Tamogami, Palin, and populist conservatisms

It has been just over a year since General Tamogami Toshio (ASDF-ret.), then the chief of staff of Japan's Air Self-Defense Forces, was drummed out of the service after he was awarded the top prize in an essay contest sponsored by the APA Group for his essay "Was Japan an Aggressor Nation?"

In the year since he became a household name, Tamogami has become a leading figure of the Japanese right, as I expected following his appearance before the House of Councillors foreign and defense affairs committee. According to his website, by year's end he will have given more than seventy lectures across Japan. He has made at least seven TV appearances, and has his name on twelve books (aside from a number of them being transcripts of conversations with other right-wing figures, it is unlikely that Tamogami has written much of what his name is attached to). And he has been the subject of a fawning special issue of WiLL, which features his writings, including autobiographical writings, conversations between Tamogami and Ishihara Shintaro and Kobayashi Yoshinori, and contributions from right-wingers like Sakurai Yoshiko (whose "work" Tamogami cited in his essay), Watanabe Shoichi (the Sophia University emeritus professor who chaired the selection committee for the APA contest), Nishimura Shingo, an outspoken Diet member, and Kyoto University's Nakanichi Terumasa, among other regular contributors to WiLL and similar publications.

Tamogami Toshio: Japan's Sarah Palin.

The comparison is not without merit. Like Palin, Tamogami claims to be speaking the truth to power, in both cases left-wing elites who they claim have stifled the expression of the country's true identity. (The WiLL issue is full of complaints about double standards aimed at the Asahi Shimbun especially, complaints about free speech only for those who speak ill of Japan.) While Tamogami and other revisionist conservatives claim to care only about revealing the noble truth of Japan's wartime past and its beautiful history and seek to promote policies that will enable the Japanese people to be proud of their country again, the revisionist right's program is less a program than an aesthetic appeal, a collection of slogans about pride and greatness, about reclaiming Japan's past from the anti-Japan Japanese left and escaping the postwar regime.

And so with Mrs. Palin. As far as I can tell from the reviews, her book is long on right-wing platitudes, extremely short on policy substance. And like her Japanese counterpart, Mrs. Palin sees the "lamestream" media as the enemy within. Like Tamogami, Palin is the voice of a defensive, populist conservatism mobilized to defend traditions seen as under siege by left-wing elites who want to weaken the resolve of their respective countries in the face of threats at home and abroad.

Both have found considerable success as private citizens, finding it easier to speak truth to power when not in a position of authority. Not surprisingly Tamogami has, according to Asahi, rejected LDP overtures to run as a candidate on the LDP's proportional representation list in next summer's House of Councillors election. Why would Tamogami want to trade the lecture circuit for a seat in the upper house, in which he would have to wait his turn to speak, obey certain rules of decorum, and be only one of 242? He has far more freedom to attack the DPJ government now than he would as a representative from a marginalized LDP.

Meanwhile, the similarities between Japan's revisionist right and America's populist right will be in full view next year when Tamogami visits New York City to give a speech and appear at a dinner cruise. Sharing the stage with him will be Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas who posed a surprisingly formidable challenger for John McCain in the race for the 2008 Republican Party presidential nomination. While Huckabee has crafted a kinder, gentler image than the moose-hunting, media-scorning Palin (he has been a regular on Comedy Central, after all), he occupies a similar space in the post-2008 conservative movement, a populist evangelical Christian who has railed against the powers that be not just on cultural grounds but on economic grounds (alienating some Republicans in the process). Some polls show him as a front runner for the Republican nomination in 2012.

I hope someone will ask Huckabee why he has agreed to share the stage with Tamogami, who you may recall believes that the US went to war against Japan because Franklin Roosevelt was manipulated by Stalin (through the influence of Harry Dexter White). Perhaps some journalist will ask Huckabee what he thinks about Tamogami's thoughts on the humanitarianism of the Japanese empire or Japan's war of self-defense against China or his opposition to the corrupting influence of America upon Japanese culture or his calls for a Japanese nuclear arsenal.

I have a hard time seeing how someone viewed as a serious contender for the nomination of a major party could associate himself with Tamogami and still be taken seriously.

Guam makes The Colbert Report

Stephen Colbert interviewed Madeleine Bordallo, Guam's congresswoman, Wednesday evening. Unfortunately Congresswoman Bordallo didn't get a chance to answer the question about Japanese tourists.

The campaign comes to Guam

This weekend, the US presidential campaign comes to Guam, the island territory closer to Japan than the continental US that will soon be home to a vastly expanded US military presence, if all goes according to plan.

Guam will be holding a Democratic caucus, and with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton struggling for every delegate, the two have given some attention to the island, thanks to its four delegates. (NPR provides a handy guide for the perplexed here.)

With Guam on the receiving end of the realignment of US forces in Japan, this might be the closest the US-Japan alliance gets to the presidential campaign all year. Both candidates have prepared statements on the relocation of US forces to Guam. Senator Obama promises to balance economic needs with social needs in the planning for the expanded military presence; Senator Clinton emphasizes a federal funding commitment and the appointment of a Guam liaison in the Pentagon. Both recognize that the relocation of US forces involves far more than building new facilities for military personnel.

Neither, however, mentions the bilateral dimension. Neither acknowledges that with Japan footing part of the bill, the process will be more complicated than it already is within the federal government.

In short, Guam's caucus will come and go, and the US-Japan alliance will remain invisible in the campaign.

Obama, Koizumi, and the DPJ

I have learned that Ozawa Ichiro reportedly dispatched a DPJ member to observe Barack Obama's presidential campaign in Texas in advance of Tuesday's voting.

He could have saved some money and looked closer to home at the politics of former prime minister Koizumi Junichiro.

There are a few obvious superficial similarities — and a few equally obvious differences. In the former category, the two share certain rhetorical gifts, a "hipness" that enables them to appeal to younger voters (not surprisingly, Rolling Stone has endorsed Mr. Obama), and a sense of being propelled to leadership thanks to the "fierce urgency of now" despite relatively lackluster or short political careers. Perhaps the biggest difference between them is the conditions they face: although Mr. Koizumi has been rightly criticized for the simplicity of his slogans, kaikaku meant something. The Koizumi revolution, while incomplete, was still a revolution, with the LDP's facing its full consequences today. By contrast, while Mr. Obama speaks often of "change," it is still not clear what that will mean in practical terms — and as David Brooks argues in the New York Times, his message of standing for a new kind of politics might not even survive the fight for the Democratic nomination.

But there is something more to the superficial similarities, which may not be so superficial after all. In the massive crowds that greeted Mr. Koizumi at his campaign appearances and the record-breaking crowds who have greeted Mr. Obama in even the most unlikely of places, one sees how both men are capable of tapping into the most visceral hopes of Japanese and American voters. Despite widespread cynicism about the political process in all mature democracies, both politicians make clear that voters are still willing to believe that things can be better, that it is still possible for a more hopeful, responsive politics that addresses the fears and ambitions of the people — and the politician that can tap into that reservoir of hope is a powerful politician indeed. (And, of course, there is always the danger that such politicians will abuse their power, with disastrous consequences that do not bear mentioning because I wish to respect Godwin's law.) There is, of course, a strong likelihood that voters will end up disappointed; Japanese voters were certainly frustrated by Mr. Koizumi's failings. But no matter how many times they are disappointed, they continue to hope for leaders who promise to deliver change that results in a kinder, gentler politics. Hence Mr. Koizumi's resounding victory in 2005, despite the disappointments of the previous four years. Hence the strong approval ratings that greeted both Mr. Abe and Mr. Fukuda to office.

This, then, is the challenge for the DPJ. How can the party tap into the lingering hopes of Japanese voters? There appears to be no messenger on the horizon capable of elevating the DPJ's somewhat muddled message into a transcendent message of hope. The DPJ does not necessarily need a Koizumi of its own — indeed, Mr. Koizumi's aggressive, crisis-driven (dare I say Schmittian) politics were probably better suited for waging intra-LDP battles than for addressing the country's problems — but it does need a leader who can inspire the hopes of Japanese citizens and earn their trust, in the process enabling the DPJ to ask for sacrifices in interests of building new institutions and undertaking necessary and wrenching reforms.

As for Mr. Obama, I hope that he eventually turns from scapegoating trade agreements (and by extension, foreigners) and starts emphasizing structural reforms needed in the US to enable Americans to compete in a post-industrial, globalized economy.

Do-nothing leaders

Being back in the US, I have had a chance to reacquaint myself with American politics — and to be reminded of why I find the American political class so disappointing. The problem isn't just the failure to act; it's a failure to find new conceptual categories for the problems of the twenty-first century. US leaders, in the broad sense, including media elites, have an unfortunate tendency to assume that once the US sheds itself of its Iraq problem (and its Bush problem), it will once again be able to wield power and influence around the world.

The world and the US have changed, however. The unipolar moment is over, if it even existed in the first place. The post-industrialization of the US will continue apace. The democratization of information worldwide will also continue, undermining US military power. As the US is learning, it's harder to use power in a more complex mediaspace that undermines the ability of large organizations to control the information that reaches publics, raising the costs of the use of force. Even as it continues to bolster its military power, the US, beset with economic difficulties, is finding it increasingly difficult to get what it wants globally. (Stratfor's George Friedman addresses the shallowness of the US foreign policy debate in this post at his blog.)

The US political elite, however, is not the only group of leaders fiddling while Rome burns.

Indeed, the G8, struggling to remain relevant in a rapidly changing global environment, is a monument to the collective failures of the leaders of the developed countries.

Tokyo is no exception — Japan's political class might be the world leader in ineffectual leadership. Tahara Soichiro, grand old man of Japanese journalism, calls attention to the government's failures in a short article in the March issue of Liberal Time. His particular grievance is the government's failure to deal effectively with the deepening global economic crisis and its impact on the Japanese economy. His ire is directed at the leaders of both parties, and he actually calls for the dissolution of both the LDP and DPJ — and points to the nascent Sentaku movement as a possible solution to the failures of the Japanese political class.

I think he's unfairly critical of Prime Minister Fukuda. Mr. Fukuda might be of an older generation and might have been ineffectual since taking office, but his keen understanding of the problems facing Japan is unique not just among Japanese politicians, but among G8 politicians more generally. The problem is not individual leaders, but a policymaking process that is a relic of better times, when the greatest task for senior politicians was distributing pork and plum posts to supporters. Indeed, if the Japanese political system was up to the challenge, the rearguard action by the Zoku giin on the temporary gasoline tax would be easily dismissed and the discussion would have from the first focused on how best to use the tax revenue. It is unclear, however, whether the government will accede to the opposition's demand for the end to the road construction earmark.

Changing the system will entail more than just replacing one group of leaders with another. Change must be comprehensive: political, administrative, economic. It is on this point that Mr. Tahara falters. He speculates about which leaders will be capable of doing what must be done — he cites Nakagawa Shoichi in particular (an assessment I don't share) — rather than considering the institutional obstacles to change.