GlobalTalk 21

GHG Emissions and Demographics; Japan and the US

2009-11-29T18:58:00.000+09:00

Prime Minister Hatoyama announced that he would push for a GHG reduction target that would reduce net Japanese emissions to 75% of 1990 levels—the equivalent of 67% of the 2005 level. Caveat: the Japanese target is contingent on major fence-sitters—read US and China—coming up with their own comparable sacrifices. The Obama administration has just come out with its own goal that aims to reduce US emissions to 85% of the 2005 level, or 97% of the 1995 level. The Japanese figures look far more impressive than the corresponding US figures. Does this mean that Hatoyama has far greater ambitions than Obama?

What’s missing from the ongoing debate in Japan is the demographics perspective. The Japanese population plateaued in the post-bubble years and peaked in 2005 at 3% above the 1990 level so it will be back to the 1990 level when 2020 rolls around. The US population, in contrast, was at 21% above the 1990 level in 2005, and is expected to be 38% above the 1990 level in 2020. Do the arithmetic and you’ll find that, on a per capita basis, the Japan target represents a 25% reduction from the 1990 level and a 33% reduction from the 2005 level, while the US target represents 30% and 33% reductions respectively. In per capita terms—the most equitable yardstick according to many pundits as well as most developing countries lacking oil export capacities—the US target is arguably more ambitious than the Japanese one.

There are too other important factors that determine existing energy/GHG-emissions profiles to say anything definite about the relative merits of the goals that state actors have been pushing on behalf of their constituencies. Still, a cursory look at the demographics indicates that the Obama administration’s target is nothing to sneer at compared to the corresponding figure for the Hatoyama administration.

”Hatoyama vs. Obama”? Doesn’t the Emperor Count?

2009-11-22T14:53:00.003+09:00

The following is adapted from my response to a visiting scholar whose friend back in the US wanted to know if there was any veracity to this article in Shūkan Bunshun, a weekly general interest magazine whose sensationalism is around 5 on a scale of 1 to 10 in this publishing category. The scholar notes that the Free Republic is a far right blog. He himself comes across as a moderate Republican—hey, if you’re recruiting, HA and LG…

Short answer: Who knows? But leaving aside my views on the veracity of independent (i.e. not published by the major dailies) weeklies, including the authenticity of their sources, the article boils down to two points:

1) The Hatoyama administration is dithering over Futenma because the DPJ fears the SDP.
2) The two sides got into a diplomatic pissing match because Obama administration is pissed off at the Hatoyama administration for dithering over Futenma.

1) is only partly true. SDP’s internal dynamics—the election manifesto, the leftish elements, its unanimously anti-military base Okinawa contingent, Hatoyma’s personality, Okada’s personal attachment to the Kadena option—have at least as much to do with the confusion as the SDP’s position does. To look at it from another angle, I don’t think this is a coalition breaker for the DPJ.

As for 2), this is the first time that I heard speculation that Obama had delayed his departure one day to express his displeasure. I’m sure there has been some speculation about Hatoyama’s motives. Me? I think a tit-for-tat would not be conducive to a satisfactory resolution of the problem. But then, maybe none of the advisors on either side is smarter than your average kindergartener.

I can think of perfectly legitimate reasons for Obama not leaving Washington immediately after a top-priority, inconclusive NIC session with no easy conclusions, leaving most of the principals behind to wrestle with the question in his absence. (Now that would have been Kobe beef for the right-wing media/blogs.) Of course anything is pure speculation unless one has access to his full itinerary—which I assume that the Japanese writer is likewise not privy to.

As for Hatoyama, the reason given in Tokyo was that he left because he didn’t want to skip the APEC inaugural dinner. And what’s wrong with that? So he should have accommodated the last-minute changes in Obama’s itinerary by staying on for the last, ceremonial leg of Obama’s visit and given up engaging, as a newly-minted Japanese PM, in Asia-Pacific summitry in Singapore? What kind of message would that have sent to Japan’s neighbors, especially when he would be hosting next year’s APEC summit? The clincher in my view is our Emperor, who, from a ceremonial perspective, is better than a run-of-the-mill [head of state]. The Chinese authorities have been using their Hu-Wen tag team (and odd-couple Jiang-Zhu before that) to great logistical advantage; now, Moscow is putting Medvedev and Putin to the same task. True, the Emperor has no power—but does Dmitry?

Occam’s Razor, I think.

That said, if some people want to take a single tabloid article as gospel, that's their problem, not mine.

I Should Be Responding to the People Who Stuck with Me…

2009-11-19T23:54:00.002+09:00

But I’m weary to my bones, so—and the slacker that I am and to save LCH the trouble of googling—for those of you who come to my blog not named DM… I give you… Jonte Moaning! Channeling J.P. Polnareff?

FYI, that’s his real name, Jonte Moaning, Jefferson High School, class of 2001.

There's Less to U.S.-Japanese Frictions than Meets the Eye

2009-11-18T10:51:00.003+09:00

From The Call, a little perspective on Japan-U.S. relations as things heat up around troops realignment. It got out there a little more slowly than I’d hoped because of unavoidable circumstances that I won’t go into here, but it’s not as if it’s already dated, so there you are.

Here’s an earlier piece if you want to know what our thoughts were on the outlook immediately after the DPJ victory. What’s striking to me is that on both issues (refueling operations, Futenma), the Hatoyama Cabinet has been consistently sending mixed signals that add to the problems. I think that I see this elsewhere, and it’s usually a bad thing. If Hatoyama is not careful, the media and hence the voting public will begin dealing with him as a continuation of the recent string of ineffectual prime ministers.

“‘Oasis of the Seas’: Go Inside the World’s Largest Cruise Ship”?

2009-11-16T19:35:00.003+09:00

The underlying message of this PR video not even pretending to be a work of journalism is that you can do everything on this ship that you can do in Tokyo/New York/Florida. Hmm…

My personal takeaway? A reminder of how inherently boring it was on the high seas oh so many decades ago when I crossed the Pacific on a ship—because it was cheaper.

And you wonder why they mutinied on the Bounty.

Twitter: Yuriko Koike

2009-11-16T09:22:00.001+09:00

No, I don’t twitter, and I don’t follow anyone either. But in the course of work this morning (I was looking up the World Economic Forum), I bumped into this. Dig around her tweets and you’re bound to run into other LDP twitterers, in case you want to know what they’re up to these days.

Just thought you might want to know. Okay, back to work.

How They are Doing: The Odd Couple

2009-11-15T11:07:00.000+09:00

Rarely does a week go by in the two month old Hatoyama administration without news of yet another outrageous Ozawa incursion on Hatoyama territory. The most spectacular and embarrassing example has been the crackdown on Government Revitalization Minister Yoshito Sengoku and Yukio Edano, the head of Sengoku’s team of parliamentary examiners tasked to squeeze a minimum of 3 trillion yen out of the 95 trillion yen FY2010 budget request submitted by the ministries and agencies as well as the pile of money—buried treasures?—already stashed in their public and private affiliates. Specifically, less than a week after the appointment of 32 examiners, Ozawa showed Sengoku and Edano and by extension the entire Hatoyama administration who was boss, forcing them to drop first-term members from the team; Sengoku/Edano eventually wound up with only 7 Diet members leading a team of 56 private sector experts to comb over the budget requests (closely aided by budget cutters from the Ministry of Finance). Also highly visible has been talk of Ozawa’s support for Diet member sponsored legislation for the extraordinary Diet session in direct contravention of his own ban on freebooting. (Most legislative bills are submitted by the Cabinet, although this is not what the framers of the Japanese Constitution envisaged.)

Such talk actually highlights Ozawa’s religious observance of his division of power. First, regarding the crackdown on the Task Force: Ozawa had installed an around-the-clock program for rookie Lower House members elected in the 30 August landslide victory. The Government Revitalization Task Force appointments, made without his knowledge, clearly interfered with that regimen; Sengoku and Edano, two Diet members with at best chilly relationships with Ozawa, had invaded the latter’s turf. The Task Force reassembled, Ozawa and his closest associates have maintained total silence on its actual work there. Second, talk of Ozawa’s contravention of his (constitutionally sketchy) ban on DPJ Diet member sponsored legislative bills appears to be mostly talk, and not necessarily coming from Ozawa himself. For the only bill that is likely to survive the ban is aimed at assisting hepatitis victims suffering as the result of government malfeasance—a bipartisan undertaking that dates back to the LDP administrations under popular MLHW Minister Yoichi Masuzoe. A couple of other legislative proposals have gone by the wayside, including a controversial if inconsequential—apologies to Yoshiko Sakurai and Sankei Shinbun—proposal, long championed by Ozawa and Hatoyama and Foreign Affairs Minister Okada among many (but opposed by coalition partner PNP’s leader Shizuka Kamei), to give permanent residents the right to vote in local elections. This one has been tossed back, if reports are to be believed, by Ozawa himself to the Hatoyama Cabinet—which appears to be shelving it for the foreseeable future.

In all this, it has often appeared that it is less Ozawa himself than associates of this enigmatic, often laconic, figure to using the shadows that he casts to push their own personal agendas. In truth, Ozawa has not weighed in on any of the substantive issues that are headliners in their own right. Contrary to headlines both mainstream and non, Ozawa has remained faithful to the compact that allowed him to exercise an iron hand on party matters while putting Hatoyama and his cabinet in control of policy.

Does this mean that all is well in Tokyo? No. Ozawa’s failure to discipline his henchpersons (yes, “henchperson” is recognized as a word by Bill Gates) still leaves Hatoyama vulnerable to charges that he is a figurehead for whom Ozawa calls the shots. Now, Hatoyama is doing more than his share to create political distraction by his own stream-of-consciousness explications of his political intent. He doesn’t need the media’s help to further erode public perception of his political authority—a turn of events which would seriously harm DPJ prospects come the 2010 Upper House elections there the DPJ hopes to rack up a simple majority, which would allow it to rule without the help of its demanding coalition partners.

In the meantime, the problem can spill over into substance. The downsizing of the Task Force (which also forced Sengoku and Edano to pick from multiple-term Diet members who had been passed over by Hatoyama and his ministers for sub-cabinet portfolios and by Ozawa for top party and parliamentary appointments) has forced it to narrow its focus, limiting the potential budget savings from its inquisition of the ministries and agencies and their cling-ons.

Failure to meet expectations plus a growing sense of powerlessness, if illusionary, nevertheless will spell a deadly combination for the Hatoyama administration. The Prime Minister must project a credible sense of being in control; otherwise, he runs the very real danger of allowing the situation to slip by him and create a future that will definitely not be to his liking.

Sorry, have had enough time/energy to go over new comments.

How They Are Doing: Akira Nagatsuma

2009-11-06T23:01:00.000+09:00

Now, one of my big misses:

I predicted that he would be a headline generator for the Hatoyama administration. And he was. For a while. For the most trivial of reasons, as well as a more serious flap over the Late-term Elderly Medical Care Insurance. But the news cycle quickly shifted to meatier issues such as Futenma threatening to cast a pall on Japan-U.S. relations, the campaign promises that threaten to break the bank, and, of course, the laborious process of setting up operations (including the inevitable Ozawa questions), leaving Nagatsuma to toil away in relative quiet.

That said, Nagatsuma’s own actions have helped deflect media attention keep the spotlight off his turf. He has genuinely recognized his shortcomings—basically, a lack of any experience in the field except his admittedly substantial investigative efforts—and made a conscious decision to reach into the bureaucracy to learn the explore the territory before striking out on his own.

Nagatsuma showed good judgment on the Late-term Elderly Medical Care Insurance System as well. As the DPJ looked to ways to fulfill its campaign promise to scotch Late-term Elderly Medical Care Insurance, the local governments threatened to revolt over yet another makeover only a couple of years into the new system. In the first place, the unpopularity of the Late-term Elderly Medical Care Insurance had stemmed not from any major flaws in its substance but from trivial complaints* that a bad rollout plan (or lack thereof) had been magnified in the media glare against a background of resentment and mistrust toward the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. As an effective anti-MHLW crusader for the DPJ—his pursuit of the missing pension accounts scandal was arguably the single most important factor in the DPJ takedown of the LDP-Komeito regime—he carried none of the political baggage of his LDP predecessors. Thus, when he quickly backed away from the situation and tabled the matter for future action—most likely as part of a more thoroughgoing reform of the national healthcare insurance system—there remained no substantial vested interests to demand a return to the old system and hence little media attention to the issue. The long-term issues remain, but, at a minimum, he’ll have the rest of this Hatoyama administration’s term to work out a plan—with the cooperation of the bureaucracy.

Of course Nagatsuma’s portfolio is only one lethal genetic mutation away from being overwhelmed with a swine flu pandemic. Which brings me to another point: He is likely to have his hands on the MHLW portfolio for the next 3-4 years—more than enough time for health-related catastrophes large and small to occur. His leadership and communications skills will be tested, when everything will turn on his command of his troops. The much-maligned MHLW has, in the public eye, performed with few miscues on swine flu up till now, so it is to his credit that he has worked to play down his reputation as an MHLW nemesis.

* 1) The name “Late-term Elderly (後期高齢者)” was deemed callous and disrespectful.
2) Deducting the premiums from their public pension checks was deemed callous and disrespectful. But this actually affects only the cases where a) someone else (the oldest son?) other than the beneficiary is paying the premium and b) that someone decides to take the opportunity of the switchover to stop doing so.
3) There were complaints over higher premiums. But they actually fell on average, though they did rise in some municipalities because local subsidies were dropped in the switchover to management at prefectural levels.
4) The new system caps the transfer from the rest of the national healthcare insurance system. This means that the (currently very low) copayments will rise for the elderly as the population ages. This figured less in the public outcry than the trivia, though, most likely since otherwise the DPJ and the media would have had to present alternatives.

How They Are Doing: Shizuka Kamei

2009-11-05T13:55:00.000+09:00

I suggested at the beginning of the Hatoyama administration that Kamei Shizuka, the Minister of State with the double portfolio of Financial Services and Postal Reform, would be the wild card in the Hatoyama deck. He has not disappointed so far, predictably putting down his marker on Japan Post and more surprisingly, to everyone’s alarm, calling for a moratorium on bank loans to small and medium businesses—as well as speaking up on other issues as the head of the junior-most coalition partner People’s New Party.

A standstill on the privatization process for Japan Post had been a foreordained conclusion since the portfolio fell to Kamei, who had been exiled from the LDPO when he opposed then Prime Minister Koizumi’s privatization plans. Thus, most of the media attention, mostly unfavorable, fell on the choice of Jiro Saito, a former MOF Vice-Minister, whose appointment (as well as the nomination of another ex-MOF official to the board of directors) was attacked (unfairly in my view) as a “decent from heaven,” as the new Japan Post CEO, while Ayako Sono, the 78 year-old conservative Catholic novelist, also attracted some attention as a celebrity appointment to the JP board. What was overlooked in all this, though, was the overall, old-school LDP look of the new JP leadership. With two ex-MOF officials and one ex-Vice-Minister of the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications (now folded into MIAC) on board as well as Hiroshi Okuda, the previous Keidanren Chairman, and a top executive from Canon, which currently holds the Keidanren chair on the board, it’s about as “1955 System “as it can get without being an LDP selection outright. Sono herself has graced many a government advisory board and was brought in as chairman at the Nippon Foundation by the Sasagawa family to clean up the image of their fiefdom. Also notable is the fact that there is only one member of the board with banking experience, a former executive at the failed Long-Term Credit Bank.

More surprising and potentially far more damaging, at least in the short run, was Kamei’s call for a 3-year moratorium on bank loans to small and medium businesses. Taken at full face value, the populist measure would have wreaked havoc on commercial financing. Subsequent negotiations whittled it down to a non-mandatory measure with a 60% semi-government guarantee and reporting requirements—not that far beyond the scope of past counter-recession measures (though the reporting requirements will serve to exert public pressure on the banks) . In fact, it is likely that the exercise will be repeated if there is a second dip in the economic recovery as many fear and some predict.

What does the future hold for the DPJ with regard to Kamei’s antics? Not much, actually. I think that he’s basically shot the works. He buried Koizumi/Takenaka’s legacy, and made his mark on his other, financial, portfolio. His populist instinct will no doubt lead to more outbursts as we go along, but I believe that we’ve seen the best (or worst, depending on your perspective) of his achievements. And he should be happy with that.

Hatoyama’s Money Woes

2009-11-04T20:30:00.000+09:00

I’ve been telling people who’ll listen for some time that there’s a small but non-negligible chance of Hatoyama leaving office before the next Upper House election in September 2010. It’s unlikely that he’ll be indicted, but there is a fairly good chance that the media will conclude that he knew of the arrangements that had funneled personal and family money to his political operations in violation of the political financing law, likely from the very beginning of his political career. He has a fairly good chance of riding it out, though, because he’s not being accused of taking money—essentially, he’s a miniature Bloomberg/Corzine. Still, his past statements regarding LDP politicians who have run afoul of the political financing laws—he has consistently called for their heads regardless of their personal complicity—are coming back to haunt him. His problems are compounded by his consistent fumbling, rambling and bumbling on the issues. He’s definitely undershooting the high hopes and low expectations of the public that swept the DPJ into office. But, as veteran economist AS said, it still beats no hopes, no expectations. (Now what could he have been referring to, hmm?) So he can still win by default.

From the Indian Ocean to Offshore Somalia?

2009-11-04T18:27:00.000+09:00

I’ve been telling people that taking the JSMDF escort ship/destroyer that has been accompanying the refueling vessel for the counter-terrorism operations on the Indian and redirecting it to the counter-piracy operations off the Somali coast would be a low cost way to square the circle. It appears that MOD and now the Hatoyama administration are also taking a serious look at this option. Let me put it this way: It certainly beats throwing even more money at the Afghan police than the Japanese authorities are doing right now—for which I’m not sure that the Afghan public in general would be grateful to Japan.

Translating the Titles of Government Officials

2009-11-04T14:10:00.002+09:00

I intend to do a one-by-one follow-up of what I hoped were educated guesses about the personalities in the Hatoyama administration as well as the relationship between the Prime Minister and Ichiro Ozawa. I don’t think they’ve been that far off the mark, though some of the actual incidents have caught me by surprise.

In the meantime, for your amusement:

The Prime Minister’s Office’s lists of the English-language titles of cabinet and sub-cabinet political appointees, specifically the Ministers (大臣), Senior Vice-Ministers (副大臣) and Parliamentary Secretaries (政務官) here. Note the MOFA (and MOFA-only) substitute of the preposition “of” with “for”. MOFA has subtly distinguished itself in this and other ways with regard to its English-language titles, but has really gone overboard on its own website, where it calls its Senior Vice-Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries “State Secretaries” and “Parliamentary Vice-Ministers” respectively. I’m not sure how long MOFA has been doing this, but I do recall that an across-the-board Parliamentary Secretary-to-Parliamentary Vice-Minister upgrade was set in motion during the Koizumi administration when METI Parliamentary Secretary Satsuki Katayama (Lower House) reportedly complained that she would be mistaken for a “secretary.” When the authorities were slow to respond, she took the matter into her own hands and bestowed the “Vice-Minister” title on herself. Soon, all the “Parliamentary Secretaries” were calling themselves “Parliamentary Vice-Ministers.” I looked in fairly recently to find that they had for the most part reverted to “Parliamentary Secretaries” but that the Ministry of (not “for”) Foreign Affairs had retained the upgrade and given its “Senior Vice-Ministers” an additional twist. (Or had things always been so there?)

METI, incidentally, substitutes “of” with “for” in the case of its Parliamentary Secretary but not the Minister or Senior Vice-Minister. I understand the logic behind it— “of” and “for” are used discriminatingly for the non-political appointees as well for basically the same reason.

East Asia Community

2009-11-01T17:16:00.000+09:00

Anyone who talks about an East Asia Community should be forced to define that term and stick to that definition through that particular discourse. Otherwise, any talk is at best meaningless. I think that this is a rule that should be generalized through all public discourse. It’s the only way to enforce basic rules of logic.

That’s it for today. Thanks for visiting.

Forward and Backward in Time

2009-11-01T16:56:00.001+09:00

I found that I was not the only person with a college degree who had problems with intuitively grasping the meaning of “forward” “ and “backward” in time when I saw the following passage in an analysis of prospects for sanctions on Iran.

“[T]he new revelations will quicken the sanctions timeline, bringing it back to late 2009.”

No one should have problems figuring out that the analyst meant that the sanctions were now likely to come more quickly (this was near the end of September), so the error went mostly undetected, but the correct phrase should have been “bringing it forward.” The antonym phrase is “push back.” It’s confusing for us, who have lived under unidirectional, chronological time for at least a couple of centuries, to have to come “back” from the future, but I didn't write the rules for Christian Europe. If you think I am sampling a Benedict Anderson riff here, you’re right. And not without shame either, since I have an aversion to anything that carries even a whiff of post-modernist narrative and yet I cannot deny that Imagined Communities is a masterful, insightful book.

Note that time travel eliminates the “unidirectional, chronological” nature of time. That is why “Back to the [already existent] Future” makes intuitive sense.

DPJ Crosses Red Line with Support for Anti-Helicopter Base Candidate

2009-11-01T16:30:00.000+09:00

I’ve believed, like many people here, that if only Prime Minister firmed up and took the heat for sticking with the 2006 agreement to move the U.S. Marine helicopters on Futenma Base to a base to be built offshore of Camp Schwab on the coral seas of the remotest part of Nago City, everyone except the pacifist SDP would fall into line, the bulk of the Marine forces at Futenma could be relocated to Guam, and Futenma would revert to Japan to be used for non-military purposes. After all, the DPJ manifesto and the subsequent DPJ-SDP-PNP policy pact had only carried a vague reference to revisiting the U.S. troop realignment, and even the reprisal in the policy pact—hammered out on the DPJ side by Katsuya Okada—had been a grudging concession to the SDP. The DPJ would—did—have more than enough on the domestic agenda without U.S. relations becoming an unwelcome distraction. The projected landfill might be something of an eyesore, but few people would notice, as Henoko, the part of Nago where Camp Schwab now resides, is one of the most sparsely populated areas in all of Okinawa. More significantly, the helicopter base would bring welcome Tokyo money. Perhaps that is why Nago has elected three pro-base mayors—albeit professing great reluctance and a powerful sense of public duty—in a row. Thus, I had believed Foreign Minister Okada’s most recent brainstorm to relocate the helicopters to Kadena Air Base to be no more than a strawman, to be knocked down by the U.S. side—which the Obama administration promptly proceeded to do at all levels from the Defense Secretary on down—and by the Okinawans themselves—which the good assemblymen of the Kadena township immediately proceeded to do, in a unanimous vote that rejected the idea and, for good measure, called for easing the burden on their own shoulders.

So there the matter would end, and the DPJ administration would have to bow to the inevitable. But what do I know? For Okada has continued to pursue the Kadena option as his “personal proposal,” and at least one news report claims that a senior member of the ruling coalition (phrasing that indicates that the person is not a member of the Hatoyama administration) has sounded out the locals with a scrap-and-build plan to move 28 out of the 48 U.S. F-15s stationed on Kadena Base. I am sure that the Obama administration will be very surprised, and not in a nice way, if the Hatoyama administration ever puts this on the negotiating table. I cannot believe that the Hatoyama would put placating the DPJ (and its own most radical, ex-Socialist elements) ahead of Japan and the United States’ individual and joint security concerns, but, as Okada himself admits, there’s no way of moving the helicopters to Kadena if it increases the net burden. Besides, the U.S. side has made it clear that air traffic control requirements preclude the location of the helicopter fleet conjointly with conventional aircraft on the existing space in Kadena.

So is Okada, and by extension Hatoyama, continuing to play the Kadena card as a show of exhausting all possible avenues? Perhaps. But in the meantime, the locals are getting restless. The good assemblymen of Nago have become irritated at the dithering and are threatening to rescind their offer to host the helicopters. An even more ominous turn in local politics, has the DPJ reportedly deciding to back an anti-helicopter base candidate against the pro-base incumbent in the January mayoral election. This, to me, effectively precludes the possibility of the Hatoyama administration giving the nod to Nago as the site within the year—for good, if the DPJ-backed anti-base candidate wins,

What will the fallout of the birth of an anti-base administration in Nago be like? In the near future, nothing—on the ground at least. The relocation of the U.S. troops from Futenma grinds to a stop, and everything is frozen in situ. But frustration and mistrust will build up among everyone involved—the people of Futenma, the Obama administration, the U.S. military, the Japanese national security establishment—with longer-term, negative consequences all around.

My Thanks Go to You

2009-10-31T18:35:00.004+09:00

To those of you who have inquired, I thank you for your concern. Family matters have kept me preoccupied. I hope to resume soon, if possible, tomorrow.

Thanks again.

Jun Okumura

Shakedown, or… Shakedown? The First Days of the Coalition

2009-09-21T20:02:00.002+09:00

The following is my response to Mark’s comment here. Personal circumstances have forced me to neglect my self-assumed obligation to people who comment on my blog. I’ll cover them all in due course, but now that I have a little more time (for today at least), I’ve decided to adopt the LIFO principle for my backlog. (Sorry, Matt, etc.)

And I promise to get back to those writing proposals of mine as soon as I can. Sorry, GD, NF.

Mark: Sadly for those of us who need a major Japanese politic theater fix, given the huge DPJ victory in the 2007 HOC election, nothing short of a miracle will give the LDP-Komeito coalition an HOC majority in the 2010 election. That being said, the main bumps on the road so far:

Minister of State for Postal Reform Shizuka Kamei’s turf fight with MIAC Minister Kazuhiro Haraguti, as Haraguti dares to opine on the future of Japan Post, an institution over which he, as MIAC Minister has formal jurisdiction and knows inside out.

Minister of State for Financial Services Kamei’s turf fight with MOF Minister Hirohisa, as Fujii expressesd reservations over Kamei’s 3-year moratorium for bank loans to small and medium enterprises. The MOF Minister has partial or total jurisdiction over all financial Japangos, and will have to cough up the fiscal resources necessary to compensate the banks in the event the Hatoyama administration decides to implement the PNP proposal.

PNP leader and representative for the Intra-Cabinet Party-Leader Trilateral Shizuka Kamei’s verbal jousting with MOF Minister Hirohisa over the DPJ’s promise for an across-the-board child allowance. Kamei wants to set an income ceiling, so as not to benefit the wealthy…

…do I see a pattern emerging?

BTW, in the last endeavor, Kamei is joined by:

SDP leader and representative for the Intra-Cabinet Party-Leader Trilateral—as well as Minister of State for Social Affairs—Mizuho Fukushima.

Speaking of the Intra-Cabinet Party-Leader Trilateral, the third party will not always be the Prime Minister. In fact, the DPJ participant is more often than not likely to be Naoto Kan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for National Strategy, who happens to be p!ssed off (if media reports are to be believed) because his DPJ policy base has been kicked out from under his other foot as Ichiro Ozawa (and Hatoyama) abruptly decided to abolish the DPJ Policy Research Council—not a bad decision per se, considering the new setup replacing it that will potentially tighten the hold of the Cabinet over the policymaking process. (Here, I disagree with some of the MSM thinking on this measure.) The idea (again according to media reports) was to have Kan assume the PRC Chair, which would have made him the Policy Czar, the double-headed eagle as far as substance was concerned.

MLIT Minister Seiji Maehara’s public works woes assumed as the consequence of including the cancellation of the Yanba Dam construction, in Maehara’s words “because it’s in our manifest” (in my view carelessly inserted), as well as JAL’s business woes precipitously dumped in his lap. I didn’t see these two coming, and neither of these lend themselves to easy solution. Yanba Dam reminds me of Tokyo Governor Yukio Aoshima’s fulfillment of his campaign promise to shut down the Tokyo Expo—a very unpleasant precedent for the past and future DPJ would-be-king.

There may be more, but I think that’s enough. I have no idea if these are portents of things to come—in which case the whole of the Hatoyama Cabinet will be much smaller than its parts—or merely a shakedown process of an untested policy vehicle that will soon hit its stride.

Stay tuned, folks.

Quick Note: More on Hatoyama Cabinet Trouble Spots

2009-09-19T00:47:00.000+09:00

Bad week for me; so, from my latest email:

Nagatsuma's body language was all wrong. If he'd come in smiling and waving, he would have received a standing ovation accompanied by a collective sigh of relief. In personal relationships, it's easy to get what you wish for, I guess. Just as troubling if not more so has been the report that he wanted the public pension so badly he was willing to take the Deputy Minsister's post. The Hatoyama administration needed him as one of the faces of the administration, so it forced a switch on Sengoku, who had to take the administrative-reform at-large portfolio instead. This, if true—indeed Nagatsuma is only a 4th-term HOR (I like this abbreviation)—highlights Nagatsuma as an obsessive, insensitive figure. It enhances my fear that he will be unable to make the transition from crusader to administrator. That, and Kamei's bully instincts, then Kan, is how I rank the Hatoyama administration's potential fault lines.

Preliminary Thoughts on the Hatoyama Administration

2009-09-17T13:28:00.002+09:00

My life has been taking/may be about to take some dramatic turns, so I don’t have enough time to generate meaningful stuff for this blog right now. So for the time being, much of what you see here will be material produced for other purposes. Such as following, which is my end of a Q&A as the response to an email that I received last night soliciting my comments regarding the Hatoyama Cabinet, typos corrected:

1. Very solid Cabinet, the strongest across the board that I've seen in a long time, if ever. Remember, Hatoyama, Kan, Okada, and Maehara are in a sense a throwback to the LDP faction leaders of the 50s and 60s, men who built, not inherited, their power bases from scratch. And old-school Kamei and SDP Fukushima are just as powerful personalities, if not more so. I'm not aware of any weak spots, though Toshimi Kitazawa came as a total surprise to me, with one year as the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the House of Councilors as his only significant exposure to the field. I did go through a few Committee records, where he came across as calm and collected, competent. I was also mildly surprised at not seeing Yoshihiko Noda, the other center-right leader, in the Cabinet*. But otherwise, it's a very Ozawa-Not Cabinet.

2. I don't know enough about the appointees to rank them. I'll give you the following instead.

Nagatsuma and Maehara will generate the most important headlines because they will be going after big game: the healthcare and pension systems, and public works. On the MHLW portfolio, Nagatsuma must remember that it's more than going after the missing pension accounts and the people responsible for that. He must show that he is more than a crusader, that he has the policy chops and leadership skills to bring the two systems in line with our future needs and fiscal constraints. Maehara's job is to slash public spending--a difficult task that is sure to alienate local powers. But he has to do it, if only to go some ways to finance all the spending promises and tax cuts that the DPJ has promised. I see two potential trouble spots: a restless Naoto Kan clashing with the Ministry Ministers, and a turf battle between Haraguchi—by all accounts one of those articulate, new-school policy wonks—and Kamei over the Post Office. Both the DPJ and PNP oppose the Koizumi privatization, but beyond that, I'm sure people like Haraguchi have a rather different view of where to go from that. Also, Kamei's heterodox views regarding financial services, his other portfolio, has a chance of bringing him into conflict with other Cabinet Ministers and the BOJ. I think Kamei is the joker in the pack, particularly since he has less to lose than the other Ministers. Fukushima has a safety portfolio, I think.

3. None of the people that I have an opinion on is "weak." That will be the weakness if Hatoyama is unable to keep everyone on message. He's probably as good as anyone else in the DPJ for that role.

4. It's Hatoyama's Cabinet, and Ozawa's party. Am I the only one that thinks it looks a lot like the Nakasone-Tanaka LDP of the 80s? That didn't turn out too badly, did it? Personally, I don't think Ozawa will meddle on the policy side. I think he has his dream job, another crack at sticking the knife into the LDP heart without the distasteful job of being accountable to the media.

That's it. Back to work. And preparing a late dinner.

Jun Okumura

Perhaps I should have also referred to Fujii in 3. That may have been my contrarian streak kicking in. Let me add that I’m pretty impressed with the way the Hatoyama administration is handling the administrative appointments as well. The message seems to be: If you’re okay with us, we’re okay with you. He trusts (but will verify) that the bureaucracy will follow where his administration leads—which is something I’ve been predicting for a while. He looked klutzy and indecisive throughout the lead-up to the election, but I’m impressed by the javascript:void(0)post-election process. For my sake—as far as I see it, I’m stuck with Japan—I hope the rest of his regime goes at least half as well. Otherwise, there are plenty of floater voters like me, if you catch my drift.

Sorry about your comments. I’ll get back to them later. Honest. I really, really feel bad about not responding, since dialogue is the point of it all.

* Noda is reportedly being taken care of with the Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary’s job on the HOR side, not exactly a political embarrassment, especially for a policy wonk like him.

Quick Note: The Ozawa Party and the Ozawa-Not Administration

2009-09-14T13:11:00.003+09:00

I may have touched on this before, but take a look at where the names fingered by the media for the Hatoyama Cabinet were when the Hatoyama-Kan DPJ, the Ozawa Liberal Party and lesser mortals merged to create the bigger, better DPJ in 2003:

Hirofumi Hirano, Chief Cabinet Secretary: independent from moderate labor union and close associate of Hatoyama
Naoto Kan, National Strategy Bureau Chief: DPJ
Hirohisa Fujii, Finance Minister: premerger Liberal Party, but bad blood between when he went public with his desire to see the latter step down during the political finances scandal
Katsuya Okada, Foreign Minister: The People’s Voice, parted ways with Ozawa when the latter split the New Frontier Party
Masayuki Naoshima, METI Minister?: DPJ
Yoshihiko Noda, ?: DPJ
Seiji Maehara?: DPJ
Tatsuo Kawabata?: DPJ

If you think that this looks a lot like the DPJ leadership minus Ozawa’s people—say, Diet whip Kenji Yamaoka and House of Councilors DPJ Chief Azuma Koshiishi—you’re right, it does. So Ozawa and his people run the party while the rest of the party runS policy? The resemblance to the old LDP becomes more than passing if you remember that Hatoyama beat Okada only with Ozawa’s help—shades of the unholy Nakasone-Tanaka union—and that Ozawa’s rivals lead their own group of likeminded Diet members, in contrast to the caretaker faction heads of today’s—yesterday’s?—LDP.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The DPJ leaders reportedly joining the Cabinet are more than just political players. They are mainly first-generation politicians who have shown genuine policy chops over their careers. And Yasuhiro Nakasone turned out pretty well for the DPJ—and Japan.

I won’t be surprised to see surprises tomorrow, when Hatoyama and Ozawa come to an agreement on Cabinet and major party assignments, but this looks like the shape of things to come, so I thought I’d mention it here.

Incidentally, I now think that tomorrow’s assignments will be completed without a major hitch. I still believe the second and third-tier Diet member assignments to the ministries and agencies as well as to secondary party posts is going to be a messy affair—unless Ozawa directs the traffic.

Now, back to work.

Quick Note: DPJ Decision to Let Cabinet Ministers Choose Their Own Political Appointees Will Come Back to Haunt It

2009-09-14T00:18:00.001+09:00

I called the looming political challenge over the DPJ rollback of the FY2009 supplementary budget. The next problem in my view is the reconciliation of the Ministers’ right under the Hatoyama edict, the Cabinet’s pro forma right to choose political appointees, and Ichiro Ozawa’s free hand in selecting DPJ members for party and Diet posts? If deciding how to make the Ozawa group swallow Hirohisa Fujii’s candidacy for the MOF portfolio, imagine how difficult it is going to be to decide what to do simultaneously with 17 Cabinet posts and more than 80 other Diet member political appointees, as well as… You see the point.

Quick Note: “Right-Wing” LDP Looks to Tanigaki to Lead It Out of the Wilderness? Figures

2009-09-14T00:03:00.001+09:00

The most recent reports have metrosexual, preternaturally youthful sexagenarian—and notable dove—Sadakazu Tanigaki declaring for the LDP Presidency with party elders’ blessings. It’s somewhat depressing, if, with 20/20 hindsight, inevitable that preternaturally youthful baby Nobuteru Ishihara wimp out, but it’s more distressing that his fellow quinquagenerian Shigeru Ishiba continues to dither on the sidelines. Their reluctance to challenge their elders continues even after the historic defeat.

The silver lining is that a Tanigaki leadership will lay to rest once and for all imbecilic pronouncements such as, “Analysts say the party seeks to reverse Japan’s growing isolation in the region under decades of right-wing Liberal Democratic rule.” Any report that is able to ignore all of Japan’s relationship with its Northeast Asia neighbors since no later than its historical accord with China in 1972 under Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka except the fallout from Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s stubborn insistence on visiting Yasukuni Shrine is not to be trusted. More to the subject of this post, I cannot help but point out, the LDP switched leadership from a dove (Kozumi) to a hawk (Shinzo Abe) to a dove (Yasuo Fukuda) to a hawk (Taro Aso) before it yielded the stage to the DPJ—which, incidentally, is the closest thing to the old-school, Sankakudaifuku LDP in Japan today, with its own Darkseid overlord and powerful faction leaders—unlike the desiccated “LDP” that desperately needs a business model remake. More about this later, I hope.

Quick Note: Is It the LDP Who Cannot Afford an Alliance with Komeito?

2009-09-13T23:34:00.000+09:00

I’ve speculated before that Komeito might be better off without the LDP as its main squeeze—policy-wise, the DPJ would be a more natural ally—and the Komeito leadership has been doing nothing to dampen such speculation. Increasingly evident Komeito antsyness suggests that it’s time to ask, Can the LDP afford an alliance with Komeito?

The DPJ may be Komeito’s more natural ally, but as Ozawa’s aborted efforts at a Grand Coalition in 2007 show, the DPJ is also the LDP’s more natural ally. In fact, a permanent alliance with ideologically narrower—and perforce smaller—parties is inherently confining in that it requires perpetual accommodation of such coalition parties’ defining positions. Thus there is something to be said for the discretion to fight an election on its own undiluted platform, leaving the compromises for later maneuvering.

But what about the Komeito tithe? True, 10 percentage points represent a lot of votes. But it wasn’t that long ago that the bedrock support for the LDP was, say, 10 percentage points higher than the same for the DPJ. And media polls suggest that 1/3 of the voters are floaters. Keeping Komeito in the fold is likely to call for a lot of concessions, new and old, concessions that the LDP cannot afford too many of if it is to position itself opportunistically against the DPJ while lying in wait for the accumulation of a host of DPJ gaffes and errors, the kind of gaffes and errors that, over a period of 3 years and Prime Ministers, consigned the LDP to a severely truncated opposition bench. The odds might be better for the LDP if it went off on its own for the time being, honing its own message; the better to attract the floater vote, which will be looking for the next political black, ready to abandon the DPJ, the same way that it jilted its long time flame, the LDP.

I’m not ready to hazard a guess one way or the other, but it’s at least useful to remember that the coalition entailed costs for the LDP as well.

I’m seriously behind on counter-comments. Sorry, later. Things happening.

Would It Make More Sense to Translate It as “Conventional State”?

2009-09-10T23:49:00.001+09:00

You know, that “normal country” thing. I do believe that post-WW II Japan has been an “unconventional state,” constitutionally speaking. And it worked. But “abnormal country”? I think not.

No time for anything else today. Tomorrow for sure.

“A More Perfect Death”?

2009-09-07T18:25:00.001+09:00

Mortality has absorbed more of my attention lately…

~~Richard~~ Ross (one wonders if this was not some kind of Freudian slip) Douthat makes an ingenious argument against assisted suicide in this NYT op-ed. In place of the usual death-panel argument of the slippery slope, “especially under government-managed health care, to some sort of death-by-bureaucrat,” he offers the idea that “in the profligate, Promethean United States, it probably won’t lead to rationing-by-euthanasia. It’s just as likely to become one more ‘intervention’ that we insist every health insurance plan should cover — on our way, perhaps, to a rendezvous with fiscal suicide.” On the way, he argues that American “instincts run so strongly toward unlimited spending that it’s much easier to imagine the government going bankrupt paying for extreme life-saving procedures than it is to imagine a suddenly cost-conscious bureaucracy pressuring doctors to administer lethal overdoses.” In other words, assisted suicide is the cherry on top of the exploding fiscal cake of nationalized medicine—America the profligate, in death as in life.

Douthat’s argument against assisted suicide sets aside the familiar, ethical objections and ventures into the culturalist realm. As such, it immediately sends my skepticometer readings through the roof. Still, it’s more logically consistent than any death-panel argument I’ve heard so far from opponents of universal healthcare with a public option.