Another Koizumi child leaves the LDP

As expected, despite their tenuous position in the party (and their bleak electoral prospects), the LDP has not seen young reformists rush to exit the party and sign on with Watanabe Yoshimi's Your Party.

Only a small number has left, one by one, and with only a week until the campaign officially begins, presumably not many more will leave. The latest is Shimizu Seiichiro, who won a Tokyo PR seat in 2005 and opted to leave the party Monday. He is seeking to run as YP's candidate in Tokyo's twentieth district.

It is getting harder to see the YP having much impact on this election. Watanabe will win his seat in Tochigi, Eda Kenji will be reelected in Kanagawa-8, Asao Keiichiro may well be in a position to win in Kanagawa-4, but beyond the nascent party's three heavyweights, the party's candidates are unlikely to score victories in single-member districts. For the YP to have a strong showing, it needed to trigger a media "boom," but it seems that in the excitement surrounding a likely DPJ victory on 30 August, the creation of the YP will be of marginal importance in this election. Perhaps in a close election three seats could be the deciding vote for a coalition government, but if the DPJ does as well as it appears it will do, the YP's votes will be inconsequential.

It seems that the significance of the YP is in giving Koizumi children like Shimizu and Kanagawa-9 candidate Yamauchi Koichi another chance to win a Diet seat against long odds.

Fleeing a sinking ship?

A week after Nagasaki Kotaro — and his 3600 supporters in Yamanashi's second district — left the LDP, another Koizumi child has bolted the party.

Yamauchi Koichi, a first termer representing Kanagawa's ninth district, had, as discussed in this post, come to recognize the unpleasant situation for reformists in the post-Koizumi LDP. As he said in this post announcing his departure from the LDP, "The current LDP is like a different party from the 'Koizumi LDP' of the general election in 2005." He rejects the backsliding since 2005, and would rather campaign on his own than violate his principles. (Yamamoto Ichita describes Yamauchi, a member of his reform study group, as having a "pure heart.")

In short, Yamauchi may simply have uncommon courage for an LDP politician. He will face a particularly tough reelection fight: the DPJ candidate is Ryu Hirofumi, the incumbent who lost to Yamauchi in 2005 86,673 votes to 82,878 and was resurrected through proportional representation. And that's without considering the possibility that the LDP might send an "assassin" against Yamauchi.

As expected, there appears to be no plan in the works for a large-scale exodus of reformists from the LDP. Instead, it seems that following Tuesday's self-criticism session, the reformists have made a temporary peace with Aso Taro, perhaps following Nakagawa Hidenao's message that the DPJ must be stopped.

In other words, Yamauchi may not be the last reformist to leave the LDP before the general election, but he will most likely not have much company in exile. For many reformists, it seems that likely defeat with the help of LDP resources is preferable to near-certain defeat alone.

Reaping the whirlwind

How can the LDP govern Japan when it can barely govern itself?

The war of attrition that has been waged between the Koizumian remnant in the LDP and the rest of the party since Koizumi stepped down as prime minister in 2006 has entered a particularly bloody phase as the Koizumians have decided to launch a final offensive in the hope of toppling Asō Tarō before he can call a general election.

Yamamoto Taku, the lower house member collecting signatures to "recall" Asō by forcing an early party election, has stepped up his effort in the hope of collecting the requisite 216 signatures (half the total number of LDP members of both houses and the chairs of the prefectural party chapters) by 13 July, the date of the general meeting of LDP members from both houses. Beyond Yamamoto's signature drive, on Tuesday afternoon a new study group — the Manifesto Association — held its first meeting. The association is a collection of nine different Diet members' leagues of the reformist stripe and plans to draft proposals for inclusion in the party's election manifesto. The association wants the party's manifesto drafted before the Diet is dissolved and an election called. Not surprisingly, many in the party suspect that this group has a not-so-ulterior motive of toppling Asō.

There is a certain symmetry to this explosion of open opposition to the Asō government and, by extension, the LDP establishment, which continues to back the prime minister. Four years ago it was the reformists who were in control of the party and the agenda. During the summer of postal reform, it was the reformists who were advancing, with the LDP establishment doing everything in its power to slow Koizumi's agenda — with the small band of postal rebels eventually emerging to challenge Koizumi openly. Indeed, it was around this time four years ago that the LDP establishment delivered a blow to Koizumi when the LDP's general council broke with precedent to hold a majority vote on proposed revisions to the government's postal privatization bills.

Since then of course the reformists have been in steady retreat against a resurgent party establishment, bringing us to this latest round of infighting, a last-ditch attempt by the reformists to steer the LDP in a new direction.

Whether by design or not, Koizumi appears to have destroyed the LDP. The reformist remnant that was supposed to be the vanguard of a new LDP appears to be better at destruction than creation, skilled at undermining governments deemed insufficiently committed to their reform plans but incapable of putting forward their own candidate for the party leadership or convincing other members of the party to embrace the reformist agenda as being beneficial for the party as a whole.

I am not questioning their policy ideas, which, after all are not altogether different from ideas being floated by the DPJ. The difference, however, is that the DPJ lacks the pathologies of LDP rule. The LDP has become ungovernable. No authority can bring recalcitrant members to heel. No leader can impose a unifying vision on a party home to fundamentally incompatible visions for what the LDP should be.

In some sense the decline of the factions is responsible for the anarchy within the LDP, in that conflict within the LDP used to be conducted among organized groups that obeyed certain basic rules and were fighting less over policy visions than they were fighting for control over party resources. Which is not to say that factional conflict was tame (cf. the Kaku-Fuku sensō), but that it lacked the ideological fervor that the Koizumians have brought to the LDP. Like the international system, a once orderly balance of power has given way to a unipolar factional system (with the Machimura faction playing the role of the US) sitting atop an unruly party in which factions exist alongside a myriad of study groups, non-partisan groups, policy zoku, and other smaller, less organized groups (much as nation-states and U.S. unipolarity exist alongside international organizations, terrorist groups and gangs, multinational corporations and the like).

Anarchy within the LDP has had severe consequences for Japan, having paralyzed the Japanese government just when Japan needed a government capable of assessing problems clearly and responding decisively.

And so we have the Asō government, which is fighting to the death for the privilege to lead the LDP to defeat. To save himself, Asō will say or do anything. The reformists, supposedly eager to save the LDP, will do anything to push their agenda and elevate another party leader, despite the obvious contempt such an act would show for the Japanese public. Asō still enjoys the upper hand in this fight, in that the reformists, while a vocal minority, are still a minority. They are making life difficult for the prime minister (while making life easier for the DPJ, which will face an LDP whose members have spent months fighting amongst themselves), but they cannot dictate terms to the LDP. Shiozaki Yasuhisa and company are deluding themselves if they think that the rest of the LDP will allow the reformists to dictate the party's manifesto, making this round of fighting especially futile. If the LDP were capable of drafting a manifesto that the whole party could accept — no matter how watered down its proposals — and agreeing to stand behind Asō, the party would at least make the DPJ fight for every seat and perhaps deprive it of a majority. As matters stand now, the DPJ stands a good chance of taking a simple majority on its own.

The question remains what will happen following an LDP electoral defeat. Will the reformists use the occasion to break from the LDP and form their own party? Will they continue the internecine fight for control of the LDP? With each act of rebellion against the Asō government, the reformists make it less likely that they will be a welcome part of a post-defeat LDP.

None of this is to say that Asō is an ideal leader or that there is a right side and a wrong side in the battle between the reformists and the party establishment. Rather, the problem is the LDP itself, that LDP government has meant brutal and ceaseless infighting within the ruling party, which has made for irregular and more often than not deeply ineffective government. That is reason enough for the LDP to be removed from power.

The fall

The Aso cabinet is in free fall.

The Yomiuri Shimbun has released its December public opinion poll, which found that not only has the Aso cabinet's approval rating fallen by half since the beginning of November (from 40.5% to 20.9%), but the cabinet's disapproval rating rose by twenty-five points to 66.7% during the same span of time. The poll contains bad news for the LDP on every front. The DPJ has edged ahead of the LDP in baseline approval rating (28.2% to 27.2%) and opened a commanding lead in support in the next general election (40%, a ten-point increase, to 24%, an eight-point drop) — and, moreover, Ozawa Ichiro scored higher than Prime Minister Aso when respondents were asked who is the most appropriate choice as prime minister (Mr. Ozawa's support rose to 36%, a fourteen-point increase, while Mr. Aso's fell twenty-one points to 29%). This last figure is a critical indicator for the next general election, because voters have not only abandoned Mr. Aso, they also appear to be warming to Mr. Ozawa, depriving the LDP of the argument that no matter how unpopular the LDP is, the public still does not trust Mr. Ozawa.

(For the record, Asahi's monthly tracking poll recorded similar numbers. Twenty-two percent approval rating compared to a sixty-four percent disapproval rating and a dramatic fall and rise in support for Mr. Aso versus Mr. Ozawa for prime minister.)

The only heartening news — if one can call it that — is that more respondents preferred a political realignment over a DPJ-centered or LDP-centered government, or a grand coalition, the second-most preferred option.

Of course, a political realignment is not good news at all for the LDP, seeing as how for the moment the realignment could consume the LDP while leaving the DPJ comparatively unscathed. While Nakagawa Hidenao has spoken of uniting reformers from both parties, it appears for the moment that there is no better cure for the DPJ's internal disputes than the belief that the party is poised to seize power.

But the LDP's reform movement continues apace. Appearing on Fuji TV Sunday, Watanabe Yoshimi doubled down on his challenge to Mr. Aso, suggesting that he is steeling his resolve to overturn the cabinet and arguing that an election at the close of the extraordinary Diet session is essential if Japan's government is to be capable of formulating policy. As MTC argued recently, Mr. Watanabe may be poised to do what his father was unable to do — deliver the death blow to the LDP. It is yet unclear whether he will be able to muster the support to overturn the cabinet, perhaps by voting against the government when one of the bills requiring a second vote by the House of Representatives comes before the lower chamber. He may have some help from Kato Koichi, who could be prepared to make a second bid to overturn an unpopular LDP prime minister and has been in talks with the DPJ and the PNP about electoral cooperation and the formation of a new party. Nakagawa Hidenao, undoubtedly an indispensable player in any rebellion by LDP reformists against Mr. Aso, is reportedly skeptical about leaving the LDP before a general election, presumably because to do so would be to diminish his bloc's bargaining power. At this point the plan seems to be close ranks, prepare to contest a general election under the LDP's banner but in opposition to the standard-bearer, and then see the post-election balance of power. If neither the DPJ nor the LDP achieves a majority, the LDP reformists may make all the difference in determining who controls the government. (Koike Yuriko, one of his lieutenants and another player in the fight between reformists and the LDP establishment, is reportedly "tired" of forming new parties, given that she spent the 1990s jumping from new party to new party. Her attitude may simply be a means of reinforcing Mr. Nakagawa's efforts to proceed deliberately.)

Mr. Aso's allies appear to be closing ranks, with both Abe Shinzo — representing the conservative bloc — and Machimura Nobutaka — representing the party elders — criticizing Mr. Watanabe and the other reformist opponents of the Aso government. Yamamoto Ichita, a natural leader of the reformists, has also been hesitant to echo Mr. Watanabe's full-throated opposition to Mr. Aso. In a post at his blog, he relates what he sees as the honne of the young reformers. Mr. Yamamoto dismisses the idea of replacing Mr. Aso before an election, arguing that the public would be gravely insulted, even if an election were held immediately after the formation of the new cabinet. Furthermore, he suggests that it is unreasonable to think that the LDP will be able to fix its problem simply by finding a new, more dynamic leader (he dismisses this as the Kimu Taku option, referring to Kimura Takuya's teledrama Change). This sounds like another version of Mr. Nakagawa's argument. Hold steady and prepare for the next election, but be ready to act following the election.

In considering the rapid decay of the Aso government, it bears mentioning that the reformist rebellion is not primarily an opportunistic response to the government's falling popularity. As I have argued previously, the rift between the LDP's reformists and the rest of the party has been building for years. Mr. Aso may have forced the rift open by making it clear upon taking office that his government would move away from Koizumi-ism and consolidate the LDP's counter-reformation, making it clear to reformers that the party no longer had a place for them, but he did not create the conflict between the LDP's ideological tendencies. The poll numbers may have provided the reformists with an opportunity to launch their attack, thanks to the combination of public sympathy for their efforts to trigger a realignment and a government powerless to stop their machinations, but this conflict has been a long time coming.

With even the LDP executive beginning to contemplate holding an election in January instead of convening the regular session of the Diet immediately following the New Year holiday to pass a second supplementary budget, the conflict may reach its climax sooner rather than later.

It appears increasingly likely that Mr. Aso will go down in history as having presided over the destruction of the party whose creation his grandfather so vociferously opposed. There is a certain rhythm to history, isn't there?

Conservatives, Clientelists, and Koizumians

Asahi has published a long article illustrating the feeling of crisis that has descended upon the LDP, especially following Aso Taro's disastrous showing in the latest Nikkei poll (discussed here).

After months of building, it appears that the dissolution of the LDP may finally be in motion.

The LDP can be roughly divided into three broad groupings, with some overlap: conservatives, clientelists, and Koizumians. I provided an outline of these various divisions in an article published at the Far Eastern Economic Review's website in October, in which I argued that "it is best to think of the contemporary LDP as divided not by faction or policy group, but by broad ideological 'tendencies.'" The members of these groups have largely distinct visions for how Japan should be governed and how the LDP should wield power (with some overlap, especially on foreign policy), and it is increasingly difficult to see how these tendencies can inhabit the same party. Whereas the goal of keeping the LDP in power might have once served to unite various LDP groups — the party has, after all, always been divided along a number of fault lines — this goal is no longer sufficient to unify the party, perhaps in part because power is no longer shared evenly throughout the party. Over the past seven years, one tendency or another has been marginalized within the party. The Koizumi government was essentially a coalition of the conservatives and Koizumians to wage war on the clientelists, culminating in the fight over postal privatization. The Abe government rested on an uneasy truce among the three groups, with the Koizumians gradually being marginalized as his government proceeded. The Fukuda government saw both the conservatives and the Koizumians marginalized, resting largely on the power of party elders who still aim to keep the LDP in power and constitute a power bloc in their own right. By the end of the Fukuda government, the conservatives had regained some of their strength, taking important positions in the second Fukuda government before electing Mr. Aso with a coalition of conservatives, clientelists, and party elders. The Koizumians, marginalized virtually since Mr. Koizumi left office, have hinted at forming their own party (see this thread), but have done little more than talk.

Until now: Watanabe Yoshimi, a leading Koizumian and adminstrative reform minister under Messrs. Abe and Fukuda, appeared on TV Asahi Tuesday and suggested that he and his reformist colleagues could be prepared to leave the LDP and form their own party. Previously talk of a Koizumian party was fed more by media speculation about various study groups formed by reformists — the latest being Nakagawa Hidenao's new study group on social security — rather than by explicit threats by reformers to leave and form their own party. It's possible that Mr. Watanabe is bluffing. The party leadership certainly thinks he is. The clientelists, through the vehicle of the party's general council, is pressing for a three-year freeze in the the Koizumi government's 2006 plan to cut public works spending by three percent compared to the previous year and restrict the growth in social security entitlement payments. If the clientelists win, it may be the final indicator that the Koizumians are no longer welcome in the LDP, the beginning of the LDP's existence as a rump party of conservatives and clientelists.

The Asahi article suggests that Mr. Nakagawa — and Yosano Kaoru, who, as the leading "fiscal reconstructionst" is in some sense a tendency of his own — may yet have a role to play in destroying the LDP as it exists today, as they have links with each other and across the aisle to Ozawa Ichiro and former DPJ leader Maehara Seiji. The LDP's liberals (the LDP's truly marginalized group), namely Kato Koichi and Yamasaki Taku, may also be making their preparations to defect from the LDP.

Little wonder that Mr. Ozawa has now proposed a plan that is transparently an attempt to break up the LDP, calling for an all-party coalition government to govern until an election can be held (provided Mr. Aso resigns); in fact, Mr. Ozawa's scheme is so transparent I have a hard time believing anyone in the government will buy it. LDP members may be discontent with Mr. Aso, but that does not mean that they will run to embrace Mr. Ozawa.

But the point is that the Koizumians may finally be ready to fight back against their marginalization in the LDP by threatening the Aso government with defection (and the consequent destruction of the government's supermajority). They may be bluffing or not as eager as Mr. Watanabe to depart — Mr. Nakagawa is doing all he can to dampen rumors that he is moving against the prime minister — but the threat has been made. Will the LDP do anything to attempt to retain them?

If it doesn't, will the LDP as it exists today survive to contest the next general election?

The end is nigh

I have previously speculated on the consequences of Aso Taro's becoming prime minister for the future of the LDP.

In this post, for example, I wrote, "...If the conservatives retake control of the LDP under Mr. Aso and reunite with Mr. Hiranuma, that alliance could prove fatal for the LDP, as the readmission of Mr. Hiranuma and the other postal rebels could lead Mr. Koizumi and his followers out of the party, perhaps prompting liberals unconnected to Mr. Koizumi to leave too and drift towards the DPJ."

It seems that it may not even take Hiranuma Takeo's return into the party for Mr. Aso's election to be the catalyst for an exodus of reformers from the LDP.

The immediate catalyst instead is Koizumi Junichiro's decision to not run for reelection and let his 27-year-old (my near contemporary) son Shinjiro run in his stead.

As MTC notes, with Mr. Koizumi goes the last thread connecting his reformist followers with the party. Those reformists were undoubtedly aware that they had no place in Aso Taro's LDP; as Yamauchi Koichi wrote, Mr. Aso's new cabinet is purged of members of Nakagawa Hidenao's "rising tide" school. Instead there is an assortment of politicians looking to prime the pump a bit more, with Yosano Kaoru included in the mix to lend an air of responsibility to the proceedings. (I wonder why he is willing to participate in the farce, if he's serious about what he says about the need for fiscal retrenchment.)

The question now is whether Mr. Koizumi's followers leave before or after a general election. Why they would stay around to campaign under Mr. Aso's standard is beyond me. I do not expect them to join with Ozawa Ichiro's DPJ, which undoubtedly they see as little better (cf. Nakagawa Hidenao's posts on the DPJ). Will we see a three-way general election, with a Koizumian New Party the wild card?

Whatever the outcome, the LDP appears to be on the road to becoming a rump party comprised of an alliance between nationalist hawks and party stalwarts longing to break open the bank.

Even in his retirement, Mr. Koizumi retains his flare for the dramatic, in the process wrecking Mr. Aso's long-awaited opening night.

Koizumi speaks

Just one day after telling an audience of young reformers that he would not say who he was supporting, it appears that Koizumi Junichiro has come out in support of Koike Yuriko, the woman who he elevated to his cabinet shortly after her arrival in the LDP.

Sankei reports that Mr. Koizumi met Friday with Koike lieutenants Eto Seishiro, Tanabe Tsutomu, and Ono Jiro — all solders in the Koizumi revolution — and told them that Ms. Koike has his vote, and that he thinks she can beat Ozawa Ichiro.

He may even believe the latter.

I do not think that Mr. Koizumi's endorsement will be enough to swing the election.

First, I think that Mr. Aso's band of eighty is more disciplined than Mr. Koizumi's club of 83. I think the bulk of the LDP is embittered towards Mr. Koizumi and his legacy — for good reason, seeing as how Mr. Koizumi promised to destroy the LDP, which had worked so well at enriching many of its members, their constituents, and their supporters for so long — and has made no secret of a desire to stamp out the remnants of Mr. Koizumi's legacy. Hence the decision to readmit the postal rebels. And the decision to withhold support for the reelection campaigns of the Koizumi children.

It is Mr. Aso who now best embodies the LDP desire for — in Mr. Ozawa's favorite phrase — change so that things remain the same.

Of course Mr. Koizumi may yet have the last laugh.

Administrative reform is a wedge issue after all

In this post earlier this month, I asked whether administrative reform, the subject of a private consultative commission at the Kantei, was the ideal wedge issue for the DPJ to wield against the LDP.

At the time, the DPJ had yet to elevate the issue to the top of its talking points. It appears, however, that the opportunity still exists for the DPJ to exploit the issue to its advantage.

Following the publication of the advisory group's report (discussed here), Watanabe Yoshimi, minister for administrative reform, has pushed hard for the implementation of the report's recommendation, including the creation of a central personnel agency. The cabinet held its first meeting on administrative reform Wednesday, at which it was clear that Mr. Watanabe is badly outnumbered within the cabinet. Mainichi reports that more than half the cabinet opposes the creation of the personnel agency — and quotes one member of the cabinet describing Mr. Watanabe's "performance" as "loathed by everyone." (As an act of protest, Mr. Watanabe covered his mouth with a mask and refused to talk to reporters after the meeting.)

It seems that administrative reform is exacerbating tensions within an already divided LDP. It appears that this issue might prompt a mini-revival of Koizumism: Mainichi reports that Kokka Senryaku Honbu [National Strategy Headquarters], an LDP research group dedicated to keeping the flame of the Koizumi revolution burning (which counts Mr. Watanabe as a member), is entering into battle on behalf of the administrative reform package. Mainichi describes the fight as being between pro-bureaucrat and anti-bureaucrat groups, but it seems to be that it is also about ins and outs. Mainichi points to the involvement of Shiozaki Yasuhisa, Mr. Abe's chief cabinet secretary, and Nakagawa Hidenao, former LDP secretary-general to suggest that this is a defense of the "Koizumi-Abe line," but I think there's one name too many in that phrase. Mr. Abe made very clear during his time as prime minister that Mr. Koizumi's battles were not his battles. It remains the Koizumi line. Period.

The Koizumians are without question the "outs": their ideas have been rejected by the party leadership since the moment Mr. Koizumi took his final (?) bow. Many of them — the Koizumi Kids — have been disregarded by the party leadership in its plans for the next general election, to the point that Takebe Tsutomu, LDP secretary-general under Mr. Koizumi, has been reduced to exhorting party leaders to "protect all of the Koizumi children." The fight over administrative reform may turn out to be a last-ditch effort by the marginalized Koizumians to force the LDP to take them and their reformist ideals seriously. Is it a fight they can win? And if they lose, is it a prelude to the formation of a free-market, pro-deregulation Koizumian party (probably following the next general election, although with Mr. Koizumi who knows).

Both Prime Minister Fukuda and Chief Cabinet Secretary Machimura appear decidedly reluctant to give administrative reform their full-throated approval. Mr. Machimura in particular seems especially opposed to provisions restricting contact between bureaucrats and backbenchers. However, to reject the proposals pertaining to contact between politicians and bureaucrats would effectively gut the advisory group's plan.

This is all fertile ground for the DPJ to exploit, especially in combination with the Fukuda cabinet's pusillanimity in the face of the Road Tribe. The message is clear: the days of "structural reform without sanctuary" are long gone. The LDP under Mr. Fukuda will fight to preserve every last privilege for the bureaucracy, for its backbenchers, for its construction company supporters — everyone but the Japanese people. The DPJ should be drawing up its own legislation on this, borrowing from the government's own advisory group as needed and appealing to pro-reform members of the LDP to help the DPJ maneuver this plan through the Diet this spring. The DPJ should be forcing LDP members to choose between loyalty to their principles and loyalty to their party — just as Mr. Koizumi repeatedly foisted the same dilemma upon members of the DPJ during his tenure.

The Machimura faction grows

Seki Yoshihiro, an LDP member of the House of Representatives representing Hyogo-3, has announced that he is joining the Machimura faction, making him the eighty-fifth member of the party's largest faction.

Mr. Seki, a "Koizumi kid" as indicated by his membership in the "Group of 83" (AKA, the Koizumi Kids Klub), is neither the first member of the class of 2005 to join a faction nor the first to join the Machimura faction. Indeed, fifteen Koizumi Kids have joined the faction that has produced the last four prime ministers.

Considering that factions are increasingly unable to deliver anything tangible to members other than sponsorship for junior political appointments, and that the bigger the faction the more competition for those appointments (and thus diminishing marginal returns to the most recent member of a faction), I wonder what Mr. Seki gains from this move. A guarantee that he won't have his seat taken from him by party election strategists?

Alternatively, it could be a function of the changing nature of the factions, with the Machimura faction — already the descendant of the LDP's hawkish anti-mainstream tendency — becoming more explicitly ideological, the home of ideologues of both Koizumi and Abe colors. (The two approaches undoubtedly share much in common on constitutional and defense issues, but those who belong to the latter appear to have little or no interest in economic reform.)

Of course, if that's the case, it raises the question of how long politicians like Fukuda Yasuo will be tolerated within its ranks.

Who won the battle over postal reform?

On Saturday, Koga Makoto, the LDP's chief election strategist, announced that the party's candidate in Gifu-1 will be Noda Seiko, a former postal minister ousted from the party as a postal rebel in the summer of 2005 and readmitted to the party in December 2006. The dispute was over whether the party would give the nomination to Ms. Noda or to Sato Yukari, one of Mr. Koizumi's assassins.

In accordance with stated policy, the reason for Ms. Noda's receiving the nomination was on the basis of her "objectively" being able to win — apparently because she has won five elections.

Ms. Sato (or should I say Dr., on the basis of her Ph.D. in Economics from NYU?), having been elected only once, simply could not compete on that criteria.

In case anyone still thought that the LDP is the party of Koizumi Junichiro, this is yet another example that the real winner in the summer 2005 showdown over postal privatization was neither Mr. Koizumi and his band of reformers nor the postal rebels (after all, privatization is going forward), but the party elders who forced Mr. Koizumi to accept amendments to the bills to make them more palatable to the party's risk-averse and cowardly members. Recall the 28 June 2005 LDP executive council meeting when Kyuma Fumio, then chair of the council, forced a vote on the amendments without first achieving a consensus. Mr. Koizumi ended up getting his (amended) legislation and winning a major election victory, expelling the die hards in the process, but upon his leaving office control of the party passed back into the hands of the risk-averse elders, who are now prepared to erase the remaining traces of the Koizumi legacy.

Mr. Koizumi may ultimately get the last laugh — indeed, I suspect that he's been laughing to himself for the past year — because the LDP may be on the brink of destroying itself. But for the moment, the party elders are in control, and will continue to run the LDP as they know best, for the time being anyway.

Perilous weeks ahead

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prudence, or reading the air the moment of decision?

The man to beat

From Kishi scion to Yoshida scion: with less than a week until the LDP presidential election, it seems hard to conceive at this point how anyone will be able to stop Aso Taro, professed manga lover and friend of otaku (oh, and longtime foreign minister and current LDP secretary-general).

With Mr. Koizumi declaring that he will not cave to the "Draft Koizumi" movement that his "children" (including Koike Yuriko) have formed, Mr. Aso is the only henjin in sight, and after the bland pleasantries of Abe "beautiful country" Shinzo, a henjin just might be what the party is looking for. Sure, he has a history of inappropriate remarks — documented here — but it's all part of his henjin charm.

With less than a week, he seems well placed to rally factions to his side and stifle a dark-horse candidacy before it emerges. He probably has nothing to worry about from prospective challengers at this point, including Tanigaki Sadakazu, who has been campaigning since day he lost the last LDP president election, and Fukuda Yasuo, the longest-serving chief cabinet secretary ever. It is still unclear whether Mr. Fukuda actually wants to run, and Mr. Tanigaki, now described as being in the LDP's "anti-mainstream," has little or no chance of garnering the kind of support needed to overcome Mr. Aso, who is likely to receive the support of the Machimura faction (the LDP's largest, and Mr. Abe's own).

In the midst of all the maneuvering in Tokyo, it might be the LDP's beleaguered prefectural chapters that call the shots, seeing as how they absorbed July's blow as much as the national party. According to Asahi, they have reacted to Mr. Abe's resignation with "surprise and anger," and in the aftermath of the resignation, fifteen prefectural chapters from across the country have apparently begun considering throwing their support to Mr. Aso, just shy of a third of the total forty-seven.

With one day before campaigning officially begins, it may be Mr. Aso's race to lose. Not that he'll be winning a desirable prize. While stepping into the shoes of a prime minister who will leave office with a 74% unfavorable rating means that there is more or less nowhere to go but up, Mr. Aso will have to rebuild the LDP from the regions up, while fending off the DPJ in Tokyo.

(Wall Street Journal subscribers can read me arguing about the Abe succession here.)

Anti-faction non-faction to become a faction?

Say that five times fast.

In response to the readmission of Hiranuma Takeo, prominent postal rebel, to the LDP, and to the general thrust of discourse within the LDP — Mr. Abe's speech to the Diet yesterday notwithstanding — the reform-minded "Koizumi children" are apparently at work preparing to convert their study group into a formal LDP faction.

Their rallying cry: "The people are not idiots!"

Of course, the decision that to have influence within the LDP they need to be a formal faction strikes me as an admission of defeat, a rear-guard action on behalf of ideas (and a type of leadership) out of vogue in the party. They will probably not be comforted by Mr. Hiranuma's statement that he "understands" their opposition.

Will it make any difference? Arguably what's missing are not the ideas of reform, but the standard bearer. There is no substituting for Mr. Koizumi's charisma. And given the way the Tanigaki faction has been excluded from power, there's no guarantee that having a faction will put the "children" any closer to the reins of power within the LDP. The party is treading water with considerable difficulty thanks to the leaden anchor of Mr. Abe. It is unreasonable to think that a band of reformers without a charismatic leader will be able to transform the situation in their favor.