Goodbye to all that

After 128 days, the resignation of one prime minister, the selection of another, the aborted resignation of the leader of the largest opposition party, and the "re-passage" of a major bill in the House of Representatives over the rejection of the House of Councillors, the 2007 special session of the Diet — Japan's latest experiment with divided government — has come to a close.

Despite the impression of gridlock, Mainichi reports that the Diet passed twenty-six bills this session (fourteen government bills, twelve individual member bills), one more than was passed in the 2006 special session. Of the thirteen bills submitted to the HC by the DPJ, only one — on support for disaster victims — passed.

The battles of this session, however, were nothing more than a prelude to the showdown to come. The LDP is now divided over whether the anti-terror law should be the government's last use of its HR supermajority (not to mention the underlying divisions in the party that were only temporarily settled when Mr. Fukuda took office). Thanks to the precedent, various government and LDP officials have begun making the case for the use of the supermajority to pass budget-related bills and an extension of the temporary gas tax, most recently Finance Minister Nukaga. The DPJ's divisions are equally apparent after the struggle over the anti-terror law.

Will all of this result in a general election, whether in the middle of this Diet session or in the late summer (or another time of the government's choosing)? That question will loom large over this session's deliberations.

Hold on tight.

Use of force

"Japan PM forces navy bill through" — BBC.

"Japan's ruling party steamrolled a new anti-terrorism law through parliament." — Morning Brief, Foreign Policy Passport.

"Japan's ruling coalition forced a bill through parliament today..." — LA Times (AP)

"Fukuda forces through law on Japanese naval deployment" — International Herald Tribune (NYT)

"Japan forces through terror law" — Financial Times

Anyone else detect a theme here? The Western press coverage (with the exception of the AFP, it seems) of the passage of the new anti-terror special measures law emphasized the supposed aggressiveness of the government's action — echoing the DPJ, whose secretary general, Hatoyama Yukio, described it as "outrageous" — and highlighted the rarity of the use of a supermajority in the HR to override the HC.

Of course it's rare: when was the last time the government had an HR supermajority at the same time that the largest opposition party was in control of the HC?

So the emphasis on the "forcefulness" of the measure is, I think, mistaken. The word "force" implies that this step was undemocratic. But Mr. Fukuda is entirely within his rights. The constitution gives the HR the right to overrule the HC if it has a sufficient number of votes. Just because this right has rarely been exercised does not make it any more forceful. It simply reflects the singularity of the present moment in Japanese politics, in which the LDP has had to take an extraordinary step to pass a high-priority measure.

If the constitutional legitimacy is beyond dispute, the political legitimacy of the act is uncertain, more open to dispute and more likely to change over time, depending on what the Fukuda government does in the coming months. I suspect that the consequences of using the supermajority will be limited. I am sure that Mr. Fukuda would have preferred not to have to pass the law this way, but the fate of his government will not rest upon this decision. If the LDP's majority is to shrink or be lost entirely in a general election, it will be due to the accretion of policy failures and cases of misgovernance, in which case the use of the supermajority to override the HR will be cited as but one case among many illustrating the LDP's failures. Meanwhile, in the event that the Fukuda government is able to sort out the pensions problem and recapture the mantle of reform in advance of the next general election, I expect that the Japanese people will forgive the government for its supposed transgression on this issue.

Indeed, yesterday was a happy day for Prime Minister Fukuda. Not only was his government able to pass this bill after months of uncertainty, finally removing it from the center of the parliamentary agenda, but the process of passing the bill exposed the rifts within the parliamentary opposition. As I noted previously, the DPJ was forced to change its approach to the bill in the HC due to pressure from other opposition parties, which wanted the HC (and thus the DPJ) to take a clear stance in opposition to the government. In HR deliberations on the bill Friday, DPJ President Ozawa Ichiro left the chamber abruptly and abstained from voting on the bill. Mr. Hatoyama claimed that Mr. Ozawa had duties to attend to in relation to the forthcoming Osaka gubernatorial election, but Mr. Ozawa's hasty departure prompted charges of "irresponsibility" from both the LDP and other opposition parties.

Whatever the reason for Mr. Ozawa's departure, there is no question that the manner in which this bill passed was a personal defeat for Mr. Ozawa, who preferred that the HC let the sixty-day waiting period pass without the DPJ having to register its opposition in an HC vote. As MTC argued in this post, the endgame of the anti-terror bill exposed the DPJ's dependence on Socialists and Communists in its opposition to the government, due to the DPJ's holding a plurality — not an outright majority — in the Upper House.

Censure motion on hold for now

As the close of the Diet session approaches — and with it, the presumed re-passage of the new anti-terror bill in the HR — the DPJ has announced that it is reconsidering submitting an HC censure motion this session in response to the government's use of its supermajority. It will instead save this motion for the regular Diet session, when the DPJ can use it in the midst of budget deliberations in the hope of bringing about an early election.

The LDP does not seem to be particularly worried. Nikai Toshihiro, head of the executive council, said in a TV appearance on Monday, "This has no foundation in the constitution or in the Diet law. If this card is played, it is not significant at all."

The DPJ is right to reconsider passing a censure motion in response to the anti-terror bill. What exactly is the government doing that it deserves to be censured? Using the constitutionally mandated power of overruling the HC with a supermajority in the HR? Poorly managing the Defense Ministry (clearly an issue that transcends this government)? Defying public opinion? The reasoning behind censuring the Fukuda government has always struck me as shaky, especially since it became increasingly apparent that the government would probably ignore the resolution entirely, making the DPJ and the HR look impotent and irresponsible.

The DPJ's introduction of its own bill on Afghanistan — now under deliberation in the HC Foreign Affairs Committee — is little better, especially at this point in the battle over the anti-terror mission, but at least it makes it look like the DPJ is playing a constructive role, even if its plan is far-fetched. It still remains unclear whether the HC will actively reject the government's bill or whether the HC will remain inactive and let the sixty-day threshold pass. The other opposition parties disagree with the DPJ's plan to do nothing except pass its own bill; they want the HC to reject the government's bill outright.

It's not clear to me what the DPJ is trying to accomplish by making the government wait until the very end of the session. The DPJ has probably worked this issue as much as it could. It forced the government to focus on seeing it through to the end, thereby distracting it from addressing the lifestyle issues that should have been Mr. Fukuda's top priority from the day he took office as prime minister. The DPJ may not be as lucky in the new year. The Fukuda government needs to give the impression that it is obsessed with the pensions issue and other domestic problems, and so at this point, the less it talks about foreign policy, the better its political prospects.

(And yet, if the government is serious about pushing for a permanent JSDF dispatch law in the new year, the LDP and the DPJ might be debating about foreign policy again. But I don't think doing so will be to the government's advantage, especially since the DPJ will be reluctant to approve a law that will permit the government to extend the refueling mission without having to get permission from the Diet again next year.)

2007: The Year That Was In Japanese Politics

A recent article in the Yomiuri Shimbun surveying the Japanese political situation as 2007 gives way to 2008 included a sidebar that compared the present day with the bakumatsu, the last days of the Tokugawa.

Looking back over the events in political Japan over 2007, that comparison does not seem inappropriate. The picture that emerges is one of naiyu gaikan, a phrase from the bakamatsu referring to troubles at home and abroad that ultimately consumed the bakufu and served as the crucible for creation of the modern Japanese state. Rather than standing on the brink of a new restoration — as many Japanese politicians seem to think — Japan may be at the very nadir of this latest bakumatsu, with institutions in all areas of Japanese life breaking down under the stress of adjusting to new conditions. (Oddly enough, my first post of 2007 addressed Alvin Toffler’s idea of future shock as applied to Japan.)

Consider the events of the past year. Every month brought reports of corruption, fraud, and mismanagement in some area of Japanese life. I will focus, of course, on politics, but it is important to remember that 2007 saw major scandals and cover-ups in the food industry, professional baseball, sumo wrestling, and finance, the eikaiwa “industry” (specifically NOVA), and others that I have probably forgotten. Perhaps there is no better symbol than the Defense Ministry, which was hailed in January as a sign of the newly assertive Japan; by December it was widely criticized for corruption and had become the subject of a high-level reform panel. There was an unmistakable whiff of decay in the air, suggesting that the foundation of Mr. Abe’s “beautiful Japan” was rotten.

2007 may be remembered as the year that demolished the “Japan is back” meme.

Recall the confidence with which former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo headed into the New Year and the first regular Diet session of what many observers (and presumably Mr. Abe himself) assumed would be many. In early January the Japan Defense Agency became a full ministry, the result of a bill passed in the autumn 2006 extraordinary session of the Diet. Throughout January, Mr. Abe confidently declared that the 2007 would be the year of advancing the cause of constitutional revision — by passing a law establishing a national referendum system for constitution revision — and “leaving behind the postwar regime.” In his maiden speech to the Diet on 26 January, Mr. Abe spoke of remaking Japan to deal with twenty-first-century challenges.

His eyes fixed firmly on the distant horizon and his focus firmly on his obsessive pursuit of some ill-defined “beautiful country, Japan,” Mr. Abe walked straight into quicksand, which consumed his government and exposed the fragility of Japan’s recovery from its “lost decade” and the flimsiness of Japan’s pretensions to wield greater power regionally and globally.

As 2008 approaches, Fukuda Yasuo, Mr. Abe’s successor as prime minister and LDP president, is left to cope with problems inherited from Mr. Abe: a broken pensions system; an LDP torn between the reformist legacy of former Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro and the older legacy of generous state assistance to farmers, small businessmen, and other traditional LDP supporters scattered throughout Japan’s regions; and a “twisted” political system, in which the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, under the leadership of the mercurial Ozawa Ichiro, holds sway in the House of Councillors thanks to electoral gains in July’s election at the expense of Mr. Abe and the LDP.

He has also inherited international difficulties, not least turbulence in Japan’s relationship with the United States. Indeed, 2007 might also be remembered as the year of the slow-motion crisis in US-Japan relations, despite the presence of Mr. Abe, a favorite of Washington Japan hands, in the Kantei. After Christopher Hill, US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs, secured an agreement with North Korea at a meeting in Berlin in February to restart the stalled six-party talks a mere four months after North Korea’s putative nuclear test, disagreement between the US and Japan became inevitable. Under Mr. Abe, Japan took the lead in pressuring North Korea following the nuclear test, and its bargaining position in the six-party talks became decidedly inflexible on account of Mr. Abe’s special interest in the resolution of the dispute over North Korea’s abduction of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s. Despite the repeated assurances of US officials — from George W. Bush down — that the US would not forget Japan and its abductees in negotiations with North Korea, as the US committed more time and energy to reaching an agreement, a rift appeared increasingly inevitable. North Korea, whether by design or accidentally, scored a major diplomatic coup by appearing amenable to an agreement on its nuclear program, effectively isolating Japan in the six-party talks as the US shifted from Japan’s side to join with China, South Korea, and Russia to move negotiations forward. It is unclear whether Mr. Fukuda will be able to deemphasize the abductees and bring Japan’s negotiating position into line with the US, considering that doing so will likely require a bruising fight with conservatives in his own party.

Between the gap in US and Japanese bargaining positions on North Korea and the still-unresolved battle between the LDP and the DPJ over Japan’s refueling mission in support of coalition activities in Afghanistan, 2007 may be the year in which the US-Japan alliance began to consider structural reforms necessary to ensure the alliance’s continuing relevance. In November, both Robert Gates, US secretary of defense, and Mr. Fukuda acknowledged the existence of structural deficiencies and argued for the need to answer fundamental questions about the alliance.

In politics, the biggest story of the year was, of course, the rapid decay of the Abe government, which prompted a near-civil war within the LDP before and after the House of Councillors election.

In January, there was the Yanagisawa indiscretion, in which Yanagisawa Hakuo, the minister of health, labor, and welfare, referred to women as “birth-giving machines”; this was but the most egregious in a series of inappropriate remarks by Mr. Abe’s cabinet ministers and advisers that seriously undermined public confidence in the government by making the government seem insensitive to the public (months before the pensions scandal demolished whatever illusions remained about the Abe cabinet’s concern for the Japanese people).

From February we witnessed the saga of Matsuoka Toshikatsu, Mr. Abe’s minister for agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, who stood accused of gross violations of laws regulating the use of political funds. Mr. Matsuoka spent most of the Diet session obfuscating, spinning a convoluted web of explanations that was laughable right up until the moment that Mr. Matsuoka hanged himself in late May. (Of course, the presence of Mr. Matsuoka in the cabinet was — or should have been — a scandal in its own right, given Mr. Matsuoka’s history of corruption, bribery, and use of his office to interfere with the policymaking process to the benefit of his supporters, his constituents, and, of course, himself. Mr. Matsuoka’s case was but the most prominent example of the corruption epidemic that hit Japanese politics in 2007. “Money and politics” was one of the year’s political leitmotifs, right up until the end of the year, with the LDP finally giving in to demands from opposition parties and its coalition partner Komeito to revise the political funds control law to require reporting for all expenses over one yen. Corruption brought down both of Mr. Matsuoka’s successors as agriculture minister, and became a major issue in the formation of Mr. Abe’s second cabinet during August, as the LDP struggled in vain to assemble a lineup that would be free of the accusations that dogged the first Abe cabinet. We should not forget, however, that allegations of corruption crossed party lines, with Mr. Ozawa as the most notable target for allegedly using his political support groups to purchase real estate, a forbidden practice.

The Matsuoka fiasco hit just as the Abe government took an ultimately fatal blow when a DPJ member of the House of Representatives questioned the government about missing pensions records, ultimately revealed to be on the order of more than 50 million missing records. Those affected were the most vulnerable members of Japanese society, those without a history of lifelong employment with a single company who therefore depended on the inadequate state pensions system. The revelations prompted widespread insecurity among the Japanese people, which was bad enough for the Abe government, but Mr. Abe made the situation worse in his tone-deaf and dilatory response to the situation: his first instinct was to defend the bureaucrats, who, it has since been revealed, were responsible for shoddy, careless work that exhibited a wanton disregard for the people they ostensibly served. The result was that Mr. Abe’s public support was fatally undermined; the election campaign, which Mr. Abe had wanted to focus on his issues of constitution revision, education reform, and national defense, instead focused on the pensions issue and associated “lifestyle” issues, those issues that Mr. Abe spent his time in office largely avoiding. The public did not necessarily reject his ideological program outright: the Japanese people simply decided to stop indulging the prime minister and punish him and his party for their misguided priorities.

All told, the pensions issue became what Columbia University’s Gerald Curtis has called Mr. Abe’s “Hurricane Katrina” moment. There was nothing Mr. Abe could do to escape from his predicament, which was largely of his own making. Extending the regular session of the Diet to pass a few more token laws, pushing the date of the July election back a week, apologizing profusely for the pensions scandal: none of it mattered. By 29 July, the only questions left were how big the LDP’s defeat would be and whether Mr. Abe would somehow be able to weather a landslide and cling to power. Thanks in part to Mr. Ozawa’s inspired campaigning, in which he sojourned in rural Japan in the hopes of taking advantage of rural discontent with both Mr. Abe’s rule and the negative consequences of Mr. Koizumi’s reforms, the DPJ won a victory of historic proportions, winning overwhelmingly in single-seat constituencies across Japan and making an exceptionally strong showing in Tokyo and the densely populated three-seat constituencies surrounding the capital.

The precipitous decline of Mr. Abe sparked a battle for the future of the LDP that remains unresolved and could very well intensify in 2008. Even before the election LDP members were publicly criticizing Mr. Abe for his disastrous leadership and speculating about the timing of his departure from office. The electoral defeat simply intensified the battle.

Mr. Abe managed to hold on for August, despite worsening health and appeals from party elders — including former Prime Minister Mori — to resign. By holding on, waiting a month before reshuffling his cabinet, and delaying the start of the extraordinary Diet session, Mr. Abe may have encouraged disarray within his party. The post-election vacuum likely prompted more jockeying for power among LDP leaders, not least by Aso Taro, his foreign minister and presumptive heir. (Mr. Aso’s maneuverings in the aftermath of the election led to questions in the media following Mr. Abe’s resignation about a possible Aso “coup” against the prime minister in the hopes of easing his path to power.) Even before Mr. Abe resigned, the party’s fault lines were apparent: the conservative ideologues grouped around Mr. Abe, who wanted the campaign to cast off the postwar regime to press on despite the election returns, were increasingly opposed to the party’s cautious elders, who, whatever their ideological leanings, feared that the election was a signal to the LDP to change its ways, to be more sensitive to the concerns of the people and more willing to work with the ascendant DPJ. Not surprisingly, it was in August that the Yomiuri Shimbun, the newspaper of the conservative establishment, began calling for a grand coalition for the DPJ. The underlying issue was the party’s post-Koizumi identity. If there’s one thing that the two camps could agree upon, it was the need to distance the LDP from Mr. Koizumi. Mr. Abe spent most of his year in office trying to differentiate himself from his charismatic predecessor, and in the post-election struggles, Mr. Koizumi’s followers remained marginal.

Mr. Abe finally resigned on 12 September, although not before a surprisingly defiant maiden speech at the opening of the Diet two days earlier and an intensification of his rhetoric on the extension of the anti-terror law, which had emerged as the defining issue of the post-election political environment due mainly to the DPJ leadership’s announcement in the immediate aftermath of the election that it opposed extension of the law. While the precise timing of Mr. Abe’s announcement was surprising — at least to everyone but Mr. Aso — his departure was not. The already-in-progress battle within the LDP simply manifested itself openly in the LDP’s presidential election campaign, with the party elders quickly deciding to back Mr. Fukuda (eight of nine factions, or, perhaps more accurately, faction leaders endorsed his candidacy), and the conservative ideologues rallying behind Mr. Aso.

Mr. Fukuda’s victory at the end of September was widely reported as a landslide, but a look at the voting in the LDP’s prefectural chapters suggests that were it not for the LDP’s quirky election laws, the party election could have been considerably closer. The margin of victory in prefectures where Mr. Aso lost to Mr. Fukuda was in many cases considerably narrower than in prefectures won by Mr. Aso. (And as it turned out, Mr. Aso received higher support in voting among Diet members than he would have had members followed the endorsements of their faction heads.) The party united behind Mr. Fukuda after his victory, although Mr. Aso made a point of not joining the Fukuda cabinet, but the unity that followed the election should be regarded as a truce, not a peace treaty. The December formation of a “true conservative” study group under Nakagawa Shoichi, chairman of the LDP’s Policy Affairs Research Council under Mr. Abe, suggests that in 2008 the truce could come to an end should Mr. Fukuda’s difficulties continue.

The tasks facing Mr. Fukuda upon taking office were daunting. Beyond ending the LDP’s internal disorder, he had to assuage Komeito, which had also taken a blow in the July election and whose support had been taken for granted under Mr. Abe. More importantly, he had to begin the process of devising new rules of the game under a divided Diet. Mr. Fukuda gained a temporary political victory when it emerged that Mr. Fukuda and Mr. Ozawa had purportedly discussed an LDP-DPJ grand coalition in private meetings, as the DPJ rank-and-file reacted in horror, leading to the fiasco surrounding Mr. Ozawa’s aborted resignation — but that episode did not necessarily bring the two parties any closer to determining whether and how the two parties and (two chambers) would cooperate on legislation.

Beyond these challenges, there was the struggle over policy. Thanks to Mr. Abe’s escalation on the refueling mission — his “international promise” — Mr. Fukuda had little choice but to maintain Mr. Abe’s policy, going so far as to extend the Diet session into January and (presumably) use the government’s supermajority in the House of Representatives to pass the new enabling law over objections from the DPJ and the House of Councillors. Regardless of what the new year brings, the DPJ has effectively “won” on this issue. The MSDF ships returned home following the expiration of the previous law on 1 November, but more importantly, the Fukuda government was forced to focus on the anti-terror law, a low-priority issue for the Japanese people, instead of devoting its energy to the pensions issue and other social issues. The cost of falling into the DPJ’s trap became apparent in December when the pensions scandal re-erupted, prompting the first substantial drop in Mr. Fukuda’s public support.

The events of 2007 have left a number of unanswered questions about Japan’s future. Will the LDP be able to heal the rift that has emerged since Mr. Koizumi left office? Will Mr. Fukuda be forced into calling a snap election, and will the LDP emerge victorious? Are the DPJ — and Mr. Ozawa — ready to govern? Will the divided Diet be able to produce legislation that strikes a balance between advancing structural reform and protecting those citizens hurt by structural reform? What role will Japan play in the region and the world, and how will the US-Japan alliance change to reflect Japan’s new role?

In addressing these questions, I hope that Japanese politicians draw the right lessons from the bakumatsu and the Meiji Restoration. Mr. Abe seemed to think that if he spoke in more grandiose terms about Japan’s role, visited the troops, and modified Japan’s national security institutions, Japan would magically wield more power and influence globally. But there is no shortcut to playing a greater role internationally. In the twenty-first century especially, national power depends as much on the strength and durability of domestic institutions (and a country’s openness to flows of goods, people, money, and ideas) as it does on more traditional metrics. Without reform in how Japan educates its children, provides for its elderly, interacts with the global economy, uses its workforce, and conducts its politics, Japan’s influence will shrink. Future governments need to be more concerned about these aspects of Japanese life — the lasting foundation for national power in the twenty-first century — than about the outward manifestations of national power. Architects of the modern Japanese state understood that national power depended on the quality of domestic institutions. Do their successors?

The answer to that question will determine where Japan will go from 2007. Was it a turning point on the road to a new system that will reinvigorate Japan? Or will the Japanese people and their elected representatives be unable to undertake structural reform that overcomes the sclerosis?

One more month

As anticipated, the Fukuda cabinet has decided to extend the extraordinary (and extraordinarily long) Diet session thirty-one days, to 15 January, ensuring that the sixty-day rule will take effect and allow the House of Representatives to pass the new anti-terror special measures law.

As noted by MTC, the extension means that the Diet will recess for two days — when the LDP and the DPJ will hold their national conventions — before reconvening for the regular session of the Diet on 18 January.

Has the government, as suggested by Komeito, "crossed the Rubicon?"

It may look that way, especially since the decision to extend the Diet session — in effect a demonstration of the government's resolve to do whatever it takes to pass its bill — has coincided with the reemergence of the pensions scandal at the forefront of the national discussion. Mr. Fukuda has acted quickly in an attempt to soften the blow — in this week's mail magazine, he wrote, "As the representative of the Government, I offer my apologies to the people for the misconduct that has gone on for many years" — but his public support will probably drop some more, and, as suggested by Jun Okumura, Masuzoe Yoichi may be forced to offer up his head, an unfortunate consequence for the government.

Is this the beginning of a death spiral that will result in a dissolution, a general election, and possibly a change of ruling party? As reported by Mainichi, Komeito is evidently not convinced that the government will be able to avoid a snap election. And, of course, the LDP has given the DPJ yet another gift that will allow it to remain on the offensive against the government.

But I still think that should the Upper House pass a censure motion against the government in response to the re-passage of the anti-terror law in the House of Representatives, Mr. Fukuda will be able to ignore it and carry on with governing, at least for the time being.

It is interesting to see the approach that the prime minister has taken in response to the new pensions scandal. Aside from wasting no time in apologizing to the Japanese people, he has also wasted no time in making clear that the issue is the bureaucracy and its failings:

It turns out that in numerous cases these unidentified records involve rudimentary mistakes, including typos and record transfer errors, on the part of the Social Insurance Agency. The further we advance in our investigations, the more it has become apparent just how slipshod work had been at the Social Insurance Agency. Each and every one of the pension records is directly connected to the livelihood of a person. Nevertheless, the Social Insurance Agency failed to act in a manner consistent with this basic fact, which I find to be truly regrettable.

Is Mr. Fukuda able to take this approach — which Mr. Abe conspicuously did not take when first faced with this issue — because of the supposed respect he receives from the bureaucracy? (Remember back to September when this was mentioned frequently as one of the strong points of his candidacy for the LDP presidency.) Is it a matter of principle, a burst of Koizumism? Or is it simply an expression of LDP survival politics, an acknowledgment that the LDP is more than willing to jettison the bureaucracy's privileges to save itself?

Whatever the case may be, it would truly be a shame if Mr. Masuzoe — who, as I've discussed before, sincerely believes in the need to transform the bureaucracy to limit the kind of behavior noted above by the prime minister — were to be forced out of the cabinet as a result of the bureaucratic misdeeds against which he has railed.

Fukuda answers some questions

After weeks of uncertainty, Prime Minister Fukuda has moved to answer definitively the six unanswered questions of the current Diet session, answering at least two of them by announcing that he will use the government's supermajority in the House of Representatives to pass the new anti-terror law, and he will extend the Diet session into January in order that the bill will be sent back to the Lower House should the Upper House not act on it within sixty days.

At the same time, Maehara Seiji, a deputy chief of the DPJ and potential thorn in the side for Mr. Ozawa, is making noise again for the first time since August, when there were rumblings of discontent over the DPJ leadership's opposition to the MSDF refueling mission. He is once again criticizing the DPJ for its failure to think of Japan's national interests and warned, "In the event that we quit without the session being extended, the Indian Ocean activities will be suspended for a long time. If there is a dissolution from this, our party will be in trouble."

MTC suggests that the DPJ's immediate response to the above course of action by the LDP will be a censure motion in the Upper House.

The consequences of this chain of events, however, are still unclear and will remain so right up until the moment they transpire. The potency of the weapons possessed by each side still depends largely on public and media support. If the government can somehow get the public to break its way, at least enough so that Mr. Fukuda can spin it as a trend in his favor, then he may be in a position to ignore the non-binding censure resolution and carry on as if nothing happened. A trend the other way, harder to ignore. Will the public continue to remain non-committal through all of this?

As for Mr. Maehara, to date, Mr. Maehara has been long on sound and fury, short on action. I think that he will continue to toe the Ozawa line when forced to choose, but then again, it is in moments like this that the whims and caprices of a disgruntled actor like Mr. Maehara could become very important, if not in terms of numbers — if Mr. Ozawa would have found it difficult to destroy the DPJ's position in the Upper House by leaving the party, would Mr. Maehara find it any easier? — then in terms of perceptions regarding the fitness of the DPJ as a credible contender.

In any case, his remarks mean that we haven't heard the last of the 政治再編 (political realignment) in the Japanese press, that panacea for all of political Japan's problems on the lips of commentators, even though few seem able to sketch out exactly what it would look like.

Ozawa, posturing

I was apparently mistaken to think that Mr. Ozawa might use the occasion of a visit to China to find some common ground with Mr. Fukuda by staking out a shared position on Japanese China policy.

Mainichi reports that Mr. Ozawa plans to use the trip as an opportunity to criticize the Fukuda cabinet's approach to a range of issues, from the six-party talks to the Taiwan Straits dispute. It's anyone's guess the direction from which Mr. Ozawa will criticize the government. Will he attack from the right, criticizing the government for not taking a firm stand in support of Taiwan and moving away from support of the abductees? Or will he come from the "left," calling for a more positive contribution to the six-party talks and kowtowing to China on Taiwan?

Meanwhile, the Upper House Management Committee has approved the trip, despite the fact that Mr. Ozawa will be taking twenty-four members of the Upper House with him while the Upper House is still in session. (The group also includes twenty-one Lower House members.) It's not entirely clear to me why he's traveling with such a large group of Diet members, and I think the LDP and Komeito are right to criticize the DPJ for taking a trip this size while the Diet is still in session. Whatever the DPJ thinks of the anti-terror law currently under consideration by the Upper House, it is disrespectful to the legislative process to pull a considerable number of its Upper House caucus out of deliberation.

I am certain Mr. Ozawa sees this as a convenient way to run out the clock to December 15th and hasten the point at which the government has to decide whether to extend the Diet session once more — and it is this kind of posturing that is what's wrong with the political system today.

Perilous weeks ahead

Prime Minister Fukuda, as I expected when he was chosen as prime minister in late September, has shown himself to be far more adept than most commentators expected. (And one hears fewer complaints about Mr. Fukuda's being a government of factions — I have no doubt that this is Mr. Fukuda's government.)

But while he has stabilized the LDP and made the best of the opportunities present in the political situation, the next two weeks will determine whether Mr. Fukuda's government is doomed to be short-lived or whether he will able to maneuver his government through perilous straits and survive until September 2009.

LDP officials continue to send mixed signals about the party's (and government's?) thinking about the timing of a general election. Nikai Toshihiro, the chairman of the party's executive council, suggested in a speech Saturday that a general election is "not far" and that the LDP should consider talks on a political realignment or a grand coalition in the aftermath of a general election. Nakasone Yasuhiro, grand old man of the LDP, suggested on Saturday that the LDP make the pursuit of a grand coalition with the DPJ a campaign promise in a general election campaign. Finally, in a sign of the LDP's need to regain the trust of rural Japan, Tanigaki Sadakazu, the PARC chairman, said in a speech in Fukui-ken, "I cannot say what amount of money, but the voice of farm households will be reflected and included in the 2007 supplementary budget." He received complaints about the government's failure to recognize the difficulties faced by farmers.

These remarks suggest that the LDP is thinking hard about calling a snap election sooner rather than later, contrary to recent remarks by Koga Makoto, the LDP's election strategy chairman and fourth senior executive. Or is it? Are these messages designed to keep the opposition off balance?

Meanwhile, should the persistent calls for a grand coalition be construed as a tacit admission of the hopelessness of the LDP's position in a general election? The LDP's election chiefs have made clear that it is giving up on the one-term Koizumi kids, writing them off as sure losers. Considering that Mr. Koizumi's followers are more competitive in more urban districts, does the LDP assume that it has no chance of besting the DPJ in urban Japan? How does the LDP plan to win if not by backing the 2005 incumbents associated with the still-popular Mr. Koizumi? Does the LDP really think that it will draw voters by promising to share power with the DPJ?

All of this could just be designed to keep the DPJ off balance, somehow tricking Mr. Ozawa into appearing unreasonable and undermining the DPJ's public support, but then again, it could be a sign that the LDP is improvising, that Mr. Fukuda doesn't have a plan for dealing with the six unanswered questions of the Diet session. As reported in a recent Mainichi article, the government will exercise prudence as to whether it will extend the Diet session a second time to ensure passage of the anti-terror law.

Prudence, or reading the air the moment of decision?

Expanding options

I am increasingly led to think that there is one principle common among both states in the international system and politicians within a domestic political system (especially democracies), it is that power is rooted in flexibility. The more options an actor has, the better able he is to outmaneuver rivals and secure other interests.

A classic example of this principle in the Nixon-Kissinger opening to China, in which the US, in a stroke, exercised the option of a tacit anti-Soviet alliance in Asia to hem in the USSR while expanding US flexibility.

Prime Minister Fukuda, I think, understands this — the fewer the commitments, ideological or otherwise, the greater the flexibility and thus the greater the advantage over rivals. The more one is open to a rival's policy ideas, the easier to undermine that rival. Mr. Koizumi was a master of this, "borrowing" DPJ policies to the consternation of the DPJ. This principle was undoubtedly behind the prime minister's cabinet picks, neutralizing potential rivals by depriving them of reasons for contention (and co-opting them into his government).

Accordingly, it is no surprise that on Wednesday Mr. Fukuda met with Takagi Tsuyoshi, the head of Rengo, an ally of the DPJ, to discuss labor policy, including the minimum wage and pensions. The prime minister proclaimed his desire to cooperate with the DPJ on pensions reform and urged Mr. Takagi to push the DPJ to cooperate with the government.

At the same time, Mr. Ozawa, as a result of his restlessness, has painted his party into a corner. He has spurned cooperation with the government — by which I mean routine cooperation across party lines, not a coalition. He has shifted course in opposition to the government's anti-terror law enough to give whiplash to DPJ members and members of other opposition parties alike. As a result, he has, according to MTC, weakened his party's bonds with the minor opposition parties whose support the DPJ needs within the Diet in order to exercise a majority in the Upper House and whose cooperation is essential if the DPJ is to have any chance of winning a general election.

There is no guarantee, of course, that Mr. Fukuda and the LDP will succeed in the battle over the anti-terror law as the extraordinary session concludes. But I think that, despite the appearance of tottering on the brink of disaster, Mr. Fukuda is in a good position. He has stabilized his party's situation following the wreck of the Abe cabinet and has maneuvered the DPJ into a position of passing legislation in the House of Councillors that stands little chance of being adopted in the House of Representatives, such as the newly passed bill calling for the withdrawal of Air Self-Defense Forces elements in Iraq.

Of course, Mr. Fukuda's leadership has not been free of mistakes that have limited his room for maneuver. The biggest mistake may have been retaining the anti-terror law as agenda item number one. Dropping it may have been politically untenable for the new prime minister — I still suspect he has no great desire to commit Japanese forces to the mission, this being the unspoken message of his remarks in Washington — but the result is that Mr. Fukuda may have no choice but to use his government's supermajority in the House of Representatives to pass the bill lest he lose credibility with the US, undermine his position within the LDP, and hand a victory to the DPJ. I don't think Mr. Fukuda has a problem using the supermajority, but I think he would rather use his government's silver bullet on issues that are higher on his government's and the Japanese people's list of priorities.

Accordingly, look for Mr. Fukuda to continue to seek partners for his initiatives, ignoring party and ideological lines in the process. At some point, he will have to deliver something, but in the meantime a willingness to cooperate will not be his undoing.

Individuals matter

With the start of another week, there are now fewer than three weeks before the already-extended Diet session is scheduled to end. It is still unclear how Japan's first experiment with a divided Diet will end.

Six important questions, it seems, will be postponed into the final days of the Diet session. (1) Will the DPJ reject the anti-terror law outright, or (2) will it simply not act on the bill? In response to the former, (3) will the Fukuda government use the supermajority to pass the bill again? In response to the latter, (4) will it extend the session into January so that the sixty-day waiting period will lapse, giving the LDP a chance to pass the bill again in the Lower House (depending, of course, on its answer to question #3)? (5) Will the DPJ respond to use of the supermajority with an Upper House censure motion? And (6) will the government respond to an Upper House censure motion by dissolving the House of Representatives and calling a snap election?

MTC presents his answer to the penultimate question in this post, in which he argues, "A censure motion is, in a certain sense, a declaration of war. The power of the censure motion comes not from what it says about the present but what it says about the future." His argument that a censure motion will effectively sink the prime minister by ending any chance that the DPJ and LDP would work to facilitate cooperation between Diet chambers is convincing, but I cannot help but wonder whether the DPJ actually views it that way.

For my part, I remain agnostic about the meaning of the censure motion: by its very nature as a non-binding resolution, its power derives entirely from outside factors. Would a non-binding censure resolution have any power against a prime minister with Koizumian popularity? Would it have power if used against the prime minister over a policy issue in which he enjoyed public backing? I'm not saying that Mr. Fukuda enjoys a shield of high poll numbers — he doesn't — or that he has the public's overwhelming support on the refueling mission — again, he doesn't — but that's precisely the point. The public has been decidedly indecisive on both Mr. Fukuda and his refueling bill: he obviously doesn't enjoy the support he enjoyed upon taking office, but the public hasn't abandoned him, and the refueling mission continues to enjoy a near-majority of support so far as I can tell (and insofar as the Japanese people care). Thanks in part to public ambivalence, the meaning of a censure motion is essentially open to interpretation. (Another factor is, of course, that there are no meaningful precedents for this situation.) As a result, both parties will be busy with extracurricular maneuvering in the media to either talk down (cf. Mr. Koga) or play up the significance of a censure motion in the hope of moving the public decisively in one direction or the other.

Accordingly, the current situation is not unlike the situation in early 1993, as described by Gerald Curtis in The Logic of Japanese Politics — "It is a story of how politicians maneuver to exploit opportunities and how the context of their actions constrains the choices they make." The answer to the above questions will depend on contingencies. Which leader — both, as MTC notes in another post, extremely adroit — is gutsier? Which leader has the fatal flaw that will become apparent at the critical moment in the drama? Which party (and party leadership) is more disciplined? What role will the Japanese media — the omnipresent chorus of the drama — play in answering the six questions? And the fickle Japanese public? What part will the ongoing sideshow of Mr. Moriya, his relationship with Yamada Yoko, and corruption at the Defense Ministry play in the shifting calculations of the various actors?

As Curtis (and Richard Samuels, another advocate of the importance of leaders in spite of structural constraints, as discussed here) recognize, individual politicians have tremendous room to shape outcomes for better or worse. As this Diet session reaches its climax, we will get an illustration of just how much individuals matter.

The elusive rules of the game

Prime Minister Fukuda held another meeting with Ozawa Ichiro and the heads of the other opposition parties on Thursday.

Unlike the last meeting, nothing of note occurred — perhaps the other leaders were there to forestall a "corrupt bargain" between Messrs. Fukuda and Ozawa — and the LDP and the DPJ appear to be no closer to establishing the rules of the game for a divided Diet.

The editorials of the major dailies blame Mr. Ozawa for standing in the way of compromises on, "many things that should be done." (Believe it or not, that's in the headline of Asahi's editorial, not Yomiuri's.) Mainichi, while recognizing that both sides need to work together to make policy on behalf of Japan, singled out Mr. Ozawa for not taking a position amenable to cooperation on the new decision making rules, calling it "regrettable."

Yomiuri, not surprisingly, has the most strident tone in criticizing the DPJ: "Under the divided Diet, the DPJ, as the largest party in the House of Councillors, bears great responsibility in driving the political situation...However, on the DPJ's side, one cannot see them bearing this responsibility." The editorial goes on to criticize the party's irresponsibility at length for opposing the anti-terror law without passing alternate legislation, and raises the prospect of a "a debate on the uselessness of the House of Councillors."

Sankei largely echoes Yomiuri and Mainichi, and Asahi devotes most of its attention to the LDP and its agenda, but the common thread running through these editorials is dissatisfaction with gridlock.

I do think that the blame falls on the DPJ's shoulders. Had the party — and Mr. Ozawa — been more flexible on foreign policy questions, upon which the political debate is now focused, the DPJ could have pressured the LDP to approve all or most of the DPJ's domestic plans in exchange for the DPJ's assent to the MSDF refueling mission. But Mr. Ozawa has refused to give on anything, instead staking out a hardline position and hoping that the LDP will bend to his will. When push comes to shove, Mr. Fukuda and the LDP control a supermajority in the Lower House, and should public dissatisfaction (or, perhaps more accurately, media dissatisfaction masked as public dissatisfaction) grow, the DPJ will lose. The fact remains that the DPJ needs the LDP more than vice versa. I think the DPJ has completely mishandled the current Diet session. Even while compromising with the government on the anti-terror law, the DPJ could have criticized the LDP for ignoring the concerns of the public — which are overwhelmingly domestic, "lifestyle" issues — and for serving as the tool of the Bush administration. By holding its nose and supporting the MSDF mission, the DPJ could have refocused discussion on domestic policy issues, to its advantage, I think.

Now, in the wake of the meeting, it seems that talk is growing both of yet another Diet extension and a snap election. The former step will be necessary if, as I suspected (as in this post), the DPJ uses its control of the Upper House to delay action on the anti-terror law. Remember that according to the constitution, if the Upper House takes no action within sixty days — not counting days out of session — the bill is considered rejected, giving the Lower House the opportunity to pass it again. Should the bill be passed in this manner, however, a snap election could be unavoidable; Mainichi suggests that an Upper House censure motion would follow Lower House "re-passage" of the bill, leading to a general election. (I still disagree with the assumption that an Upper House censure motion against the government will necessarily lead to a snap election, but I recognize that it is a plausible outcome.)

Whatever the difficulties ahead for Mr. Fukuda as the debate over the MSDF mission reaches a climax, whatever the problems associated with corruption at the Defense Ministry, the DPJ has squandered its advantages — and, for the moment anyway, the prime minister may be enjoying a slight boost thanks to two successful foreign trips. It is not at all clear how this Diet session will wrap up, but as MTC suggests, Mr. Fukuda has not faltered in the face of adversity.

The Ozawa era is over

It looks like Mr. Ozawa won't be fighting one more general election campaign after all.

Facing outright chaos in the party due to the perception that he was willing to consider — even for a moment — a grand coalition with the LDP, Ozawa Ichiro, grand old man of Japanese politics, has announced his resignation as head of the Democratic Party of Japan. (His announcement — which includes a slam at the media's treatment of him — is available at Asahi.)

I am not surprised not only by his having to resign over this issue, but also that he won't be leading the DPJ into a general election. Whatever his talent for election strategy, I viewed him as more of a liability as the face of the party than an asset, not least because — as MTC so sardonically observed — by turning to Mr. Ozawa, the DPJ made a pact with the devil (the devil being Tanaka Kakuei-style LDP politics). Undoubtedly a number of DPJ members were aware of and uncomfortable with this deal, and finally got their opportunity to move against Mr. Ozawa.

There are three pressing questions. The first is the future of the DPJ. Will the resignation of Mr. Ozawa send into a tailspin the opposition party that was brimming with confidence not too long ago? It depends on his successor, I think. I am of the opinion that Mr. Ozawa was actually a terrible person to have in the party leadership in the post-election situation. He clung to a confrontational posture for far too long; once Mr. Fukuda replaced Mr. Abe, the DPJ should have begun echoing Mr. Fukuda's conciliatory tones and talking with the LDP about the rules of the game for the divided Diet. He also cemented his doom by antagonizing just about everyone within the DPJ by his maneuvers on the refueling mission, first upsetting the hawks by uncompromisingly opposing the measure, then shocking everyone else in the party by calling for an armed Japanese contribution to ISAF. Like geniuses and schizophrenics, he was playing by his own rules, but don't ask me if he is the former or the latter.

In short, the party could benefit from his departure, particularly if it chooses a leader who is capable of articulating an identity for the DPJ that distances it from the LDP but still leaves enough ground for the parties to cooperate on legislation. For the moment, Kan Naoto will serve as acting president, with a party election likely to be held after the Diet session (although I wonder what will happen if Mr. Fukuda gets his wish and the session is extended a month — more on this in a moment). The favorite among the DPJ's younger members appears to be Okada Katsuya (54), the former party leader who was trounced by former Prime Minister Koizumi in the September 2005 general election. I'm not sure whether Mr. Okada, who began his political life in the Tanaka faction and subsequently followed Mr. Ozawa through various opposition parties before winding up in the DPJ.

The DPJ, in fact, has a similar problem to the LDP: there is a dearth of leaders in their fifties. Having already turned to Mr. Maehara, one of the forty-something Young Turks, and encountered nothing but disaster, I suspect that the party will not be inclined to walk that path again. Mr. Kan, in fact, may find himself back in the leadership position by default.

The second question is what this means for the LDP. The departure of Mr. Ozawa, if followed by a protracted battle within the DPJ to choose a new leader, should give Mr. Fukuda plenty of momentum and will probably push back any suggestion of a general election. I suspect that the LDP might be tempted to call a snap election to take advantage of the DPJ's disarray, but even in disarray the DPJ will probably still be able to deprive the governing coalition of a supermajority, meaning that Mr. Fukuda will likely resist the temptation to submit his government to the approval of the voters. The more immediate question is whether Mr. Fukuda can use this window to revive the sagging fortunes of his government's new bill to authorize the MSDF refueling operation. Will an LDP PR campaign, under- or unchallenged by the DPJ, be enough to rally sufficient public support to the government's side for the measure and give the LDP confidence that it can use its supermajority without fear of backlash?

Relatedly, what does this means for Japan's security policy? The Bush administration will undoubtedly be thrilled to see the back of Mr. Ozawa, but the US might not like what follows in his wake. If Mr. Ozawa has an enduring legacy from his time as leader — apart from the DPJ's near-majority in the Upper House and turmoil within the DPJ's ranks — it will be in raising questions about how LDP governments since 2001 have conducted relations with the US. Mr. Ozawa never quite managed to elevate his opposition to the refueling mission into a coherent critique of Japanese foreign policy and Japan's relationship with the US, in part because he was playing a balancing act among disparate elements of his party and thus clung to UN-centrism, but the critique is there for his successor to take up, if he so chooses. If so, foreign policy could be at the center of the next general election campaign.

All depends, of course, on Mr. Ozawa's successor. Fortunately, with its control of the Upper House there is a limit to how far the party can fall. For the next three years, the party — provided it doesn't shatter — will have a seat at the table.

Cooperation breaks out

One meeting between Mr. Fukuda and Mr. Ozawa, another scheduled for today, the MSDF's ships on their way home, and all of the sudden the political mood seems to be completely different.

With the LDP eager to avoid a general election before September 2009 and the DPJ seemingly cognizant that it's not enough just to pass laws in the Upper House, both parties, according to Asahi, "can be seen to be working to compromise, and the confrontational mood is beginning to fade."

One area being considered for a compromise is the drafting of a permanent law on JSDF dispatch, which would necessitate three-way discussions among the LDP, DPJ, and Komeito inside and outside the Diet on the principles that should guide JSDF missions abroad. Undoubtedly this debate would distance the DPJ from other opposition parties, but that may be an unavoidable consequence of the DPJ's having to work more with the LDP, a problem that does not concern the others. That said, this concept remains a possibility, and nothing more.

A more immediate area for cooperation is a revision of the political funds control law. While the LDP, DPJ, and Komeito agreed in a private meeting to revise the law to require reporting of all expenses over one yen, the challenge, Mainichi suggests, is moving the discussion to a meeting of the Diet Strategy committee chairmen that includes the other opposition parties, while hammering out remaining differences between the LDP and DPJ on the specifics of the revised law.

There is still the looming problem of a new law authorizing the MSDF's refueling activities, on the agenda for the Friday meeting, but at least they're talking about practical differences on matters of legislation, and not grandstanding or name-calling. Now that the ships are coming home, I am curious to see whether the LDP will be able to convince the Japanese people to support sending them back in a few weeks. The permanent end of the refueling mission might be a price worth paying for constructive debate on the other, more pressing issues on the policy agenda, particularly if the parties can revisit proposals for Japanese (probably civilian) contributions to the reconstruction of Afghanistan on the ground. Jun Okumura has a solid proposal for how something of this nature could happen.

At least the DPJ has finally learned that with the dissipation of its momentum from the Upper House election win, it needs to have something to offer the public, which means shaking hands with Mr. Fukuda every once in a while. Is Mr. Ozawa prudent enough to manage the task?

Fukuda's bumpy road

Prime Minister Fukuda, facing reports of corruption at the Defense Ministry thanks to Mr. Moriya and confusion as to how his government intends to proceed with the new bill on the MSDF refueling mission, may now be facing a precipitous decline in popularity.

Mainichi's latest poll recorded an eleven point drop in the cabinet's approval rating to 46%, with disapproval rising five points to 30%. The honeymoon, it seems, is over. Mainichi also asked about support for the MSDF refueling mission and found that support was more or less unchanged, falling one point to 48% (with those opposed rising by one point to 43%). Interestingly, when asked their reasons for supporting the mission, respondents overwhelmingly (65%) said it was because international contributions are important, as opposed to only 18% of respondents saying it was necessary to prevent a worsening of relations between the US and Japan. (Oh, and DPJ supporters are not only overwhelmingly opposed to the MSDF mission, but also to Japanese contributions to ISAF — what was Ozawa thinking?)

While the public remains generally in favor of the government's position, the LDP should be worried that support isn't growing. Once the bill hits the Upper House — LDP secretary-general Ibuki Bunmei insists it will — the LDP will have a hard enough time retaining the support it has in the face of an endless parade of witnesses and revelations exhibiting how poorly managed the MSDF operation has been.

The DPJ is momentarily well placed to exploit the government's growing weakness. But one should not go too far in praising the DPJ. Judging by Mr. Maehara's appearance on The Sunday Project — as described by Jun Okumura — it seems that the DPJ is back to being strictly negative following Mr. Ozawa's (politically) ill-considered statement of support for JSDF participation in ISAF. Not only did Mr. Maehara provide no clear statement on the party's plans for constructive legislation, but he also further undermined Mr. Ozawa's leadership by suggesting that the party president's comments on the unconstitutionality of the MSDF mission were Mr. Ozawa's personal opinions and not party policy. The DPJ could come out on top in the legislative battle, but I'm not sure what that means, considering that Mr. Ozawa must present a realistic, constructive alternative that can challenge the persistent meme that the DPJ is as of yet unfit to govern while trapped between rank-and-file support opposed to all options on the table (see above), an Upper House caucus sympathetic to the views of the party's supporters, and the party's young hawks.

As things stand now, both the LDP and the DPJ are in purely reactive stances. Neither seems to have a clear strategy; each party is essentially relying on the other to make mistakes, with the party that makes more and bigger mistakes losing.

No wonder former PM Nakasone Yasuhiro is already talking about the post-Fukuda era, with his candidate of choice being "an able politician like Aso Taro."

The Fukuda fakeout

Earlier this week, Masuzoe Yoichi, health minister, suggested that a snap election may be possible within the year, fueling speculation of an imminent dissolution of the Diet as a result of parliamentary deadlock.

He was promptly reprimanded by Chief Cabinet Secretary Machimura, who clarified that it is the prime minister's responsibility — the prime minister's alone — to dissolve the House of Representatives and call an election, and that it is inappropriate for a member of the cabinet to address this (no matter how many books on politics, including one on the premiership, to his name).

Prime Minister Fukuda, too, jokingly chided himself for hinting at the possibility of a snap election at an informal gathering of cabinet members.

But behind the jokes, however, is the very real concern that should the LDP call an election now, it could face a defeat that would make the July defeat look like an LDP triumph. Miyagawa Takayoshi, head of the Center for Political Public Relations, had an article in the October 18th issue of Shukan Bunshun (not online) in which he describes his predictions for a general election.

In short, disaster for the LDP:

LDP 197 (down 110 from 307, 134 single-seat constituencies)
Komeito 23 (down 8 from 31)

DPJ 224 (up 111 from 113, 145 single-seat constituencies)

Combined with slight gains or no change among the other opposition parties, the opposition as a whole would have 260 of the Lower House's 480 seats. The article goes into some detail about the components of this dramatic shift, with change concentrated in Hokkaido (where the DPJ already has a strong foothold and will be running against LDP heavyweights like Mr. Machimura and former PARC chairman Nakagawa Shoichi) and Tokyo, where the DPJ saw its position nearly wiped out in 2005 (another article in this issue suggests that Mr. Ozawa might consider jumping constituencies from Iwate to Tokyo, confident that the vacated seat will be picked up by the DPJ candidate).

A couple things leap out at me. First, even if this outcome comes to pass, the DPJ will still need a total of seventeen more seats to secure a governing majority, which will mean turning to some combination of Kokumin Shinto, SDP, the Japan Party, Suzuki Muneo's Great Earth Party, and an assortment of independents (not to mention the Communists, who may be an unlikely coalition partner but who may play a decisive role in the next election by changing their electoral strategy and limiting the number of candidates they run in the next general election). The opposition parties may be cooperating now, but would a governing coalition fall into place easily under Mr. Ozawa, given memories of the last multi-party coalition engineered by Mr. Ozawa? Obviously this case would be different, given the DPJ's overwhelming dominance of a coalition, but the DPJ would still depend on its coalition partners in order to govern, despite the discrepancy in numbers.

Second, and more significantly, given the prospects of a defeat of this magnitude, why would Mr. Fukuda decide to call an early election that would mean the end of LDP rule? If the party had even a remote possibility of restoring its prospects over the next twenty-three months, why would it act within the next three, as suggested by Mr. Masuzoe? Sure, it could get worse for the LDP, and the DPJ could take an outright majority, but it seems like that's a risk worth taking.

And I think the LDP knows this, which is why I suspect that any references to an early election from Mr. Fukuda or his inner circle are intended more to rattle the DPJ than to signal serious intentions of calling an early election. Why? Because as suggested by Mr. Koizumi's new "mainstream / anti-mainstream" thesis, the closer an election seems, the more the DPJ will go on the attack and try to widen the differences between it and the LDP. Like bullfighting in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, Mr. Fukuda can wave the cape of an early election, prompting Mr. Ozawa to lower his head and charge, only to withdraw the cape and have the DPJ slam head on into the cold, hard anvil of another two years (at least) of divided government.

All of this depends, of course, on Mr. Fukuda's retaining his teflon coat — or to stick with the metaphor, remaining the calm, unflappable matador untouched by the turmoil around him. As Jun Okumura suggests, Mr. Fukuda's cabinet might even be on the brink of losing its allure and seeing its popularity plummet should its new anti-terror law stall in the Diet thanks to Moriya Takemasa's allegations. But I still have strong doubts that Mr. Fukuda will cave into a snap election quickly.

As for Mr. Miyagawa's predictions, I haven't checked them thoroughly, but I intend to do my own breakdown and predictions for the 300 single-seat constituencies soon, critiquing Mr. Miyagawa's in the process.

The end of the beginning

I'm not entirely clear to me why the cabinet decision to submit a new bill on the MSDF refueling mission deserves this kind of treatment from the BBC, considering that the government announced days ago that it would make its final decision on October 17th — and that there was no doubt that the government would decide to submit its bill to the Diet.

This is nothing more than the end of the beginning, a decision that introduces a new, parliamentary front in the battle over the MSDF mission. The new law limits refueling to ships explicitly involved in maritime interdiction operations and eliminates provisions about parliamentary approval, which will undoubtedly be subject to intense debate in the Diet.

It is still unclear exactly how this drama will play out, and what role the DPJ counteroffer of civilian contributions to Afghanistan's reconstruction — Mr. Ozawa agreed to the compromise position earlier this week — will play in the final outcome, but the debate is moving forward. My money remains on the government's getting its way, extending the Diet session to the end of the year and passing the bill over an Upper House veto. Mr. Fukuda will undoubtedly make all manner of conciliatory gesture to the DPJ, in part as a way to coax the public to support the government's doing whatever necessary to pass the bill.

But I could be wrong, because it's still unclear precisely how a divided Diet will function and how the public will react to the parties' efforts to cope with it, meaning the cabinet's deciding to support the continuation of the refueling mission does not have the air of finality that it might have had four months ago.

Thrust and parry on Afghanistan

Prime Minister Fukuda and members of his cabinet were grilled in Upper House Budget Committee deliberations on Monday, and continued their defense of Japan's participation in coalition activities in the Indian Ocean on grounds of Japan's obligations to the international community as the second largest economic power.

The sparring in the Upper House this week comes in the midst of results of a new opinion poll by Asahi, which show a small gain in support for the refueling mission since last month's poll, with support rising from 35% to 39%, with 44% opposed. For an Asahi poll, that seems to be a decidedly close margin. At the same time, however, the poll recorded marked opposition to a new law authorizing the mission, with 28% in favor and 48% opposed to a new law.

The poll also contains some good news for Mr. Fukuda's hopes for a long tenure. While it recorded a slight drop in support for his cabinet from 53% to 47% and a slight rise in its unfavorable rating from 27% to 30%, the poll also recorded a sharp drop (50 to 32%) in respondents who think that a snap election should be called quickly, and a similarly sharp rise (43 to 60%) who think that it's not necessary to call a general election soon. The poll also recorded a nine-point drop (41 to 32%) in support for a DPJ-centered coalition government, with support for an LDP-centered coalition holding steady at 33%.

Meanwhile, in advance of the scheduled October 17th cabinet decision, the government has agreed that the new law will apply for but one year, a concession by the LDP to Komeito — whose rank-and-file membership is as or more dissatisfied than ever with the now eight-year-old coalition with the LDP. I would expect more concessions to Komeito on legislation in the months to come. What choice does the LDP have? Nothing the LDP can do will probably make the Komeito rank-and-file happy, but the LDP at least needs to give the Komeito leadership something that can be presented to the rank-and-file as a positive outcome of the coalition.

But while the government continues the work of restoring the damage inflicted by Mr. Abe, the DPJ is lurching forward, seemingly making up strategy as it goes along. The DPJ leadership has reportedly decided to submit its own version of a law authorizing Japanese contributions in and around Afghanistan — but the content of said bill remains to be decided. Mr. Ozawa, of course, wants the bill to mandate a JSDF contribution to ISAF, but the compromise position seems to be civilian participation in Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT).

It's unclear to me why Japan can't do both — and that might be what happens, particularly if the DPJ bill only mandates a civilian contribution to Afghanistan reconstruction. Of course, LDP approval of the DPJ plan won't be enough to buy DPJ acquiescence on the refueling mission.

I still find it difficult to see how the DPJ can "win." Winning in this case means making passage of the bill over an Upper House veto politically untenable for the government, but it is not clear to me how the DPJ can reverse the trend in the government's favor on this issue. In Budget Committee deliberations, the DPJ seems to have been unable to score a direct hit on Mr. Fukuda, who if he keeps this up may earn a reputation as a "teflon" prime minister. The muddled DPJ response certainly can't help, particularly compared to the government's straightforward, low-risk plan that simply calls for continuing what the MSDF has been doing for six years. Easy to understand, and unambiguous, as long as the government can continue to bat away allegations about Japanese fuel being used for the US war in Iraq.

UPDATE — It looks like Jun Okumura and I have similar takes on the situation.

Komeito's emerging role?

With the special session of the Diet session now in full swing, both the LDP and the DPJ are learning how to function in an unprecedented political environment. Barring the government's somehow folding and calling an early election — essentially giving up its Lower House supermajority, its one trump card — both parties will have to establish new rules of the game, a modus vivendi that will enable them to cooperate on some legislation even while struggling to win the upper hand in the battle for public support.

Because there is plenty of ground for the two parties to work together. Take, for example, the issue of a monthly child allowance, which was one of the DPJ's campaign promises in July. The DPJ has finalized its proposal, calling for a monthly child allowance of 26,000 yen until the child completes junior high school, without means testing for parents' income. Mr. Fukuda, based on his maiden speech in the Diet, surely wouldn't disagree with a some kind of proposal like this. What would stop the LDP and the DPJ from cooperating on this issue, given that they agree on the principle? They might quibble over money and conditions, but that's politics.

And so I find remarks from Mr. Kitagawa, Komeito secretary-general, of interest. Mr. Kitagawa suggested that if DPJ legislation is good, "We think it will be good to appeal to the LDP. We want to strive for a flexible stance." Komeito could be a useful actor, prevailing on both the DPJ and the LDP to come to terms on behalf of good policy. Indeed, after a miserable performance in July's election, Komeito is suddenly in a good position. After being battered under Mr. Abe, in Mr. Fukuda they have a prime minister who appreciates them and in a tense political environment they may have an important role to play in forging compromises on policy.

The LDP readies its bill

On the heels of Mr. Fukuda's maiden speech to the Diet, the government has outlined a new bill on the MSDF mission in the Indian Ocean and will begin working with relevant cabinet ministers and within the governing coalition to hammer out a final draft, before appealing to the DPJ to cooperate.

Perhaps, then, Jun Okumura is right: a perfunctory effort to get the DPJ to sign on, then a quick push through the House of Representatives by mid-October (Jun said October 16th), meaning that the sixty-day waiting period would end sometime in December. It seems that the government will be unable to avoid extending the Diet session into December.

The terms of the government's draft, accordingly to Asahi, are much more limited than the special measures law, stripping the mission down to its refueling core (instead of also being permitted to do searches and disaster relief). Acknowledging opposition criticism, the government will provide information on the mission at fixed intervals — and it will acknowledge the farcical UN resolution as a basis for action. The LDP wants the bill to last two years, but apparently Komeito would prefer only one.

But any differences within the coalition will presumably be ironed out. It seems that Mr. Fukuda may be able to achieve what Mr. Abe couldn't, with minimal turbulence. The DPJ will ask its questions and demand documents — it has already begun its parliamentary inquest — but it won't be able to do much more than delay the inevitable. Mr. Ozawa may still be able to spin it as a victory of some kind, saying that he stood up to both the government and the US and refused to cave, but it seems that it won't serve as the rallying cry that perhaps the DPJ leadership intended when it took this stance after the election.

In other words, in with a bang, out with a whimper.

A very typical scandal

In case anyone thinks that the DPJ will buy the dodge attempted by CCS Machimura on The Sunday Project — discussed by Jun Okumura in this post — this post by Nagashima Akihisa should disabuse you of that notion.

Mr. Machimura attempted to shift the blame to the US for reports that US warships used Japanese-provided fuel for activities related to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

As seems typical for Mr. Nagashima's blog posts, he is "dumbfounded" by Mr. Machimura's remarks, suggesting that in all likelihood the government knew exactly what was going on in the Indian Ocean.

This "scandal" has the makings of other Japanese scandals, with unanswered question following unanswered question (i.e., the question of whether Japan provided 200,000 or 800,000 tons of fuel), which of course justifies the position taken by Mr. Nagashima and other DPJ hawks that the problem isn't the mission, but the government's failure to provide adequate information about the MSDF's activities. This whole "Iraq or Afghanistan" question has probably destroyed whatever opportunity remained of the government's using the anti-terror bill to divide the DPJ, if such an opportunity even remained — apparently the government doesn't even have the information that the DPJ wants (and if it's playing dumb, well, that's even more inexcusable).

In the meantime, the DPJ continues to support a role on the ground in Afghanistan, doing "DDR": disarmament, demobilization, and reconstruction. Shadow Defense Minister Asao reiterated the DPJ's support for a government plan to put personnel — presumably civilians — on the ground in Afghanistan in support of DDR activities.

I have to disagree with Jun Okumura on point related to this, however. I see no way for this bill to pass this year. Depending on how quickly the Lower House acts on a new bill, we're still looking at a two-month waiting period before the Lower House can vote for the bill again, even longer if the Diet session isn't extended to last into December or the new year. I find it hard to believe that the DPJ won't use the full sixty days to embarrass the government, questioning witness after witness after witness about the mission.

The Fukuda cabinet might be able to raise the costs to the DPJ of opting for this strategy, but I think that will depend on the height of the ceiling for public support for this mission. The recent polls on this matter show that the support the government enjoys is soft — of the "can't be helped" variety rather than the "absolutely must do this" variety.