Selling free trade

Bogged down by an unfavorable political situation in Tokyo, the Kan government has few avenues for policy innovation. In recent weeks, however, it seems that the Kan government has decided to consider joining the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP), a multilateral free trade agreement that currently includes only Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, and Brunei, but which the United States, Australia, Peru, Vietnam, and Malaysia are negotiating to enter.

The DPJ sent mixed signals on trade during the 2009 campaign: the initial draft of the party's manifesto stated that the party would "conclude" an FTA with the United States, but, criticized by farmers' groups, the party softened its proposal to "begin negotiations with the United States" and added a clause that it would only conclude an FTA with the US if domestic agricultural production could be safeguarded. Since the DPJ took power, trade has more or less vanished from the agenda — until now.

Following Kan's declaration in his policy speech that his government is considering TPP, Maehara Seiji, the foreign minister, has emerged as the government's leading advocate for greater trade openness, arguing in his speech earlier this month at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan that since Japan's foreign policy is only as effective as its economic strength, diplomacy that enhances Japan's economy should be the government's top priority. (To make the point he pointed to South Korea's superior competitiveness as something that Japan should emulate.) To that end, he outlined a three-pillared approach that included (1) building a free trade system, (2) diversifying sources of food and natural resources as a hedge against risk, and (3) ensuring that Japan has the technology and infrastructure necessary to export.

When it came to concrete proposals to expand free trade, however, Maehara balked. He said that taking steps to join the TPP would be a test for Japan, but did not promise anything. He talked about trade negotiations with the US either bilaterally or within a multilateral framework, but offered little in the way of specifics. Given the thorny politics of free trade in Japan, Maehara's circumspection comes as little surprise, and the debate that has occurred within the government since his speech has been similarly tentative. To this point the government is still collecting opinions on the matter and has not decided whether it will pursue negotiations to join the TPP. Genba Koichiro, head of the national strategy office, said that the government will make its decision late next week. It has the support of Maehara and Kaieda Banri, the minister for economic and fiscal policy, as well as Sengoku Yoshito, the chief cabinet secretary, who said that TPP could be coupled with measures to support farmers harmed by imports (the logic behind Sengoku arch-rival Ozawa's income support plans). But these advocates are of course opposed by the ministry of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries — and by Nokyo, the peak association for agricultural cooperations, whose chairman has declared the TPP will mean the destruction of Japanese agriculture. The PNP, the DPJ's partner in government, and the Social Democrats, its erstwhile partner, have also come out against TPP, and Hata Yuichiro, chair of the DPJ's upper house parliamentary strategy committee, has said that he opposes joining the trade agreement "at this time."

Given the opposition arrayed against TPP, it is perhaps wise that the Kan government has not committed to the policy and is instead floating trial balloons. However, I wonder if there will ever be a good time for a Japanese prime minister to pursue an ambitious trade agenda. By proceeding cautiously now, did the government simply give its opponents time to mobilize and thus ensure that once again the issue will be postponed? It strikes me that if Japan is ever to participate in an ambitious free trade agreement like TPP (or the hypothetical US-Japan FTA), the only way it will ever get done is if the prime minister owns the issue, building a coalition in favor of free trade and selling the policy to the public in the same way that Koizumi sold postal reform. As the political economist Helen Milner once wrote (I'm paraphrasing), for economists, the puzzle is why states would ever done anything other than free trade — for political scientists the puzzle is why states would ever practice anything but protectionism.

If the government decides next week to make joining TPP a priority, it better be prepared for a three-pronged fight: among political parties in the Diet (remember that the government needs to cobble together upper-house majorities to pass legislation), among interest groups, and in the court of public opinion. The trade agreement will not sell itself. The government will have to commit to it fully. Anything less and the government is likely to suffer yet another defeat.

This Hatoyama's for turning?

As the campaign has progressed, the DPJ has shown that it is willing to be flexible as far as its manifesto is concerned. While it has taken the work of building a manifesto that is the result of a consensus within the party — and which a DPJ government will give due consideration when formulating policy — the DPJ has adjusted its program in response to criticism.

Perhaps it has been a bit too willing to adjust.

On Tuesday, the party issued several amendments to its manifesto, which DPJ policy chief Naoshima Masayuki said were not policy changes, but "clarifications." The amendments — available here — largely conform with Naoshima's explanation. The party did not fill the vacuum in the manifesto as far as future of the Japanese economy is concerned, but now stresses that its various spending programs (child allowances, free high school, free highways, lifting the "temporary" gasoline surcharge) are intended to stimulate domestic consumption and so begin the long-term transformation of the Japanese economy. (Okada Katsuya stressed the importance of domestic consumption for growth in a meeting with Keidanren last week.) While I don't think these measures go far enough, they're at least a start, and the party has the right idea in mind.

What bothers me is the party's decision to soften its stance on an FTA with the US. Okada tried to spin the change as cosmetic; it changed the language from "conclude" to "begin" negotiations in recognition of the fact that negotiations depend on one's partner. The DPJ isn't in a position to promise the conclusion of an FTA. But if the edit didn't "change anything fundamental," why bother with editing the proposal? The reality is that by revising the proposal the DPJ gutted it, because it added a clause suggesting that an FTA won't happen unless domestic agricultural production can be safeguarded, with an eye towards increasing Japan's rate of self-sufficiency and the security and safety of the food supply. As Ozawa Ichiro argued in opposition to the revision, the change is solely about the power of Japan Agriculture (JA), the association of agricultural cooperatives. In other words, JA raised a fuss, and the DPJ altered its position accordingly. If there is one benefit to the DPJ's taking power, it should be a degree of independence from the interest groups that have traditionally sustained LDP rule. Ozawa further stressed that there is nothing contradictory between the party's proposal for income support for farmers and its proposal for an FTA with the US. He resisted the idea that free trade with the US will destroy Japanese agriculture, arguing that consumers care about more than price — meaning that an FTA with the US would mean more options for Japanese consumers, but not necessarily doom for Japanese farmers, who in any case would be supported by the DPJ's system that would kick in should the market price fall below production costs.

I can understand why the DPJ, afraid of the LDP's exploiting the FTA proposal to sow doubts among rural voters, would soften this position, but as Ozawa has shown, the original position is not indefensible. And public opinion polls suggest — see MTC's analysis here — that there is something more at work in rural Japan than approval or disapproval of party policies. Voters may be interested in "policy," but that can mean a lot of things, and by panicking the DPJ made its manifesto that much worse. The bottom seems to have fallen out of the LDP's traditional support, of which JA was a critical part. It may be the case that the DPJ is attributing power to the JA that it no longer has. By adding the line about not concluding a deal prejudicial to Japanese agriculture (or is that Japanese Agriculture), the DPJ will make it that much harder to begin negotiations in the first place. It should have limited its edits to "beginning negotiations" with the US, or changed nothing at all.

(As an aside, Ozawa's criticism of the change is another reminder of the Ozawa problem. The problem isn't that he disagrees with the changes — it is unreasonable to expect unanimity in any party — but that should Ozawa not join a DPJ-led cabinet and instead remain as a party leader, his comments about the cabinet's policy decisions will have the effect of widening the gap between cabinet and ruling party, undermining the DPJ's aim of creating transparent and accountable government. There will inevitably be points of disagreement: Ozawa simply has too many ideas about how things should be for there not to be. The point is that his disagreements should be aired as part of the policy process within the cabinet, not in the course of negotiations between cabinet and ruling party that play out in part in back rooms in Nagata-cho, in part on the pages of the nation's newspapers.)

But the agriculture dispute is a comparatively minor problem. I am more bothered by Hatoyama's changing position on the three non-nuclear principles. In a comparatively short period of time, Hatoyama has gone from publicly considering a revision of the non-nuclear principles to proposing that they be written into law. Speaking in Nagasaki to a group of atomic bomb survivors, Hatoyama suggested that in consideration of Japan's status as the only country attacked with nuclear weapons the non-nuclear principles should be written into law. Of course, five days earlier Hatoyama said precisely the opposite: that if the principles were written into law, there is a danger the law could be changed. Hatoyama muddied his position further Tuesday at a press conference for foreign journalists: "To the extent that a DPJ government continues, Japan will forever not possess nuclear weapons. We will stick to the three non-nuclear principles. I think that the three non-nuclear principles are national policy stronger than law." But will the party make the principles into law? "We want to investigate..."

In other words, Hatoyama has completely side-stepped the issue of what to do about the non-nuclear principles now that the "secret" treaty between the US and Japan allowing the introduction of US nukes into Japan is no longer secret.

This may be less a DPJ problem that a Hatoyama problem. Hatoyama is clearly prone to "foot in mouth" disease, and, being a weak leader, is susceptible from pressure from others, in this case the Social Democrats.

So what will the DPJ actually do about the non-nuclear principles? Well, before next year's upper house election, nothing. Like the incumbent government, it will continue to pretend that the three non-nuclear principles are completely sacrosanct, that the Japanese government has no knowledge of the introduction of US nuclear weapons into Japan. It can hardly do otherwise. It will not waste political capital on an issue that is important for the Social Democrats but risks dividing the DPJ. It will not request that the US remove nuclear weapons from its ships before entering Japanese harbors.

This episode highlights my two greatest concerns about a DPJ government: Hatoyama as prime minister and the Social Democrats as a coalition partner. Hopefully the DPJ can find ways to manage both.

I suppose it's too late to bring back Ozawa. Perhaps a Hatoyama-Ozawa cabinet wouldn't be so bad after all.

An LDP upset in the making?

The LDP continues to set the tone in the non-campaign campaign. Speaking in Hiroshima on the occasion of the sixty-fourth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb, Prime Minister Aso Taro stressed the existence of "a country with nuclear weapons that could attack as our neighbor," and reiterated the importance of the US nuclear umbrella. That Aso stressed the US nuclear umbrella ought to deflate the impact of the first statement somewhat: if the US nuclear umbrella is adequate to meet the North Korean nuclear arsenal, then the prime minister is suggesting that North Korea can be dealt with in the same way that Japan has dealt with the Russian and Chinese nuclear arsenals. But, of course, Aso's purpose was to call attention to North Korea as a country THAT COULD ATTACK Japan rather than his suggestion that the North Korea could be managed via the same arrangement by which the much larger and sophisticated Russian and Chinese arsenals have been contained.

In other words, another day of the LDP's playing on the public's fears to make its case for a new mandate.

Aso was delivering the same message on a different front in Shimane and Okayama Wednesday, when he attacked the DPJ for its position on a US-Japan FTA. Exhibiting the LDP's full-out reversion to agricultural protectionism — discussed here by Aurelia George Mulgan — Aso stressed, "Agriculture is the foundation of the nation." It is difficult to know whether the LDP's attack on this front is having the desired effect, but I have to figure that the LDP has at least convinced the newly born rural floating voters to think a bit longer about whether to cast their votes for the DPJ. And after a few more weeks? The LDP may have found a winning formula: "The DPJ: it will leave Japan vulnerable to attack and destroy your livelihood." The message seems to be, national defense and some talk of economic growth (and the "once-in-a-century-economic-crisis-originating-from-America") for voters in urban and surburban areas, out-and-out protectionism in rural areas. To a certain extent the LDP is conceding seats to the LDP in urban areas — how much energy is Aso really exerting on behalf of first-termer Koizumi children? — in the hope that an all-out campaign in the countryside can deprive the DPJ of the seats in places where it needs to gain the most ground from past elections. It is trying to neutralize the DPJ's Ozawa-engineered shift to a national strategy complete with a message for rural areas.

And now in the face of the first assault by the LDP the DPJ has stumbled. As Ikeda Nobuo argues, the DPJ has diluted what was a coherent and "strategic" policy designed to destroy what he calls the LDP's "Matsuoka" legacy of particularistic support for inefficient part-time farmers. Okada Katsuya tried to answer the LDP's attack in a press conference in Mie prefecture Wednesday, in which he stated that this matter is simply the LDP's norin zoku stirring up trouble. Not good enough, Mr. Okada. Complaining about the source of the criticism does nothing to blunt the criticism in the eyes of voters. The DPJ has to meet the criticism directly and explain, over and over again, why it's wrong, how the DPJ intends to both support mostly older small farmers and promote the transformation of Japanese agriculture through trade liberalization.

[As an aside, it bears mentioning what the LDP is doing here. The LDP is basically saying that the DPJ will destroy the livelihood of farmers by opening the domestic market to the country responsible for defending them from attack. It bears mentioning that the DPJ's proposal is aimed precisely at the fundamental principle of the US-LDP alliance, that security comes first and that economics should be isolated from the alliance or not discussed at all. The LDP's friends in Washington have been all to happy to push this line, especially after the revisionist excesses of the early 1990s. But presumably there is some happy medium between paying scant attention to the economic dimension of the relationship and a virtual trade war.]

Time will tell whether the LDP's political strategy will bear fruit. But politically speaking, sowing doubt and exploiting fear is perhaps the only way the LDP can with this general election. It certainly cannot win on the basis of its policy achievements since 2005.

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 DPJ will bring the ships home — and open Japan's economy to the US?

After weeks of signs that the DPJ might wholly embrace the foreign policy status quo, Hatoyama Yukio announced on Wednesday that, when the current special measures law for the deployment of Maritime Self-Defense Forces (MSDF) refueling ships in the Indian Ocean in support of coalition activities in Afghanistan expires in January, a DPJ-led government would not extend the mission or draft a new law. Hatoyama's statement met with the approval of the Social Democratic Party, the DPJ's likely coalition partner — not surprisingly, because it is perhaps the first indication of how the SDPJ could be able to manipulate the DPJ if they enter into government together. The SDPJ claims that it is untroubled by the DPJ's new realism and that it is highly likely that the party will join a DPJ-led coalition should the DPJ win next month, but we've just gotten a glimpse at the dynamics of such a coalition, at least on foreign policy.

This is not particularly surprising, nor, I would argue, is it particularly troublesome. As I've argued previously, the DPJ's extensive agenda requires its lasting long enough in power to implement it, which means compromising with the SDPJ long enough to score some legislative victories to bring into the 2010 upper house election campaign. Taking the refueling mission off the agenda is an easy concession to make, and barring an international crisis, ensures that the DPJ can focus on matters of greater concern to the Japanese public in the months leading up to the election.

As for the refueling mission itself, I expect that the Obama administration would not make much of a fuss in response to a DPJ government's decision to bring the ships home, provided that the DPJ replaced the symbolic MSDF mission with something more substantive in support of coalition activities in Afghanistan. As Richard Holbrooke suggested on a visit to Tokyo in April, "something more substantive" does not have to be boots on the ground. Indeed, the Obama administration would prefer real economic and political assistance to the Afghanistan and Pakistan governments over the token contributions that satisfied the Bush administration as far as Japan was concerned. If the DPJ wins, it better have an idea of what it will offer instead by January.

It appears that the Obama administration may be both a blessing and curse for the DPJ. In the Obama administration the DPJ faces a US administration that has more often than not showed itself to be not particularly alarmed by the possibility of a DPJ victory and interested in a more "hands-off" approach to Japan than the Bush administration's. At the same time, however, the DPJ has had to abandon the rhetoric on the alliance it used when George Bush was still president. With Bush the DPJ could have run a campaign like Gerhard Schröder's in 2002 and done quite well. Not so with Obama. If the DPJ wins, I am convinced that the mere existence of the Obama administration will pressure the DPJ to be more constructive in the US-Japan relationship. Treating the Japanese government with respect and dignity — as the equal partner that the DPJ wants Japan to be, whatever the reality of the underlying power dynamics — seems to take gaiatsu in a whole new direction.

It is in this context that I find the DPJ's call for negotiations of a US-Japan FTA of considerable interest (discussed here). If the DPJ is serious about this proposal — serious to the point of actually making it a priority and expending political capital on it — it would give some substance to the DPJ's desire to focus on the non-security aspects of the relationship while contributing to the structural transformation of the Japanese economy and weakening the power of the bureaucracy. Naturally the fight over a US-Japan FTA would be brutal, especially in agricultural policy. In that sense, this proposal must be viewed in tandem with the party's proposal for direct income support for farmers. As Ozawa Ichiro has argued, trade liberalization and direct income support should go hand in hand, supporting farmers as Japan liberalizes its markets. For the same reason the agriculture lobby responded vociferously to the DPJ's manifesto (documented by Nakagawa Hidenao here). But not just the agriculture lobby: the LDP went on the offensive against the idea of a US-Japan FTA, issuing a statement that detailed the dire consequences of agriculture trade liberalization with the US.

In the event that the DPJ concludes an FTA with the US that liberalizes agriculture, it is estimated that the importation of prodigious amounts of agricultural products from the US will snatch away the domestic agricultural market with an impact on the scale of trillions of yen...This would inevitably be a lethal blow, which would be equal to selling out Japanese agriculture.

The DPJ, the LDP argues, stands for the destruction of Japanese agriculture and is a "dangerous political party."

The LDP's nōrin zoku are convinced that the DPJ has handed them a gift with which to save their seats, if not the LDP. But is this a glimpse of the LDP's future? What future is there for the LDP if the election hits reformists in urban and suburban areas disproportionately harder than LDP members in the rural areas attached to the traditional agriculture machine? I suppose that would be one way for the LDP to clarify its internal contradictions. But if the LDP shrinks to a rural base, it loses in the long term. Indeed, Koizumi's vision for the party was arguably intended to prevent this outcome, because an LDP that can depend on votes in aging, depopulating rural districts is an LDP with a bleak future.

But regardless, I'm not sure that this plan is an election loser for the DPJ in rural areas. At this point, an FTA with the US is single proposal that would take years of negotiations and might not even include serious concessions on agriculture — Kan Naoto responded to the LDP's complaints by suggesting that the DPJ would demand that rice and other major crops be treated as an exception. The DPJ's direct income support plan, however, is a major piece of the manifesto and has been one of the party's most prominent proposals for years. The LDP, meanwhile, has been shedding support from farmers for much of this decade and is still trying to shed the party's association with Koizumi Junichiro, who is widely blamed for Painting the DPJ as plotting to destroy Japanese agriculture might help, but it assumes that farmers have very short memories.

Perhaps this issue provides an answer to the pressing question of what to do with Ozawa should the DPJ win next month. The problem with Ozawa is that if he is allowed to remain outside the cabinet, he will undermine the party's plan to include major party politicians in the cabinet and will be in a position to freelance in ways that could hurt the government. If he is in the cabinet in an executive position — deputy prime minister, for example — Hatoyama would be vulnerable to the criticism that he is Ozawa's puppet. If he were given an ordinary ministerial post, it would be a waste of his considerable political talents. If he were given a minister-without-portfolio position, it would give him too much freedom. Accordingly, perhaps a special post should be created for Ozawa: minister with the special mission of negotiating a US-Japan FTA. This job would be inter-ministerial, involving cooperation at minimum with the foreign minister, the agriculture minister, and the economy, trade, and industry minister; it would have both domestic political and foreign policy components, enabling Ozawa to both negotiate directly with the US and to make the case directly to the Japanese public of the importance of the FTA. Accordingly, it would be a specific mission, to keep Ozawa occupied (and therefore not devising schemes independent of the government) while still using his considerable political talents. Given the political sensitivity of an FTA with the US, it may take someone of Ozawa's stature to manage it. And if the DPJ is serious about this proposal, appointing Ozawa would send a costly signal of the party's intentions about negotiating an FTA (and ensure that Japan had a tough pol representing it in talks).

To return to the question of the alliance, Washington should be aware of the LDP's response to the DPJ proposal. From one side of its mouth the LDP criticizes the DPJ as a danger to the US-Japan alliance for wanting to bring Japanese forces home and reopen the realignment of US forces in Japan; from the other it warns that the DPJ will kill Japanese agriculture by allowing in cheap US agricultural goods. In other words, token, symbolic contributions that involve the JSDF? The alliance has never been closer. Negotiations for a US-Japan FTA that would have dramatic consequences for the bilateral relationship and probably the global trading system? Traitors!

The LDP's reaction has me convinced that the DPJ may be on the right track with this proposal. I am no less dubious about the possibility of concluding such an agreement — especially given the obstacles in Washington — but it might be worth the effort.

Observing Japan on Radio Australia

I recorded an interview on Japanese agricultural policy for a story that aired on Radio Australia.

Not my most articulate media appearance, but readers can listen to the story here. Ken Worsley of Japan Economy News was also interviewed.

Idealism and realism in the DPJ

The Japanese political system's pendulum continues to swing, as the DPJ's fortunes are worsening at the moment that Fukuda Yasuo's fortunes are on an upswing.

The tension within the DPJ is spilling into the open again, with Maehara Seiji waging an open campaign on the pages of Japan's monthlies against what he sees as disingenuousness in the DPJ's policy platform as presented in the party's 2007 election manifesto.

The main target of Mr. Maehara's ire is the party's plan to provide 18 trillion yen in subsidies to small farmers, a plan described by Mr. Maehara in Chuo Koron as "completely impossible" to implement. He went further and suggested that if the DPJ takes the government, it will be unable to govern. His contributions to Chuo Koron and Voice, however, prompted criticism from other DPJ members. Tsutsui Nobutaka, the agriculture minister in the DPJ's "Next Cabinet" and other DPJ members emailed the party's members to call for Mr. Maehara to leave the party. [MTC informs me in the comments that he believes that Mr. Tsutsui demanded that Mr. Maehara step down from his position as a deputy leader of the party, a reasonable request in my eyes.] Hatoyama Yukio responded by criticizing Mr. Tsutsui for misusing the party's email system — and Mr. Maehara for speaking impertinently about the break-up of the party.

Mr. Maehara's concern about the DPJ's ability to govern is touching, and his desire for truth in advertising in politics noble — but ultimately irrelevant. The DPJ made a decision when it embraced Ozawa Ichiro, first by merging with his Liberal Party, then by making Mr. Ozawa party leader, to embrace Mr. Ozawa's cynical political maneuvering. The DPJ spent the first half of its life as the party of the high road, whose good intentions would propel it to victory over the LDP. But good intentions, which might have worked had Mori Yoshiro lasted more than a year as prime minister, were inadequate in the face of a skilled political operator like Koizumi Junichiro, the master manipulator who both desired change and, as head of the LDP, had the ability to act on his reformist intentions (unlike the DPJ, mired in impotent opposition).

Mr. Ozawa was to be the antidote to Koizumism. The DPJ would play hardball. It would not wait for the Japanese people to see the merits of DPJ reformism and embrace it accordingly. It would swing violently between confrontation and cooperation with the government (Ozawa-induced whiplash), campaign hard nationally, and put politics before policy in a single-minded effort to force the LDP from power. The emphasis on support for small farmers was central to Mr. Ozawa's strategy. It is likely that Mr. Ozawa knows that as long as rural areas control a disproportionately large number of votes in lower house elections — and as long as the LDP has a lock on the votes of the small farmers — the LDP will not lose power. As a result, as long as the DPJ remains an urban, reformist party dependent on the sympathy of floating voters, it will remain in opposition (and vulnerable to reversals like 2005, when urban voters deserted the DPJ for Mr. Koizumi). And so Mr. Ozawa has poured his efforts into strengthening the party's position in rural Japan. He has personally campaigned around the country, undoubtedly a factor in the DPJ's success in largely rural single-seat prefectures last summer. He has emphasized support to small farmers in the form of the subsidies criticized by Mr. Maehara. The subsidies might be bad policy — terrible policy even — but politically they might make the difference between the DPJ's remaining in opposition or winning enough seats in the next election to form a government. Having been completely shut out of single member districts in seventeen mostly rural prefectures in the 2005 general election and fifteen in the 2003 general election, strong campaigns in these areas will determine whether the DPJ wins: the cities will most likely swing back to the DPJ, but the countryside is up for grabs, and holds the key to taking power.

Mr. Maehara, of course, is not interested in power, at least not first and foremost; Mr. Ozawa is. He wants power to be wielded properly, hence his echoing of the LDP complaint about the DPJ's being unable to govern. By making Mr. Ozawa party leader, the DPJ rejected idealism — whether Mr. Maehara's right-wing idealism or Kan Naoto's left-wing idealism — and embraced realism, realism in the pursuit of regime change and power. Mr. Maehara will continue to rail against the prevailing realism, and he (or a surrogate) will likely challenge Mr. Ozawa in September, but his protests will likely be of little use. The party has thrown in its lot with Mr. Ozawa, and will do whatever it takes to win the next election, up to and including fudging the numbers in its policy program.

Will Mr. Maehara's dissatisfaction lead to his defection? If he means what he says, he won't be jumping to the LDP, which is not exactly a paragon of idealistic governance. And while the media is speculating about Mr. Koizumi's creating a proto-party with Mr. Maehara and Koike Yuriko, that remains groundless speculation. To leave before an election risks being wiped out should the DPJ copy Mr. Koizumi and send "assassins" to unseat Mr. Maehara and his followers. If he does leave, it will be after an election, when he can let the LDP and the DPJ bid for his loyalty as they struggle to assemble a government should the next election produce a hung parliament. In the meantime, Mr. Maehara will make his peace with Mr. Ozawa's realism, not least because the pendulum will likely swing back towards idealism in time. It is unlikely that Mr. Ozawa's realism will survive his leadership of the party.

Meanwhile, DPJ members have other reasons to be dissatisfied with Mr. Ozawa's leadership. Party members are reportedly unhappy with a decision to boycott lower house debates in the wake of the upper house censure motion — a foolish decision considering that the lower house is deliberating on opposition-sponsored bills that have already passed the upper house, including the bill calling for scrapping the new eldercare system. The communists have been left to defend the legislation in deliberations.

This is the reality of life under Mr. Ozawa: regular, unpredictable changes of tactics with little regard for ideals and principles, grandstanding, and policy taking the backseat to politics. But for better or worse, the DPJ is likely stuck with Mr. Ozawa at least until the next election.

Ozawa prepares for his last stand

Mr. Ozawa, back at the helm of the DPJ — and apparently no longer estranged from the other party leaders — has fixed his attention squarely on a campaign that many seem to think will happen any day now (another "Happening Dissolution" [Japanese Wikipedia]).

Accordingly, the DPJ is scrambling about to conclude the nomination process for its candidates for a general election.

At present, there remain eight-five districts (out of 300) for which the DPJ has not designated a candidate, with the ultimate aim being between 270 and 280 candidates for the single-seat districts (the remainder being DPJ-backed Socialist and Kokuminto candidates). The vacancies, according to Mainichi, are particularly pronounced in urban areas, with candidates nominated for only thirteen of Tokyo's twenty-five districts. Asahi notes the same, but also suggests that DPJ may end up with only 250 candidates of its own.

Mr. Ozawa has acknowledged the difficulty the DPJ faces in a general election, and suggests that the party's goal is to become the largest party in the House of Representatives — as opposed to winning an outright majority — and form a coalition with other opposition parties. Even that may be a stretch.

Given the documented discrepancy in Japanese voting patterns between Upper House and Lower House elections, given Mr. Fukuda's skill at navigating the perilous situation he inherited upon taking office (with the help of his predecessor's dismal performance making him look great without doing much of anything), and given the very public display of the DPJ's internal disorder, it seems extremely unlikely that the LDP would lose its position as the largest party in the House of Representatives. It may lose its supermajority in the event of a snap election, but I think the Japanese people are still willing to give Mr. Fukuda a chance. Recent opinion polls on the Fukuda cabinet may be downward trending — a recent NHK poll (not online) showed a four-point drop to 54%, a recent Sankei poll showed a fourteen point drop to 41% (largely due to the idea that Mr. Fukuda wanted a grand coalition with the DPJ) — but a recent Nikkei poll found a four-point drop (to 28%) in support for the DPJ, with a four-point increase (to 42%) for the LDP. The bottom certainly hasn't dropped out of support for Mr. Fukuda, and a good performance in Washington — which, as today's Nelson Report confirms, truly is more open-ended than US-Japan summits have been of late — could shore up his support.

The DPJ has yet to give the voters any reason to defect from the LDP. The key to a general election remains rural Japan. Mr. Ozawa undoubtedly still hopes that he can pry rural voters away from the LDP again, with the result that the LDP's norin zoku are panicking and will no doubt put pressure on Mr. Fukuda to throw some pork ("emergency countermeasures" in response to the fall in the price of rice, for example) their way as the budget process progresses. The DPJ has already passed its plan for income compensation for farmers in the Upper House — and it's unclear what the LDP will do in response. Kan Naoto suggested, "The LDP is working to adopt the DPJ's thinking."

Whatever his desire for fiscal rectitude, Mr. Fukuda may find demands for more largess for farmers irresistible. What better way for him to placate LDP backbenchers, shore up support in the countryside, and steal the DPJ's thunder.

But will Mr. Fukuda be tempted to strike fast and call an early election, while the DPJ is disorganized? I still think that Mr. Fukuda would like to keep the DPJ guessing right up to September 2009.

It's official

Fukuda Yasuo is the new president of the Liberal Democratic Party and will be (presumably) be elected prime minister on Tuesday.

For coverage of the oh-so-predictable voting, check out Shisaku and TPR.

There's not much I can add to Jun Okumura's assessment of what this means. Mr. Fukuda ended up winning comfortably enough so as not to further exacerbate intraparty tension. While not winning by a landslide in the prefectural votes, Mr. Fukuda had a strong enough showing so as to deny Mr. Aso the opportunity to continue to contest the presidency as a pretender to throne with legitimacy derived from support in the grassroots.

It remains to be seen whether Mr. Fukuda will be able to salvage the current Diet session, and whether he will even last long enough to finish Mr. Abe's presidential term, which lasts until September 2009. To hasten the return to normalcy, he is expected to retain most of Mr. Abe's second cabinet. (Yomiuri speculated today that even while removing Mr. Aso as LDP secretary-general, he'll retain Hatoyama Kunio, Mr. Aso's ally, as justice minister.) But he will face a DPJ that is aiming to make the Fukuda cabinet but a short interlude between the Abe train wreck and a DPJ triumph in a general election.

The DPJ has used the unexpected break caused by Mr. Abe's resignation to "go to the people" and continue to sell its agriculture policies to restive rural Japan, reassuring farmers that the money exists to provide the promised subsidies. The party has, in fact, announced that it will submit its income compensation bill to the Diet in mid-October. The debate over that bill, if and when it happens, may be more consequential for the balance between the parties and their prospects leading to a general election than the ongoing battle over the anti-terror special measures law.

The battle for rural Japan

The campaign for the LDP presidency officially opened on Saturday, and its contours are already apparent.

As now widely acknowleged, Fukuda Yasuo enjoys a commanding position thanks to support of every LDP faction but Aso Taro's.

Mr. Aso, therefore, will be campaigning as a rebel. Thanks in part to the rapid commitment of the factions to Mr. Fukuda, Mr. Aso has now started calling attention to the perils of faction rule, borrowing from the Koizumi playbook to campaign as the candidate for a new LDP. It is unclear whether he can succeed by taking this message directly to the party grassroots.

As Asahi found when it asked LDP prefectural chapter officials about the race, it's not exactly clear what they want from the next leader: "There are differing views: On the one hand, there is the view that approves of the factions' simultaneous embrace of Mr. Fukuda as 'resulting in party unity,' but there is on the other hand the objection that 'it's strange before a policy debate.'" For example, Hokkaido's officials mentioned leadership, while Tohoku officials mentioned the kakusa mondai. Outside of Gunma, Mr. Fukuda's home prefecture, Asahi did not find great enthusiasm for Mr. Fukuda's candidacy — and the process by which the factions rushed to his side seems to have raised eyebrows.

What will it take to placate the prefectural chapters? Will vague promises from Tokyo to listen to their concerns be enough to make them fall into line behind the will of the party elders?

Meanwhile, the discussion about what Fukuda administration's agenda will look like continues, and the consensus increasingly seems to be that it will be like Mr. Abe's, but stripped of ideological fantasies and vacuous slogans. Jun Okumura fleshes this out in considerable detail in this post.

This approach — reformist at home, moderate abroad — could be enough to ensure that the LDP remains competitive in urban Japan, putting pressure on the DPJ in the coming months to work with the government on the budget and related legislation, or else risk getting its hoped-for early election in circumstances more favorable to the government. But rural Japan remains the wild card. Was July's desertion a fluke, or will Mr. Ozawa's "back to the future" strategy actually serve to pry rural voters away from the LDP in general elections as well? If the latter, it's wholly unclear to me what Mr. Fukuda will do to regain the trust of rural Japan.

A potentially ominous sign for the government is MAFF's recent decision to begin working with the DPJ on agricultural policy. It is well known that in the past the bureaucracy has declined to work with the DPJ in drafting its own legislation. For MAFF to begin talking of "conciliation" with the ascendant opposition could well signal just how parlous the LDP's situation in rural Japan is. At the very least, it shows that Mr. Ozawa has actually seized the initiative on agricultural policy with the DPJ's plans for introducing an "income compensation" system, earning the support of sympathizers within MAFF, who are more than happy to support a plan criticized by the LDP as baramaki seisaku (i.e., throwing money around).

Mr. Fukuda, should he hold on to win, has his work cut out for him.

Groundhog day

I've said it before and I'll say it again (and again): there is not an "agriculture expert" in the LDP who has clean hands.

With the resignation of Endo Takehiko as minister of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries one week into Prime Minister Abe's "re-challenge" cabinet, we're once again given a look at the reality of LDP governance, at least as far as agricultural policy is concerned. To be an LDP agricultural "expert" means to have inappropriate ties with the groups regulated by MAFF.

The new minister will be Wakabayashi Masatoshi, the environment minister, but I can't help but wonder if the government would be better off finding a younger member with no agricultural experience whatsoever — someone who has never waded through a rice paddy or seen a cow. Four ministers in the span of the year means that the bureaucracy is calling the shots on agricultural policy anyway, so the government might as well appoint someone whose purpose will be nothing more than signing off on what the bureaucrats do.

The government may yet pay a heavy price for the latest scandal, not least in popularity. But will the censure motion reportedly under consideration by the DPJ make any difference? As Yamaoka Kenji, DPJ kokutai chairman, said, "It is not a problem of one minister. It is the structure of collusion between politicians, bureaucrats, and businesses." Mr. Yamaoka speaks of using investigative powers that come with the control of the Upper House to expose the whole mess, which is fine — but the opposition shouldn't waste its time with a symbolic censure motion.

Looking at the 2007 single-seat districts

Over at Liberal Japan, Matt points to an article in the Yomiuri Shimbun pointing to a poll that shows DPJ support rising in both major cities and smaller cities and towns in rural areas. Based on this, he concludes — emphatically, by way of music videos — that the election is bound to be a landslide for the DPJ.




I wish I could be so optimistic.

The basis for his optimism is his conclusion that these poll numbers show that the DPJ's rural strategy is working; Ozawa's focus on touring the country rather than fighting in the Diet is set to yield major results for the DPJ. Now, I've praised Ozawa's choice of strategy before, and having looked through the DPJ's forty-six-page manifesto, including its three-plus pages on agricultural policy, I can confirm that the DPJ is indeed prepared to pump pork into the countryside, so that, er, they can continue producing pork for the cities. From biomass energy promotion to rice support to support for small-scale agriculture, the DPJ is prepared to pry open the jaws of the exchequer to prop up Japan's farmers. The manifesto also shows that the DPJ has borrowed the late Mr. Matsuoka's playbook in trying to sell agricultural support to precious urban voters on the basis of food security and the environment. (Mr. Matsuoka emphasized both during the Koizumi years, seeing the environment especially as a new way to keep the money flowing.)

But I disagree that one can simply call the election on the basis of a single public opinion poll. Accordingly, I looked at the twenty-nine single-seat electoral districts to see the potential for a DPJ landslide.

My conclusion:

LDP best-case scenario: DPJ 12 / LDP 17

DPJ best-case scenario: DPJ 19 / LDP 10

Barring a total collapse of the LDP, I expect the worst the LDP can possibly do in these districts is win a mere ten out of twenty-nine. In that scenario, the LDP would without question win fewer than the 15 PR seats it won in 2004, and assuming twelve seats from the two-seat districts and six more from the three- and five-seat districts, it would finish with around forty seats, falling far short of a majority.

In the best case scenario for the single-seat districts, the LDP would win 17 seats, perhaps repeat its 2004 PR performance and take one seat in each multi-member district and finish with fifty seats, enough to pull together a majority in the Upper House.

The reality will probably fall somewhere between the two, as I argued before. In other words, not a landslide at all.

Looking at the individual races is useful, because one immediately notices the number of senior LDP politicians up for reelection. Whatever the unpopularity of the government, each of these members enjoys the advantages of incumbency, and a number of them are norin zoku from rural prefectures, meaning that they have been well placed to provide support for their constituents. The DPJ has a difficult task ahead of it in many of these races, and I am not entirely sure that the candidates that the opposition has selected are up to the challenge.

Furthermore, the question of turnout remains. Will the opposition be able to bring out enough voters angry about the government to turn the tide to the LDP's worst-case scenario? And will they be angry enough by the time it comes to vote? Will weeks of campaigning, hearing from incumbents about how they have helped the prefecture, be enough to mollify public outrage?

What follows is my assessment of each of the twenty-nine single-seat elections. As you can see, I outline the facts of each race, and then make a prediction based on my own reasoning. Admittedly, a lot of it is guesswork and hunches. I'm sure many of you will look at my notes and make drastically different predictions. I am interested to hear, one way or another. As always, your comments are appreciated.

Sources: Yahoo Seiji, Za Senkyo, the LDP homepage, the DPJ homepage, and Japanese Wikipedia.

The 2007 Upper House Election Single-Seat Districts

Aomori: two-term LDP incumbent (60), facing a young (37) DPJ challenger with little political experience and with a Socialist in the field too, siphoning off opposition votes (and incumbent Yamazaki won handily in 2001, 100,000 more than the combined DPJ/Socialist vote total). Aomori's LDP governor won big in April.

My prediction: LDP

Akita: similar to Aomori, two-term LDP incumbent (57) is facing an independent (media personality Matsuura Daigo, age 37). The DPJ holds a single seat in the prefectural assembly, with the LDP holding a plurality and independents the next largest bloc.

My prediction: LDP
Optimistic prediction: Potential for an upset, with a media-personality independent winning in similar circumstances in 2004.

Iwate: "Ozawa's Kingdom" has a DPJ incumbent, Hirano Tatsuo (53), facing a younger LDP challenger as well as a Socialist candidate (in his first election in 2001, the Socialist candidate received 60,000 votes, making the margin of victory much closer [6,000 votes] than otherwise). The "counterwind" may mean that Hirano wins more resoundingly.

My prediction: DPJ

Yamagata: In this open seat, the DPJ is running Funayama Yasue (41), a retired MAFF bureaucrat who lost by a narrow margin in 2004, due to the Socialist siphoning off more votes than the LDP's margin of victory. This time the Socialists are backing Funayama.

My prediction: DPJ

Tochigi: Tochigi, shrinking from a two-seat to a one-seat district, features a showdown between a DPJ and an LDP incumbent. The LDP incumbent is Kunii Masayuki, an archetypal norin zoku — worked in agricultural cooperatives in Tochigi, elected to the Upper House in 1995, served in a number of agricultural policy posts within the LDP, in the Diet, and in the government since then (he's currently the MAFF vice minister). In other words, the kind of politician who has access to the levers of power that enable him to bring tangible benefits home to his constituents. Facing him is Tani Hiroyuki, a one-term DPJ incumbent, with long experience in politics at the local level.

Tochigi may be the most important of the twenty-nine single-seat districts. Facing a leading norin zoku, a man uniquely capable of ensuring that his constituents have the support of the central government, will the DPJ's rural appeal succeed? I doubt it.

My prediction: LDP
Optimistic prediction: A choice of Tani over Kunii could signal a desire among voters for a cleaner politics.

Gunma: With Kokumin Shinto carrying the torch for the opposition against future LDP giant and TV personality Yamamoto Ichita, this one might be one of the few seats that the LDP wins convincingly. (And adhering to the Okumura principle, Yamamoto has a brief article on the English Wikipedia, which informs us that he was once in a rock band. This leads me to add my corollary to the Okumura principle: Japanese politicians with Wikipedia entries in English and who once played in rock bands cannot lose.)

My prediction: LDP

Yamanashi: The DPJ may be well placed in the competition for this open seat, running the young (41) Fuji Television veteran Yonenaga Harunobu against a young (42) LDP activist and consultant Irikura Kaname.

My prediction: DPJ

Toyama: Toyama could be another pickup for the DPJ, with the DPJ supporting independent Morita Takashi, a young medical professional who emphasizes quality nursing care, against LDP incumbent Nogami Kotaro, who was first elected in 2001 — a Koizumi child — and whose record in his first term seems largely undistinguished. LDP candidates like Nogami are undoubtedly vulnerable.

My prediction: DPJ

Ishikawa: The open contest in Ishikawa features two relative heavyweights, the LDP's Yata Tomiro, a long-serving prefectural assemblyman who ultimately rose to the assembly leadership and has experience with agriculture faces the DPJ's Ichikawa Yasuo, a twenty-five-year MAFF veteran and three-term Lower House member washed away in the 2005 Koizumi landslide. Ichikawa probably has the edge here, and his victory would be an important step for the DPJ in the countryside.

My prediction: DPJ

Fukui: In Fukui prefecture, the DPJ is running another Lower House member defeated in 2005 against Matsumura Ryuji, two-term Upper House member, retired bureaucrat (National Police Agency) and vice minister of the Transportation Ministry (and let's not forget his various policy "activities" in various PARC committees). Both are hardly young, the DPJ candidate Wakaizumi 61, Matsumura 69. But like elsewhere, this may be an election that comes down to the national mood: when the citizens of Fukui vote, will it be based on their attitude to the government, or will it be based on their gratitude to Mr. Matsumura for his "service" to the prefecture? It may be contrarian of me, but I suspect the latter.

My prediction: LDP
Optimistic prediction: DPJ

Shiga: The DPJ is running Tokunaga Hisashi (44), a prefectural assemblyman who lost his first bid for the prefectural assembly in 1991, worked for a bit, became a secretary to a Lower House member in 1997, and won a prefectural assembly seat in 1999. His opponent is Yamashita Hidetoshi, first elected in a by-election in 2000 and reelected in 2001; he was parliamentary secretary in the Finance Ministry under Koizumi and chair of the Upper House's health and welfare committee. With Shiga one of the few growing prefectures in Japan (although part of that growth is foreign labor) and home to major corporations, one would it expect it to incline increasingly away from the LDP. It is difficult to predict based on recent elections, however, although the 2006 gubernatorial election, in which Socialist Kada Yukiko surprisingly defeated an LDP/DPJ/Komeito candidate suggests that floating voters may rule. Expect Yamashita to be one of the losing incumbents.

My prediction: DPJ

Mie: The incumbent is the DPJ's Takashi Chiaki, who worked with JA Mie, the prefectural federation of agricultural cooperatives, before being elected in 2000 in a by-election. His LDP opponent is Harvard alum (School of Public Health) and Rotary fellow Onozaki Kohei. While Onozaki is thirteen years' Takashi's junior, I have a hard time seeing the DPJ incumbent losing, no matter how many pictures of his children Onozaki puts on his webpage.

My prediction: DPJ

Nara: The DPJ candidate is Nakamura Tetsuji, another DPJ Lower House member unseated in 2005. Only 36, Nakamura has already served two terms in the Lower House and sat in the DPJ's Next Cabinet as next vice minister of Internal Affairs and Communications responsible for information and communications. (He was also a policy secretary straight out of university and apparently pioneered the use of the "mail magazine.") He is opposed by Matsui Masatake, a dentist and long-serving prefectural assemblymen who ultimately became head of the assembly. This looks like a win for the DPJ, but the DPJ contingent in the prefectural assembly held steady in April, and the DPJ did not field a gubernatorial candidate, suggesting a weaker local organization.

My prediction: DPJ

Wakayama: The Wakayama race pits Seko Hiroshige, adviser to Prime Minister Abe on communications, against the DPJ's Sakaguchi Naoto, head of an NGO that does post-civil war peace-building and reconstruction (during the 1990s he volunteered through MOFA to assist with precisely that). Due to Seko's presence in the campaign, the Abe Cabinet's record will undoubtedly be an important factor in the outcome. Seko was reelected resoundingly in 2001, with 319,080 votes, more than twice the total of the three candidates opposing him. That total will be diminished without Koizumi, but how much will his service in the Abe Cabinet harm Seko? (Sakaguchi's background may also make the Abe Cabinet's designs for Japanese security policy an issue, oddly enough.)

My prediction: LDP
Optimistic prediction: If anger at Abe is that deep, then expect Seko to pay the price.

Tottori: The LDP incumbent, Tsuneda Takayoshi, is another member of the LDP's Upper House class of 1995 and another norin zoku member, serving on a number of MAFF-related Diet committees and LDP policy making committees in his twelve years. (This following a career in Tottori's assembly, in which he also specialized in agriculture.) Kawakami Yoshihiro, his DPJ opponent, is a former LDP member elected in 2003 as an independent member of the Lower House. Kawakami then joined the Kamei faction, voted against postal reform and was "assassinated" in 2005. He joined the DPJ in 2006. I expect Tsuneda will hold on to his seat.

My prediction: LDP

Okayama: In Okayama, there is a five-way race (LDP, DPJ, Communist, Independent, a small party), with the LDP candidate being LDP Upper House Secretary-General Katayama Toranosuke. His DPJ opponent is Himei Yumiko, a judicial scrivener who has served in the prefectural assembly. If Katayama cannot hold onto his seat, the LDP is in major trouble.

My prediction: LDP

Shimane: Facing another member of the LDP class of 1995 holding a senior position, Kageyama Shuntaro, the opposition parties are backing Kamei Akiko, daughter of Kokumin Shinto Secretary-General Kamei Hisaoki, who has worked as an aide to her father but never been elected to office before. (After studying in Canada, she worked as a translator, including at the Nagano Olympics and the Japan-Korea World Cup.) I doubt the Kamei name will be enough to defeat Kageyama.

My prediction: LDP

Yamaguchi: In Prime Minister Abe's "home" prefecture, the LDP incumbent, Hayashi Yoshimasa, is another member of the class of 1995 and currently vice minister in the Cabinet Office (and another LDP Harvardian). His DPJ opponent is Tokura Takako, a community activist running for her first public office. Hayashi, reelected in 2001 by a wide margin, should be able to hold his seat.

My prediction: LDP

Tokushima: In Tokushima, yet another LDP incumbent from the class of 1995, Kitaoka Shuji is facing the DPJ's Nakatani Tomoji, a thirty-eight-year-old retired salaryman. Based on the previous two elections, Kitaoka might be in trouble. First, in 2001 he was reelected by what may be the slimmest margin for an LDP candidate in a year in which the LDP could not lose: 198,387 to 116,278, with 50,000 more votes split between three other candidates. This time, it is just LDP, DPJ, and JCP. Second, in 2004, in a campaign for an open seat, the LDP candidate won by the narrow margin of 166,032 to 153,057. An upset is not guaranteed, however, with only four DPJ members, including two incumbents, elected to the prefectural assembly in April (although a good number of independents were elected too, nine for the first time).

My prediction: DPJ

Kagawa: In Kagawa, LDP four-term incumbent and former Environment Agency Director-General Manabe Genji faces thirty-nine-year-old DPJ candidate Uematsu Emiko, who previously ran in 2004, losing narrowly to LDP incumbent Yamauchi Toshio, 204,392 votes to 197,370. Based on her own electoral record and her youth, together with the general mood, Uematsu may knock off the septuagenarian Manabe.

My prediction: DPJ

Ehime: The DPJ is facing senior LDP incumbent Sekiya Katsutsugu, an eight-term Lower House member-cum-two-term Upper House member, chairman of the Upper House's committee on constitution revision, and construction minister in the Obuchi Cabinet (I can only imagine the largess Ehime received then, with him as the construction minister and the government in a fit of Keynesian pump priming). The opposition parties have opted for an independent celebrity candidate to face Sekiya, recently retired Ehime FC footballer Tomochika Toshiro (32). In the 2004 Upper House election, Ehime was open, and the LDP candidate won by 50,000 votes. Sekiya will probably win comfortably.

My prediction: LDP.

Kochi: Two-term LDP incumbent Tamura Kohei, who has held a number of senior parliamentary, party, and government posts since being elected in 1995, is facing DPJ Kochi City Council Member Takeuchi Norio. Tamura could find himself in trouble; in 2001 he had a relatively narrow win over independent candidate Hirota Hajime, who went on to beat the LDP incumbent in 2004.

My prediction: LDP
Optimistic prediction: My gut tells me that the DPJ can pull off an upset against Tamura. If Chertoff can go by his gut, so can I.

Saga: Contending for the open seat in Saga are the LDP's Kawakami Yoshiyuki, a construction (later transportation) ministry bureaucrat turned vice-governor of Saga prefecture, and Kawasaki Minoru, a retired Bank of Japan economist. Kawasaki ran in 2004, and lost by a mere 20,000 votes. Yomiuri reported on 14 July that Saga looks to be a major battleground, with the government sending most of the campaign and a number of other senior LDP leaders to campaign for Kawakami. That could turn the tide for the LDP, meaning another close loss for Kawasaki. Of course, that the LDP has to fight hard for a prefecture it has long dominated is significant in itself.

My prediction: LDP
Optimistic prediction: Visits by Prime Minister Abe and others refuse to staunch public outrage, and Kawasaki ekes out a close win.

Nagasaki: In what may well be the "Kyuma election," DPJ candidate Okubo Yukishige, a prefectural assemblyman who lost to Kyuma in 2005, is facing LDP candidate Komine Tadatoshi, a school principal. With the DPJ having won handily in 2004 and the LDP tainted by Kyuma, I expect Okubo will prevail.

My prediction: DPJ

Kumamoto: In another test for the DPJ's agricultural strategy, the DPJ is contending with another LDP norinzoku giin incumbent first elected in 1995, Miura Issui. MAFF vice minister, member of various LDP agriculture policy committees, and a native of the late Mr. Matsuoka's Kumamoto prefecture to boot, Miura is another member capable of bringing public funds home to this rural Kyushu prefecture. Facing him is Matsuo Nobuo, a lawyer and onetime DPJ member of the Lower House — like others, he was first elected in 2003 but defeated in the 2005 landslide. Consistent with the results for other norinzoku members facing reelection, I expect that the voters of Kumamoto will send Mr. Miura back to Tokyo, even if Yomiuri finds that some are more concerned with pensions than with agricultural support. Miura may have to work a little harder, and the margin of victory may be narrower, but the interests will win out.

My prediction: LDP

Oita: The situation is somewhat turbulent in Oita, as the DPJ declined to support the SDP candidate, who is now running as an independent. The incumbent, meanwhile, is Kokumin Shinto member Goto Hiroko; she was first elected in 2001 as an LDP member, but left the party after the postal rebellion and joined Kokumin Shinto. I think it is an open question whether the voters of Oita will opt for her again, now that she's joined a marginal party. With the opposition split among two independents, Goto, and the JCP candidate, the LDP candidate, Isozaki Yosuke, a retired bureaucrat, could win more or less by default.

My prediction: LDP

Miyazaki: The race in Miyazaki is similar messy. The LDP incumbent, Kosehira Toshifumi, was first elected in 2001 with 199,171 votes. Two independents took 172,023 and 155,269 votes each. Kosehira, a norin zoku giin in training, holds positions on a number of PARC agriculture committees and sub-committees, and he may once again benefit from a divided race. The Socialists, DPJ, and Kokumin Shinto have endorsed Toyama Itsuki, a DPJ activist — who is running as an independent, to the chagrin of some DPJ members. Toyama may have an advantage going into the election, but three other independents and a JCP candidate could divert votes away, giving Kosehira a narrow victory.

My prediction: LDP
Optimistic prediction: The DPJ and its partners overcome divisions in the final two weeks of campaigning and present a clear challenge to the LDP, diminishing the appeal of votes for other independents.

Kagoshima: Kagoshima is a straight-up LDP incumbent vs. DPJ challenger vs. JCP challenger election. The LDP incumbent is Kajiya Yoshito, another incipient member of the norin zoku as the chairman of the Upper House agriculture committee and participant in the LDP's agriculture policy committees. Like Kosehira, Kajiya was first elected in 2001 with more than double the votes of his closest rival. The LDP candidate in 2004 received a similar number of votes, although with only DPJ and JCP candidates with whom to contend the margin of victory was smaller. Given that the LDP candidate in 2001 and 2004 received 435,300 and 455,591 votes respectively, and LDP candidates had a strong showing in April's prefectural assembly elections, Kajiya is probably safe from DPJ challenger Minayoshi Inao, a Rengo activist who was the DPJ candidate in 2004 (he received 315,560 votes).

My prediction: LDP

Okinawa: Ozawa has been repeatedly frustrated in Okinawa, losing a gubernatorial election and Upper House by-election since becoming head of the DPJ. The opposition is supporting indepdent Itokazu Keiko, who won the Upper House election in 2004 but left to contend for the governorship in 2006, which she lost. In that election, Itokazu received 309,985 votes, losing by fewer than 40,000 votes. But Itokazu actually received fewer votes in 2006 than she received in 2004 as an Upper House candidate (316,148 votes). However, Nishime Junshiro, the LDP incumbent, was first elected in 2001 with 265,821 votes, meaning that he has a lot of work to do to compete with Itokazu.

My prediction: DPJ