The curtain comes down on the ordinary Diet session — and Fukuda and the LDP?

The 169th ordinary session of the Diet comes to an end Saturday, with the comprehensive economic partnership agreement with ASEAN passing naturally. The session ends with the prime minister's having been censured by the upper house and three opposition parties' boycotting proceedings (with a handful of exceptions). Mainichi reports that of eighty bills submitted by the government, only sixty-three passed for a success rate of 78.8%. Not only that, the eighty bills submitted was lower than the usual 100-120 bills per session.

It's not clear to me why this should be surprising. The government doesn't control the upper house. The opposition can and has held up legislation it opposes. If anything, it's remarkable that the government was able to achieve a 78.8% success rate — and that it was able to do so having only used its lower house supermajority on a handful of occasions.

There will be much wailing and rending of garments about the gridlock of the nejire kokkai, but I am not convinced that divided government has been an unmitigated disaster for Japan. The DPJ has managed to balance, however unsteadily, its roles as leading opposition party and master of the upper house.

The biggest problem, the leading obstacle standing in the way of the major changes Japan needs is not the divided Diet but the divided LDP. The toughest policy battles the prime minister has had to wage have not been across party lines but within the LDP (with the exception of the anti-terror law). Mr. Fukuda's battles against his own party will only intensify in the autumn as he attempts to force the party to follow him in phasing out the road construction fund and raising the consumption tax rate. The LDP remains the leading opponent of reform, regardless of what its leaders say.

As a result of tension within the LDP (and the DPJ), talk of a political realignment, most likely after the next general election, remains common. While his popularity has improved slightly in the final weeks of the session, Mr. Fukuda may still end up presiding over the destruction of his party — unless someone forces him out first.

It is possible that after playing host to his fellow G8 leaders in two weeks, Mr. Fukuda will opt to reshuffle his cabinet. Yomiuri reports that he is "groping towards" a post-summit reshuffle that will revitalize the government in advance of what will be a busy extraordinary session — and a long extraordinary session, as it will likely begin at the end of August to leave the government enough time to pass the refueling mission extension by Article 59 if necessary. A reshuffle, however, will not save his government. It might in fact hasten his demise, should the reshuffle free senior LDP politicians now serving in the cabinet to speak against the government. As Mainichi reports, a reshuffle could just as easily lead to disorder within the party. (And there's still the question of whether the prime minister would bring Mr. Aso and/or Mr. Yosano, the leading contenders to replace him, into a new cabinet.)

Some LDP members are looking for a savior — see this post — but no one person can save the LDP. Something appears to have snapped in the Japanese people. Or more accurately, something appears to have snapped in rural voters, who have continued to vote for the LDP in large numbers even as their city cousins abandoned the LDP to become DPJ voters (or floating voters). The number one task for Mr. Fukuda was and is healing the rift between the LDP and its rural supporters that opened under Mr. Abe and played an important role in the party's defeat in the upper house election last July. There is no indication that Mr. Fukuda has made any progress in repairing the LDP's prospects in rural areas. Indeed, after the over-75 eldercare system rollout, the situation is even worse.

This is the reality facing the LDP. There seems to be little Mr. Fukuda can do to change it. The question now is whether the LDP will give someone else a chance to try to save the LDP before the next general election.

Fukuda looks to political reform

In the July issue of Bungei Shunjyu, Akasaka Taro paints a portrait of Fukuda Yasuo at the present time as ebullient as the current Diet session draws to a close. (Part one here. Part two here.)

The prime minister is reportedly pleased with his achievements during the current Diet session, having faced down the LDP's road tribe — for now — and blunted the DPJ's attacks by borrowing liberally from their agenda. He reportedly said to Mori Yoshiro, former prime minister, and Aoki Mikio, former president of the upper house, "Don't worry. I won't imitate Prime Minister Abe."

It does seem that the prime minister is increasingly finding his voice and looking to carry his party into the next election. He is increasingly looking to take up the mantle of Koizumi Junichiro, however tentatively and with reservations. He told Columbia's Gerald Curtis in a meeting, "In reform, the problem should not be assessed quantitatively. Qualitative value is important." In short, the prime minister is looking to stake out a Fukuda agenda to distinguish himself both from his rivals in the LDP and Ozawa Ichiro, head of the DPJ. (Regarding the former, Akasaka suggests that the Mr. Fukuda's foreign policy vision is in direct contrast with Aso Taro's "arc of freedom and prosperity," an assessment that I share — he is explicitly rejecting the foreign policy approach of his two most recent predecessors, especially regarding the US-Japan alliance.)

In continuing his "silent revolution," the prime minister is now prepared to turn his attention to political reform. On Wednesday he attended a general meeting of the LDP's headquarters for realizing party reform. Takebe Tsutomu, LDP secretary-general under Mr. Koizumi, heads up the group, which shares his mission of keeping the flame of the Koizumi revolution burning in the LDP. The LDP reports that the group will consider reforming the Diet, liberalizing restrictions on political activity and political funds, and strengthening the party. It is too early to say what will emerge from this process. Diet reform, for example, may specifically refer to reform of the procedure for approving officials like the Bank of Japan's executives (according to Mainichi), which is less inspiring than these ideas for Diet reform. Lifting the restrictions on political activity, meanwhile, is badly needed. Many of those restrictions, however, have served to protect incumbents, which will undoubtedly make said reform popular in the LDP. So whether Mr. Takebe's group will produce anything of lasting value remains to be seen.

But what's important to note is that Mr. Fukuda is looking both at what made Mr. Koizumi successful and what arguments the DPJ will muster in its next general election campaign. Mr. Koizumi succeeded in part because of his promise to destroy the LDP; the DPJ, especially under Mr. Ozawa, is running on the same platform. Making political reform a priority will bolster Mr. Fukuda's reformist credentials at the same time that he weakens the DPJ's best argument for regime change.

Pushing for political reform will not spare the LDP from a devastating blow in the next general election — but it and every other effort by the prime minister to borrow from the DPJ to undermine the LDP's reactionaries could mean the difference between a total defeat of the LDP and a lesser defeat that leaves the LDP with a parliamentary majority.

An ebullient Mr. Fukuda looking to burnish his reformist credentials puts the DPJ on the defensive, despite the DPJ's censure motion. The tide may turn against Mr. Fukuda eventually — he will not be able to antagonize the reactionaries forever and escape unharmed, because he doesn't have Mr. Koizumi's theatrical (or perhaps prestidigitatorial) skills and public support. But for now he will escape the Diet session intact and play host in Hokkaido before having to rejoin the battle against enemies inside and outside the LDP.

Censured!

As planned, the House of Councillors passed a non-binding censure motion against the Fukuda government this evening.

It should be noted that the upper house passed twelve bills — including four government bills — on Tuesday, bypassing normal deliberation to clear the agenda for the censure motion. Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't the DPJ complained about the government's "ramming" legislation through the lower house with insufficient deliberation?

The government will not surprisingly ignore the motion and carry on; the lower house will pass a confidence motion in the prime minister on Thursday.

For once I agree with Machimura Nobutaka, who said that he understood the motion's "political appeal" but saw no legal meaning in it. Breathless foreign coverage of the motion notwithstanding, all the DPJ has done is said, by way of a non-binding resolution, what it's been saying all along: we object to how the LDP-led coalition is governing Japan. Yes, now it's the upper house that's saying it — officially — and not the DPJ, but that's a trifling distinction.

On the plus side, at least the DPJ finally followed through on its threat, demonstrating just how feeble a threat it was. Did the DPJ really think that the government would crumple in the face of its censure motion, that forcing a dissolution of the lower house and a general election would be as easy as passing a non-binding resolution in the chamber they control?

Fukuda the unflappable

The DPJ has decided that it will submit a censure motion against the government on Wednesday, as planned. The LDP and Komeito agreed Tuesday that it will extend the Diet session by six days to 21 June to ensure the automatic passage of the economic partnership agreement (EPA) with ASEAN (the one-month period during which the HC has to act on a treaty expires on 21 June).

In other words, the government will carry on its business for ten days in the shadow of the upper house's non-binding censure resolution.

Ozawa Ichiro admitted Monday that the timing of the motion has little to do with the eldercare system debate. The censure is "all inclusive," an all-encompassing critique of the government's conduct. That actually makes it even less effective than if the motion were specifically targeted at some issue. Now the DPJ is just bleating in futile opposition to the government. Perhaps it should save its "all-encompassing" censure of the government for the election campaign, when it could actually make a difference. The extension of the Diet session two days after the censure motion will make it even more clear just how impotent the DPJ is. The DPJ will censure, and the government will carry on with business as usual.

It appears that Fukuda Yasuo is feeling more confident as the Diet session comes to an end, even after the government's defeat in the Okinawan prefectural assembly set off a new round of panic within the ranks of the LDP and Komeito about the electoral consequences of the new eldercare system. He is apparently looking to the future, to his moment on the world stage in Toyako next month and to plans for the government's agenda in the autumn. Despite the fears within the government, on Monday Mr. Fukuda waved off the idea of an early election, suggesting that doing so would deepen the paralysis in the political system. He is prepared to lead the LDP into the next general election, even if large swathes of his party are increasingly unhappy at the thought.

Nevertheless, Mr. Fukuda's grace under fire is impressive. Time will tell whether it's foolish.

Fukuda the survivor

With the regular Diet session entering its final week (or penultimate week), it's possible that Prime Minister Fukuda may emerge from the session stronger than seemed possible.

His bolstered stature has less to do with personal victories — the pork-and-patronage members of the LDP are no less angry with his leadership than before, and he still faces bruising fights over fiscal policy and road construction in the autumn — but he has succeeded at co-opting ideas from the DPJ, stopping the DPJ in its tracks.

As MTC notes in a superb post, the DPJ has benefited mightily from an incompetent LDP that has spent the months since Koizumi Junichiro's departure distancing itself from his legacy and abandoning his tactic of borrowing policy ideas from the DPJ to bludgeon opponents within the party (and secure greater popular support). MTC sees a possible revival of Koizumism in the LDP, the longer that Mr. Fukuda holds on.

It seems that MTC shares Nakagawa Hidenao's assessment of the prime minister as a "silent reformer." However, I wonder whether MTC might be a bit too optimistic about the balance of forces in the LDP. Mr. Fukuda might be declaring "Mission Accomplished" today, but there may yet be an insurgency lying in wait when he tries to get his road construction reform bill — perhaps his signature victory this session — passed into law.

But his assessment of the DPJ under Ozawa is spot on. The DPJ is in the unfortunate position of needing victories, however small, to keep its ragtag ranks together. As long as things are looking up, as long as the polls continue to report good news, as long as the LDP is airing its dirty laundry for all to see, the DPJ is in good spirits and news reports of DPJ fissures vanish. Stall, and those reports reappear. It's little wonder that Mr. Ozawa's DPJ is all tactics, no strategy. In the grand scheme of things, the DPJ has performed ably since taking control of the HC. It has controlled the agenda and pushed issues that exploit divisions within the LDP. It has forced the government to speak on terms favorable to the DPJ: "lifestyle" issues, so to speak.

But it is no surprise that Mr. Fukuda will willfully shift in the DPJ's direction. It's been clear from before the launch of Mr. Fukuda's cabinet: in picking up the pieces from the Abe debacle, Mr. Fukuda would necessarily have to sound similar notes to the DPJ's campaign slogan of putting lifestyle issues first. This would be worrying for the DPJ if Mr. Fukuda was Mr. Koizumi. But he's not. Whereas Mr. Koizumi relished borrowing from the DPJ to pummel his own party and then taking his case to the public to win support for his initiative, Mr. Fukuda is far less inclined to pummel his own party and far less able to reach out to the public. He's left trying to keep everyone happy, now leaning to Nakagawa Hidenao and the Koizumi remnant, now backpedaling on reform, now preaching the gospel of cooperation across the aisle, now throwing a tantrum when frustrated by DPJ intransigence. Through all this maneuvering, Mr. Fukuda may have prolonged the life of his government. But how long can he keep up this balancing act? Will he throw in his hat with a single LDP school (i.e., the Koizumians)? If he does so, will he be completely abandoned?

This is the essential question in the prospective cabinet reshuffle. If Mr. Fukuda opts for a new cabinet, will it once again be a unity cabinet? If so, why bother? If not, will he use a reshuffle to throw his weight behind one group? (Another question is whether he would use the reshuffle to bring Aso Taro and/or Yosano Kaoru, the leading post-Fukuda contenders, into the cabinet and prevent them from campaigning.) This question is speculative for now; Mori Yoshiro, Mr. Fukuda's "guardian," claims that the prime minister is leaning against a reshuffle.

In short, Mr. Fukuda is not in the clear yet. He is still constrained by his divided party, and it remains questionable whether he has the power to impose his will on the party. But he is a canny politician, and he is making the best of a terrible hand. The calendar may be his greatest ally. The longer he holds out, the more he can kill speculation about the post-Fukuda era and force members of the LDP to accept that he may be around for the long haul, the long haul being September 2009, the deadline for a general election — and by accepting Mr. Fukuda's durability, embracing (however reluctantly) his strategy for preserving an LDP majority.

Here comes a censure motion

The power to pass a non-binding censure motion in the upper house has been burning a hole in the DPJ's pocket since the moment it took control of the House of Councillors, and it looks like the DPJ will finally make good on its threat to use it against the Fukuda government.

For those keeping score at home, the DPJ has threatened to pass censure motions in opposition to the use of Article 59 to pass the new anti-terror law, against Ishiba Shigeru for his ministry's handling of the Atago incident, and against the government's use of Article 59 to pass the road construction plan in the HR a second time. The DPJ has yet to follow through on any of these threats.

The significance of an HC censure motion remains unknown, but limited.

Nevertheless, it looks as if the DPJ will make good on its threat and pass a motion against the prime minister on 11 June, in the hope that waiting until next Wednesday will give the DPJ time to pass desired legislation related to compensation for the victims of Aum Shinrikyo and asbestos exposure.

The trigger is reportedly the government's revisions of the new eldercare system — regarding which the HC has just passed a bill calling for scrapping the new system — but this censure motion isn't really about the eldercare system. The eldercare system is simply the last opportunity the DPJ has to pass a censure motion before the term ends. As MTC has argued convincingly, the government has acted quite sensibly in responding to criticism of the new system, while the DPJ has opted for the shortcut of simply demanding a reversion to the old system. Presumably a censure motion should be used to, you know, censure the government for something it has done wrong.

This is politicking, plain and simple. Ozawa Ichiro continues to believe that when the HC passes a censure motion, the political world will shake. The government will fall, an election will be held, and the DPJ will sweep into power. He assumes that because this has never happened before, "this is an extreme state of affairs." More likely is that the talk shows and the newspapers will be abuzz about the censure motion for a day or two, the Diet session will end, and attention will shift to the G8 summit.

Perhaps it's best that the DPJ go ahead and pass the motion, so that the non-binding censure motion will lose its mystique and the DPJ can stop trotting out the threat every time the government does something that the DPJ doesn't like.

Administrative reform in sight

Its fate uncertain after being introduced in the Diet, the government's administrative reform bill now looks set to pass both houses after the DPJ concluded an agreement with the LDP and Komeito on a compromise bill.

The bill, according to Asahi, will pass the HR's cabinet committee on Wednesday and the whole HR on Thursday.

The government made several important concessions to the DPJ. The bill will create a cabinet personnel bureau that will be responsible for personnel decisions (as opposed to the government's plan that permitted ministries and agencies to retain prime responsibility for personnel decisions). All contact between politicians and bureaucrats other than the those in the new class of officials responsible for relations between legislators and ministries will be recorded and made public — the DPJ was adamant on this point, and the government agreed. The DPJ failed to secure desired restrictions to prevent amakudari, as well as expanded labor rights for clerical officials, a clause desired by DPJ ally RENGO, Japan's largest trade union confederation.

There is little reason for the DPJ to be disappointed. While it did not get everything it wanted, it got more than enough concessions from the government to claim that progress is being made along lines desired by the DPJ. In a stroke it has illustrated that it is capable of playing a constructive role in the policy process and push for greater transparency and accountability in Japanese governance. The Fukuda government, meanwhile, sounds happy just to have agreed to something and to have a signature bill progressing to passage without having to use Article 59. Chief Cabinet Secretary Machimura declared, "The content has become considerably different from the original government bill, but we welcome the bill's passage."

Sankei has hailed this as a victory for Mr. Fukuda's "silent reformism," the prime minister's understated approach to changing Japanese governance. While this may be a way for the prime minister to improve his public image, his position is no less tenuous. The DPJ, by agreeing to cooperate on administrative reform, has successfully used this issue as a wedge issue, separating the prime minister and the LDP's reformists from the party's zoku giin and other friends of the bureaucracy, who are already up in arms over the prime minister's road construction reform plan. In agreeing to substantial concessions to the DPJ in order to secure a legislative victory to boost the government's public standing, Mr. Fukuda may have further weakened his standing within the LDP.

But this is, as LDP HR member Yamauchi Koichi argues, a step forward. A step forward for who, well, that's open to discussion.

The DPJ will use administrative reform as a wedge issue

With the government's having finally dispensed with the gasoline tax and road construction issues — for now — attention is now turning to other portions of the Fukuda agenda, such as it exists.

Item number one is the government's — or perhaps more accurately, Administrative Reform Minister Watanabe Yoshimi's — administrative reform plan (previously discussed here). When I last addressed the administrative reform bill at the beginning of May, the bill had yet to come under discussion in the Diet, with bureaucrats and LDP sympathizers unhappy with the bill.

Now, as of 9 May, the bill is under discussion in the House of Representatives. (The initial proceedings can be read at the National Diet Library site here.) The Fukuda government has decided to prioritize the bill. Prime Minister Fukuda, after a meeting Thursday with the Diet strategy chairmen of the LDP and Komeito, declared that he wants to "exert as much effort as possible" to see the bill passed during the remaining weeks of the current Diet session. It is not clear what "exert as much effort as possible" entails. Does he mean that the government will extend the Diet session to leave the government time to overrule the HC again in the event of DPJ opposition? I ruled out the possibility before, and it seems clear that the Fukuda government will not keep the Diet in session past mid-June. Unlike his predecessor, Mr. Fukuda seems to recognize that freeing up Diet members to campaign in their districts is more important than keeping them in Tokyo to pass token (and watered down) pieces of legislation.

There may actually be some hope for the passage of the government's administrative reform bill, as the DPJ is considering cooperating with the government to pass a revised version of the bill. According to Mainichi, the main points that the DPJ wants to strengthen are provisions related to transparency in politician-bureaucrat contacts and centralized management of the civil service. On the former point in particular, the DPJ wants every case of contact between politicians and bureaucrats reported to the appropriate cabinet minister.

The government, especially Mr. Watanabe, is receptive to the DPJ's position. Nakagawa Hidenao, not in the government but certainly close to Mr. Fukuda, has also spoken favorably about LDP-DPJ cooperation on the administrative reform bill. In a post authored earlier this week titled "More than LDP v. DPJ, the important axis of confrontation is Kasumigaseki leadership v. political leadership," Mr. Nakagawa argued that the government is fully committed to the plan, that it hasn't been watered down from the initial conception of an advisory group to the prime minister, and that the LDP and DPJ must work together to contain the power of the bureaucracy, Mr. Fukuda's "quiet reform."

I still have my doubts about the strength of this bill, not least because as a basic law, it leaves too much detail about implementation unstated. And the DPJ is right to suggest that it doesn't go far enough in curtailing contacts between politicians and bureaucrats. But there is some merit to the bill, not least because it will cause turmoil within the LDP.

The problem is that some (LDP) politicians cannot conceive of a system in which they don't go to the bureaucrats whenever they need information. (Ed. — Or a favor...?)

Okashita Nobuko, an LDP member from Osaka, questioned Mr. Fukuda and Mr. Watanabe about the plan, stating her fear that "if Diet members cannot get essential information from bureaucrats, our activities as Diet members will be obstructed."

Ms. Okashita seems to miss the point of administrative reform (or she gets it too well): it is not aimed solely at bureaucrats, but also at backbenchers who have abused the current system of lax regulation of contact between politicians and bureaucrats to distort policy. (See the case of the late Matsuoka Toshikatsu for a more blatant example.) Presumably restrictions on contact between politicians and bureaucrats will change how the LDP makes policy. The current system, under which the bureaucracy supplies LDP members with information at every stage of the policymaking process thanks to the shadow bureaucracy that is the LDP's policy research system, presumably violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the current administrative reform bill. PARC therefore would have to become more like the British Conservative Party's Research Department, and the party executive — and the prime minister's office — would play an even greater role in establishing policy priorities.

Naturally there are more than a few LDP backbenchers who might be unhappy about this. The DPJ, lacking the dense contacts with the bureaucracy to begin with, has little reason to oppose greater restrictions.

By offering to cooperate, the DPJ is finally using administrative reform as a wedge issue, as the closer the bill gets to passage, the greater the pressure LDP backbenchers will put on the government to back away from the reform (or to make sotto voce promises to water it down in the implementation stage). Administrative reform has the potential to worsen the already strained relations between the Fukuda government and LDP members dependent on pork-barrel politics. In the process, the DPJ can claim that it is acting responsibly on an issue that concerns the public.

Bait and switch

The HR passed the road construction bill a second time on Tuesday afternoon, as scheduled. Despite rumors to the contrary, there was no rebellion. Kono Taro and his comrades voted with the government, in the process illustrating why the much-anticipated political realignment has yet to occur: for all the discontent voiced by backbenchers about the leadership of both the LDP and the DPJ, they remain reluctant to bear the risks associated with bucking the party leadership and possibly leaving the party.

Mr. Kono and other reformists are still threatening to fight for the party to adopt the prime minister's plan to phase out the road construction fund from 2009, but after caving on the road construction plan Tuesday, will their concerns be taken seriously in the coming months? As Mainichi reports, despite remaining silent in the face of the cabinet decision supporting Mr. Fukuda's plan, the road tribe remains ready to fight to preserve its privileges. The road tribesmen will instead focus their efforts on the year-end budget proposal, a sound strategy considering that Mr. Fukuda will likely be gone by then, leaving the reformists to fight on alone.

Even with Mr. Fukuda as premier the tribesmen have important allies within the party for their campaign to derail the reform: local and prefectural politicians, who will undoubtedly remind their patrons in Tokyo that their communities need the road fund and suggest that if Mr. Fukuda's plan goes forward, they cannot guarantee that the LDP will get favorable returns in the next general election. Whether such a threat is credible is not the issue — if the LDP leadership becomes convinced that ending the special fund truly alienates the party from its supposed base, that will be enough to ensure that the reform plan gets watered down to the point of irrelevance. The head of the national mayors association has already criticized the plan, no doubt the first of many such comments to come from local politicians.

In short, the LDP, already concerned that its rural base could desert the party in a general election, will not follow through on Mr. Fukuda's proposal, a classic bait and switch.

And so the LDP's death throes will continue, as the LDP can no longer rely on the two methods that had extended its life in the past: opportunistic policy shifts (like this, for example) and "divide-and-rule." (These arguments are made by Ito Atsuo in a Chuo Koron article to which I linked above.) Regarding the former, not only has the LDP calcified ideologically, but its reformist members, who want to change the party's policies, find it nearly impossible to overcome the opposition of older members who desperately cling to their remaining privileges. What do the latter have to lose in resisting reform tooth-and-nail? The party is in no position to punish them, Mr. Koizumi's 2005 purge notwithstanding. Mr. Koizumi's purge of postal rebels — so objectionable to many LDP members, judging by the return of most of the rebels to the LDP — was clearly an aberration.

As for the latter, the LDP's bid to divide and co-opt the opposition by offering a grand coalition to the DPJ clearly failed and if anything united the DPJ in its opposition to the government. This scheme may have temporarily created turmoil within the DPJ by intensifying dissatisfaction with Ozawa Ichiro's leadership, but Mr. Ozawa appears to have quelled most of the resistance to his leadership. The LDP continues to hope that Mr. Ozawa will face a serious challenge in the September party leadership election but the threat to Mr. Ozawa may be overstated. A reformist like Maehara Seiji or Okada Katsuya, both former party leaders, may ultimately stand against Mr. Ozawa, but it is unlikely that the bulk of the party will abandon Mr. Ozawa for either man.

Meanwhile, the depth of the LDP's desperation is revealed in its hope for an incapacitated DPJ.

The second override

The House of Councillors voted yesterday to reject the ten-year road construction plan passed by the House of Representatives in March. The bill was defeated 108 to 126, with DPJ (proportional representation) members Oe Yasuhiro and Watanabe Hideo rebelling against the party leadership to support the bill, and Kimata Yoshitake (Aichi) and Hironaka Wakako (Chiba) abstaining from the vote. The PNP's four members, who caucus with the DPJ, also abstained from the vote.

The Fukuda government plans to bring the bill to a second vote in the HR Tuesday afternoon.

Tuesday morning the government plans to secure a cabinet decision on Mr. Fukuda's plan to phase out the special road construction fund, a precondition for forestalling a rebellion by Kono Taro and his band of reformists. The path to a cabinet decision has been tortuous, as reported by Mainichi. Until the LDP's defeat in the Yamaguchi-2 by-election, the government's policy was to wait until after passing the road construction plan a second time before securing a cabinet decision on the Fukuda plan. Taking the threat of rebellion seriously, the government has changed tacked, and, consistent with the Fukuda government's poor sense of timing, has put off securing a cabinet decision until Tuesday.

Presumably that will ensure that Mr. Kono and his comrades will vote with the government in the afternoon. Yamamoto Ichita anticipates that not even one will defect. He argues, however, that the real battle is yet to come. A cabinet decision is not enough; the reformists will have to fight within the LDP to ensure that the party embraces the prime minister's plan.

Assuming that the road construction plan passes Tuesday afternoon, an extra ten years of road construction funded by the special road construction fund will be law — and Mr. Fukuda's plan still just words.

Boldly going where Japan has never gone before

Thanks to an agreement between the LDP, the DPJ, and Komeito, on Friday the HR's Cabinet committee passed a bill that revises Japanese space policy, lifting the 1969 ban on the military use of space. The bill, expected to pass the HR on Tuesday, will create a NASA-style agency attached to the cabinet as a modification of JAXA. As Asahi reports, the bill will also permit Japan to deploy higher resolution spy satellites (Japan is currently limited to commercial-grade satellites).

After passing the HR this coming week, the bill will pass to the HC, where it is expected to pass, although it is worth noting that on this issue, as on other defense issues, there are dissenting opinions within the DPJ, including (I would suspect) members from the party's left-wing-heavy HC caucus.

There are a few relevant questions about this bill.

First, why is the DPJ signing on to this initiative? I suspect that the DPJ is inclined to support this because it gives Japan military capability independent of the US. With higher resolution satellites, Japan would be that much less reliant on the US for information in the event of a crisis (say, a missile launch from North Korea). With the DPJ interested in more autonomy, it is little surprise that the party supports the development of more advanced Japanese space assets.

Second, why now? Is this just another step in Japan's "Sputnik moment," the prolonged reaction to North Korea's 1998 Taepodong launch?

The government's administrative reform bill is dying on the vine

Nearly a month has passed since the government submitted its administrative reform bill to the Diet, and Mainichi reports that the bill's prospects are no better now than they were when the bill was submitted. Indeed, they are considerably worse.

With six weeks until the end of the Diet session — unless Mr. Fukuda does like Mr. Abe and gives himself an extension — the bill still has not come up for discussion in the HR. It was scheduled to be debated on 22 April, but was delayed because "there are many other bills that should be prioritized." The bill is now scheduled to be discussed on 8 May, after Golden Week. There is no enthusiasm within the bureaucracy and little within the LDP for administrative reform, and the government, aside from Watanabe Yoshimi, minister for administrative reform, is unprepared to exert significant effort to see the bill passed.

This sounds like the perfect combination to ensure that the administrative reform plan dies an unlamented death next month.

At the same time that the LDP is distancing itself from what was an important part of the Koizumi formula, the DPJ has announced its own "Kasumigaseki reform plan." Rather than imposing restrictions on interaction between politicians and bureaucrats, the DPJ's plan will ensure that bureaucrats see a lot more of politicians — in their own ministries. There is already little love lost between the DPJ and the bureaucracy, and the DPJ's new plan will do nothing to endear it to Kasumigaseki.

The party's administrative reform investigatory committee, chaired by Matsumoto Takeaki (49), an HR member representing the Kinki PR bloc, has announced that when the DPJ takes power, it will greatly expand the number of political appointees in the government. There are currently around seventy appointees to ministerial, vice-ministerial, secretarial, and advisory posts in cabinet ministries and the cabinet secretariat. The DPJ wants to expand that number to around 130, tapping Diet members (and experts from outside the Diet) to serve as advisers to cabinet ministers. And it doesn't just want to create new figurehead positions: the DPJ intends to give the political appointees control over bureaus and policy formulation. The plan also calls for the creation of a centralized bureau of cabinet personnel in the cabinet secretariat, and forbids ministries and agencies from finding new employment for retiring bureaucrats.

The further down into the ministries that the reach of the politicians extends, the more power the government will have to impose its will on the bureaucrats. But the politicians need operational control. Does the DPJ have enough policy experts in its ranks to dispatch them into ministries to battle day-to-day with bureaucrats? A massive influx of advisers long on titles and short on power will not change the situation. So I'm skeptical about whether the DPJ will be able to implement this broad-ranging plan. This shows, however, that a DPJ government would be free to consider radical reforms that the LDP cannot, thanks to its cozy relationship with the bureaucracy.

Administrative reform is not just something that concerns insiders in Tokyo. The people are paying attention. Note that in the Mainichi poll conducted before the Yamaguchi-2 by-election, administrative reform ranked third in order of priority, after health and welfare, and pensions. The public knows who is responsible for misgoverning Japan, and the DPJ is wise to discuss how a DPJ government will deal with the bureaucracy.

A pyrrhic victory

Japan's "temporary" gasoline surcharge holiday is over, just as the Japanese people set off on their Golden Week holidays.

The government will use its HR supermajority to reinstate the temporary tax Wednesday, ensuring that the surcharge is in place for the start of the new month.

The opposition parties have, of course, strongly criticized the government's decision to proceed as contrary to the will of the people. The DPJ's "gasoline price reduction brigade," an organization of younger DPJ members that played an important role in the early stages of this debate in bringing this issue to the top of the agenda, was particularly apoplectic in its response to the government's widely expected decision to proceed as planned.

Based on the government's own statements about its plan to pass the tax bill again today, it appears that there is little doubt that the LDP and Komeito will be able to line up all of their members in favor of renewing the temporary tax.

The DPJ and the other opposition parties may have lost the battle, but if the Yamaguchi-2 by-election was any indication, another victory like this and Mr. Fukuda is done for.

Counting down to X-Day

With less than a week until 30 April — "X-Day" — when the government intends to bring the tax bill to a vote in the HR again, the DPJ is apparently stepping away from threats to censure the government in response to the revote.

Kan Naoto indicated at a press conference Thursday that the party has yet to decide how it will respond to the expected reinstatement of the temporary gasoline tax, noting that there is a discussion underway about whether a censure motion will pressure the government into dissolving the HR and calling a general election.

This should come as no surprise. It became clear last fall that despite being able to pass non-binding censure motions, the HC is largely powerless when it comes to resisting a government armed with a two-thirds majority in the HR. For all the complaints from the LDP about how irresponsible the DPJ has been acting, the government has still been able to get what it wants through the Diet, even if it has to wait sixty days on occasion (which would be less of a problem if the government planned better).

The DPJ's only ally in its fight against the government is public opinion. The public's ambivalence about the MSDF refueling mission meant that the DPJ was impotent in the face of the government's determination to restart the mission. Will the same dynamic apply next week?

Both parties are keenly watching how public opinion breaks in the days between the by-election in Yamaguchi-2 on 27 April and the HR vote on 30 April. As Sato Hiroya suggests:

Whether the LDP wins or loses, if there's a narrow margin, the LDP will likely go ahead and forcibly pass this bill again. However, if the LDP candidate loses by an unexpectedly large margin, it is likely that it will not be easy for the LDP to take the strong step of passing it again on the 30th.

In short, the government will conclude that the political consequences of the temporary tax are negligible and proceed as planned. A close and/or victorious election will stand in for the numerous opinion polls showing opposition to the temporary tax.

Pushing forward with the tax bill does, however, entail some risk to the government, particularly if public opposition translates into a vocal backlash following the bill's second passage.

It's possible that the situation is not as dire for the Fukuda government as it appears. Yamamoto Ichita thinks that both the potential rebels within the LDP and the DPJ are full of bluster but will ultimately fail to deliver: the rebels will fall into line and vote with the party, the DPJ will not pass a censure motion in the HC, and the government will get its way on the two votes (the tax bill vote next week, and the road construction bill sometime in May). In short, the government will survive this crisis by acting resolutely and not wavering.

As suggested above, he may be right about the DPJ. I'm still not convinced, however, that the LDP has stifled the rebellion, especially if Sunday results in a DPJ landslide, an entirely plausible outcome.

That's the flaw in Mr. Yamamoto's "election avoidance syndrome" theory. Of course elected officials would prefer to put off an election for as long as possible. But they would also like to win the election when it comes. Given a choice between taking an action that might bolster their electoral prospects at the risk of hastening a general election, which instinct wins out? If a DPJ landslide provides a clear illustration for LDP HR members of their vulnerability in a general election, will they be as inclined to vote again for a measure opposed by an overwhelming majority of the public?

In short, an overwhelming DPJ victory in Yamaguchi-2 could have far greater impact on how the government proceeds than the threat of a censure motion ever could.

Koizumi goes to work for the government?

The Fukuda government has announced that it will definitely proceed with plans to submit the tax bill to the HR for a second vote on 30 April, the day after the expiration of the sixty-day Article 59 window. No word from Asahi or Mainichi about whether the LDP and Komeito will face defections when the HR votes — recall that it will take all of eight defectors to defeat the measure and trigger a crisis. Presumably the government is confident that it has the votes if it is announcing that it will definite reimpose the tax. But it will still have to weather the blow to its popularity from reinstating the unpopular measure.

No better time for Koizumi Junichiro — who is, as discussed in this post, still more popular among LDP supporters and the public at large than Mr. Fukuda and his likely successors — to begin playing a role defending the government.

On Tuesday, Mr. Koizumi met with Chief Cabinet Secretary Machimura, and stated that he thinks that a mooted HC censure motion will not have the support of the public. The government has already started to make the case that it has nothing to fear from a censure motion, and it will need all the help it can get in prelude and aftermath to the HR vote.

Whether Mr. Koizumi has the power to blunt public opinion running against the government may be tested this week. The LDP executive has stated its desire to harness Mr. Koizumi's popularity and use him to explain the government's new pensions plan to concerned elderly voters who may be leaning towards Hiraoka Hideo.

Unlike the Abe cabinet, which did everything it could to distance itself from the former prime minister, Mr. Fukuda and his leadership team have no concerns about letting Mr. Koizumi overshadow the prime minister if it means a victory for the party, whether in Yamaguchi-2 or in the showdown with the DPJ over the temporary tax.

Asahi reported that the LDP executive wants Mr. Koizumi's help. But no word on whether Mr. Koizumi wants to help — or whether his active support will be able to reverse Mr. Fukuda's declining popularity.

The LDP and DPJ talk past each other

A six-party conference of government and opposition parties met Friday to negotiate a compromise on the future of the special fund for road construction. Debate will begin in earnest on Wednesday, a week before the governing coalition is expected to use its HR supermajority to reimpose the temporary gasoline tax.

According to Mainichi, at the initial meeting Tanigaki Sadakazu, chairman of the LDP PARC, called for a review of the parties' positions on a broad spectrum of issues, including the absorption of the road construction fund into the general fund and the temporary tax, subsidies to local governments and the state of local government finances, road construction plans, and the reform of related public corporations. Yamaoka Kenji, the chair of the DPJ's Diet strategy commitee, objected, arguing that the conference should focus on the matter immediately at hand: the road construction fund and the temporary tax.

This dispute is revealing about the nature of the conference. The purpose of this conference is not to forge a compromise amenable to all parties. The purpose of this conference is to provide the LDP, and to a lesser extent the DPJ, political cover. The LDP needs to appear conciliatory before the HR votes again first on the temporary tax at the end of April and the road construction bill two weeks later, so as to undermine the inevitable argument that it is acting heavy-handed in overruling the HC. So why not call a compromise conference that has a broad remit, a remit so broad and a timeline so brief as to ensure that no agreement will be forthcoming? I find it hard to believe, as the LDP leadership argues, that it is the DPJ alone that is playing politics with important national issues.

For its part, the DPJ isn't interested in compromise at the moment. Why should it be? It has painted the Fukuda government into a corner by opposing the temporary tax, forcing the government to take the potentially unpopular step of reimposing the tax. It has used road construction plans as a wedge issue, forcing the LDP's reformists to fight with the zoku giin over the future of road construction, with Mr. Fukuda caught in the crossfire. Accordingly, the DPJ is divided less over whether to compromise than over the party's response to the increasingly inevitable HR re-vote on the tax and road construction bills. That decision may now rest solely in Mr. Ozawa's hands as the DPJ's HC caucus has announced that it will respect party policy.

Going into the conference, it is the LDP that has yet to figure out what it stands for in this debate. The official stance, of course, is Mr. Fukuda's plan to move road construction funds into the general fund from FY2009 while renewing the temporary gasoline tax and possibly re-envisioning the tax as a "green tax." But as Sankei points out, there is considerable (and open) discontent with Mr. Fukuda's approach on all sides of the LDP. Some fear the electoral consequences of restoring the temporary tax. The zoku giin oppose a compromise, and hope that the HR will re-pass the same road construction bill in May that it passed in March, instead of considering a new compromise bill. The reformists want a compromise bill and are supposedly ready to vote against the prevailing bill. And the party's cautious elders — perhaps we should call them the 慎重派 (the shincho-ha, the cautious faction) — are, as always, cautious.

The LDP's internal discontent shows no signs of abating. Ishihara Nobuteru, a potential reformist contender for the LDP's leadership in the future, gave a speech in Fukuoka Friday that described Mr. Fukuda's compromise plan to move road funds to the general from 2009 as "clearly inconsistent." On the other side of the debate, Mr. Tanigaki argued in Hokkaido that neither bill should be revised: the temporary tax should be reimposed and gasoline tax revenue should continue to go to road construction, otherwise the finances of local governments will suffer and public works projects will not be completed. (Mr. Tanigaki's hardline position is interesting considering that he is involved in the compromise conference discussed above.)

It remains unclear whether internal discontent will manifest itself when the HR votes on the temporary tax and the road construction bills. It is entirely possible that the LDP will be torn asunder by rebellion in the coming weeks.

Fukuda under pressure

A council of LDP, Komeito, and cabinet officials have conferred and agreed to a plan to phase out the road construction fund, based largely on the plan mooted by Prime Minister Fukuda in the waning days of March.

As anticipated, the plan calls for shifting gasoline tax revenue from the road construction fund to the general fund from fiscal 2009. As Mainichi notes, however, while the government says it will be shifting "the full amount" in the general fund, there is a giant loophole in the government-ruling parties agreement in the form of the phrase "roads judged essential will be steadily maintained," which will enable the doro zoku to preserve their empire and limit the amount of revenue shifted to the general fund. Asahi raises similar questions, wondering whether the "grand reform" Mr. Fukuda claims to be delivering is actually realizable: "If it is implemented this time, it is a huge reform that will transform LDP politics — but there is strong opposition from the doro zoku and the transport ministry."

Despite these concerns — and despite the plan's neither having been approved by the LDP's executive council nor having been approved via an official cabinet decision — the governing coalition will present its plan to the opposition next week in the hope of reaching an agreement across the aisle. Whether such an agreement is possible remains to be seen.

According to Sankei, Ozawa Ichiro has made an LDP general council and cabinet decisions prerequisites for entering into negotiations over the new plan. Mainichi suggests that the DPJ is divided on this issue, although it is vague about who exactly is calling for a "prudent" stance on the road construction issue. I would argue, however, that Mr. Ozawa is on firm ground on this issue — and beyond that, he cannot afford to appear soft lest he further undermine whatever remains of his standing with the party's reformists (who are looking for excuses to throw their weight behind a candidate to run against Mr. Ozawa in September).

By Mainichi's own reckoning, the LDP remains horrendously divided, with Mr. Fukuda pressured by the party's young reformists — who, in addition to suggesting that they'll vote against the reimplementation of the temporary tax, have like the DPJ called for a cabinet decision and LDP executive council decision on the prime minister's plan — and the doro zoku, who are not particularly pleased with Mr. Fukuda's plan. Naturally the prime minister is reluctant to go to both the cabinet and the LDP general council with his plan, where he will face strident and implacable opposition. As such, Nikai Toshihiro, chairman of the executive council has dismissed both demands, stating "Why is a decision in the executive council necessary?" (And Mr. Machimura thinks the DPJ lacks democracy?) On top of the divisions within the Tokyo party is the division between Mr. Fukuda and the party's many members in prefectural assemblies, whose political fortunes rest on their ability to secure funding from Tokyo for projects in their constituencies.

I think the DPJ is in a good position here. For the sake of party unity, Mr. Ozawa can continue to stonewall without risking too much electorally. The more protracted, public, and messy the fight over Mr. Fukuda's plan gets, the better it is for the DPJ. The more aggressively the zoku giin fight to preserve their privileges — and the more Mr. Fukuda bends to them to save his plan — the easier it will be for the DPJ to paint the LDP as retrograde and anti-reformist. And the more Mr. Fukuda pushes for his plan, the deeper he drives the wedge between reformists and zoku giin, Tokyo leadership and prefectural party, bringing the party closer to fracturing.

All's well that ends well; or, much ado about nothing?

As expected, the DPJ-led House of Councillors approved the nomination of Shirakawa Masaaki, the acting governor of the Bank of Japan, to serve as the full-fledged governor, thus ending Japan's three-week nightmare with only an acting governor at the helm of the BOJ. Mr. Shirakawa will make his debut on the international stage later this week at the meeting of G7 finance ministers and central bankers in Washington Friday.

Also as expected, the HC rejected the nomination of Watanabe Hiroshi, former administrative vice minister of finance and professor at Hitotsubashi University, to serve as a deputy governor.

Not surprisingly, the government responded to the DPJ's rejection of Mr. Watanabe by complaining about the DPJ's prioritizing politics over the public interest. As Ibuki Bunmei, the LDP secretary-general, said, "One can think only that this decision prioritizes party interests at the expense of national interests."

In stating the DPJ's reasons for opposing Mr. Watanabe, Hatoyama Yukio, DPJ secretary-general, said (somewhat pathetically, as noted by Jun Okumura), "It is President Ozawa's strong desire to not accept amakudari."

As Okumura writes, Mr. Ozawa actually outmaneuvered his DPJ rivals on this vote. Many of the hardline anti-Muto DPJ members were willing to support Mr. Watanabe's nomination, but Mr. Ozawa nixed that idea on the same grounds that his rivals opposed Mr. Muto (thereby forcing Mr. Ozawa to take a harder line on the BOJ succession than he was prepared to take initially). In the end, only three DPJ HC members voted in favor of Mr. Watanabe. It is unclear how the DPJ can punish the three, given its slim hold on the HC.

It is worth noting that the BOJ's monetary policy committee decided to leave interest rates unchanged in light of worsening economic conditions at home and abroad. For all the alarm that greeted the non-vacancy vacancy at the BOJ, the international economic "narrative" has been considerably less important than the domestic politics narrative.

This fight was about each party's trying to position itself in advance of the next general election and to a lesser extent about the future of Japanese governance. Hence the LDP has to this day used this fight to emphasize the DPJ's lack of concern for the national interest. Hence to this day the DPJ has emphasized that it is standing against amakudari government and the pervasive influence of the Ministry of Finance.

I think that the DPJ comes out looking better over the long term — and that is a good thing for Japanese democracy. The DPJ was able to say no to the government (and the MOF) and make it stick. The DPJ got exactly what it demanded. The new BOJ governor is a thirty-year veteran of the BOJ and he is the third consecutive BOJ OB to be named governor. The DPJ's rejection of all MOF OBs may now have been taken to an irrational extreme by Mr. Ozawa's response to intra-DPJ opposition — as even his opponents recognize — but it's preferable to rolling over and accepting whoever the government sends over to the Diet.

It's unlikely that the LDP will change its ways and become more accommodating of the DPJ after this battle, but the DPJ should take every opportunity to remind the government that there are two houses in the Diet, one of them is controlled by the opposition, and the government can't govern solely by Articles 59-61. The DPJ should continue doing what an opposition party, especially an opposition party with some power, should do: question, cajole, expose, and undermine the government at every turn. That's democracy. It should, of course, connect its actions to a broader message, but it should not feel compelled to govern. The upside of controlling the upper house is that it is unreasonable to expect the DPJ to act like a governing party. The DPJ's access to the bureaucracy is still less than the LDP's, so it is at a disadvantage in terms of policy formulation. The government's budget took precedence due to Article 60. The HC has no way around HR approval for its approved bills. Control of the weaker chamber by an opposition party is good for little more than harrying the government and forcing it to change its ways to accommodate the opposition.

I suspect that media's refrain that the public will vote against the DPJ if it is too obstructionism is vastly overblown. The LDP's failures — like the still-vanished pensions, for example — will be more than enough to dampen whatever concerns voters have about the DPJ's doing what an opposition party should be doing.

The unknown but limited power of the censure motion

During the fight over the MSDF refueling mission and at other junctures in the months since the DPJ took control of the HC, the DPJ has threatened to use its "censure motion" card. It has yet to play it, whether against Prime Minister Fukuda or one of his cabinet ministers.

It is still unknown what will happen if and when the DPJ passes a non-binding censure resolution. I stand by what I wrote in this post back in November.

"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?"

This is once again a pressing question now that the DPJ is threatening to censure the government if it re-approves the temporary gasoline tax at the end of April. If this scenario transpires, the censure motion will trigger a short, fierce battle for public opinion. The government will claim that it was acting in the public interest and is not obligated to do anything in response to the HC's censure; the DPJ will try to claim that it has the public's support and that the government is acting without a mandate from the people.

Mainichi has provided a first glimpse at how the public might respond to this scenario. In a national phone poll conducted on 5-6 April, 55% of respondents said that the government should dissolve the HR and call an election in response to a censure motion. 21% said that no action is necessary since it would be a non-binding resolution, and only 19% said that the cabinet should resign in response. Interestingly, the poll found that even 43% of self-described supporters of the Fukuda government approve of a general election in response to a censure motion, compared with 42% who feel that the government should do nothing.

It is worth noting that respondents did not see the need for the government to resign in response to a censure motion. In short, the government should stand and face the direct judgment of the people — which also means that the government would be given the opportunity to explain itself directly to the people in an election campaign. I suppose that's a suitable compromise position regarding a censure motion.

That said, I'm still skeptical of the ability of the DPJ to pressure the government into calling an early election. The DPJ, of course, has plenty to gain from calling an election now, but by the same token the LDP has everything to lose. I am not convinced that the government will throw away its one means to avoid genuinely compromising with the DPJ over a censure motion. Barring a massive public outcry, which may be hard to come by in the midst of Golden Week, the government would most likely survive a censure motion, which raises the question of whether it's worth it for the DPJ to bother passing one. Passing a censure motion that the government proceeds to ignore is a great way for the DPJ to illustrate its weakness.

But then, censure motion or no censure motion, the DPJ is weak. Even the threat of a censure motion is inadequate and easily dismissed. Faced with a government armed with an Article 59 supermajority, when the stakes are high and the government acts "forcefully" there's little the DPJ can do but complain (with censure motions by the constitutionally approved form of complaining).

Is a tax revote a sure thing?

Yamamoto Ichita, who is a far more prolific blogger than I despite (because of?) his membership in the House of Councillors (I've just added his blog to the blogroll after linking to him for months), lays out the reasons why the government must use the HR supermajority to reintroduce the temporary tax.

His four reasons are: (1) the government must demonstrate its consistency to the public by following through on its promises, (2) a failure to revote will undermine the government more than a revote will, (3) the end of the temporary tax leaves a hole in the road construction budget, and (4) lowering the gasoline tax weakens Japan's credibility as a global environmental leader in advance of the July summit.

A successful vote in the HR will likely buy Mr. Fukuda some time, but it will not fix the LDP, not by a long shot. After all, the temporary tax has become a sideshow. The main attraction is the fight within the LDP over Mr. Fukuda's plan to phase out the road construction special fund and halve the road construction plan to five years. At stake in this fight is nothing short of the LDP's last shred of reformist credibility, and with it the party's prospects in the next general election. That fight is far more uncertain, giving the smoldering anger of the doro zoku and the vigor of the reformists (not to mention the DPJ's implacable opposition). As Yamauchi Koichi, one of the young LDP reformists supporting Mr. Fukuda, notes colorfully, Mr. Fukuda is caught between "the DPJ, the tiger at the front gate, and the doro zoku, the wolf at the back gate."

The LDP as we know it is in terminal decline, as how the LDP governs appears to be more important to many LDP members than the mere fact of LDP government.

As such, I do not share Jun Okumura's confidence that Mr. Fukuda has the LDP factions lined up in support of the temporary tax, not to mention the road construction plan. Okumura-san does the math and finds that the prime minister should have no problem lining up the factions behind him — all but three already have — giving the prime minister the support of at least 260 LDP HR members, meaning that he has only to persuade the remaining LDP independents and Komeito to ensure the restoration of the tax. But that assumes that factional discipline is ironclad.

As we saw in Mr. Fukuda's election as LDP president in September 2007, factional unity cannot be taken for granted, for reasons that even Okumura-san recognizes. Commenting on the fact of the factions' holding regular Thursday meetings, he tells us, "That’s useful in maintaining unity within the factions, since their ability to raise money for their members and find them Cabinet appointments has been greatly diminished." I doubt that meetings are enough to maintain factional unity in the absence of the latter. Given that it will take a mere sixteen nays to derail the tax, the decline in factional unity cannot be written off so easily. It might make all the difference in whether the tax passes — and whether Mr. Fukuda survives to fight another day.

For that reason, I suspect that DPJ is working hard to remind vulnerable LDP members of the political consequences of restoring an onerous tax on consumers.