Back in action

MTC, after going on hiatus in advance of the official campaign period, is posting again, firing a salvo against the besieged Mr. Abe.

After laying out how Mr. Abe has become an albatross to the LDP — and demonstrated his worthlessness as a leader, he asks, convincingly, "So what is the benefit of having Abe Shinzō carry on--for members of the LDP, that is?"

To quote Victor Laszlo, "Welcome back to the fight. This time I know our side will win [more than it already has]."

Who's the adult here?

One trope that has emerged in the days since the election has been talk of "adult politics" in terms of how the DPJ will conduct itself as the Upper House's largest party. The fact that it is even necessary for the DPJ to promise that it will act "grown up" is a sign of just how far the party has to go before it is ready to hold power (this stunt, for example, doesn't strike me as particularly adult).

But, at the same time, one has to wonder who exactly is adult in the Japanese political system. Prime Minister Abe? The way he has reacted to the defeat — to the outright rejection of him and his leadership by the voters — is little better than that of a petulant child. This article in Asahi shows him consulting with Messrs. Mori, Nakagawa (Hidenao), and Aoki in the midst of the defeat and insisting that he will not be resigning no matter what. Mr. Abe might think it makes him look courageous, holding his ground in the face of growing opposition, but in fact it makes him look like a stubborn toddler refusing to eat his vegetables or go to sleep at bedtime.

So the question is how and when the grown-ups will finally punish Mr. Abe. Will he be felled by a kind of frontal assault in the Diet in the manner of Kato Koichi's aborted attack on Prime Minister Mori in 2000, building up public support and then moving against the prime minister? This time around, with party discipline in shambles, such a gambit might work, because it's hard to see the threat of expulsion from the party carrying the same weight as it did then. That scenario depends, of course, on someone having the courage to do it. Alternatively, will Mr. Mori, the LDP capo di tutti capi, finally make Mr. Abe an offer he can't refuse and put a steadier, more senior hand at the wheel who will listen to the wisdom of party elders? (Mr. Abe, for his part, recently met with former Prime Ministers Mori, Nakasone, and Kaifu for advice, and he was told to make his next cabinet an all-faction unity cabinet; it remains to be seen whether he'll take that advice.) Another scenario would be a kind of pincer movement, with a reformist upstart challenging Mr. Abe in the Diet while the elders sneak in from behind and finish the job.

Whatever the case may be, I increasingly doubt that the LDP's "civil war" will last all that long. I expect over the next few weeks that the newspapers will be full of rumors and innuendo concerning potential moves to unseat Mr. Abe before swift action against him. After all, the virtue of a parliamentary system is that when a leader descends into the Bush range of unpopularity, while possessing the same tenuous hold on reality, there are steps that can be taken to show said leader the door.

The emerging contours of post-7/29 politics

I am back from the lunchtime session with Professor Curtis, who gave a thorough and pessimistic account of the era in Japanese politics coming into being.

I do not think it inappropriate to speak of a new era in Japanese politics; Professor Curtis is certainly convinced that Sunday's catastrophic electoral defeat for the LDP marks the beginning of a new period of policy stasis, political gridlock, and perhaps the catalyst for the final destruction of the LDP. Indeed, the one bright spot in his remarks was the idea that this election was a victory for Japanese democracy — a notion I discussed here — since the voters punished the government for its inattentiveness to their concerns.

I will not even try to provide a full summary of his talk, which contained enough nuggets of wisdom to fill a long article or two, and anyway, you will be finding bits and pieces of his talk in foreign press coverage of the election over the next several days. I will, however, give you his main points. First, this election, rather than signifying an embrace of the DPJ, represents a vote of no-confidence in Prime Minister Abe, with voters saying no to his leadership, his policy priorities, and to his predecessor's economic reforms (at least in the countryside). Accordingly, Professor Curtis insists that Abe should resign on account of the failures being a product of his insecurities, his ideological obsessions, and his reliance on yes-men, and yet he won't: "He does not get it. He does not know why the voters rejected him." (In that sense, Abe is just like his grandfather, who just couldn't understand why the people were demonstrating against him and his treaty. As Abe wrote in his book — mentioned in this post — "I asked my grandfather, 'What's ampo?' I dimly remember that thereupon he answered, 'The Mutual Security Treaty [ampo] is a treaty so that Japan will receive protection from America. Why everyone is opposed to it, I don't understand.'")

Professor Curtis sees no good scenario resulting from the election, and he does not envision an early departure for Mr. Abe, who will try to use the cabinet reshuffle to signal a "new start" for his government. (Indications suggest that the reshuffle will not come until early September, after Mr. Abe's tour of Indonesia, India, and Malaysia.) He will hold power in large part because opposition within the LDP is scattered and cowardly, an unfortunate consequence of the Koizumi era, which resulted in the emasculation and marginalization of faction heads and actors who might moderate the Kantei. At present, Abe's opponents, including the "New YKK" of Kato Koichi, Yamasaki Taku, and Koga Makoto, as well as former Finance Minister Tanigaki are unable to agree on a successor — aside from preferring anybody but Aso — and are thus unwilling to take steps to oppose formally and publicly Abe's remaining in power. This despite the widespread recognition, according to a senior LDP politician with whom Professor Curtis spoke about the election, that the LDP is like the Titanic except the passengers know it is going to sink — and they are powerless to stop it.

An intriguing question raised by Professor Curtis is whether Komeito, seeing its candidates lose unexpectedly and still caught uncomfortably between its principles and the pull of power, will use this defeat as an opportunity to back out of the coalition, or whether it too will go down with the ship. For the moment, it looks like Komeito won't be going anywhere.

And the DPJ? Professor Curtis praised Ozawa for his brilliant electoral strategy of swooping in to rural areas alienated by the Koizumi reforms, but cautioned that Ozawa has a "fifteen-year-history of upsetting expectations that he will do good things for Japan," and that his overweening pride and inability to cooperate with those who disagree with him undermine any party with which he is affiliated. He nixed the idea of any DPJ members leaving for the LDP, given the extent of the LDP's loss, but he was skeptical of the idea that the DPJ is ready to assume the reins of power and suggested that the best thing for the DPJ might be Abe's holding on to power for longer, giving them time to consolidate and build on their gains, and draft a coherent agenda — this of course runs contrary to DPJ's now publicly stated objective of using its Upper House position to force an early general election.

So at this point anything is possible. An LDP crackup, a new partisan realignment, a moderate coup within the LDP that unseats Mr. Abe and tries to draw the DPJ's conservatives to the LDP, Mr. Abe's cabinet somehow lasting until September 2009, an early election called by Mr. Abe to try to profit from DPJ obstructionism: any one of these scenarios is possible, which in the meantime will mean that the policy making process grinds to a halt.

The morning after

The final breakdown: DPJ 60, LDP 37, Komeito 9, Independents 7, JCP 3, SDPJ 2, PNP 2, NPJ 1.

That gives the opposition parties 137 seats to the government's 105, with the DPJ becoming the largest party with 109 seats, more than the government parties combined. With the thirty-two-seat differential between opposition and government parties, there is no possibility for the LDP to undermine the election results by political legerdemain.

Interestingly, the DPJ won big without a major increase in turnout, which was 58.64%, only a slight increase over 2004.

As expected, the full significance of the election will take some weeks to sink in, with a cabinet reshuffle not likely to come until September. The landslide has, of course, already claimed LDP Secretary-General Nakagawa and Upper House head Aoki, but the battle lines within the LDP are being drawn. Older party barons are making supportive gestures to the prime minister — each faction head has reportedly indicated his support — but it seems that younger party members are more inclined to jettison the Abe albatross. Yomiuri quoted former JDA chief Ishiba Shigeru as saying, "Prime Minister Abe should resign. If he doesn't, the LDP is finished."

The DPJ, meanwhile, has stated that its goal is an early dissolution of the Lower House and general election. But while the DPJ comes out of this election with a strong tail wind in its favor, it will face the tricky task of preserving its momentum. Recall that right up until the pensions scandal broke in May, the DPJ was riven with infighting, with members openly questioning the wisdom of the party leadership. The factional and ideological divisions remain. The whiff of power that comes with control of one house of the Diet may temper the divisions somewhat — after all, the LDP has survived for decades despite being more a microcosm of a party system than a cohesive political party. But then again, if Ozawa is forced to step down for health reasons, the resulting leadership fight could aggravate the party's rifts.

And that's before even considering the ideal strategy for managing the Upper House. Should the DPJ be uniformly opposed to the government's agenda, making the Upper House the place where the government's policies go to die? Doing so might force the government's hand on a Lower House election, particularly if the public expresses its distaste for policy gridlock. Alternatively, should the party make a good faith effort to forge a national agenda, or at least national policies? I suppose it all depends on whether there really is a way for the opposition to force the government to cede its super-majority anytime before September 2009. I see little reason to think that the LDP will be tricked into doing so.

And what of the balance of power between LDP, Kantei, and bureaucracy? Will the bureaucracy find its policy making powers restored in the face of gridlock in the Diet? If so, it would reinforce the idea that Japan is in for a period of policy stasis, because the bureaucracy is hardly likely to be the vehicle for dynamic change.

I will have more to say about this election later today — and I will address Noah's questions in the comments then. In the meantime I'm going to the FCCJ to hear Gerald Curtis's take on the election.

The results are in...

UPDATE, 1:04am — The final five PR seats have yet to be assigned, but regardless of which party gets them, the impact of this election is hard to understate. The polls leading up to the election were correct: the LDP was abandoned by voters across the country. Urban voters, rural voters, all opted to oppose the LDP by voting for the DPJ. This election may prove an important milestone on the road to a proper two-party system.

I will dissect this election over the coming days and weeks as the fallout becomes more apparent, but for now, the 135 to 102 distribution of seats between governing and opposition parties (as of now) suggests a new balance in the Japanese political system, the government's Lower House super-majority notwithstanding.

Meanwhile, NHK just reported that Ozawa has been AWOL this evening due to illness.

And on that downbeat note, here ends my live blogging of the 2007 Upper House elections.

UPDATE, 12:50am — NHK reports that LDP Secretary-General Nakagawa Hidenao has submitted his resignation to Prime Minister Abe.

UPDATE, 12:41am — Two more PR seats, one to Tanaka Yasuo's New Party Japan, one to Kokumin Shinto. Five remain.

UPDATE, 12:38am — NHK has called Fukui for the LDP by a margin of 192,439 to 189,642. The LDP now has 35 seats to the DPJ's 59, with seven left. The final count of single-seat districts? The final count is 23-6 in favor of the DPJ, four seats below what I thought was the LDP's worst-case scenario.

UPDATE, 12:33am — Does anyone else find Ozawa's absence on the night of one of the greatest triumphs of his political career unusual? NHK is running through the results, and in prefecture after prefecture, DPJ and DPJ-backed candidates have won convincing victories. With eight seats left undecided, it is probably safe to say that Ozawa's strategy of prioritizing building campaign organizations throughout the country over confronting the government in the Diet has paid off (although he obviously had a lot of help from the Abe Cabinet). And yet Ozawa is nowhere to be found.

UPDATE, 12:25am — The final margin of victory in Kagoshima is 402,395 votes to 399,227. The race is similarly close in Fukui, which is the last open single-seat district.

UPDATE, 12:23am — Responding to Ken's comment, NHK is reporting that Marukawa is the sole LDP winner in Tokyo, meaning yes, Hosaka is out.

UPDATE, 12:16am — Kagoshima has been called for the LDP, raising its total to 34 versus 59 for the DPJ. The JCP has picked up another PR seat, its third seat.

UPDATE, 12:10am — Komeito wins another seat, now up to eight. Down to ten seats...

UPDATE, 12:07am — NHK has yet to call Kagoshima, where the LDP leads the DPJ by 3,000 votes with 99% counted.

UPDATE, 12:04am — The DPJ's Mito Masahi — for whom I prepared fliers — has won the third seat in Kanagawa Prefecture, giving the DPJ two of the prefecture's three seats. The DPJ now has 59 seats to the LDP's 33, with eleven left.

UPDATE, 11:52pm — The LDP has won the fifth and final seat in Tokyo, LDP seat number 33. Twelve seats remain.

UPDATE, 11:49pm — One more LDP seat, DPJ 58, LDP 32, thirteen left. Of those thirteen, nine are PR seats, one is in Fukui Prefecture, one is in Kagoshima Prefecture, one is in Tokyo, and one is in Kanagawa. In the single-member districts, the current balance is 23-4 in the DPJ's favor, with two remaining.

UPDATE, 11:38pm — And another, now DPJ 58, LDP 31.

UPDATE, 11:36pm — The DPJ defends a seat in Niigata, raising its total to 57. Fifteen seats left.

UPDATE, 11:32pm — Another LDP win means the balance is now DPJ 56, LDP 31, sixteen seats left. NHK has been interviewing the party heads in rapid succession (Hatoyama and Kan have spoken for the DPJ, but still no sign of Ozawa). The party heads look uniformly exhausted, DPJ included. Kan and Hatoyama seem barely capable of showing any sign of exhilaration.

UPDATE, 11:24pm — DPJ-backed independent Morita Takashi has won in Toyama Prefecture, another opposition win in a single-seat district. Seventeen seats left...

UPDATE, 11:20pm — Komeito picks up its seventh seat, this one in Tokyo, leaving one more that will presumably (?) go to the LDP candidate. Imagine though, if the LDP is locked out of Tokyo after winning all but two of Tokyo's twenty-five Lower House seats in 2005 (one went to the DPJ's Kan Naoto, the other to a Komeito candidate).

UPDATE, 11:07pm — While Hatoyama is interviewed, the screen shows that the DPJ has won in Saga Prefecture in Kyushu, raising its total to 56 seats, now with nineteen remaining.

UPDATE, 11:05pm — Abe is being interviewed on NHK now. Same blank stare, apologetic phrasing — and now he's speaking of building a "new country" instead of a "beautiful country." (Apparently a country in which the opposition controls one house of the Diet is no longer fit to be called beautiful.)

UPDATE, 10:59pm — One more LDP win, 30 to the DPJ's 55 with twenty seats left. (A number of the seats that remain too close to call are in Kyushu, and if the DPJ emerges triumphant there, then its victory will be total, having beaten the LDP resoundingly throughout the country.)

UPDATE, 10:43pm — Mainichi reports that LDP Secretary-General Nakagawa will, not surprisingly, be falling on his sword to protect the prime minister: "It is my responsibility as secretary-general. I want to apologize to the prime minister for all the results." Meanwhile, the LDP picks up two more, raising its total to 29 to the DPJ's 55, with twenty-one left.

UPDATE, 10:31pm — Another upset in Chugoku: Kokumin Shinto candidate Kamei Akiko has defeated the veteran LDP incumbent Kageyama Shuntaro. This is Kokumin Shinto's first victory of the night, and adds another seat to the majority already won by the opposition. Twenty-three seats left...

UPDATE, 10:28pm — NHK just showed footage of Ozawa Ichiro on the campaign trail, the first I think I've seen of Ozawa this evening. But now Abe is getting to speak at LDP headquarters; he's wearing the same blank, unblinking stare as Nakagawa, with perhaps the glint of a tear.

UPDATE, 10:23pm — The LDP has lost each of Shikoku's four single-seat election districts, one better than my most optimistic prediction. The fourth winner was retired J-leaguer Tomochika Toshiro, running as an independent in Ehime.

UPDATE, 10:17pm — Prime Minister Abe is at the dais at LDP headquarters, receiving modest applause as underlings indicate the locations of the party's latest victories and Abe places a rose next to each. (And Katayama, the loser in Okayama, has just apologized for his loss.)

UPDATE, 10:08pm — Phrase of the night: "Tough conditions." [厳しい状況]

UPDATE, 10:05pm — NHK reports that the balance in the single-seat districts is now 19-3 in favor of the DPJ. DPJ has now reached the upper limit of my predictions for the single-seat districts, with seven more to go. And LDP Upper House head Aoki has just described the situation in the single-seat districts as "extremely tough."

UPDATE, 10:02pm — I kind of wish that NHK would cut over to Pyongyang to Kim Jong Il's Upper House election night party and show the Dear Leader doing a round of banzais every time a DPJ win is announced.

UPDATE, 9:51pm — NHK calls Okayama for the DPJ's Himei Yumiko, who has apparently defeated LDP Upper House Secretary-General Katayama Toranosuke. I predicted that "If Katayama cannot hold onto his seat, the LDP is in major trouble." Major trouble, indeed. NHK has also called Nagasaki for the DPJ. DPJ 55, LDP 27, twenty-four seats left.

UPDATE, 9:48pm — The DPJ adds one more, now 53 to the LDP's 27. Twenty-six remaining.

UPDATE, 9:45pm — It looks like Yamamoto Ichita, the LDP incumbent in Gunma, may be the only LDP candidate who can sleep easy tonight, doubling up his rival with sixty percent of the vote tallied.

UPDATE, 9:43pm — NHK reports that Prime Minister Abe has arrived at LDP headquarters. Cannot wait for that press conference...meanwhile, the LDP defends a seat in Osaka, meaning that with twenty-seven seats left, the DPJ has 52, the LDP 27.

UPDATE, 9:37pm — An independent candidate in Tokyo picked up one of the five seats, raising the independent total to six. Twenty-eight remain to be called.

UPDATE, 9:35pm — The LDP picks up another seat, one of the three in Kanagawa. DPJ 52, LDP 26, with twenty-nine seats left. Meanwhile, NHK is reviewing some of the seats yet to be called, showing excruciatingly close races in Okayama and Shimane. (And among the LDP losers is Tamura Kohei, who critized Abe for his "beautiful country" rhetoric.)

UPDATE, 9:19pm — DPJ Secretary-General Hatoyama, meanwhile, looks shell-shocked. The history books will record this as a landslide for the DPJ, but the results make it look easier than it's been. And Komeito just picked up another seat, its sixth, leaving thirty seats left to be called.

UPDATE, 9:16pm — Interview with Nakagawa Hidenao...his face is still frozen in that eerie blank stare. I mean, really, he's barely blinking.

UPDATE, 9:05pm — The single-seat district balance is now 17-3 in the DPJ's favor.

UPDATE, 9:04pm — NHK is currently at LDP headquarters, showing LDP Secretary-General Nakagawa sitting in front of a microphone with about as blank a stare as I have ever seen on his face. One more called for the DPJ, now 52 to 25, with another called for an independent. Now thirty-one seats remaining. The opposition parties now have 121 seats, the line of majority.

UPDATE, 8:58pm — One more called for the DPJ, now 51 to the LDP's 25. Thirty-three left.

UPDATE, 8:56pm — While waiting for more results, they're now showing the headquarters of Tani Hiroyuki, DPJ candidate in Tochigi, who has been declared the winner over LDP candidate Kunii Masayuki, a veteran norin zoku. I had expressed doubts about Tani's chances, although I noted his chances for an upset. It seems that the Japanese voters did indeed opt for a new era in Japanese politics.

UPDATE, 8:52pm — Another called for the DPJ, DPJ 50, LDP 25, thirty-four to go. NHK is currently looking at results in Kanto, where the balance at this point is DPJ 12, LDP 3. Seems like a good sign that the urban appeal the LDP gained under Mr. Koizumi is gone.

UPDATE, 8:50pm — Two more called for the DPJ, DPJ 49, LDP 25 with thirty-five seats still to be called.

UPDATE, 8:48pm — Kyoto is called, not surprisingly splitting its two seats between the LDP and the DPJ. Thirty-seven left, DPJ 47, LDP 25.

UPDATE, 8:47pm — Thirty-nine left now...DPJ 46, LDP 24.

UPDATE, 8:45pm — Balance is 114 to 87 now, with forty-one seats left. DPJ 45, LDP 23.

UPDATE, 8:40pm — Forty-four seats left, DPJ 43, LDP 22. Still waiting for most of the seats in three- and five-seat districts, and about half the single-seat districts. The current balance in single-seat districts is DPJ 12, LDP 3.

UPDATE, 8:38pm — Forty-six seats left, DPJ 41, LDP 22. The opposition has 110 seats, the governing coaltion 86.

UPDATE, 8:35pm — NHK gives 19 PR seats to the DPJ, 11 to the LDP, 5 to Komeito, 2 to the JCP, and 1 to the JSP.

8:30pm — The results for all but forty-seven seats have been called, and it's already shaping up to be a good night for the DPJ.

The results as of now: LDP 22 seats, DPJ 40 seats, Komeito 5 seats, JCP 2 seats, JSP 1 seats, Independents 4 seats.

NHK has also ran through the exit polling from each district and it looks as if the rural revolt went as planned, with the exit polls suggesting that the DPJ could pull off upsets deep in the heart of LDP country in Shikoku, Kyushu, and the Chugoku region of Honshu.

More soon as results come in...