Tohoku, Ozawa's backyard

The Tohoku regional block is comprised of Aomori, Miyagi, Akita, Yamagata, Fukushima — and Iwate, Ozawa Ichiro's "fiefdom." These six prefectures combine to elect thirty-nine Diet members, twenty-five from single-member districts and fourteen from proportional representation. In 2005, the LDP won seventeen of twenty-five SMDs, with the DPJ taking seven and an independent winning the remaining one seat. In PR voting, the LDP won six seats, the DPJ five, and one each for Komeito, the JCP, and the SDPJ.

In short, Tohoku is one region where the DPJ has ground to make up, and due to the influence of Ozawa, may be particularly well-placed to do so.

Aomori

The LDP won all four seats in Aomori in 2005, and holds twenty-four of forty-eight seats in the prefectural assembly, compared with only six for the DPJ.

The first district has been thrown wide open due to the decision by Tsushima Yuji, eleven-term Diet member and LDP faction head, to retire from politics. In the past his decision would not have been a source of difficulty, but given the unpopularity of hereditary politicians, the LDP was reluctant to endorse his son's candidacy. The LDP's Aomori chapter has, however, endorsed Tsushima Jun's independent candidacy. The result is that the first district race will be a bit chaotic. Tsushima the younger will face Yokoyama Hokuto, who ran against the elder Tsushima in 2003 and 2005, doing well enough in 2005 to win a PR seat. (Not unlike a number of DPJ candidates and representatives, Yokoyama worked as a secretary to Ozawa, in his case between the 2003 and 2005 elections.) As in 2005, both the SDPJ and the JCP will be fielding candidates in this district — their combined 20,000 votes would have been sufficient for Yokoyama to unseat Tsushima. The non-LDP vote in 2005 was further divided by the presence of two independents in the race, who combined for nearly 30,000 votes. Masuta Sekio, the most successful of the independents will be running again. Given the national trend, Yokoyama may be well placed to win.

The LDP may actually be well positioned to hold the other seats in the prefecture. Eto Akinori, the LDP incumbent in the second district, has been defeated before (in 2000), but has generally won his district by sizable margins, by more than 40,000 votes in 2005 and 75,000 votes in 2003 (in 2003 his nearest rival was an SDPJ candidate). This year he will be facing a political novice, Nakanowatari Noriko, a young candidate running for the first time, whose only political experience to date is attending Ozawa's training academy for would-be politicians. In the third district the incumbent is Oshima Tadamori, the LDP's Diet strategy chairman and head of the party in Aomori. Oshima might be one of the vulnerable LDP heavyweights — he faces Tanabu Masayo, a second-generation Diet member who ran against Oshima in the previous three elections and did well enough in 2003 and 2005 to win PR seats. Tanabu may finally unseat Oshima this year. Kimura Taro, the LDP incumbent in the fourth district, looks likely to hold his seat in a race against Tsushima Kyoichi, a former Diet member who has migrated from the LDP (he first ran against Kimura in 1996, when Kimura was in the New Frontier Party) to the People's New Party to the DPJ.

The DPJ will likely win two of Aomori's four seats.

Iwate

Iwate is truly Ozawa's kingdom: the DPJ controls three of four seats in the district, the prefectural governorship, and holds a plurality in the prefectural assembly. The DPJ should be able to complete a perfect sweep in Iwate in 2009. The LDP incumbent in the second district, Suzuki Shunichi, is six-term incumbent and was an environment minister under Koizumi, but his once-sizable margin of victory fell to a mere 22,000 in 2005. For the second time he will face Hata Koji, an eighteen-year veteran of the construction ministry who retired in 2005 to run as the DPJ candidate. Hata will likely win this time around.



Miyagi

The LDP controls five of the prefecture's six SMDs, the governorship (the independent candidate it backed in 2005 won by more than 50,000 votes), and 28 seats in the prefectural assembly to the DPJ's nine.

But the DPJ's candidates in Miyagi may be the strongest in the Tohoku regional block. Azumi Jun, the party's incumbent in the fifth district, has represented it since the electoral reform and won by nearly 10,000 votes in 2005. The DPJ may be in a position to pick up seats in the first, third, and fourth districts. The first is represented by Doi Toru, who defeated Koori Kazuko, the then-incumbent and his DPJ challenger this year, by a mere two thousand votes. Doi, a Koizumi child, faces a tough reelection fight. The third district will also see a rematch between LDP and DPJ candidates, this election's being the third consecutive fight between LDP incumbent Nishimura Akihito and DPJ challenger Hashimoto Kiyohito. Nishimura defeated Hashimoto in 2003 by roughly 200 votes, with Hashimoto's settling for a PR seat. Nishimura won by 20,000 votes in 2005, but the difference suggests that this district may follow the national trend, meaning that Hashimoto should win this time around. The race in the fourth district should be tight as well, with Ito Shintaro, the LDP incumbent, facing off against DPJ candidate Ishiyama Keiki and JCP candidate Kato Mikio. Ito, a two-term second generation Diet member, won by roughly 25,000 votes over Ishiyama in 2005, with Ishiyama's receiving the most votes ever received by a DPJ candidate in the district. Ishiyama, whose campaign pitch is based on his background in farming, could be affected by the broader national debate over agriculture policy and an FTA with the US.

The DPJ should win four of Miyagi's six SMDs.

Akita

Akita has been fairly unfriendly to LDP candidates in recent elections. Independents won in the 2004 and 2007 upper house elections, and the governorship is held by a long-serving independent who first won with the backing of various opposition parties in 1997. The DPJ should do well in Akita. The first district is held by Terata Manabu, who when he won in 2003 was the youngest member of the Diet. Terata managed to win reelection in 2005 despite the presence of both a PNP and a JCP candidate in the race. He should cruise to reelection this year.

The DPJ may stand to gain in the remaining two districts. The second district pits Yamamoto Kiyohiro, an SDPJ candidate who won a PR seat in 2003, against the LDP's Kaneda Katsutoshi. Kaneda, a finance ministry OB who previously served two terms in the upper house before losing in 2007, may face an uphill battle in gaining the lower house seat. The race, however, has been thrown into turmoil by the recent decision by Kawaguchi Hiroshi, former mayor of Kosaka, to run as an independent. Both Yamamoto and Kaneda have reason to fear that Kawaguchi will draw votes from them, as Kawaguchi could draw votes from DPJ supporters uninterested in voting for an SDPJ candidate, while also drawing votes from conservative LDP voters. Should Kawaguchi win, he could end up joining the DPJ after the election.

In the third district, LDP incumbent Minorikawa Nobuhide faces DPJ challenger Kyono Kimiko and independent Muraoka Toshihide. In 2005 Kyono and Muraoka each received roughly 80,000 votes, with Kyono edging out Muraoka for second place to Minorikawa's 114,000 votes. The question is whether Kyono can, with the help of the DPJ's tailwind, cut into both Minorikawa's and Muraoka's votes to emerge victorious. I suspect she can.

The DPJ should win at least two of three in Akita, and will probably come out on top in the second district.

Yamagata

Yamagata, home to the LDP's Kato Koichi, is an LDP stronghold. It holds the prefecture's three seats, dominates the prefectural assembly, and holds the governorship. The DPJ is not contesting Kato in the third district. The DPJ's best chance is probably in the second district, where the LDP is fielding a newcomer Suzuki Hironori, to replace Endo Takehiko, Abe Shinzo's third minister of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries and the third to leave office under questionable circumstances. The DPJ candidate, Kondo Yosuke, is the son of a candidate defeated by Endo during the 1990s, but Kondo the younger has done well enough in 2003 and 2005 to win PR block seats. This is Suzuki's first bid for public office and will likely be defeated by the more experienced Kondo.

The LDP candidate in the first district, Endo Toshiaki, is close to Kato, and while he faces a tough DPJ challenger in Kano Michihiko, a ten-term Diet member defeated by Endo in 2003 and 2005 (he received a PR seat in 2003 but not 2005), he is probably a fairly secure LDP incumbent.

The DPJ will likely win one of three seats in Akita.

Fukushima

The DPJ stands to do well in Fukushima's five districts. The party has secure incumbents running in the third and fourth districts — Genba Koichiro and Watanabe Kozo respectively — and stands to win the fourth district, where its candidate, Yoshida Izumi, will be contesting his fourth election at the DPJ candidate. He won PR seats in 2003 and 2005, losing by 16,000 votes in 2003 and 20,000 in 2005. His contender is Sakamoto Koji, who in 2005 was a PR candidate on the basis of the LDP's "Costa Rica" system of having candidates alternate between SMDs and PR. With the LDP's phasing out the Costa Rica arrangement, Sakamoto has the chance to make this seat his. Sakamoto defeated Yoshida in 2003, but Yoshida will have the national trend and the absence of a JCP candidate (the JCP received 18,000 votes in 2005) working in his favor.

The first and second districts will be more heated. In the second district the DPJ is running Ota Kazumi, who won a by-election in Chiba-7 in 2007, against LDP incumbent Nemoto Takumi. Nemoto, an aide to Abe Shinzo for economic policy, may suffer from his association with Abe and faces a tough reelection fight against Ota, who is nicknamed "the DPJ's Jeanne d'Arc." Ota, fending off charges that she is parachuting into Fukushima, has spoken of a "marriage" with Fukushima. She should at the very least do well enough to be resurrected as a PR representative.

The first district pits the LDP's Sato Tatsuo, who won the first in 1996, 2000, and 2003 before running solely as a PR candidate in 2005, against the DPJ's Ishihara Yozaburo, a Fukushima city councilman, brother of the DPJ's candidate in 2003 and 2005, and son of a former Diet member. Ishihara's brother received 109,000 votes in 2005, the most yet for a DPJ candidate in the district, but still lost to the LDP candidate's 171,000 votes. The DPJ should do even better this time around, which makes the presence of JCP candidate Yamada Yutaka in the race troubling: the JCP vote could make the difference in a close race.

The DPJ will likely win four seats in Fukushima.

Proportional representation

In 2005, the LDP bested the DPJ in PR voting in Tohoku, receiving 1,901,595 votes to the DPJ's 1,748,165 (six seats to five seats). Komeito received 620,638 votes, the JCP received 325,176, the SDPJ received 362,523, and the PNP received 244,933.

Running the simulator again (and using Yomiuri's recent PR polling figures), if the DPJ receives at least 41% in Tohoku — and if the turnout is the same as 2005, probably an unrealistic assumption — the DPJ could conceivably increase its PR seats in Tohoku to eight.

All told, the DPJ may be in a position to double its share of Tohoku's seats, from twelve seats to twenty-five.

The next installment is here, the North Kanto regional block.

Political Japan awaits a black swan

"SOCIAL ENTROPY: A measure of the natural decay of the structure or of the disappearance of distinctions within a social system. Much of the energy consumed by a social organization is spent to maintain its structure, counteracting social entropy, e.g., through legal institutions, education, the normative consequences or television." – Krippendorff's Dictionary of Cybernetics

The LDP is in an advanced state of decay. Not surprisingly, as its death throes worsen, as the chaos within its ranks grow, more energy is being expended simply to preserve the fiction that the LDP remains a coherent party capable of governing its own members, let alone Japan. As entropy grows, so too does the energy dedicated to preserving the structure.

The signs of decay are everywhere.

At present the leading example is the developing Watanabe mutiny, which shows no signs of abating. Watanabe Yoshimi appealed to Prime Minister Aso for cooperation in a speech in Fukushima prefecture Saturday, but only on Mr. Watanabe's terms. Mr. Watanabe criticized Mr. Aso's new stimulus package as doing little to shift power from the bureaucracy to the politicians. "Change for this country," he said, "is truly desired." Behind Mr. Watanabe stands what AERA suggests is a group of forty-eight young reformists who share Mr. Watanabe's desire for wide-reaching reform and fear for their political lives. These forty-eight, including Shiozaki Yasuhisa, chief cabinet secretary under Abe Shinzo, are more than sufficient to overthrow the government by depriving the government of its supermajority. The question is whether they are willing to do so. The article makes a good point in suggesting that the reformists may have nowhere to go: with the DPJ running candidates in nearly 250 of 300 single-member districts, many of the Koizumians — particularly those in their first or second terms — face uphill battles for reelection and are hardly in a position to run to the DPJ. In Albert Hirschman's terms, their exit option is limited, so they are left trying to exercise voice within the LDP by forming study groups and publicly criticizing the prime minister. (And the DPJ will do everything it can to encourage the exercise of voice by LDP members — just as LDP officials have cheered for DPJ members opposing Ozawa Ichiro and criticized the lack of voice within the DPJ.)

Perhaps this explains Kan Naoto's inclusion in what is now being referred to as the YKKK. Growing out of the LDP's liberal dynamic duo of Yamasaki Taku and Kato Koichi, the final two letters are for Kan Naoto, DPJ executive, and Kamei Shizuka, founder of the People's New Party. Messrs. Yamasaki and Kato are apparently in touch with the latter two regarding the possibility of a post-election realignment. Asahi reports that Mr. Kato is open to leaving the LDP before an election — as are the other two (naturally) — but Mr. Yamasaki is reluctant, saying only that his goal is ending the divided Diet. Accordingly, Mr. Yamasaki joined the six other faction leaders to voice their support of the Aso government.

Based on the combination of names, the YKKK looks to me more like a way for a potential DPJ-led coalition government to pry away some LDP members than the basis for a comprehensive political realignment. The liberals are even more alienated within the LDP than the Koizumian neo-liberals, and have little to lose from leaving the LDP. It's little wonder that Mr. Kan would want to pry the liberals into the DPJ; not only would the bolster the party's numbers, but they would strengthen Mr. Kan's group within the DPJ. Not surprisingly, Mr. Kan has rejected the notion of a realignment before a general election. (I should add that this must be precisely what Ozawa Ichiro wants: all talk of a realignment is focused on LDP members defecting, as opposed to the dissolution of both the LDP and the DPJ during a realignment. The YKKK resembles less a multi-partisan alliance than the opposition parties looking to pluck low-hanging fruit from the LDP.)

The LDP's leadership, consistent with the notion of social entropy, is taking all of these threats seriously — these manifestations of entropy within the LDP. The party elders have closed ranks around the prime minister. Mori Yoshiro, don of the Machimura faction and a former prime minister who knows something about low approval ratings, most recently lashed out at Messrs. Yamasaki and Kato, as well as Nakagawa Hidenao. "Deplorable," he said. "Nothing but carefree, thoughtless politicians who have profaned all who have done the hard work of building Japan's politics." Ibuki Bunmei, Mr. Abe's education minister and LDP secretary-general under Fukuda Yasuo, has also spoken up on the prime minister's behalf, first by arguing that the party has no choice but to stick with Mr. Aso, because the public would be outraged if the LDP picked a fourth leader without a general election (how is four any less bad than three?) and then by warning that the YKKK could be like the KKK, "assassinating" young LDP members who follow them. It's hard to describe just how offensive this is, although MTC tries. But lame attempt at a joke aside, Mr. Ibuki couldn't be more wrong. Staying loyal to the Aso LDP — Mr. Aso's name has been inserted before the party's name in recent promotional material — at the same time that the party has moved ever further from the platform that got so many of the young LDP members elected in the first place seems like a terrible career move. Mr. Ibuki forgets that the party has systematically alienated its young Koizumians in the two years since Mr. Koizumi left office. How could the YKKK, or whatever alternative emerges, possibly be worse?

The LDP leadership's goal is to both close off exit options and stifle the exercise of voice.

None of this is to say that any one scenario is inevitable. There are number of possibilities for the coming year: a pre-election realignment that involves defection of the liberals and/or the neo-liberals; the creation of a neo-liberal third party before or after the next election; no change before a general election, in which the Koizumians are defeated; a fierce leadership struggle in the DPJ should Mr. Ozawa be forced to step down due to ill health. No one can say with any certainty which scenario will come to pass. The actors themselves don't know. The Japanese political system is waiting for a black swan of one form or another, the next jump in the history of Japanese politics. "History and societies," Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote, "do not crawl. They make jumps. They go from fracture to fracture, with a few vibrations in between."

What is certain is that the LDP establishment is losing its grip over the LDP and its constituent parts. They cannot silence mutinous backbenchers. They cannot stop backbenchers from forming study groups working at cross purposes with the government. When the right opportunity comes, they will most likely be unable to stop discontented members from leaving.

And they cannot stop voters and interest groups who have long supported the LDP from breaking with the LDP to support the DPJ.

The liberals step into the breach

Watanabe Yoshimi is not relenting in threatening rebellion against the Aso government.

Speaking at a fundraising party on Monday evening, Mr. Watanabe speculated openly about scenarios for political realignment. Edano Yukio, a DPJ reformist, was in attendance and stated that if Mr. Watanbe decides to leave the LDP for the DPJ, he should be welcomed with open arms.

Mr. Watanabe's three scenarios for realignment include (1) a franchise model, the creation of a new party bearing the LDP label (the Tokyo LDP, for example); (2) the amicable divorce model, freeing Mr. Watanabe to bargain with all possible partners; and (3) the "without means" model, jumping from the LDP without any guarantee of a successful landing.

It is unclear which scenario will come to pass, if any. Mr. Watanabe may be able to rely on the support of other young reformers, but it's by no means a sure thing. The Koizumi children and their fifty-something older brothers and sisters have shown themselves to be remarkably timid. The lot of them have been waiting virtually since Koizumi Junichiro's term as prime minister ended for someone to challenge the drift within the LDP. But even now, with Mr. Watanabe talking openly about challenging the government and leaving if the LDP they cannot make up their minds. Yamamoto Ichita has, for example, argued at his blog that Mr. Watanabe speaks only for himself — he does not speak for the reformists en masse. It may be that even Mr. Watanbe does not know what he wants to do. Sankei suggests that he may be driven as much by resentment at having been bounced from the second Fukuda cabinet at then-LDP secretary general Aso's urging as by policy disagreements with Mr. Aso. As such, it remains an open question whether he has the courage to act. He may yet tell himself that he has too much to lose from breaking with the LDP (although if he keeps talking he may lose more reputationally from speaking openly about challenging the government only to back down).

In the meantime, an older generation is also speaking of realignment, namely those old allies of Mr. Koizumi, Kato Koichi and Yamasaki Taku. The self-styled liberals have little to lose from publicly challenging the Aso government and threatening to leave the party. Both are their own men, insofar as LDP members are capable of being independent. Mr. Kato, having left politics for several years after being accused of corruption, is not affiliated with any faction and is something of an outsider within the LDP. Mr. Yamasaki is a faction chief, but as a liberal (and an advocate of normalization with North Korea), he is increasingly out of place within the LDP. Little surprise then that both men have been active in discussing a possible realignment. The latest is that Mr. Yamasaki appeared on TV Monday to argue for a new party drawing members from both the LDP and the DPJ that will be able to govern following the next general election.

I would argue that neither Mr. Kato nor Mr. Yamasaki is in a position to be the catalyst for a realignment. The problem with being independent is that there are few guarantees that anyone would follow them out of the LDP. Such is the paradox facing the LDP's malcontents today. A rebellion by Mr. Watanabe is meaningfuly precisely because as a promising future leader, a former cabinet minister, and an LDP princeling he has something to lose by rebelling against Mr. Aso and the party establishment. But for those same reasons he might ultimately decided not to rebel, especially if he is unable to rely on his fellow reformists for support.

Fixing Fukuda's "good enough" cabinet

After Koizumi Junichiro called upon Prime Minister Fukuda to decide whether to shuffle his cabinet in the coming months, Mori Yoshiro — Mr. Fukuda's so-called "guardian" and an advocate of a reshuffle — and Kato Koichi suggested that the prime minister should form a new cabinet before the start of the extraordinary Diet session in the autumn.

In a speech Friday, Mr. Mori suggested that the prime minister should announce the new cabinet in the second half of July or the first half of August, before the O-bon festival.

Mr. Kato, meanwhile, said that a reshuffle would enable the prime minister to promulgate a Fukuda agenda that would serve to distance the LDP from the Koizumi agenda. He suggested that new cabinet should exclude members of the CEFP under Prime Ministers Koizumi and Abe. [I would dispute the idea that Mr. Abe didn't mark a break from the Koizumi line; it appeared to me that Mr. Abe was keen to distance himself from his predecessor.]

For his part, Mr. Fukuda remains noncommital, insisting that he remains a "blank sheet" on the question of a cabinet shuffle.

Yamamoto Ichita, LDP upper house member from Gunma prefecture and supporter of a shuffle, argues that if Mr. Fukuda taps powerful, popular officials and times the new cabinet's appearance just right, Mr. Fukuda might reverse his decline and undercut the DPJ. He offers three reasons.

First, a new cabinet would distance Mr. Fukuda from the taint of the Abe cabinet. Mr. Yamamoto argues that Mr. Fukuda's cabinet is still the second Abe cabinet (with a few changes). A change, he suggests, would enable the prime minister to wield more control over the government and make some progress in tackling policy problems.

Second, Mr. Yamamoto cites Mr. Koizumi to argue that a shuffle is one of two tools (the other being the power to dissolve the Diet and call an election) that the prime minister has to impose his will on party and parliament.

Third, Mr. Yamamoto suggests that if Mr. Fukuda lets the new Diet session begin without forming a new cabinet (after which a shuffle is unlikely), it will signal to the LDP that Mr. Fukuda is doomed and presumably trigger more intense campaigning to succeed him.

(He also argues, in an unnumbered point, that a shuffle will enable the prime minister to bring young LDP leaders to the fore and boost the party's appeal.)

The aforementioned arguments sound logical enough, but they rest on the unfounded assumption that the Japanese public will be satisfied with a statement of good intentions, as opposed to concrete, resolute action to address their insecurities. Will a new cabinet be any more effective or dynamic than the current cabinet? Does Mr. Fukuda actually want to form a "Fukuda-colored" cabinet that will take a definitive policy position (pro-reform or anti-reform / pro-consumption tax hike or pro-growth / pro-Koizumi or anti-Koizumi, etc.), an approach that risks making enemies of the LDP members on the short end of a cabinet shuffle? Do the Japanese people actually see the current cabinet as a "Koizumi-Abe line" cabinet and reject it as a result? Or do they reject it because it has failed to deliver significant results?

A new cabinet may enjoy a small bump, but any bump is guaranteed to be short lived. The new cabinet will face the same obstacles faced by the current cabinet (hostile public, recalcitrant DPJ, divided LDP), with the possibility that opting for a policy-oriented cabinet over a "unity" cabinet will actually exacerbate the LDP's divisions. Ironically, a more ideologically cohesive cabinet could be less effective than a heterogenous cabinet that is more capable of exploiting opportunities and co-opting potential rivals. Advocates of a reshuffled cabinet must at least consider the possibility that the new cabinet could be worse than the current, adequately mediocre Fukuda cabinet.

Does Mr. Fukuda actually think that the source of his troubles are his cabinet? Why fix something that isn't broken?

Kato steps up

Kato Koichi has been chosen as the head of the Japan-China Friendship Association, an influential and venerable organization advocating closer relations between Japan and China. (A history of the organization can be read here.)

Mr. Kato has seen his influence vanish since his failed rebellion against Mori Yoshiro in 2000, which was followed soon thereafter by the arrest of his secretary and his (temporary) resignation from the Diet. He subsequently became LDP's leading liberal, criticizing both his onetime comrade Koizumi Junichiro and Abe Shinzo for their revisionism before declaring his support for Fukuda Yasuo. A retired diplomat who was in MOFA's China School, Mr. Kato has been a relentless critic of historical revisionism and a tireless advocate of cooperation in Asia. Indeed, as seen as in this 2004 speech at Johns Hopkins University, Mr. Kato, like Mr. Fukuda, has a vision for a peaceful, integrated Asia.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Kato is not particularly popular with the Japanese right — and his home was the target of arson on the auspicious date of August 15, 2006.

But now with a perch at the top of an influential organization that spans party lines, perhaps Mr. Kato may yet have an important role to play in Japanese policy making. The prime minister needs all the help he can get in making a case for a constructive relationship with China and a more cooperative approach to Asia more broadly. Few prominent, popular figures seem to be willing to make the case publicly and persistently for a more cooperative Asia-centered foreign policy, meaning that the conservatives have effectively won the propaganda war. Mr. Kato, however, still commands respect when he speaks, even as an outcast within the LDP.

Mr. Kato may now be prepared to reconnect with Yamasaki Taku, the other member of the YKK, to fight back on North Korea policy and Japan's Asia policy more broadly.

On Friday morning, Mr. Kato appeared on a TV program to join Mr. Yamasaki in his feud with Abe Shinzo, emphasizing the failure of the Koizumi-Abe line on North Korea. Arguing that Japan may be finally having a debate on North Korea, three years late, he said about Mr. Abe, "If Mr. Abe was a person who understood a little more about the international situation, the Six-Party talks on the North Korean nuclear problem would have been held in Tokyo." In other words, if Japan had remained engaged in finding a solution to the problem instead of going down the abductions rabbit hole, Japan would be enjoying greater influence in the region today, instead of wondering how Japan became so isolated, estranged even from the United States. (He also urged Mr. Fukuda to reshuffle his cabinet and distance himself from the Koizumi line, advice that runs contrary to Mr. Koizumi's, and is unlikely to be embraced by the prime minister, who, I think, is less concerned about embracing a "line" than balancing the various elements of the LDP and keeping his opponents off balance.)

Perhaps this is the beginning of pushback by the liberals against conservative-revisionist control of the LDP. It is unlikely that the pushback will get very far, resting as it does on Messrs. Kato and Yamasaki, politicians on the downhill side of their careers, unless they manage to encourage their compatriots to speak up (one of Mr. Kato's greatest strengths seems to be courage and fearlessness in the face of great opposition) and challenge the conservatives. However, it matters less what they do within the LDP than what they do in the public at large. If Mr. Kato can combat public skepticism towards China and challenge an abductions-centered North Korea policy in public, he will have accomplished something great — and something necessary for the future of a peaceful Asia.