The Yosano-Hiranuma alliance of convenience

Michael Cucek has already pondered Yosano Kaoru's thinking behind his strange alliance with arch-revisionist Hiranuma Takeo — which has resulted in party that will supposedly be called Stand Up Japan! (the SUJ? As if Your Party wasn't bad enough) — but there's another factor beyond the electoral factors considered by Cucek.

The alliance is a marriage of convenience in policy terms for both Yosano and Hiranuma.

As I've argued in the past, if the revisionist conservatives have a blind spot, it is a patent inability to speak intelligently about economic problems (which was one reason why the appointment of the late Nakagawa Shoichi as finance minister so puzzling). They love symbolic politics — they love making the case for why, in the grand sweep of history, their program of revising the constitution, reinvigorating Japanese arms, and defending traditional culture is imperative. When it comes to speaking convincingly about the economic insecurities faced by Japanese families, however, they fumble, as the government of Abe Shinzo (and Abe's decision to campaign in the 2007 upper house election on constitution revision) so clearly illustrates. Not only can they not emote on economic issues, they just have nothing new or interesting to say when it comes to solutions to the problems plaguing the Japanese economy.

If there's one thing Yosano can do, it's economic policy, having long fought a lonely battle within the LDP for fiscal reconstruction. Whatever other considerations are going through his mind, we should not forget his emphasis on forthrightly explaining policy proposals to the nation. Indeed, he wrote a whole book on this idea, a book in which he comes across as wholly sincere.

As such, Stand Up Japan! is an alliance of convenience for both its progenitors. I expect Yosano will have a free hand to push his economic agenda of choice without having to compromise as he did within the LDP, while Hiranuma will have a vehicle for inserting the revisionist agenda into election campaign without having to worry about having something to say about the economy.

Whether this chimera of a party will survive is another matter entirely, but it does pose a major risk to the LDP. Now that there are neo-liberal and revisionist LDP splinter parties it's possible that the collapse of the LDP could pick up speed. Partisans from both camps within the LDP now have parties to which they can comfortably escape, which would leave a rump party in the hands of the old guard, which has stood for nothing but holding power. And out of power, what purpose will the LDP serve other than serving as work relief for aging politicians? The party might linger on as a loose coalition of hereditary politicians who can keep winning on the strength of personal support, but even then, how much longer will the aging members of the koenkai of LDP politicians have the power to return their man?

As unlikely as it seems, Stand Up Japan! could be a serious, even mortal blow to the LDP.

Exit, voice, and loyalty in the LDP

On Saturday, Yosano Kaoru, onetime contender for the LDP presidency and the Aso cabinet's second finance minister, met with LDP President Tanigaki Sadakazu and filed notice that he will leave the party from next week. Sonoda Hiroyuki, Yosano's ally who was forced to resign as a deputy secretary-general last month over criticism of Tanigaki, is expected to follow Yosano out of the party soon.

Both are said to be considering joining up with Hiranuma Takeo, the postal rebel who refused to rejoin the LDP with other erstwhile rebels in 2006. Hiranuma has been talking about forming a conservative party that could serve as a "third pole" in Japanese politics since at least October 2007, in the immediate aftermath of Abe Shinzo's stunning fall from the premiership. After years of hinting at creating a new party, Hiranuma apparently feels that the time is right now, and he will launch his party sometime this month so to prepare to contest this summer's House of Councillors election.

That Hiranuma has waited until now to launch his party suggests to me Hiranuma hopes to fill an electoral niche that does not exist. Where is the demand for another conservative party? Who is clamoring for Hiranuma's third pole? As I've argued before in regard to Hiranuma's quest to build a "true" conservative party, the project is little more than fantasy.

So what of Yosano's unusual alliance with Hiranuma, given that Yosano has been anything but an adherent of the "true" conservatism? No one seems to have a good explanation for it. Sonoda suggested that if they form a new party, it would be close to the LDP in policy terms, in other words, the Hiranuma new party, unlike Watanabe Yoshimi's "neoliberal-ish" Minna no tō, would not be carving out a new niche for itself.

What does Yosano's decision to leave the party mean for the LDP? Following on the heels of Hatoyama Kunio's departure — making Yosano the second Aso cabinet member to leave in under the span of a month — Yosano's departure appears to suggest that exit is growing more attractive to would-be reformers. That's not to say that there aren't LDP members exercising voice. Tanigaki is under relentless pressure from LDP members to initiate sweeping party reforms or get out of the way. This past week a meeting of 50 LDP members met to advocate the dissolution of the factions, to which Tanigaki could only say that if they didn't like factions they didn't have to be in them. Meanwhile, Nakagawa Hidenao criticized the LDP president for failing to stand up for postal privatization in his debate with Prime Minister Hatoyama. And Masuzoe Yoichi continues to be the most vociferous critic of Tanigaki and the LDP executive, castigating the party's leaders for "lacking the will, the ability, and the strategy" necessary to lead the LDP.

But despite the exercise of both exit and voice by LDP reformists, Tanigaki continues to enjoy the support of an inner circle of faction leaders and other party chieftains, at least judging by their silence. Yosano, like Masuzoe, is a maverick, albeit a prominent maverick. Not belonging to any faction, Yosano is if anything best know for his lonely fight in favor of fiscal austerity and open calls for a consumption tax increase, positions that did not earn him a wide following within the LDP. Neither Yosano nor Masuzoe, however, has the numbers to back their actions and force the party's chieftains to act against Tanigaki, at least not before the election.

Both exit and voice in this situation appear to depend on both volume and magnitude: were a faction leader to take his faction out of the party en masse, or to dissolve his faction voluntarily and side with the reformists, those actions might be enough to push the LDP in a new direction. But for now the party is fighting the same battle it has been fighting since Koizumi Junichiro left the premiership. The old guard controls the party, as the reformists, marginalized, struggle to organize and utilize the media as a weapon against the party's leaders. The difference now seems to be that exit has become an increasingly attractive alternative due to public dissatisfaction with both the DPJ and the LDP.

The LDP may yet survive, but it will take lots more voice — or lots more exit — before the party's leaders stand aside and allow the reformists to begin remaking the party so to better compete in a more competitive political environment.

The DPJ needs to hone its message

By any measure, the DPJ enjoys a considerable advantage over the LDP with less than two weeks until the campaign officially begins on 18 August. It is ahead in polls, Hatoyama Yukio, its leader, is uniformly preferred to Prime Minister Aso Taro, and there is a widespread feeling that the public is disgusted enough by LDP rule that it is already to throw the bums out (finally!) and put the DPJ in power in its place.

But despite all that, the DPJ has not sewn up the general election. While I think Nakagawa Hidenao's argument that the DPJ has already peaked in public opinion polls is a bit of wishful thinking on his part, there are an awful lot of undecided voters whose decisions over the next few weeks will determine which way the wind blows on 30 August.

But beyond the existence of undecided voters, the DPJ could lose the general election simply because it has been generally poor at political communications. This is not a new problem. (Remember this?) The DPJ has had so much help from the LDP over the past several years that it has had to do relatively little communicating of its own in order to put itself in a position to win this month. The party has done a decent enough job at devising a realistic manifesto that, whatever its shortcomings, does show that the DPJ is serious about governing. But the manifesto won't sell itself. And it won't counter the LDP's charge that the DPJ cannot be trusted with power because it won't defend Japan.

Watch this video of Aso speaking outside Sakuragicho station in Yokohama Tuesday:



From about the eight-minute mark, the prime minister goes into a long discourse on the importance of defending that which must be defended, on the importance of a forthright national security policy in the face of a nuclear North Korea and the contrast between the DPJ and LDP on this front. While I think Aso's claim that the general election should be a choice based on policy is a bit silly (elections are always about more than just policy), Aso is working hard to redefine this election campaign along terms more friendly to the DPJ. "Defend what should be protected." Repeated enough, this message could sink in among the public and make the public think twice about turning over power to an untested DPJ.

Contrast Aso's remarks in Yokohama with Hatoyama Yukio's remarks Tuesday next door in Kamakura.



While Hatoyama does address Aso's leadership deficiencies, at times it seems as if he's campaigning against the bureaucracy instead of the LDP. His stump speech is a bit all over the place. He begins getting to the kind of message the DPJ needs to deliver about eight minutes in when he asks why Japan has become a world leader in suicides among its young people. But then he starts talking about Aso's anime "palace," which, while a bit humorous, is a bit off message. Hatoyama and his party need to be angry. They need to meet the LDP's talk of the DPJ as an irresponsible party with anger at what Japan has become under LDP rule. They need to tap that sense of anger which is clearly abroad among the public. The message needs to be focused on the LDP. It shouldn't veer off into attacks on the bureaucracy or this or that instance of wasteful spending. It must answer the LDP's description of the DPJ as dangerous with a message that stresses the danger of returning the LDP to power again.

For the moment, I think the LDP is controlling the campaign narrative. Messages like Yosano Kaoru's claim that for the DPJ to deliver on its manifesto it will have to raise the consumption tax to 25% may, regardless of their truth, prove effective at hammering home the dangers of electing the DPJ. Repeated enough, that figure could prove devastating for the DPJ, which is why it must answer it now, before it sticks.

Meanwhile, the DPJ has clearly mishandled the flap over a US-Japan FTA. At the first sign of criticism, it folded: it has announced that it will revise the manifesto to clarify that agriculture will be excluded from negotiations, and it will soften the language to "conclude an FTA" to "promote negotiations for an FTA." In revising its position that DPJ will stress that the income support system will take priority over FTA negotiations. Of course, by doing so, the DPJ's position is now incoherent. As Sasayama Tatsuo suggests, if agriculture were excluded from negotiations, why would the US bother with FTA negotiations?

It's possible that the DPJ could have sold rural voters on the idea of an FTA packed with comprehensive support, if it had explained itself properly. But by sneaking the proposal into the manifesto with little fanfare, the DPJ gave its critics an opportunity to define the party's position. Now it has given a gift to LDP candidates across the country, especially in rural areas in Chugoku, Shikoku, and Kyushu, where the DPJ needs to do better than it ever has done before: the LDP can wave the original manifesto before voters as evidence of the DPJ's desires to destroy Japanese agriculture. It may not be true, but as with Yosano's line about the consumption tax rate, repeat it enough times and enough people may eventually believe it. By vacillating and not defending its own positions, the party looks squishy and weak, and so ends up making mistakes for fear of making mistakes.

The time to answer the LDP's and its allies' criticism is immediately: if the DPJ believes in its manifesto, then it should defend it when attacked. As of now, the LDP, desperate to retain power, appears to have more fight in it than the DPJ. There is plenty of time for the polls to turn.

The LDP in ruins

On Wednesday, Nakagawa Hidenao announced that the movement to move up the LDP presidential election from September — in effect a campaign for a recall election aimed at Prime Minister Asō Tarō — reached its goal of signatures from more than one-third of LDP members in the upper and lower houses (one-third is 128 members). Among the 133 signatures received are those of two members of the Asō cabinet, Yosano Kaoru, the finance minister, and Ishiba Shigeru, the agriculture minister.

The rebels are urging the LDP executive to convene a general meeting of LDP members from both houses — and with Asō determined to dissolve the Diet Tuesday, they are running out of time.

Having one-third of the Diet caucus is sufficient to force a general meeting, but whether they will be able to secure a majority of Diet members plus the heads of the forty-seven prefectural chapters remains to be seen. But that said, this group includes more than just the Koizumi children, although they are certainly in the mix. There are enough signatories with cabinet experience and longevity that Asō and his allies cannot simply ignore them. (The complete list is available here.) There is certainly a reformist "color" to the list, but it is not necessarily a group of Nakagawa's compatriots. I would imagine a number of the signatories are there because they simply fear for the future of the party, not because they accept Nakagawa's ideological program. In other words, this group is not the beginning of a new reformist party.

This group, and Nakagawa in particular, is convinced that the LDP can be saved by throwing Asō overboard, indeed that the prime minister is the only thing standing in the way of LDP victory. As I argued here, I think Nakagawa's position assigns far too much blame to Asō for what is essentially a structural problem in the LDP. After going through three prime ministers in three years, it is hard to believe that the problem is simply having the wrong people at the head of the party. After watching the LDP's members war with one another simply to remove Asō, will the public be convinced that the LDP is a whole new party? If the party manages to unseat the prime minister and elevate, for example, Masuzoe Yoichi in his place, will the party instantly become more manageable? (Motegi Toshimitsu, a former administrative reform minister, and Sugawara Isshu, the LDP's deputy secretary general, met with Masuzoe Wednesday evening to urge him to run in the event that Asō falls from power.) Masuzoe's position would be particularly difficult given that he would be the first postwar prime minister from the upper house and has always prided himself on being independent from party (great as a crusading minister, bad in a party leader). He might be able to save the LDP in a general election, but when it came to governing he would presumably get ensnared by the same problems that have undermined previous LDP prime ministers.

At this juncture, however, Yosano has emerged as a key figure in determining not only whether Asō will survive, but also whether the prime minister will be able to go forward with a dissolution and general election as planned. Yomiuri reports that the finance minister met with the prime minister for forty minutes on Wednesday and urged him to resign voluntarily. Yosano also hinted that he might not sign the declaration dissolving the House of Representatives and stressed that the party leaders must listen to dissenting voices in determining how to proceed. Despite his long-running battle with Nakagawa — the war of Nakagawa's "rising tide" school versus Yosano's "fiscal reconstructionists" — Yosano is now a critical ally for Nakagawa inside the cabinet, seeing as how the reformists do not have one of their own in the government. But even Yosano cannot stop the dissolution, as the prime minister can dismiss him and assume his position if Yosano refuses to sign the order.

The battle is building to a climax. There will presumably be a meeting of LDP Diet members, if only to vote down the proposal. That would probably be the best outcome for Asō, given that he probably has the votes. Mori Yoshiro spoke of making a decision about a "recall" election on the basis of the opinion of all members, a reminder that two-thirds of the party's members did not sign the petition. And Asō has the upper hand, in that he only has to hold out until Tuesday and then he can dissolve the Diet, even if he has to dismiss members of his cabinet to do so.

On Thursday, Takebe Tsutomu likened the current situation to the bakumatsu, the end of the Tokugawa shogunate in the 1850s and 1860s. He may be right, but he should remember that it takes more than one group to produce political chaos. The Asō cabinet may be tottering and feeble, but the reaction it has engendered from within the LDP has mortally wounded the government, worsening the conditions that inspired the reaction in the first place. If the rebels fail — and it looks like they will, because Asō is nothing if not stubborn — they will have guaranteed the outcome they sought to avoid: the disastrous defeat of the LDP and the formation of a DPJ government.

The DPJ rattles markets

How much longer can the US count on Japan to buy Treasuries?

Nakagawa Masaharu, since 2007 shadow finance minster in the DPJ's Next Cabinet, has raised the specter of DPJ government's forgoing US government bonds (at least those dominated in dollars instead of yen). In a story that originated with the BBC, according to Jiji, Nakagawa said, "We propose that we would buy [the US bonds], but it's yen, not dollar." (The fact that the article gets the name of the party that has governed for Japan for a half century wrong — and that Jiji is the only Japanese media outlet carrying this story — makes me a bit reluctant to link to it, but the markets apparently took the report seriously.)

The BBC writes off the possibility that the DPJ could take power this year, but obviously I think it is a mistake to dismiss the DPJ out of hand: Ozawa's troubles notwithstanding, the outcome of the general election is still open. Which is why Nakagawa's remarks should be taken seriously. As Brad Setser reminded readers recently, creditors prefer to lend in their own currency. He was referring to China, but his analysis applies equally to Japan. The DPJ — less constrained than the LDP thanks to its status as an opposition party (and an opposition party interested in distancing Japan from the US) — is free to say what LDP members and bureaucrats may think but are constrained from saying openly.

That said, Yosano Kaoru, finance minister-economy minister-FSA chief did allude to the internationalization of the yen at the recent ASEAN + 3 finance ministerial meeting in Bali, when he pledged up to 6 trillion yen in emergency loans to Southeast Asian countries that would be financed out of Japan's foreign reserves. In other words, Japan would sell some of its dollar holdings to convert into yen, which it would then lend in the region. Whether Japan could sell that quantity is doubtful, but Nakagawa and Yosano's remarks suggest that the Japanese establishment is concerned about Japan's dollar reserves — and is surely watching China's activities warily.

As the two largest holders of US government bonds, Japan and China are locked in a standoff. Neither wants to be the second to liquidate their holdings. Both governments are trapped by their holdings, in that the economic consequences of unloading their Treasuries could damage the US recovery and harm their own economies, but they also don't want to pay for US profligacy by holding Treasuries while the US inflates its way out of debt (or defaults entirely). Given the future outlook for the US government's balance sheet, they have good reason to worry.

So to return to Nakagawa's threat, it is worth asking whether it is a credible threat. Could a DPJ-led government act less restrained in its financial relationship than the Chinese government? I think there is reason to doubt Nakagawa, not least because the DPJ is running to a certain extent on the basis of a populist nationalism with the US as a major target. If the DPJ takes power, it may find it hard to deliver on all of its campaign promises. Moreover, it is unclear whether Nakagawa was voicing his own opinion or speaking for the DPJ as a whole. If the former, it may be irrelevant what he thinks a DPJ government should do about Treasury holdings.

Nevertheless, the DPJ may be playing a dangerous game, not just with the United States but with China, which has every reason to be concerned that Tokyo might try to beat it in a race for the exits.

This should serve as a reminder that the LDP's conservatives do not have a monopoly on nationalism — and a reminder that Japanese nationalism takes many forms. Is Nakagawa Masaharu's argument about the "internationalization" of the yen any less nationalistic than Nakagawa Shoichi's persistent calls for a Japanese nuclear arsenal?

UPDATE: Kamei Shizuka, head of Kokumin Shintō, a prospective DPJ coalition partner, reassured Jeffrey Bader, senior director for Asia on the National Security Council, that a DPJ-led government would continue to purchase US bonds. Kamei probably does not have the authority to speak for a government that does not exist yet and may never exist, but it does diminish the authoritativeness of Nakagawa's remarks.

Aso's missed opportunity

As Aso Taro's poll numbers continue to plummet — in addition to reaching 11% approval in the Mainichi and Sankei Shimbun polls, his disapproval rating in the Sankei poll is at 80.2% — and as the likelihood of an LDP defeat in this year's general election rises, it is worth asking whether there was anything Aso could have done differently.

Looking back, Aso's downfall may be presented as inevitable, the result of the economic crisis and the missteps of his predecessors over which Aso had little control.

But to render that judgment would be letting the prime minister off too easily. While Aso has faced tough conditions, he has done remarkably little to help himself.

Waiting until Nakagawa Shoichi's blowup in Rome to appoint Yosano Kaoru as finance minister may prove to be one of his greatest errors.

In a party full of spoiled second-, third-, and fourth-generation politicians, weary old guardsmen desperate to keep the old system together, and conservative ideologues who have little to say about the problems facing the public, Yosano is uniquely earnest in his desire to get things right. (I cannot top MTC's praise of Yosano in this post from when he was appointed Abe Shinzo's second chief cabinet secretary.) As I noted last week, Yosano stressed the importance of decency in his book, and it shows how he conducts himself in public life.

In an appearance on NHK Sunday, Yosano, discussing a new round of economic stimulus, said that he wants to include input from all of society — including the opposition parties — in the new package. This desire for harmony is, as I've mentioned, the essence of Yosano's political philosophy, and I have no reason to doubt his sincerity when he says he wants to consult with others outside the governing coalition in responding to a national crisis.

Compare this with what Aso tried to do with the second stimulus package, a package that was at least in part rooted in the LDP's political needs. The unpopular payment portion of the stimulus was, as has been widely reported, the product of Komeito pressure, and the prime minister reasoned that Komeito support was more important for the LDP than public support.

We know how that turned out.

But it's more than just bowing to Komeito. Aso has made it easy for the DPJ to take a more confrontational stance with the government. Treat the DPJ like an irrelevant, noisy opposition party and it will act like an irrelevant, noisy opposition party. The LDP continues to treat DPJ control of the upper house as an irritant, instead of revising the policymaking process to acknowledge that the DPJ has a veto over policy and incorporating the opposition in policy discussions at a much earlier point in the process.

The prime minister should have been doing everything he could to get DPJ input and participation in drafting the government's response to the crisis, not just because it would smooth the passage of the government's agenda but because it would signal the government's recognition that a national crisis demands a national response.

What's the worst that could have happened? If the DPJ and the other opposition parties reacted to the government's olive branch like the Republican Party has responded to President Obama's efforts to forge a bipartisan stimulus package, the DPJ would likely have suffered in public opinion polls. The government would still have to deliver effective policies — easier said than done — but at least it would have made a good faith effort to build a working coalition to formulate an effective response to the economic crisis.

Instead, from the moment he took office, the prime minister has attacked the DPJ. Anyone remember his speech to open last year's extraordinary session? Meanwhile on Sunday, the same day that his chief economic adviser was emphasizing the importance of working with the opposition in drafting new economic stimulus plans, Aso was in Aomori questioning whether the DPJ can be trusted to deliver change. (Not a question to be asking, Mr. Prime Minister, not when it is all too easy to substitute "LDP" for DPJ in that question. It would behoove you not to emphasize "change" as a campaign theme.)

The government has made it easy for DPJ leader Ozawa Ichiro to be focused on campaigning in the countryside. Had the government made a sustained effort to include Ozawa and his lieutenants in policy consultations, he would have had a harder time escaping Tokyo, not without being punished for it.

As such, it is amazing looking back over the past five months how little Aso has learned from the mistakes of his predecessors and how easily he has allowed himself to be trapped by the same dynamic that destroyed their governments, with an assist from the global economy this time around.

How can Japan be saved?

With the sudden departure of Nakagawa Shoichi from twin posts of finance minister and state minister responsible for the financial services agency (FSA), Yosano Kaoru has been elevated from state minister for economic and fiscal policy and now holds all three positions simultaneously, making him, to borrow a term from American politics, the Aso government's economy czar.

It is most likely a temporary arrangement; the government has indicated that he will stay in place until the budget is enacted, but thereafter the posts will be divided, either with Yosano being bumped back down to his state minister's post or with Yosano's becoming a "permanent" (insofar as anything about the Aso government can be described as permanent) replacement for Nakagawa.

Nevertheless, until that happens, Yosano bears a heavy burden — it is not for nothing that Ozawa Ichiro wished his go partner good luck, not least because Ozawa and his party will do all they can to make his life more difficult.

While he has a fairly straightforward task for the first month of his tenure, it is worth considering Yosano's views and speculate as to what might have been. Arguably, if Aso was sensible and chose his ministers — or at the very least his finance minister — on the basis of merit, Yosano would have been a fine first choice for the post he now occupies. While Yosano was perhaps denied the post due to his long advocacy of a consumption tax increase as the means to set Japan's finances right (and to Aso's need to reward Nakagawa for his loyalty), he has been nothing if not pragmatic, as he stressed at his inaugural press conference Tuesday. He has also, unlike the prime minister, been unflinchingly realistic.

While Aso has done everything in his power to play down the severity of the crisis and the responsibility of LDP governments for its severity, while repeatedly making the fanciful promise to make Japan the first country out of recession even as its economy declines faster than other developed countries, Yosano has served as the bearer of bad news. His speech at the start of the current Diet session is a good illustration of his thinking. The underlying idea is that if the government is going to ask for the people's forbearance, it must be straight with them. It must be forthright about crisis and the broader structural changes underway in the global economy, and must have a clear vision about how Japan should change over the long term in response to the crisis and broader trends.

This is consistent with his approach to politics as outlined in his 2008 book Dodotaru seiji / 堂々たる政治, which can be translated as Open Politics, in the sense of straightforwardness. It is telling that Yosano says, in the closing pages of the book, that his favorite word is "decency" (he uses the English), arguing that decency is a "weapon sustaining Japan" as it struggles to adapt. Yosano's vision of politics is not unlike Barack Obama's, in that he wants to deescalate conflict within the political system — he is a uniter, not a divider. He is opposed to "market fundamentalism," although not, he notes, opening Japan's economy more to the global economy. He wants to ensure, however, that the weak are protected. He also does what few in Japanese politics seem willing to do today: he defends the bureaucracy, suggesting that the failings of some should not condemn the good work done by most. Yosano stresses that there needs to be a clearer division of labor between bureaucrats and politicians, with the latter taking clear responsibility for big decisions about the direction of the state. (I heard Furukawa Motohisa, a finance ministry bureaucrat-turned-DPJ member, make the same argument in Tokyo last month.) It does no good for governance to demonize the bureaucrats and shift the blame for Japan's problems on their shoulders. He takes a nuanced view to the common reformist theme of "cutting waste," suggesting that while there are some wasteful expenditures that can be easily cut, other expenditures require more careful consideration as they can have tremendous impact on the life of citizens in forgotten corners of Japan. Similarly, he does not dismiss Nakagawa Hidenao's "Rising Tide" school offhand, but rather suggests that it is unrealistic to expect the automatic reconstruction of Japan's finances that Nakagawa believes will result if Japan simply gets its economy growing fast enough. With Japan's sinking deeper into recession, Yosano may not see his desired consumption tax increase any time soon, but the recession suggests that it might be a long time before Japan sees the kind of growth needed for a rising tide to lift all boats.

Yosano's thinking is strongly reminiscent of the LDP's old mainstream, a view that could be called "politics as administration." In another era, he might have been a successful prime minister governing in the "low posture" style, abjuring ideology while solving national problems.

The question, however, is whether Yosano's politics are appropriate for an era of faltering institutions, mounting economic insecurity, and the need for drastic change.

More than the debate over economic policy, this is the major difference between Yosano and Nakagawa Hidenao. Nakagawa's political vision is rooted in conflict. Arguably he subscribes to Carl Schmitt's view of the political, in which the political sphere is separated from other spheres of life by its divisions of the world into friends and enemies. As Schmitt wrote, "The political is the most intense and extreme antagonism becomes that much more political the closer it approaches the most extreme point, that of the friend-enemy grouping." [NB: I am not citing the controversial Schmitt to discredit Nakagawa.

Reading Nakagawa's Kanryo kokka no hokai 官僚国家の崩壊 (The destruction of the bureaucratic state), which was published around the same time as Yosano's book, I got the impression of Nakagawa as a politician in search of monsters to destroy. His bete noire, introduced in the introduction, is what he calls the "stealth complex:" a network comprised of the universities, the bureaucracy, the Bank of Japan, the financial world, and the media that works to retard reform and protect their vested interests. (He explicitly cites Eisenhower's military-industrial complex as his model.) He explores the way in which bureaucrats undercut political rivals by leaking information, how they dominate the policymaking process as "Japan's biggest think tank," and how through government by informal networks they have hollowed out the policymaking process so that no one is accountable. Japan, he argues, is ruled by a void. And in order to transform Japan, this stealth complex must be destroyed and politicians given firm control of policymaking, to which end he more or less endorses the Watanabe Yoshimi-Takahashi Yoichi-Eda Kenji administrative reform agenda, based on the notion that in hard times, bureaucratic rule must give way to political rule (a theme with deep roots in Japanese politics). The remainder of the book contains Nakagawa's countless ideas for Japan: a kinder, gentler market capitalism in which the Japanese people help each other without the government's intervention, a decentralized government and a bureaucracy reined in and accountable to the people, and a full embrace of the IT and green technology revolutions to revitalize the economy.

But running through it all — and through his writing at his blog — is the need for someone to blame for Japan's problems; someone other than the LDP, that is. His politics clearly require an enemy against which to direct political efforts, much like Koizumi Junichiro's emphasis on the "opposition forces" within the LDP who stood in the way of reform.

In short, between Yosano and Nakagawa there are two very different approaches to politics, two very different ways of tackling the problems facing Japan. With the implosion of the conservatives, it may in fact be these two men who are left fighting over the wreakage of the LDP after the next general election. MTC wonders what exactly Nakagawa is planning (i.e., whether he intends to bolt the party at an opportune time), but it may be the case that he is prepared to fight it out within the ranks of the LDP, that he's convinced that Japan's system is a two-party system and since one party is unacceptable to him — if his writings about the DPJ are to be believed — he has no choice but to fight on to remake the LDP.

And while Yosano himself is an unlikely prime minister, his worldview could provide the right mix of concern for Japan's downtrodden and an emphasis on (as Ozawa says) change so that things can stay the same.

The question, however, is which approach to politics is most likely to get things done. That, after all, is what the public has been waiting for for years: a government that will move deliberately to tackle the problems that both Yosano and Nakagawa believe ail Japan. I think Koizumi's enduring popularity has less to do with the content of his policies than that for the first time the public saw a government in action. Perhaps at times it was only the appearance of action, but it was a significant enough departure that I think voters still appreciate the former prime minister, much to the chagrin of writers like Morita Minoru. Which suggests that Nakagawa may be right that a confrontational approach is the only way to break the establishment and set Japan on a new course. Yosano's "softly, softly" approach simply expects too much goodwill from all actors, probably more goodwill than is possible in the midst of economic collapse.

But at the same time Nakagawa is far too forgiving of the LDP: the bureaucracy is as powerful as it is because it has governed hand in hand with the help of an LDP unable to govern itself. And I'm not convinced that the LDP can reform itself to become the party Nakagawa envisions without a cataclysmic defeat that forces the party into opposition.

Ultimately the picture that emerges from both books, however, is that the range of policy ideas in Japanese politics today is fairly limited. There is a general consensus that some form of decentralization is necessary, with varying degrees of scope. There is a general consensus in a broad swath of the political class of the need to reform the bureaucracy drastically and forge a new relationship in which the bureaucracy is an instrument of the cabinet. There is a growing sense of the need to develop and draw upon the skills and expertise of Japanese outside the bureaucracy. There is an acknowledgment of the need to fix the government's finances, with the debate focusing on the extent to which trimming waste from the budget will solve the problem. (and it is unclear where exactly the DPJ falls in this debate, seeing as how they've done everything they can to avoid talking about a consumption tax increase).

(Of course, what's missing from this consensus is the most pressing problem of all: how to replace foreign demand for Japanese goods with domestic demand for Japanese and foreign goods as the basis for Japanese economic growth.)

Given that an agenda has more or less coalesced, the overriding question in Japanese politics then is who can get the government moving. After watching three consecutive LDP prime ministers crash and burn, the public seems unconvinced that LDP is up to the task, no matter how passionately Nakagawa fulminates against the bureaucracy and castigates the DPJ as an enemy of reform. Nakagawa's diagnosis may be right, to an extent, but his cure has been tried, and it has failed. The LDP is too dependent on the bureaucracy for policymaking and its members too free to manipulate policy and undermine the prime minister to make the policies both Nakagawa and Yosano see as necessary.

It is entirely possible that the DPJ, should it form a government, will be no more successful — Japan may languish for years to come. If it does, it won't be for lack of recognition of what's wrong with Japan but rather due to an inability to reshape the system of government wholesale.

Good luck, Mr. Yosano (and Mr. Nakagawa).

Aso seals the deal, and the LDP pats itself on the back

The campaign to replace Fukuda Yasuo as LDP president and prime minister officially began on Wednesday, with the five candidates — Aso Taro, Koike Yuriko, Yosano Kaoru, Ishihara Nobuteru, and Ishiba Shigeru — holding a joint press conference before traveling the country to campaign.

The press conference makes clear just how farcical claims of the LDP's "open" election are. Yes, there are five candidates vying for the slot, compared with Ozawa Ichiro's uncontested reelection as DPJ president. But for all the talk of an open election, the candidates papered over points of disagreement, refused to commit to any concrete steps to fix the budget, and took turns criticizing Mr. Ozawa for his failures to consult, explain, and persuade — and his party's lack of experience at governing (because the LDP's track record suggests that experience correlates strongly with performance, right?).

In reality, the LDP couldn't have wished for a better way to see off the bad taste left by Mr. Fukuda. The LDP gets a chance to show up the DPJ — see! this is what intraparty democracy looks like — without there being little chance of genuine and open disagreement or the possibility that something unexpected might happen (see below). If I were more conspiratorially minded, I would think that the candidates were hand-picked to maximize the PR advantage to the LDP. (In the same vein, reading that Ms. Koike was forced to close her campaign office for an ambiguous problem with the real estate agent really makes me wonder whether there is something to this — did she not get the memo that she's in the race as window dressing, and therefore someone had to send the message that she shouldn't take the election too seriously?) But I'm not inclined to think that the LDP elders coordinated the campaign of five. Nakagawa Hidenao is certainly taking the race seriously enough. It appears that the LDP just got lucky: Mr. Fukuda resigned just in time for the election to coincide precisely with the DPJ's uncontested election and enough of the LDP's younger, more popular figures feel they stand a chance against Mr. Aso, helping the LDP look more dynamic and in touch than both Mr. Ozawa — that old dictator — and the hapless Mr. Fukuda.

But there really is little doubt that Mr. Aso will win the premiership.

Polls of both LDP Diet members and party rank-and-file suggest that Mr. Aso may be in a position to secure a majority in the first round, obviating the need for a second. Asahi surmises that it is probable that he will do so, looking at the support for Mr. Aso in the prefectural chapters and in the parliamentary party. Asahi projects that Mr. Aso will receive at least 63 of the 141 votes from prefectural chapters, with a final tally considerably more than 63. Suggesting the strength of Mr. Aso's grassroots support, Asahi expects that Mr. Aso will win three votes even in prefectural chapters distributing votes proportionally.

Asahi also expects him to receive a majority of LDP parliamentarians, but given that the preferences of faction leaders no longer determine how faction members vote, it is harder to predict exactly how the parliamentary vote will break down. It is clear, however, that we are witnessing the first officially post-factional LDP presidential election: the Tsushima (second largest), Koga (third largest), Yamasaki (fourth largest), and the Komura (eighth largest) factions have announced that their members will be free to vote for whichever candidate they prefer, and with the Machimura faction divided between supporters of Mr. Aso and Ms. Koike, the Machimura faction is effectively following the same rule. Yomiuri estimates that Mr. Aso has the support of forty percent of the 386 Diet members (approximately 155 members), meaning that he needs only 109 more votes to win the election in the first round. It's possible that he will receive those 109 votes from the prefectural chapters alone, which will in turn bolster his parliamentary votes (undoubtedly some Diet members will be swayed by the results from their home prefectures).

Public opinion polls confirm Mr. Aso's support. Yomiuri finds that Mr. Aso is the only candidate but Mr. Ishihara who beats Mr. Ozawa in face-to-face matchup, and by a large margin: 59% to 27.6%. Mr. Ishihara barely edges out Mr. Ozawa, 43.5% to 40.1%, while the other three all trail Mr. Ozawa by more than ten percentage points. Asahi's nationwide poll found Mr. Aso to be the most appropriate candidate for the premiership with 42% support, with Mr. Ishihara once again ranking second with 10%. Mr. Aso won points for his perceived "ability to get things done."

But no matter how sizeable Mr. Aso's victory, he will be under pressure to perform immediately. As already noted by Ken Worsley and elaborated further by Mary Stokes at Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor, Japan's economy shrank by 3% annualized in the second quarter, instead of the original figure of 2.4%. The outlook for the new government is bleak — get the economy growing again, only to get the economy healthy enough to take measures to fix the budget deficit (i.e., a consumption tax increase, which all the LDP candidates see as necessary at some point in time).

Even if the new government passes a stimulus package as a prelude to an election which it then proceeds to win, it will be in an unenviable position. The DPJ may prefer that it lose the next election, leaving an Aso government with the tasks of battling the recession and then the budget.

The LDP field coalesces

Despite a political situation that has already consumed the careers of two LDP prime ministers — cowards, says Newsweek's Christian Caryl, and he has a point — there are now four candidates running to serve as the next LDP president and prime minister.

I think Aso Taro remains the front runner, for reasons enunciated here and here.

Arguably his position is strengthened by the proliferation of anti-Aso candidates.

Not only will Mr. Aso be running against Koike Yuriko, the "structural reform" candidate, but Yosano Kaoru, the leading "fiscal reconstructionist," and Ishihara Nobuteru, a veteran of Koizumi's cabinets and briefly LDP policy chief under Abe Shinzo, have also announced their candidacies.

Each has significant liabilities, effectively summarized by Yamauchi Koichi, the blogging first-term LDP lower house member:

Mr. Aso supports abandoning fiscal discipline to provide economic stimulus for suffering citizens.

Mr. Yosano is of the "fiscal reconstruction school, the consumption tax increase school."

As for Mr. Ishihara, "it is reported that he is of the structural reform category," but on political reform he approved the return of postal rebels to the LDP.

And about Ms. Koike, the candidate who I would expect him to support, he writes, "Ms. Koike is of the structural reform school and is Japan's first female prime ministerial candidate — she has a newness and I have a relatively good impression of her. But regarding economic policy and administrative reform, I still don't have a good understanding of Ms. Koike's thinking."

While foreigners know Mr. Aso best for his history of outrageous statements and his nationalism, he clearly stands above his rivals in this race.

Ms. Koike is an unknown, her candidacy perhaps more a reflection of Koizumi nostalgia (speaking of which, Mr. K has been curiously absent during the past week) among the media than a durable base of support from either her fellow LDP Diet members or the party's grassroots.

Mr. Yosano is saddled with the burden of being the only LDP leader with the spine to speak of a consumption tax hike, which might be necessary down the road but is a non-starter within the LDP for the foreseeable future.

Mr. Ishihara perhaps stands the best chance of upsetting Mr. Aso. A representative from Tokyo, he might be able to pry away Mr. Aso's urban supporters. He is articulate but has a lower profile than Mr. Aso — Mr. Aso can and will claim that he stands the best chance of stopping Ozawa Ichiro and the DPJ in its tracks (by stealing a page from Mr. Ozawa's playbook), citing polls like this one from Asahi showing substantial support for Mr. Aso as the next prime minister. But who will be voting for Mr. Ishihara? Will Ms. Koike and Mr. Ishihara split the reformist vote? Will he be able to draw conservatives away from Mr. Aso?

Mr. Aso has the most clearly defined base of support, and quite possibly the supporters most eager to win (or reclaim) the premiership. He has concluded — like Mr. Ozawa — that the next general election will be won in the LDP's old rural heartland, and it will be won by promising as much as possible to rural voters and mentioning structural reform as little as possible. He will ride that strategy into the premiership, and, he hopes, into a general election mandate.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: Aso Taro has learned from Mr. Abe's disastrous government. Whether he is genuinely concerned about the hardships experienced by the Japanese people or not, Mr. Aso knows that addressing them is the only way for a government to last. It is also the only way for a prime minister to indulge his interest in foreign policy. Accordingly, Mr. Aso has been silent on foreign policy and may even be willing to sacrifice the refueling mission to shore up the LDP's ties with Komeito to bolster the coalition government.

Do not underestimate Aso Taro.

Recipe for disaster

The more I look at the new Fukuda cabinet and its first days in office, the more I'm convinced that the Fukuda cabinet is, in MTC's words, designed to "set up the LDP for a wipeout in the next House of Representatives election."

In bringing Kaoru Yosano into the cabinet while also giving Nakagawa Hidenao a post as the head of the LDP's national strategy headquarters, Fukuda Yasuo has merely guaranteed that the LDP's divisions have been transposed onto the national government.

For the moment, all the government and LDP may be "Nakagawans" now — in that the emphasis will be on growth and reform — as Mr. Nakagawa triumphantly notes at his blog. Machimura Nobutaka, speaking on TV Sunday, noted that due to slowing growth (not to mention a general election within the next year), a consumption tax hike would be "difficult." Aso Taro, the new LDP secretary-general, echoed the chief cabinet secretary in a press conference Tuesday at which he declared that achieving a balanced budget by 2011 is fine as a goal, but with economic conditions worsening, fiscal measures will take priority over budget balancing.

In case there was any doubt that Mr. Aso would abjure from playing a policy role in the new government, Mr. Aso has quickly demonstrated otherwise. As the runner up in last year's leadership election, it could hardly be otherwise. It appears that Mr. Aso will use this time in the spotlight to put the lessons learned on his travels to use, burnishing his credentials on economic matters. At his press conference, for example, he said, "In Tokyo [the arrival of a recession] hasn't really hit home, but in the rural areas that I visited I think there is absolutely a recession."

(He also demonstrated that he is still capable of outrageous remarks, in this case demonstrating that Godwin's law also applies to the nejire kokkai.)

But Mr. Aso's policy activism will only muddle the waters further. Just because Mr. Nakagawa has the upper hand does not mean that Mr. Yosano intends to stop his campaign for a consumption tax hike, even as he will be responsible for drafting the government's economic plans (although, as a minister without portfolio, he will not have to oversee their execution).

It appears that the new government's goal is to overwhelm opposition and public with the impression of action. The economic plans to be prepared by Mr. Yosano — although Mr. Nakagawa may have the greatest influence on their shape — will likely ensure that certain important LDP constituents see more money in their pocket and relief from price increases (support for small- and medium-sized business for example), in time for the next general election. Naturally Koga Makoto will revise his prediction of a general election just before September 2009 depending on just how much voters are convinced by the government's blitz.

Will the voters buy it? Will Mr. Fukuda and company be able to develop a program that works and is politically popular? Will the members of the Fukuda cabinet and the LDP leadership be able to work together enough to assemble and implement said program? Will the government try to coax the DPJ into cooperating on an economic stimulus program?

Whatever approach it adopts, it is hard to ignore the impression that the Fukuda government is preparing to act first, think later.

Meet the new Fukuda cabinet

I am in Los Angeles on a brief layover before heading to Chicago, so I don't have time to offer a more thorough discussion of the Fukuda reshuffle.

For something more than my cursory remarks, I strongly recommend Jun Okumura's take and MTC's two posts.

Readers will not be surprised to learn that I am underwhelmed by the Fukuda reshuffle. Aside from the deft moves of co-opting Aso Taro and Yosano Kaoru — hard to freelance and challenge the prime minister when having responsibilities to party and government — remarkably little will change as a result of this cabinet.

It is not a particularly flashy or telegenic bunch, at least no more than the previous cabinet. While Mr. Fukuda emphasized that this new cabinet will work on behalf of the people (I thought the previous cabinet was supposed to do that?), no major policy or even stylistic shifts will result from this cabinet. Mr. Machimura remains its spokesman, and Masuzoe Yoichi remains in place as the minister handling the most pressing issues facing the government. If Mr. Fukuda were prepared to have the tax debate that he previously said he wanted to have, Mr. Yosano's presence would be significant for policy reasons, but with livelihood and consumer issues at the top of the agenda, it is unlikely that Mr.Yosano will make much ground in his campaign for a consumption tax increase.

One difference might be in the conduct of foreign policy, if this government gets enough time to address foreign policy. Mainichi notes that in China policy, this cabinet might actually be Fukuda-colored, with China-friendly Nikai Toshihiro and Hayashi Yoshimasa taking over at METI and MOD respectively. Mr. Fukuda needs all the help he can get in making the case for a constructive relationship with China, but in practical terms their presence may be negligible.

Perhaps the biggest loser from the reshuffle is Nakagawa Hidenao, whose "rising tide" group was locked out; then again, as MTC suggests, Mr. Nakagawa and the Koizumians may well be the biggest winners of the night, considering that this cabinet may well end up presiding over a catastrophic general election defeat that will wreck the careers of all involved.

I will write more later, once I've digested this lineup and read some more commentary.

The post-Fukuda landscape remains open — for now

Aso Taro, who has presumably been vying for the LDP presidency since losing it to Fukuda Yasuo in September 2007, was asked about his intentions at a speech on Monday. Like his potential rival, Yosano Kaoru, Mr. Aso demurred, declining to declare what has been openly acknowledged for months.

I suppose it would be inappropriate for Mr. Aso to start measuring Mr. Fukuda's coffin overtly, especially when he can let the media (and other members of the LDP) do it for him. But no one should take his humility at face value.

As noted previously, Mr. Aso's assumed candidacy has already upset the resurrection of the Kochikai, the onetime mainstream faction that was most notably home to dovish, liberal internationalist prime ministers Ikeda Hayato and Miyazawa Kiichi. An article in AERA, a weekly magazine, illustrates why the rebirth of the Kochikai does not mean the resurrection of the liberal internationalists as a major force within the LDP. The party, the article, notes has moved rightward in the years since the faction split in the aftermath of Kato Koichi's abortive rebellion against then-prime minister Mori Yoshiro in 2000. Not surprisingly, the resurrected faction is a diminished version of the faction that existed in 2000. The difference? The Aso faction, which in 2000 was the Kono (Yohei) group, did not reunite with the Koga and Tanigaki factions, largely because Mr. Aso's policy perspective is vastly different from the policy positions of leaders of the Kochikai.

Mr. Aso's candidacy poses a threat to factional discipline in all LDP factions, the Kochikai included, thanks to Mr. Aso's popularity among younger, reformist LDP members who are distributed throughout the party. Thanks to his "insurgents," Mr. Aso's showing in September 2007 was surprisingly strong considering that he was opposed by all factions but his own. It seems that Mr. Aso has learned his lesson, however: rather than tempt his supporters to buck their faction leaders, he appears to be using the fact of his cross-factional support to make appeals directly to faction chiefs. Two days after the Kochikai's first party, Mr. Aso met with Koga Makoto in an effort to heal a longstanding personal rift — presumably in the hope that Mr. Koga will swing the faction behind Mr. Aso's candidacy (which, as noted previously, would risk alienating his partner, Tanigaki Sadakazu).

Meanwhile the Machimura faction's failure to back a post-Fukuda candidate thus far is now an established fact. Mainichi, reporting on the occasion of the faction's party Monday night (which was attended by approximately 5000 guests), notes that the faction's chiefs are divided on whether to support a candidate from within the faction who if elected would be the fifth consecutive LDP president from the faction. Nakagawa Hidenao spoke of a "hero or heroine," presumably suggesting that he is continuing to back Koike Yuriko, despite Mori Yoshiro's openly dismissing her prospects. Mainichi rules out both Mr. Nakagawa and Machimura Nobutaka, the chief cabinet secretary and titular faction head. No word on Mr. Mori's thinking. Mainichi suggests that the faction leadership wants to nominate someone from within the faction for fear of forfeiting the faction's position, but there is no obvious contender — and the worst outcome of all (for the faction) would be for the faction to nominate one of its own over the opposition of a significant minority, prompting that minority to vote for another candidate.

Division within the Machimura faction is probably good news for both Mr. Aso and Mr. Yosano, as it raises the possibility that either might receive the support of the largest LDP faction should it prove unable to resolve its deadlock.

Indeed, it seems conceivable to me that Mr. Aso might offer a "Tanakasone" arrangement to Mr. Mori and the other leaders of the Machimura faction, agreeing to pack his cabinet with members of the Machimura faction in exchange for its support in the party election.

The post-Fukuda era looms

Asahi conducted a poll of LDP and DPJ prefectural chapters asking about support for the current party leaders.

In the DPJ, Ozawa Ichiro's relationship with the prefectural chapters is secure: forty-four of forty-seven want him to remain as party head to lead the DPJ into the next general election.

The news for Fukuda Yasuo, however, is bleak. Twelve chapters want Mr. Fukuda to lead the LDP into the next general election; twenty-two want a new leader (no indication what the other thirteen said). Interestingly, there is little correlation between how a prefecture voted in the September 2007 leadership election and its support for Mr. Fukuda today. The reasons given for discontent with Mr. Fukuda are typical: low public support numbers, poor leadership skills, an inability to make progress on the many pressing policy issues facing the Fukuda government. Asked how they think is an appropriate replacement for Mr. Fukuda, only seven chapters answered with a name (as opposed to qualities desired in a leader), and all seven provided the same name: Aso Taro.

The news from the prefectures contributes to a growing sense in Tokyo that Mr. Fukuda is running out of time, a sense that has grown in the weeks since the LDP's defeat in the Yamaguchi-2 by-election as the party has studied its defeat. There is growing talk in the media of the post-Fukuda era, as the media probes the two leading post-Fukuda candidates, Mr. Aso and Yosano Kaoru, the leading anyone-but-Aso candidate for the LDP presidency. (A Google News search finds ninety-eight uses of the term "post-Fukuda" over the past week.) As expected, Mr. Yosano's failure to say yes or no to questions about his ambitions has only fed media speculation about his designs on Mr. Fukuda's job, and now Mr. Aso and Mr. Yosano are spoken of in the same breath as having barely concealed intentions to hasten the arrival of the post-Fukuda era. Indeed, both men have articles in the June issue of Bungei Shunju discussing their plans for saving Japan.

Mr. Aso is at the point where he can no longer deny his intentions. At a press conference Friday, Mr. Yosano was asked whether he intends to aim for the premiership. His response skirted the question: "I am a person who takes pride in his work, and if I have a task, I perform it with all my might. I have no awareness of my individual ambition — I want to do good work." Not quite "I'm in. And I'm in to win." But it is consistent with his overall media approach in recent months: Mr. Yosano has emphasized his desire to do what needs to be done to save Japan (raising the consumption tax rate, for example), regardless of what the polls say.

It is still unclear who has the edge in the post-Fukuda horse race. By dint of his having the support of the LDP's conservative ideologues concentrated in the True Conservative Policy Research Group, his following among prefectural chapters and the public at large, and his tireless efforts to proclaim his understanding of the insecurities of the Japanese people, Mr. Aso probably remains the front runner.

He may also be poised to claim the support of the newly reunited Kochikai, which officially reemerged on Tuesday and with sixty-one members is the third largest faction in the LDP. At its launch the new old faction is already troubled; the phrase that has been used in the press is "setting to sea in the same bed with different dreams." The reason for tension is that there are hints that some faction members are open to supporting Mr. Aso's bid for the party presidency, despite Tanigaki Sadakazu, perennial candidate for the leadership (and likely candidate in the next leadership election), being the faction's number two. Mr. Tanigaki assumed that the new faction would be a major platform for his next bid for the leadership and has reportedly threatened to leave the faction if it fails to support him.

That said, the all-important Machimura faction (i.e., Mori Yoshiro) has yet to signal which way it is leaning, despite Mr. Aso's active courting of Mr. Mori and other Machimura faction chiefs. The post-Fukuda non-campaign campaign is in full swing, the candidates are emerging, and the LDP barons are starting to choose sides — with Mr. Fukuda helpless in the midst of the open campaigning for his job.

Yosano speaks

According to Sankei, Yosano Kaoru, the former chief cabinet secretary shaping up to be a major contender to succeed Fukuda Yasuo, will be releasing his first book next week, entitled Dōdōtaru Seiji (perhaps best translated as Bold Politics).

Mr. Yosano's message is that Japan's leaders must be willing to exert all efforts to do what's right, without regard for the popularity of a measure. Not surprisingly, Mr. Yosano is a tireless advocate for an increase in the consumption tax rate. Sankei also notes that Mr. Yosano calls for the promotion of "mild reforms" to unify society, correcting, according to Nikkei, the "strains" of the Koizumi-Abe years. No indication what that means in practical terms; hopefully the book contains a few more details.

As I noted earlier this week, Mr. Yosano has tried to be coy about his plans in the post-Fukuda era. After publishing a book outlining his vision of governance, it will be hard for him to deny that he has higher ambitions. We can expect more brief articles outlining one aspect or another of his thinking as reporters pepper him with questions.

While I'll reserve full judgment until I read the book — if I read the book — it's not entirely clear to me how this Yosano line would differ from the Fukuda line, other than a willingness to tackle the consumption tax issue head on (and presumably commit political suicide on it if necessary). The LDP's problems are structural. It is a party without an identity in an era in which it actually has to stand for something other than holding power. While genuinely bold and risky decisions by an LDP leader might provide the LDP with a new identity, especially said leader was willing to oust dissenters and purify the party, "mild reform" just sounds like more evasion, an attempt to soften axes of conflict to ensure that the LDP's various schools of thought can cooperate in order to save the party form itself.

The breaking point is coming sooner or later. It's just a question of what issue proves decisive in forcing a splintering — and which group acts first.

Koizumi changes his mind

Speaking Monday at a party held by the Kanagawa chapter of the LDP, Koizumi Junichiro changed his position on the timing of a general election.

He had previously stated that he shared the LDP leadership's view that an early election is unnecessary, but Monday he warned that an election is coming soon — and LDP members must be prepared for it.

I'm not convinced that the LDP will be so easily pressured into calling an early election with Mr. Fukuda's popularity reaching new lows and trending in the direction of Mr. Mori's abyssal figures. All sinking popularity tells me is that it is increasingly likely that it will not be Mr. Fukuda who leads his party into a general election. And what guarantee is there that a leadership change would prompt a general election? Yamamoto Ichita is adamant that another leadership change must necessarily trigger a general election lest the LDP face a severe backlash from the public. But is that really the case? The premiership passed from Hashimoto Ryutaro to Obuchi Keizo to Mori Yoshiro before the government called an election in 2000 — and given that the HR wasn't dissolved until two months into Mr. Mori's government, the LDP was clearly prepared to wait until the very last moment, which would have been October 2000, before seeking a mandate from the public. The June 2000 election happened only because of mounting criticism of Mr. Mori due to the corrupt manner in which he was selected as prime minister and his unfortunate "nation of the gods" remark. The LDP will do everything it can to delay the general election into the last moment; in the event of a leadership change I'm certain the party will conjure up some excuse for why now is not a good time to hold an election (too many urgent problems to solve, it will make Japan look bad the year it's hosting the G8, etc.), and the conservative press will help make the sale.

As such, the jockeying for position in the post-Fukuda sweepstakes is set to intensify. We're already heard quite a bit about Mr. Aso's efforts to position himself to take power, but expect to hear more about a possible Yosano cabinet (given that Yosano Kaoru is at this moment the presumptive favorite to be the Anybody-But-Aso candidate). For the moment Mr. Yosano is being coy. He appeared on a talk show Monday evening, where he was asked about speculation about his replacing Mr. Fukuda: "I'm surprised that such talk has come so quickly. I am the kind of politician who does other than politicking — I just focus on the question of what needs to be done to solve difficult problems." That answer strikes me as a way of making the case for a Yosano premiership without saying so. What he may actually be saying is, "In contrast to Mr. Aso, I'm not campaigning for the job." Regardless, this response will likely fuel speculation about Mr. Yosano's readiness for the premiership.

Sankei speculates that a cabinet reshuffle is the prime minister's ace, and suggests that Mr. Fukuda would try to "entrap" possible successors in his cabinet. Would Mr. Aso reject a cabinet offer this time around? Meanwhile, there is no reason why a cabinet reshuffle would save Mr. Fukuda. His problem is not his cabinet, aside from a minister or two. His problem is that his party is at war with itself and doesn't know how to deal with a divided Diet, problems that would swamp all but the most talented of politicians.

In short, I expect that if Mr. Fukuda manages to get the tax reinstated, he'll make it to the G8 summit in July, after which Mr. Mori and others will suggest that he step down for health reasons. If he doesn't, we might see a new prime minister before the summit.

What, me worry?

In an editorial Friday, the Hokkaido Shimbun wondered why Prime Minister Fukuda exhibits no sense of crisis despite mounting problems and falling popularity.

"It's strange," the newspaper writes, "that the prime minister's sense of crisis appears to be diluted," considering that the BOJ vacancy and the uncertain prospects for a compromise with the DPJ over taxes and road construction could spell the end of his premiership.

Yamamoto Ichita, LDP HC member, suggests that concerns about the durability of the Fukuda cabinet may be overblown because all Diet members are motivated by what he calls "election avoidance syndrome." His HR colleagues, he suggests, are terrified for their election prospects and will therefore be willing to bend considerably to delay a general election. He suggests that some younger LDP members will vote against renewing the gasoline tax if the tax is canceled and then comes up for a vote in the HR again. In a postscript, Mr. Yamamoto addresses the idea that the LDP might dump Mr. Fukuda prematurely: "With the Fukuda cabinet's approval rating dropping, 'Dump Fukuda' voices are strengthening within the party?!?...this case is inconsistent with 'election avoidance syndrome.'" The LDP will stick with Mr. Fukuda, he argues, because dumping him will raise the chances of an early election. (Then again, his logic that another leadership change will mean pressure to go to the people for a mandate is shaky, if only because the baton was passed from Mr. Abe to Mr. Fukuda without the people being consulted.)

Perhaps Mr. Fukuda's Thursday meeting with Nakagawa Shoichi and Yosano Kaoru, who represent two blocs that could potentially challenge Mr. Fukuda's leadership, suggests that his hold on the party, however tenuous, remains secure. (In other words, both men and their comrades are slight content to let Mr. Fukuda suffer the slings and arrows of the divided Diet.)

Mr. Yamamoto may be right: Mr. Fukuda could have nothing to worry about by virtue of being in possession of the leadership. But to echo a concern raised by the Hokkaido Shimbun, how long can he go without articulating a reform agenda? And for how much longer can he count on both the conservatives and the reformists to support his government?

Foreign policy could prove Mr. Fukuda's undoing. Sankei reported that the subject of the True Conservative Policy Study Group's meeting this week was China policy, which turned into criticism of Mr. Fukuda's reconciliatory approach. A muddled approach to Tibet could give the conservatives an opening, if they choose to exploit it.

The daunting political situation is probably enough to secure Mr. Fukuda's position through the July G8 summit — I still think that prospective successors would prefer that Mr. Fukuda take a thorny issue or two off the agenda first — but if his public support doesn't recover in the meantime, his opponents may be tempted to force him out before the start of the autumn extraordinary session, election avoidance syndrome or no election avoidance syndrome.

Will Fukuda last?

Many analysts of Japanese politics assumed at the inception of the Fukuda cabinet that his was little more than a caretaker government.

Now more than 100 days into the Fukuda administration, it remains difficult to say whether that assessment will turn out to be accurate. If the caretaker's job is to stabilize the ruling party and ensure that his successor's government will have surer footing, then Mr. Fukuda is an abject failure as a caretaker.

That would explain the intra-party maneuvering described in a long, rambling article by Akasaka Taro in the April issue of Bungei Shunjyu, posted in two parts at Yahoo! Minna no seiji.

The first part describes Mr. Fukuda's efforts to bolster his government's ability to lead on social security and taxation — Akasaka opens with the example of the recent appointment of Ito Tatsuya, a lieutenant of Nakagawa Hidenao as the prime minister's adviser on the social security issue in defiance of the health and welfare "tribe" to show the treacherous waters in which Mr. Fukuda is navigating.

The Fukuda government, Akasaka suggests, has been paralyzed in terms of its policy leadership, for reasons having more to do with Mr. Fukuda's struggle to impose some discipline on party and bureaucracy than with the divided Diet. At the same time, however, he may be laying the groundwork for a Fukuda-"colored" policy agenda that will enable him to serve as something more than a caretaker:

"The Social Security People's Conference." "The Conference for The Promotion of Consumer Administration." "The Global Warming Problem Consultative Group." These are all Fukuda ideas. In these three big policy areas a Fukuda color is becoming clear, sweeping away the "no policy" criticism and marking the start of the search for Kantei-led policymaking.

On this basis, Mr. Fukuda will attempt to prolong his government and delay a general election.

The second half of the article, however, suggests that reformist opponents of Mr. Fukuda may already be laying the groundwork for a new cabinet.

Akasaka points in particular to the activities of Sonoda Hiroyuki, a seven-term HR member who left the LDP in 1993 to join Sakigake before returning to the LDP in late 1999. He suggests that Mr. Sonoda is plotting with certain DPJ members to create an emergency government under the leadership of Yosano Kaoru. Supposedly Mr. Sonoda is working, through Sentaku, with anti-Ozawa members of the DPJ to undercut both Mr. Fukuda and Mr. Ozawa and vault a reformist government to power that will deal with Japan's most urgent problems. Mr. Yosano would be the man for the job apparently on the basis of his having been acknowledged as Mr. Koizumi's truest heir by longtime Koizumi aide Iijima Isao.

Whether there is something to this Sonoda "conspiracy" is besides the point. What's important is what this means for dynamics within the LDP: Akasaka acknowledges that the next LDP leadership struggle will likely be between Aso Taro and his conservative allies led by Nakagawa Shoichi, and the group of reformers around Yosano and centered in the reborn Kochikai, with outside help from Komeito and the DPJ. The decisive factor will be the backing of the Machimura faction.

For the moment, Mr. Fukuda — who vaulted to the premiership thanks to the backing of the Machimura faction, or rather Mori Yoshiro, its capo — enjoys the support of the LDP's largest faction. There is the possibility, however, that Mr. Mori and his lieutenants, the most vocal advocates of postponing a general election until September 2009, will begin looking for a more popular alternative to Mr. Fukuda later this year in the hope of repairing the LDP's prospects in the year leading up to a general election. It is possible that pressure for Mr. Fukuda to step aside in the aftermath of the G8 summit could come from his own "backers."

As for the prospects of the "Yosano emergency government," I think any plan that rests on the support of the DPJ's anti-Ozawa group is an unreliable one, not least because for the moment I think they would prefer to focus their efforts on unseating Mr. Ozawa from within the party — in September's party election for example — than in pressuring the DPJ from outside. That could change if and when someone triggers a realignment, as the Yosano camp could be the germ of a Koizumian new party, but for the moment this is just another example of the fevered speculation prompted by the uncertain political situation.

Finally, as for Mr. Fukuda, he remains, for now, the head of a woefully divided party that could splinter at any moment. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.

The LDP's personal-ideological struggles

Several media outlets, including Sankei and Jiji, have reported on comments by Kato Koichi, former LDP secretary-general and Kochikai faction leader, in which he declared, "The YKK is over."

The YKK, which stands for Yamasaki (Taku), Kato (Koichi), Koizumi (Junichiro), was a political alliance formed in the early 1990s in opposition to the Tanakist politics of Takeshita Noboru and the Keiseikai. Even now, it should be recalled as but a footnote in the tumultuous 1990s. Of the three, Mr. Koizumi of course went on to remake the political landscape; Mr. Tamasaki was but his lieutenant, and Mr. Kato is one of the great might-have-beens of Japanese politics (i.e., how would things have been different today had his 2000 rebellion against Mr. Mori succeeded, forcing Mr. Koizumi to wait for another chance at the premiership?).

Why, I wonder, is Mr. Kato's pronouncement newsworthy? No more newsworthy is his comment that the divided Diet has rendered YKK-style politics irrelevant because the ability to work across parties is at a premium. What the passing of the YKK does suggest is that the nature of competition within the LDP has changed: whereas once the dominance of Tanaka Kakuei and his successors within the LDP prompted the formation of a balancing coalition like the YKK, which united proteges of former prime ministers Ohira Masayoshi (Kato), Nakasone Yasuhiro (Yamasaki), and Fukuda Takeo (Koizumi), competition in the contemporary LDP falls along different, more intractable lines. Has there been an overt movement against the dominance of the Machimura faction? On the contrary, intra-LDP struggles of late have more or less ignored factional lines and now follow intractable, ideological fault lines, with ideological positions symbolized by prominent advocates (the Abe and Fukuda "colors," the Koizumi "line," etc.)

Accordingly, there is a subterranean factional battle that bears only the slightest resemblance to the formal struggle for power among the LDP's factions. The Abe-Nakagawa-Aso conservatives, the Koizumian reformists, the "dovish" moderates, the rural reactionaries: simplifying somewhat (and recognizing that there is some overlap),these are the actors jostling for control of the party, a struggle that will likely climax in the aftermath of the next general election.

The conservatives may have the upper hand on the basis of numbers — and because in Mr. Aso they have a visible standard bearer with no small amount of national popularity. By that account, the Koizumians are in trouble because, according to Iijima Isao, Boswell to Mr. Koizumi's Johnson, "the true successor to the Koizumi reform line" is Yosano Kaoru, former chief cabinet secretary and pipeline to Ozawa Ichiro. (He also singled out Nakagawa Hidenao, former LDP secretary general, and Takenaka Heizo, Mr. Koizumi's lieutenant, for "selling their souls" to the bureaucracy.) Apparently Mr. Tanigaki has failed to measure up to Mr. Iijima's standards. Whatever Mr. Yosano's virtues as a politician, it is difficult to see him as the standard bearer for the embattled Koizumians. The excitement that greeted reports of Mr. Koizumi's recent spate of activity illustrates the futility of Mr. Iijima's quest to name a successor: the Koizumians, it seems, will rise and fall alongside Mr. Koizumi himself.

Yosano out, Machimura in

It looks like Mr. Mori will get his wish.

Mr. Fukuda, in advance of his assumption of the premiership, has named Machimura Nobutaka to the post of chief cabinet secretary. Readers will recall that Mr. Mori was insistent during August that Mr. Abe named Mr. Machimura to the post of chief cabinet secretary, unsolicited advice that Mr. Abe chose to ignore.

As expected, Mr. Mori will once again be a force to be reckoned within the party — and that's probably not a good thing for anyway.

Mr. Machimura's promotion means that, as Jun Okumura notes, the foreign affairs portfolio is free for Mr. Aso to reclaim it, provided that Mr. Fukuda — and his backers — want to reward Mr. Aso with such a high profile post, especially given the differences in how each man thinks Japan should deal with North Korea. For my part, I'll be surprised if Mr. Aso returns to the Foreign Ministry, not least because he has adamantly rejected the idea of taking a major cabinet portfolio.

Abe, Japan alone

MTC provides a good roundup of the political environment following the resignation of Mr. Endo, the third MAFF minister to leave office since Prime Minister Abe's inauguration.

He notes that both Mainichi and Nikkei are reporting that Chief Cabinet Secretary Yosano is more or less in charge of the government — although their Beatles reference of choice to describe Mr. Abe is "Nowhere Man" (as opposed to mine, "The Fool on the Hill"). This is not altogether surprising, and this latest scandal simply reinforces the new dynamic that came with the new cabinet. By selecting senior politicians with serious bona fides, there was no way Mr. Abe's power would not be diminished in some way. Now, with the honeymoon over, ever more power will be concentrated in the hands of Yosano, Aso, and company, who will attempt to save not only the Abe government but the LDP as a government party.

I wonder, though, if the key to Mr. Abe's demise might lie in the rumored agreement between the US and North Korea — as of yet unconfirmed by the State Department, but not denied either.

No matter how bad things have gotten for Mr. Abe, he has always been able to claim that he has held the line on North Korea, refusing to provide energy support for Pyongyang as long as the abductions issue remains unresolved. He has pocketed President Bush's repeated assurances that he cares about the fate of the abductees, clung to them as a talisman in the face of evidence that the US is hungry for an agreement, with or without resolution of the abductions issue. If there is truth to the reports that the US has agreed to lift sanctions and remove North Korea form the terror list, and if there is no progress at the forthcoming Japan-DPRK working group, then there is a looming crisis in the US-Japan relationship, because as Yomiuri argues today, no resolution in the Japan-DPRK talks will mean that Japan's only choice "is to demand to the US that it not lift the designation [as a terror-sponsoring nation]."

Would the US walk away from the deal in the face of Japanese demands? If it doesn't, it might be enough to alienate Mr. Abe from his right-wing supporters as punishment for his inability to deliver US support on North Korea. Where would that leave the prime minister? And where would it leave the US-Japan relationship? And where would it leave Japan in the region?