backsliding on reform. In addition to Yamamoto Taku, the lower house member circulating a petition on the election, Takebe Tsutomu, onetime Koizumi lieutenant, is also calling for an early party election, suggesting that Koike Yuriko or Masuzoe Yoichi would make fine choices for a new party leader and prime minister. Nakagawa Hidenao has suggested that if Asō does the "honorable" thing and resigns, LDP rule can continue. Tanahashi Yasufumi, who as a forty-one-year-old third-term Diet member became a cabinet minister holding special portfolios for science and technology and food safety under Koizumi, has openly called for the prime minister's resignation.

It is difficult to see what this campaign against Asō will accomplish other than accelerating the LDP's decline and perhaps forcing Asō into accelerating the lower house dissolution and a general election. The prime minister, after all, still has a nuclear option in the form of the right of dissolution, and to use it would deal a mortal blow to efforts to unseat him. If it would be farcical to replace Asō now, on the eve of a dissolution, it would be even more insulting to the intelligence of the Japanese public to replace Asō once the clock started ticking from the dissolution to a general election. To change leaders now would be an insult, sending a simple message to the public: pay no attention to the mishaps of the three LDP leaders who followed Koizumi and look to the bright future under (insert name of flashy new leader here).

At this point it would be no less insulting for Asō to reshuffle the LDP leadership to change the faces who will be seen on the campaign trail along with the prime minister. But along with his power over the timing of the general election the power to pick his cabinet and party leaders is just about all that Asō has left, and so it seems possible that he will use this last remaining tool to shake up the LDP. Yamamoto Ichita alludes to rumors that the PM might name Masuzoe chief cabinet secretary — in other words, giving Masuzoe responsibility for the election campaign, which would ensure that one of the few remaining popular LDP members would go before the public across the country.

Nevertheless, it is getting difficult to think of new metaphors and similes to illustrate just how desperate the LDP's situation is as June comes to a close. It is difficult to see a pathway to victory for the LDP barring some enormous scandal that implicates much of the DPJ — and even then, the election would presumably be closely contested. For all their good intentions, the reformists appear to have ensured that the LDP will be stuck with Asō, who now, thanks to their campaign to remove him, looks largely powerless as prime minister and party leader.

But not wholly powerless, as it looks like he will exercise his ultimate power. Asō has met with LDP and Komeitō leaders in recent days, and Sankei suggests that an early August election is most likely. According to Oshima Tadamori, the LDP's kokutai chairman, Asō has a final choice to make: whether to dissolve the Diet before he goes to Italy for the G8 summit on July 8 (and before the Tokyo assembly election on July 12) or whether to wait until after the Tokyo election. The choice will make little difference for the outcome – although Asō may enjoy Italy more if he waits until after his return to dissolve the Diet and call an election.

The vision thing

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:03:00 +0000

On Tuesday the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (CEFP) released the 2009 Basic Plan for Economic and Fiscal Reform (known colloquially as the honebuto), available here along with other documents from the Tuesday meeting.

The plan is controversial because the Asō government appears to have sidestepped an existing agreement — originating in the 2006 honebuto — that social security spending would be capped at 220 billion yen, a figure that the general account budget is rapidly nearing. Social security spending is by far the largest portion of the budget and a major contributor to the government's deficits, hardly surprising given Japan's demographics. Needless to say, central to the fiscal crisis of the Japanese state is figuring out how to bear the burden of providing for Japan's elderly without bankrupting the state or wrecking the economy. At the same time, the LDP has struggled to undo the damage done to the party by the Abe government's mishandling of the 2007 pensions scandal — and so, as with many other recent government and LDP documents, the 2009 honebuto stresses economic security alongside economic vitality as a goal of reform. Years of polling show that the state of social security is the Japanese public's top policy priority. The LDP cannot afford to look weak on social security as it did in 2007 if it is to have the slightest chance of winning this year's general election.

How did the Asō government resolve this tension? It punted, withdrawing the clause limiting social security spending to 220 billion yen but insisting that the government still views solving the fiscal crisis as a top medium- and long-term priority priority for the Japanese state. The new plan, for example, retains a provision that calls for annual three percent cuts in public works spending. The government will also continue to economize in other areas (which will undoubtedly undermine the effort by LDP conservatives to ratchet up Japan's defense spending).

This single episode says much about the decay of LDP rule.

Press coverage of the Asō government's decision has focused on the role played by members of the LDP's education, and health and welfare policy tribes (zoku) in pressuring the government to abandon the social security ceiling and other spending limits. "A free for all for zoku," an anonymous source told Sankei. Mainichi noted the role played by the zoku and added that Prime Minister Asō was missing in action in this debate. Naturally both of these factors are important in explaining why the Asō government softened its approach to the fiscal restraint. But it is useful to step back from the interplay of personalities: this episode shows the irreconciliable forces tugging at Asō and the LDP more generally. Asō, like Fukuda before him, is struggling to weave his way between economic reformists and traditionalists, between fiscal hawks and spendthrifts, between budget cutters and tax hikers. While at various points Asō has attempted to distance himself from Koizumi and "neo-liberal" reformism, he has stopped short of committing to an approach that is anything more than a balancing act between the competing pressures present within the LDP. The LDP cannot make up its mind what kind of party it wants to be — and unfortunately for Japan, that schizophrenic party has an outsized role in shaping government policy.

Notice that this failure of vision on the part of the LDP has nothing to do with the bureaucracy, the favorite scapegoat of the structural reformers. If the LDP had a vision for governing — or if ruling politicians could impose a vision on the LDP — the bureaucracy would not have nearly as many opportunities for mischief and malfeasance.

In other words, just as the DPJ intensifies its plans for a possible power transition, the LDP has provided an excellent demonstration of how not to govern.

The DPJ faces the bureaucracy

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:15:00 +0000

With the DPJ's prospects on the rise and the LDP mired in what may be terminal disarray, the DPJ is receiving greater scrutiny when it comes to how the party will govern should it take power.

That, after all, is what this election is about: if seiken kotai [regime change], the DPJ's longtime mantra is to have any meaning, the DPJ must be prepared to change how Japan is governed. A change of government must be more than a change of the name of the party wielding Japan's shambolic administrative machinery.

To this end, the DPJ's Kan Naoto opted for an observation tour in Britain. Kan was in Britain for six days, where he met with officials from government and opposition parties to discuss power transitions and relations between politicians and bureaucrats. (Although if the DPJ is going to look to Britain for lessons, can someone please send a box set of Yes Minister to Mr. Kan and company?)

It is revealing that Kan went to Britain because in effect the DPJ hopes to transform Japan's "Un-Westminster" system into a proper Westminster system, with power concentrated in the cabinet at the expense of the governing party and bureaucracy. The vaunted administrative reforms implemented under Prime Ministers Hashimoto and Koizumi served more to strengthen the Kantei as a pillar competing with the LDP and the bureaucracy in the policymaking process than to turn the cabinet and the prime minister's office into a proper Westminster-style executive. The DPJ's hope — and its primary mission — is to concentrate power in the cabinet, declawing its own policymaking organs and forcing the bureaucracy to bend to the will of the duly elected government. Because the DPJ's policymaking organs are underdeveloped compared to the LDP's Policy Research Council, policy zoku, and other mechanisms for LDP backbenchers to intervene in the policymaking process, to effect regime change a DPJ-led government will obviously be forced to confront the bureaucracy. (Although the DPJ has thought ahead about how to prevent its policymaking council from becoming a power base independent of the government: the DPJ plans to have its head serve concurrently as chief cabinet secretary. Naturally the need for coalition partners could complicate this effort considerably.)

The DPJ has plenty of ideas for confronting the bureaucracy, many of which are spelled out by Kan in detail in the July issue of Chūō Kōron. But the sum of these ideas is a scheme to destroy the customary practices that have given the bureaucracy its power, most notably the customs of allowing the bureaucracy to wield the power of personnel appointment delegated to the cabinet and respecting the decisions reached in the conference of administrative vice ministers. Perhaps it would be easier to change Japan's administration if the bureaucracy's powers were written into law. Changing customs can be more challenging, entailing a protracted war of words between the DPJ and the bureaucracy played out in the media. The bureaucracy's goal is akin to the LDP's goal: create a public image of the DPJ as an irresponsible party incapable of acting on behalf of the Japanese people. The media will be the primary arena for the battle between the bureaucracy and a DPJ-led government, but there will be other tools at the bureaucracy's disposal. Bureaucrats may be able to use back channel connections to former bureaucrats in the DPJ in an attempt to sow dissent within the DPJ. Bureaucrats could leak information to the LDP in opposition to undermine or embarrass the government. We should expect that the bureaucracy will do whatever necessary to defend its prerogatives.

The war has already started. Ichide Michio, administrative vice minister for agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, questioned the DPJ's plans for income support for agricultural households as "unrealistic" at a press conference, a clear case of political intervention by a supposedly politically neutral public official. Hatoyama Yukio responded to Ichide's remarks by suggesting that in Britain "he would be sacked." Sasayama Tatsuo shows that Ichide was responding to leading questions from reporters, a mitigating circumstance certainly, but this episode shows what we should expect from the media should the DPJ take power — and more importantly, in the months leading up to the general election.

Admittedly I should not be so quick to speak of the "media" and the "bureaucracy" as monolithic entities. Indeed, success or failure for the DPJ will depend on the extent to which the DPJ is able to sow dissent among bureaucrats, to find and support officials sympathetic to the party's plans. But the point remains that the central task for a DPJ-led government will be engineering a dramatic shift in how power is executed in the policymaking process, a shift conceived by Kan as from "bureaucratic cabinet/centralized government" to "parliamentary cabinet/decentralized government" (the centralization dimension referring to the relationship between the center and the periphery in Japan as a whole).

What the DPJ should not do is compare this task to the two previous great reforms, the Meiji-era reforms and the Occupation-era reforms. The DPJ is simply incapable of delivering reform on that scale, not because it is the DPJ but because it is a party in a functioning parliamentary system. Consider the circumstances during which the great reforms occurred. The first followed an internal, top-down revolution that enabled the new ruling elites to redraw Japanese institutions as they saw fit. The second set of reforms followed catastrophic defeat and was the product of an external, top-down revolution. In both cases there was a blank slate, or at least as blank a slate as possible in human affairs. Reform was largely extra-parliamentary — and as a result, opposition to reform was extra-parliamentary, isolated from power and easily repressed or ignored.

Needless to say, the DPJ will not enjoy the same freedom. It will face considerable legitimate opposition, within the Diet from an LDP that will likely find its voice in opposition and even from members of the coalition government that will likely emerge from the government (even if the DPJ wins a simple majority due to the need to keep its upper house partners involved). It will face opposition from prefectural governors, mayors, prefectural and local assembly members, NPOs, industry groups, and unions. Sooner or later it will face opposition from a considerable portion of the public. And while the bureaucracy may not be elected, its members are certainly participants in the political process. Accordingly, the less grandiose the DPJ is regarding what it hopes to achieve through administrative reform, the less vituperative the party is in its rhetoric regarding the bureaucracy, the more effective the DPJ will be should it take power.

I applaud Kan's efforts to move the DPJ away from harsh, anti-bureaucracy rhetoric that will make it more difficult to work with the bureaucracy. At a press conference last week Kan stressed that the DPJ is not against the bureaucracy, that it recognizes that it needs to make use of the experience and intelligence of Japan's bureaucrats. The DPJ, he said, stands for "post-bureaucratic politics, not anti-bureaucratic politics." Nakagawa Hidenao, Schmittian in his desire for political enemies, dubbed Kan's remarks as heretical to the cause of administrative reform, a sign that the DPJ does not have the stomach to tackle the challenge. But Nakagawa has it precisely wrong. The existence of a strong, entrenched bureaucracy is a fact of life for any Japanese government. Demonizing the bureaucracy accomplishes nothing. As a party with no experience in governing the DPJ will be especially dependent on the bureaucracy.

Does that mean that there is no hope for administrative reform? Hardly. In looking to unify cabinet and party, the DPJ has sought to learn from the LDP's mistakes: bureaucratic rule has been harmful precisely because the LDP did little to prevent collusion between backbenchers and bureaucrats, which prevented the government from speaking with a single voice and enabled backbenchers to misappropriate enormous sums of public funds. A DPJ victory would be a positive development for precisely this reason, as it would represent an opportunity to create a system in which elected representatives serving as prime minister and cabinet ministers could determine national priorities and direct the administrative machinery accordingly, confident that their work would not be undermined by backbenchers following their own agendas. The task, in short, is to establish a clear division of labor between politicians and bureaucrats, making politicians accountable for setting national priorities and drafting legislation, and making the bureaucracy responsible for implementing the public's will as embodied in legislation.

LDP rule has effectively erased this line. The challenge for a DPJ-led government will be to restore it.

From crisis to crisis

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:53:00 +0000

For a government that has at various times tried to distinguish itself as putting policy before politics, the Asō government now closely resembles an immunocompromised patient desperately trying to fend off opportunistic infections, with the infections being political disorder within the LDP. It bears noting that the DPJ has played little or no role in the terminal crisis of the Asō government — indeed, the DPJ nearly resuciated the government by allowing Ozawa Ichirō to stay on as long as he did. But now the DPJ needs to do little more than sit back and let the LDP destroy itself and can in fact help the process along by speedily voting on the government's agenda in the upper house to force the question of the timing of the general election.

In the meantime, the latest crisis facing the prime minister is whether the LDP should move up the date of the LDP presidential election scheduled for September, which would give Asō's opponents a chance to replace him.

Yamamoto Taku, an LDP lower house member, has received eighty-two signatures on his petition calling for rescheduling the party election, and another twenty-six LDP members have voiced their agreement orally. As with each of these crises (or "infections"), senior government and party officials have given their opinion on the matter. Kawamura Takeo, the chief cabinet secretary, rejected the idea outright and warned that it would undermine the government and the LDP. Abe Shinzō, now something of an expert on the impact of cascading crises within the LDP, came to the prime minister's defense too, suggesting that if the LDP were to change leaders again, the public would (rightly, I think) receive it as an act of deception on the part of the LDP. Masuzoe Yoichi, the independent-minded health, welfare, and labor minister, refused to say no to an early leadership election, saying that it is the party's decision to make (perhaps a sign of Masuzoe's intentions?).

It is unlikely that this debate will change the prime minister's mind one way or another, but with each passing day, with each broadside, the LDP slides deeper into crisis. Each attempt by a senior party leader to extract the party from the morass reinforces the image of a party characterized by deep and irresolvable schisms — and a prime minister once again in need of reading material to take his mind off his troubles. (Although perhaps he's not reading for distraction after all: one of his recent purchases is a book about his grandfather's time in office, purchased along with his usual diet of conservative tracts.)

In all likelihood Asō Tarō will survive to lead the LDP into the general election; the movement to overthrow will likely do little more than cripple the LDP, reinforcing the image of a governing party incapable of governing itself, let alone Japan.

Protesting too much?

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:10:00 +0000

In a short span of time, Prime Minister Asō Tarō, Chief Cabinet Secretary Kawamura Takeo, and LDP Secretary-General Hosoda Hiroyuki rejected the attempt by Asō's opponents to link the LDP's performance in the July 12 Tokyo assembly election to Asō's future as LDP leader.

At a press conference Wednesday, Kawamura echoed Hosoda in insisting that there is no connection whatsoever between the LDP's performance in local elections and the prime minister's future as party leader: "The Tokyo assembly election is the Tokyo assembly election."

Speaking with the press Wednesday, Asō stated that regional elections and the general elections are completely distinct and therefore there should be no talk of his taking responsibility via resignation should the party perform poorly in Tokyo.

Of course, it is hard to square this position with the prime minister's decision to visit with all of the LDP's candidates for the Tokyo assembly, something that Asō's allies and opponents have noticed. Undoubtedly it will take more than this trio asserting that there is no link between the two elections to dispel this scheme for how Asō can be edged out with minimal confrontation within the party. This in turn raises the possibility that Asō will follow Koga Makoto and opt for a 12 July double election.

Koike versus the "soft liners"

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:53:00 +0000

On Tuesday, Koike Yuriko, former defense minister and aspirant to the LDP presidency, announced her resignation as chair of the LDP's special committee on base countermeasures.

She told the media that her resignation was intended as a protest against the decision to soften the language on preemption in the LDP Policy Research Council's defense division in the recommendations for this year's National Defense Program Guidelines (NDPG) sent to Prime Minister Asō Tarō this month. She sees the longstanding doctrine of "nonaggressive defense" as injurious to the national defense, unacceptably tying the government's hands in addressing threats to Japanese national security.

Koike has a point: if Japan is to acquire the capabilities to strike at "enemy bases," it might as well be straightforward about the circumstances in which it intends to use said capabilities. What is the deterrent value, after all, of capabilities that Japan may or may not use if faced with an imminent missile launch?

This feud may be indicative of what I thought the response to the remarks (mentioned here) by Cui Tiankai, China's ambassador to Japan, would be among LDP members. While it is unclear at what point the language was softened to rule out preemptive strikes even while calling for capabilities to strike enemy bases, Ambassador Cui's remarks surely reinforced concerns by LDP members like Yamasaki Taku that Japan must be careful about sending the wrong signals abroad — while reinforcing the resolve of hawks like Koike who unabashedly want Japan to be ready and able to carry out preemptive strikes.

Naturally there is also the question of Koike hopes to achieve by resigning her post in this fashion. She has reinserted herself into the discussion of a hot-button issue just as the Asō government has entered into what might be its endgame. She has taken a hardline position on an issue of prime importance to Asō's conservative backers, perhaps in hope of prying their support away should the prime minister be forced out before an election. Of course, I am not questioning the sincerity of her beliefs — just the timing and form of her protest.

It's a small step, but it could be an important one. If Asō does not survive long enough to lead the LDP into the general election, the conservatives might reason that backing Koike is a way to ensure that their approach to North Korea and national security generally enjoy top priority in the LDP's election campaign — while allowing Koike to take the fall should the LDP lose disastrously in the general election. (Of course, I remain skeptical that the prime minister's critics will be able to force him out before a general election.)

Meanwhile, I am curious about the political salience of the debate over preemption in the LDP. Curiously, I have yet to see a single poll that asked respondents for their opinion on the idea of preemptive strikes and the acquisition of capabilities in order to carry out attacks on North Korean bases. I suspect that there's little interest in the issue as a priority, especially if respondents were informed that acquiring new capabilities would entail greater defense spending, but I am keen to see some data on this question. If a poll has asked this question and I've missed it, do send it my way. Otherwise, the question remains: why no polling on preemption?

There is another question in the preemption debate that advocates like Koike have not addressed forthrightly. Can Japan actually preempt a possible North Korean attack? Jiji calls attention to a recent report by the International Crisis Group that suggests that North Korea has an estimated 320 Rodong intermediate range ballistic missiles on mobile launchers directed at Japan, exceeding the previous estimate of 200. Would Japan be able to find these missiles, let alone destroy them? Have Koike and other hawks made an honest assessment of what capabilities Japan will realistically need to possess in order to carry out this mission? If Japan is to have a proper debate about preemption versus deterrence, the advocates of preemption ought to be honest about what the JSDF would need to possess — and what such an arms program would cost.

For now, all I see is posturing from politicians like Koike about how Japan lacks a "true national defense."

A reply to Randy Waterhouse on balancing

observingjapan@gmail.com (Tobias Harris) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 05:51:00 +0000

Randy Waterhouse graciously addressed some points I raised in response to his discussion of Japanese balancing behavior, and I would like to respond in turn.

Although before I do, I must add that I like the Stephensonian moniker.

1 and 2) I think what we're dealing with here is the difference between balancing as a description of behavior intended to counter or neutralize visible threats to a state's security and balancing as the process by which the structure of international system changes. Japan may be engaged in the former in regard to North Korea and the latter in regard to China. There may be some overlap, but perhaps not as much as meets the eye. (Although any legal or constitutional changes that grow out of the North Korean threat would undoubtedly influence balancing against China.) For example, Japan has little reason to ramp up military spending to neutralize the threat posed by North Korea. The debate is over whether passive or deterrent defense is adequate to meet the threat posed by North Korea's missile and nuclear programs, or whether Japan needs to consider preemptive defense. Arguably meeting the North Korea challenge does not require all-out mobilization, a comprehensive change in how Japan mobilizes national resources in response to external threats. The debate over how to deal with the North Korean threat is obviously connected with the debate over how to deal with a rising China, but the question is how these two debates are connected.

One connection is simply that Japanese hawks are not making clear distinctions between North Korea and China when making their case. I figured that Waterhouse and I agree on the importance of China for Japanese balancing behavior over the long term, but my point was that China may play a more prominent role in Japanese debates about balancing in the near term than I read his post as arguing. After all, Waterhouse wrote of "the lack of bold, provocative military signals from China of late," which may be true in an objective sense, but from the perspective of Japanese elites arguing for balancing behavior of one form or another, China has done plenty to merit more balancing on Japan's part, whether by spending more on its military or by sending the PLA Navy to waters ever further from China (and by acting with greater assertiveness closer to China). Arguments about China may carry less weight than arguments rooted in meeting the North Korean threat, but some elites are making arguments about the China threat. It may not be easy to separate the two: national security hawks are trying to create a climate of uncertainty in order to sell their policies, and they are willing to use any external threat at hand to make their case. North Korea may provide a particular perturbation — but the sensitivity of elites and public to a perturbation may have as much to do with worrying signals from China as with North Korean behavior.

3) Just to build on a point here, there are a number of different ways to think about post-cold war changes to the US-Japan alliance. External balancing against a long-term threat may be the most likely explanation, but there are other plausible explanations, whether domestic politics or a structural explanation rooted less in preparations for a rising China than in the impact of unipolarity of the US alliances that were the legacy of the cold war. It is entirely possible that we may be entering a period in which Japan chafes at a security policy overly centered on the alliance and instead opts for Samuels's "Goldilocks consensus," a grand strategy that features a more even mix of external and internal balancing, maximizing Japan's options in a changing regional security environment. (Of course, if US power declines markedly relative to China's, structural realism would presumably predict greater incentives for external balancing by both the US and Japan and more internal balancing by Japan to compensate for US relative decline.)