Japan on the brink

The Diet returned to business yesterday after a two-day recess, with Prime Minister Fukuda and members of his cabinet delivering speeches outlining the government's basic policies for the 2008 regular session.

Prime Minister Fukuda — despite his decline in popularity, which he has said "can't be helped" — gave another excellent speech, his second in two days, in which he outlined the nature of the problems facing Japan and the work that remains to be done. Continuing the soft approach that he has followed since taking office in September, Mr. Fukuda opened his address by praising the work of the recently finished special session and calling attention to the ways in which the government and the opposition were able to cooperate to pass legislation, despite the conflict over the anti-terror law.

He then correctly identified the problems facing Japan today: "In the midst of the change in the global economy symbolized by the rapid growth of China, India, and others, how do we preserve our country's economic strength, how do we maintain our social security system in tough economic conditions, how do we deal with the problem of declining birth rates, how do we deal with the problems of expanding irregular employment and stagnant regional economies, and also, how do we deal with the fierce global competition in technology, and how do we deal with the problems of the global environment, natural resources, and energy?" He spoke of building a new Japan, not a beautiful Japan, and he said "our" — he emphatically did not lay down an ideological blueprint for this new Japan. Indeed, if Mr. Fukuda has an ideology, it is one that upends the traditional way of politics in Japan, elevating the people at the expense of the government and bureaucrats.

As expected, he emphasized the need of build a consumer-centered society. He stated five goals: (1) realizing a consumer-centered society; (2) securing the livelihood of the people by creating a new social security system; (3) constructing a vital economic system; (4) "realizing Japan as a peace cooperation state"; and (5) finding a way to a society that is both energy-efficient and prosperous. What follows is a long and detailed statement articulating how the government will pursue these goals. I doubt that he will have enough time and power to act on this agenda, but it's important to note that Mr. Fukuda gets it. As I have suspected since he took office, Mr. Fukuda, far from being an aged functionary and tool of the factions, has a keen appreciation for the problems facing Japan today. He may not be flashy like former prime minister Koizumi, but in many ways he has a more constructive vision for Japan than the mercurial former prime minister. (Like Mr. Koizumi, I think Mr. Fukuda realizes that a new system will not emerge without political change. The political system has long been dead weight holding back Japan.) He recognizes the interconnectedness of the problems facing Japan; for example, towards the end of his address he spoke of the importance of changing the education system to enhance Japan's international competitiveness. Unlike his predecessor, whose ideas about education harkened back to the Meiji-era rescript on education, Mr. Fukuda recognizes Japan's responsibility to its children. (He also undoubtedly angered the conservative ideologues by noting that if Japan is to revise its constitution, revision has to be the result of broad consensus among all parties. For an illustration of the contrast between Mr. Fukuda and Mr. Abe, check out the picture of Mr. Abe in this article.)

It is truly unfortunate that Mr. Fukuda was not elected LDP president and prime minister in September 2006, when he would have been in a position to move forward aggressively with this agenda. He would have control of both houses of the Diet, the goodwill of the public, and a sincere desire to tackle the problems facing Japan. Instead Japan got Mr. Abe, and the rest is, of course, history. Now Mr. Fukuda has to juggle a divided Diet, a divided party, and an insecure public that does not seem to be particularly willing to be patient while Mr. Fukuda tries to make progress on building a new Japan.

I do not think that Mr. Fukuda was exaggerating when he spoke of the scale of the problem facing Japan. As Ota Hiroko, his minister of economic policy, said yesterday, Japan is no longer a first-rate economic power. Takenaka Heizo, Mr. Koizumi's reform czar, made the same point in an article in the February issue of Voice. Mr. Takenaka called Japan a "policy third-world country," citing the government's inability to resolve any of the long-standing economic problems facing Japan.

But I also think that Mr. Fukuda will be hard-pressed to address these problems in this Diet session, especially with the prospect of a general election looming over the proceedings. He will not be helped by talk of a consumption tax hike, which Finance Minister Nukaga Fukushiro dared to do yesterday. I don't doubt that Mr. Fukuda's approach will put pressure on the DPJ in a general election campaign — and may make the difference in the LDP's keeping an HR majority — but the festering problems within the LDP may be enough to undermine his government fatally.

It may be the case that true reform will have to wait for regime change.

Murakami Haruki and Sino-Japanese relations

Joel Martinsen at Danwei posted a translation of an interview in the Southern Metropolis Weekly with Lin Shaohua, Murakami Haruki's Chinese translator.

It is a bizarre interview, to say the least, starting with the unironic use of the word "bourgeois" to describe novels like Norwegian Wood. Bourgeois? I guess. And then there's a statement like, "his later works focus on the hard, rigid aspects of being a warrior." If there is one thread that runs through all of his novels, "bourgeois" or post-bourgeois, it is his strong emphasis on humanistic individualism. Lin touches on this — "...He gave an interview with Chinese media in which he said that individual rights and freedoms were to be highly respected, like an egg smashed colliding with a wall. If he had to choose, he would stand on the side of the egg" — but he does not develop it further, emphasizing Murakami's social criticism without spelling out the perspective from which he makes it.

Beyond Lin's critique, however, the interview provides an interesting glimpse at one intellectual's impressions of Sino-Japanese relations, as well as his views of China today. (Emphasis on the one intellectual, because it is far from clear how much one can generalize from the views of someone who translates from Japanese to Chinese.)

While I recommend the whole interview, two exchanges stand out in my mind:

SMW: Is this type of misunderstanding related to the fact that there is an insufficient degree of cultural interchange and communication? For example, before 1949, there were many great masters in China who had returned from studying abroad in Japan - the Zhou brothers, for instance, and Yu Dafu and Guo Moruo. At the time, Japan perhaps had many authors, such as Ryunosuke Akutagawa and Junichirô Tanizaki who had traveled in China. Are exchanges today not up to the level of the Republican period?

Lin: That is one side. Another side is that Japanese schools do not tell their students true history. I've asked a Japanese high school history teacher whether he had taught his students about the Japanese army's invasion of China. He said he had not taught it, and circumstances were quite coincidental: every time his lectures reached the [second] Sino-Japanese war, the semester ended. Practically all schools were that way. And even if they lectured on it, the class time was quite short. This would be the careful plan of Japanese government agencies. Japanese contemporary literature, too, basically avoids touching on that period of history. So many Japanese young people do not understand history, and they are mystified at the opposition of the Chinese people when they visit the Yasukuni Shrine.

And:

SMW: What is your view of the nationalist sentiments toward Japan that are current in China?

Lin: I only have to mention Japan on my blog and I am subject to frequent abuse. I feel that angry youth are extreme in their sentiment; as the intelligentsia, we ought to look at the whole picture, the good and the bad. We have a responsibility to present a relatively complete Japan. The birth of certain extreme feelings is due in part to the fact that the intelligentsia has not carried out its responsibilities to the full, it has not introduced a complete, objective Japan. As intellectuals, we too have the problem of silence. I feel sad for our intellectuals; in the past they were not permitted their own voice under the pressure of ideology, but it's the commodity economy amid a rising tide that seduces them. There is no moral integrity, no perseverance. Of course we cannot tar them all with one brush; sober intellectuals with a conscience still exist, but in the clamor of the mob, their influence grows ever smaller.

Interesting that Lin actually agrees with Prime Minister Abe and his coterie about the state of Japanese education — although naturally their ideas for ensuring that Japanese students know their country's history are substantially different. (Check out Adam Lebowitz and David McNeill's review of Abe's education reforms at Japan Focus.) But seriously, is Lin's criticism of Japanese education unfair, or spot on?

For those interested in Murakami's thoughts on his own writing — note, strictly literary, not political — check out this recent essay published in the New York Times.

Revision as redemption

Ozawa Ichiro, DPJ president, laid into the prime minister on TV Asahi this morning, emphasizing that he disagrees not just with the prime minister's position on constitution revision, but with the prime minister's philosophy root and branch.

I'm with Ozawa on this one (and not because I work for a member of his party).

Back in January, I wrote that instead of looking back to Japan's postwar nationalists, including Abe's grandfather Kishi Nobusuke, it was more appropriate to view Abe as governing in the same vein as the Choshu oligarchs who built the Meiji state, conservative pragmatists who combined the desire to forge a strong, unified — heavy emphasis on unified — independent state capable of competing with the European empires with tremendous tactical flexibility. And let's not forget, of course, that the oligarchs had no trust in the people whatsoever. Wrote Richard Samuels in his Machiavelli's Children:

Never liberal...the Meiji oligarchs believed that public opinion encouraged political dissent, which was seditious and weakened the state. Ito captured this view by referring to "the onslaught of extremely democratic ideas" that had to be resisted. Ito would incorporate the people to achieve national unity, but not as a matter of any innate right to self-government. He chose to avoid popular control by appealing to "a higher transcendent moral order...that would deny any notion of private interest"— the emperor.

While I won't go so far as to call Abe anti- or un-democratic, I do think that he shares with the Meiji genro the desire for an independent and unified Japan. Perhaps in some way Abe's desire to revise the Occupation-era constitution is akin to the Meiji leaders' burning desire to amend the "unequal treaties" imposed on Japan in its time of weakness.

In fact, political scientist Douglas Lummis apparently has alluded to the Meiji Constitution, according to an article by Eric Johnston in the Japan Times last week: "He believes the LDP would prefer the kind of society Japan was in the years immediately before the war." I don't necessarily share the same alarm as Lummis, but I think he's right in observing that constitution revision is bigger than article nine.

Abe, in a manner similar to Charles De Gaulle, father of the French Fifth Republic with whom I've so often compared him, has une certaine idée de Japon, but do the citizens he supposedly represents as prime minister share his vision, and if they don't, is Abe willing to modify his vision? Or are the prime minister's plans for the education system a way of bending twenty-first century Japan to his vision, much as Mori Arinori's reforms of the education system in 1885 served as a means of inculcating Japan's youth with the Meiji oligarchs' vision of Japan? (See chapter three of the Ministry of Education's white paper, which discusses the creation of the modern education system; this section is especially revealing.) If that is the case, then it is necessary to ask whether Abe's vision — again, arguably the direct descendant of the ideas of the Meiji oligarchs — is appropriate for twenty-first century Japan in the first place.

But for all Ozawa's opposition, I'm not quite sure from what quarters opposition to the prime minister will come, if it comes at all. Certainly not, it seems, from within the LDP. Nor, if this post at Global Voices Online surveying opinions on constitution revision voiced by Japanese bloggers is indicative of anything, will it come from the Japanese people.

My problem, mind you, isn't constitution revision: my problem is Abe's obsession with it, which is the mirror image of the tendency of some defenders of the constitution to treat it as a kind of sacred totem. For Abe is intimately wrapped up with the constitution, revision being as much a personal as a political matter for him — just look at how he writes about his grandfather in his book.

If Japan is to revise its constitution, it should do so under a prime minister who is capable of soberly assessing the matter, not one who is utterly consumed by the idea of revision as redemption.

Preserving American dynamism

As the 2008 US presidential election ramps up, it seems that the biggest looming question -- perhaps even bigger than Iraq -- is the question of how to preserve America's economic dynamism in the face of intense competition from the BRICs and others. Will the US economy and society be able to adapt successfully to the post-industrial world?

It seems that Barack Obama hasn't quite accepted that the challenge facing the US will not be solved by the same tired policies, at least according to this piece by economist Thomas Sowell (via RealClearPolitics). Simply easing the pain won't work; nor, for that matter, will propping up the old pillars of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party needs to become a post-industrial party, that not only pushes for relief to those harmed by globalization, but also realizes the importance of reconstructing the American economy from the ground up, to ensure that younger generations have the tools to compete.

Bill Gates -- perhaps the poster boy for the post-industrial economy -- has an op-ed in the Washington Post pointing to how the American education system needs to change. He writes:

Our schools can do better. Last year, I visited High Tech High in San Diego; it's an amazing school where educators have augmented traditional teaching methods with a rigorous, project-centered curriculum. Students there know they're expected to go on to college. This combination is working: 100 percent of High Tech High graduates are accepted into college, and 29 percent major in math or science. Contrast that with the national average of 17 percent.

To remain competitive in the global economy, we must build on the success of such schools and commit to an ambitious national agenda for education. Government and businesses can both play a role. Companies must advocate for strong education policies and work with schools to foster interest in science and mathematics and to provide an education that is relevant to the needs of business. Government must work with educators to reform schools and improve educational excellence.

Compare that with what Sowell notes about Obama's views on changing the American education system:

He thinks higher teacher pay is the answer to the abysmal failures of our education system, which is already far more expensive than the education provided in countries whose students have for decades consistently outperformed ours on international tests.

This sounds like a great way of rewarding teachers, who, through their unions, have remained one of the biggest pillars of support for the Democratic Party, but not a particularly great way to reconstruct the American education system. Changing American education means changing how and what American students are taught -- not simply pumping in more money for teachers or computers. It will actually require people to think about what's best for America's future, instead of doing what Washington does best: throwing money at problems.

For all of Obama's talk about how he wants to do things differently, is there actually any substance to his rhetoric? And, if not him, is there anyone else in the field who gets it?