The Japanese public's enduring anxiety about social security

Even as the Japanese people confronted slow growth and considered whether the longstanding institutions of Japanese capitalism would be able to guarantee prosperity in the future, they faced the prospect of an aging, shrinking population and worried about the stability of Japan's social security system. As baby boomers retire, Japanese society, like other developed societies, has become increasingly worried about whether the government would be able to meet its obligations to provide social insurance, pensions, welfare and poverty relief, and eldercare.

One has to wonder about the extent to which anxiety about Japan's social safety net has influenced household decisions about consumption, savings, and investment and their appetite for higher risk, higher yield assets during the "lost decades." The question is whether public anxiety about Japan's social safety net has depressed aggregate demand beyond the basic effects of too few Japanese chasing too many goods as argued by Edward Hugh. Arguably, the DPJ's program while in government (at least for the first year or two) was implicitly based on the notion that reducing insecurity about the safety net could yield macroeconomic benefits.

In this post, I will document the persistence of public fears about the social security system during the lost decades. Since at least the late 1990s, anxiety about the stability of the future of social security has regularly ranked at or near the top of the public's priorities in economic policy, which remains the case today. Any discussion of the impact of Abenomics on the economic behavior of Japanese households has to weigh Japanese attitudes about the social safety net. If Abe is unable to ease fears about the government's ability to provide for retirees, any gains to Japan's economic performance could prove short lived.

We can see these fears about the safety net as early as 1997. A March 1997 Asahi poll asked respondents whether they felt some anxiety about their future livelihoods. 69% said they said, versus 29% who said they did not. When those 69% were asked to explain what they were anxious about, the most common response was pensions and social security (30%). Only one other reply — "my personal health" — was in the double digits (11%). The same poll asked respondents to state the degree to which they felt confident in the future of public pensions systems. 42% expressed either great (5%) or some (37%) confidence, while 55% expressed either little (44%) or no (11%) confidence.

The next year an Asahi poll found that more respondents were most uneasy about pensions and social security (30%) than about Japan's economic outlook (28%), their incomes (20%), or their jobs (13%). 

Perhaps the clearest picture of public insecurity in the late 1990s can be found in an extensive July 1999 poll on questions related to Japan's aging society. The poll was based on face-to-face interviews with 2122 respondents nationwide, marginally more than Asahi's monthly telephone polls, which usually have between 1500 and 2000 respondents.

The survey paints a portrait of wide and growing anxiety among the Japanese public about life after retirement. Asked if there is anything in particular they feel uneasy about for their retirement, 28% of respondents said they were most uneasy about living expenses and other economic concerns, the most popular choice and an increase of six points over a 1994 poll on aging issues. Even more dramatic was the finding that 85% of respondents did not believe that contemporary Japan provided for a secure retirement. The survey found the public was concerned about the "fairness" of the social security system (23% thought it fair, 68% did not); was nearly evenly divided over who should bear the burden of higher medical costs as a result of aging (25% said to make the generations currently working pay more in premiums, 32% said the elderly should pay more in premiums and fees, and 28% said that all should pay more through a consumption tax hike); and believed that most attention should be paid to pensions as opposed to health insurance or nursing care insurance. The same poll found that when asked whether they expect the state pension system to provide for them, roughly two out of three respondents either greatly (33%) or to some extent (32%) said they counted on their state pensions. 

As Japan's stagnation deepened, the public focused more on economic policy than on the safety net, and public opinion polls reflected shifting priorities. Polls during the Koizumi years simply did not ask questions about welfare, social security, or pensions. It was almost as if through his frenetic activity in other policy areas Koizumi Junichirō made the Japanese public (and the Japanese media) forget about Japan's aging society and safety net anxieties.

However, when polls did ask the public to assess the Koizumi government's social security policies, the response was not favorable. For example, in an April 2004 poll concerning Koizumi's first three years in office, 67% of respondents said they did not approve of Koizumi's pension reforms. 

By fall 2004, anxiety about the social safety net had returned to the top of the public's concerns. Asked in September what they would like the recently reshuffled Koizumi cabinet to make its top priority, 52% said pensions and welfare, topping all other choices by a considerable margin, including jobs and growth (28%). By December, dissatisfaction with the Koizumi government's handling of pensions grew, with 76% disapproval (and only 13% approval).

Of course, postal privatization dominated public discourse for the bulk of 2005, but public concerns about the pension system did not vanish: a poll taken in November 2005, after Koizumi's landslide victory in September and another cabinet reshuffle, found that 56% wanted the government to make pensions and welfare its top priority, with jobs and growth policy in second place with only 17%.

Koizumi effectively bequeathed to his successors a public hungry for the government to fix the social safety net. Polling in advance of the 2006 LDP leadership election repeatedly showed that voters wanted the election to focus on social security. For example, in January 2006, 45% of respondents said the campaign should center on "how pensions and health care ought to be," followed by 28% of respondents who wanted it to center on fiscal reconstruction and taxation. In September, after Abe Shinzō became prime minister for the first time, 43% of respondents said Abe should make pensions and welfare reform his top priority, with growth and jobs in second place with 17%. (And only 2% wanted Abe to focus on revising the constitution.) Abe, of course, suffered a crippling blow with the emergence of the "vanishing pension records" scandal, in which it was discovered that due to carelessness on the part of the Social Insurance Agency the pensions records of up to 50 million people may have been missing data. The scandal served only to heighten preexisting public fears that the social security system was not in fact secure, and ensured that it would remain a critical issue for the government to address.

The global financial crisis changed the public's priorities — but not as much as one might expect. A poll published on September 12, 2008, three days before Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, found that 40% of respondents wanted the government to focus on the economy and government finances, while 37% wanted the government to make pensions and social security its top priority. Despite the latest downturn, reforming the social security system remained high on the public agenda, especially after the DPJ took power in 2009 and appointed Nagatsuma Akira, the parliamentarian who challenged Abe on the missing pensions scandal, minister of health, labor, and welfare. Under the Kan government, social security reform became tied up with the consumption tax issue, as Kan Naoto fought to tie consumption tax revenue to social security funding, which Noda Yoshihiko ultimately succeeded at doing in 2012. A February 2011 poll actually found public support for this version of the consumption tax increase: 53% agreed with a consumption tax increase in order to secure social security funding, with only 35% opposed. (The same poll found that if asked if they support a consumption tax increase with no tie to social security, 46% were in favor and 45% opposed.)

Noda obviously struggled to make his case to the Japanese people but it was not for a lack of concern on the part of the public. In late August 2012, after the tax increase had passed both houses of the Diet, an Asahi poll found when asked how confident they were in the social security system, 64% of respondents expressed not much (47%) or no (17%) confidence in the system, compared with 35% who had full (3%) or some (32%) confidence in the system. The same poll found the public evenly divided (43% in favor versus 43% opposed) over the idea of shifting resources from spending on the elderly to spending on child care and strongly opposed (60% opposed versus 31% in favor) to charging citizens over 70 more in fees for health care.

For the moment the social safety net is once again second to economic policy in the priorities of the Japanese public. But if the Japanese people have had a constant concern over the past fifteen-twenty years, that concern is the viability of Japan's social safety net. As Koizumi discovered, if and when the economy improves, concerns over social security are bound to grow — and as Abe learned during his first government, those fears can prove fatal to a government. It is not entirely clear what the Japanese public expects their government to do to strengthen the social safety net, since support for tax increases to bolster social spending has proven so fragile. There may ultimately be nothing the government can do to reduce anxiety about the strength of the social security system. In an aging society public anxiety about the soundness of the safety net — particularly in an age of high budget deficits — may simply be an enduring fact of politics. Abe may have bought himself a temporary reprieve, but sooner or later public attention will turn back to the social security question.

The next post and the last in this series will look at public opinion polling on attitudes towards saving and investment, an important indicator of 1) how much risk Japanese households will tolerate, 2) how eager Japanese households are to participate in new-style shareholder capitalism, 3) how much households are benefiting from the Abenomics boom, and 4) the degree to which Japanese depend on the social safety net for their retirement living expenses.

Aso stumbles out of the gate

In Asahi's latest opinion poll, the Aso cabinet's approval rating fell seven points to 41%, and its disapproval rating rose six points to 42%. The skepticism of nonaligned voters about Aso Taro continues to grow, at least in this poll: the approval rating among nonaligned voters fell seven points to 24% and rose seven points to 48%. The DPJ also edged ahead in polling for lower house proportional representation voting.

Nakagawa Hidenao looked at this poll and concluded, "Stopping the trend of 'It's good to trust the DPJ with government one time' thinking among independents ought to be placed at the center of the LDP's strategy."

I'm not quite clear why Mr. Nakagawa thinks that this is a viable strategy — this was the closing line to his post, so until he elaborates, it's hard to know what he's thinking — but I doubt that this strategy will work. How does the LDP intend to demonstrate that the DPJ doesn't deserve even a single chance at governing, when the public is increasingly realizing that perhaps the LDP has had one too many chances at governing. Does Mr. Nakagawa really believe that the DPJ is so bad that it can't possibly be trusted with power? Really? Worse than the worst elements of the LDP, against whom the structural reformers have struggled and continue to struggle? If so, it's little wonder that there are few signs that the structural reformers are prepared to cut their ties with the LDP.

But given Mr. Aso's inability to crack the fifty percent ceiling, it is no surprise that the prospect of a snap election is receding into the distance. Mr. Aso emphasized in budget committee proceedings Monday that he is not thinking about an election at all, that economic stimulus takes precedence. The possibility of a dissolution and general election before the end of October appears nil. The Aso government, it seems, is fishing for an issue that it can use to rally the public to its standard. The DPJ has wisely decided that it will not block the government's supplementary budget containing its economic stimulus package. The bill will pass the lower house on Wednesday or Thursday before moving to the upper house, which may pass the bill by the end of next week. In doing so, the DPJ has deprived the LDP of the one issue that might have put the DPJ on the defensive. Based on opinion polls that showed considerable public interest in the economic stimulus plan, the DPJ would likely have been punished if it opposed the government's plan. At the same time, however, the government will not get all that much credit for doing what the public expects it to do.

In the meantime, the LDP still has to find an issue that will give it some momentum in an election campaign. What's left for the government? A unified consumer affairs agency? Not something that voters would oppose, but not exactly something they'll be excited about either. The MSDF refueling mission? Foreign policy will not win turn the tide for the LDP, not when the DPJ can criticize the LDP for its mishandling of pensions and health care. Expect to see more of Nagatsuma Akira, the DPJ's "Mr. Pensions," in the coming weeks and months. On Monday, Mr. Nagatsuma questioned Mr. Aso and Masuzoe Yoichi for seventy-five minutes, asking questions on the pensions problem for more than half the time. The 2007 pensions problem may be the gift that keeps on giving for the DPJ. The LDP can promise pro-growth policies, but it has little control over whether the economy will turn around before the next election (other than delaying the election as long as possible in the hope that growth returns before September 2009). While it is unclear what impact the deepening global financial crisis will have on the Japanese economy, it will likely have a psychological impact on the Japanese public, heightening feelings of economic insecurity. This can only help the DPJ.

Little wonder that Mr. Aso's numbers are trending downward. He is wholly unable to take control of the situation.

Recommended book: Race for The Exits, Leonard Schoppa

Japan's pensions and health care systems may be the rocks against which the LDP smashes to pieces.

Last year, Abe Shinzo's failure to respond quickly and decisively to reports of missing pensions records doomed his faltering government. Now, under Fukuda Yasuo, the government is still struggling to account for missing pensions records and is reeling from public criticism of its new health care system for citizens over 75 years old. The LDP, meanwhile, stands at the brink of a brutal, potentially irreconcilable debate over whether to raise consumption taxes to finance the pensions system.

As a result of this struggle to decide how Japan will provide for its burgeoning elderly population as the population shrinks as it ages, Japan will find its regional and global influence limited as governments are forced to focus on "livelihood" issues and devote the government's scarce resources to fixing the health and pensions systems.

How did it come to this?

Leonard Schoppa, a political science professor at the University of Virginia, provides a useful explanation in Race for The Exits: The Unraveling of Japan's System of Social Protection (Cornell University Press, 2006).

Professor Schoppa's thesis starts from Albert Hirschman's concepts of exit and voice. Hirschman argued that members of a social organization, if dissatisfied with the organization, have two choices in responding to their dissatisfaction: exit, whereby they leave the organization entirely, or voice, whereby they make their grievances known and work within the organization to fix the problem. Exit, however, can play an important role in bringing about change by signaling to decisionmakers that they have a serious problem on their hands. In looking at Japan's contemporary economic problems, Schoppa suggests that Japan's problem is that citizens and businesses have a moderate amount of exit options, enough to encourage some who are frustrated to exit but not enough (until recently) to signal to Japan's leaders that there is a problem. Moderate exit options also diminish the power of voice, by shrinking the number of dissatisifed members of society who might otherwise have exercised voice and mobilized for change.

Schoppa looks in particular at the decisions made by two actors in Japanese society: women and companies. He argues that the postwar "convoy capitalism" system's welfare provisions rested on sacrifices made by these actors. Firms agreed to protect their core workers and offer them generous benefits upon retirement. Women left the workforce to marry, raise children, and eventually care for aging parents and in-laws. Both sacrifices enabled Japan to emerge as a "welfare superpower" without busting the government's budget.

As Schoppa wrote:

The role of the state in providing social protection was kept deliberately small, with a primary focus on providing pensions and health care insurance for the elderly. Government aid to the unemployed, single mothers, and children remained minimal in comparison with social provision in European welfare states, leaving the task of providing for these groups primarily in the hands of firms and women. Employers were not alone, however, in their efforts to live up to the lifetime employment commitments that were at the heart of the Japanese social contract. Banks and elaborate "relational networks" gave firms the economic security they needed to provide security for their employees, and the state stood ready to back up these networks by guaranteeing banks against failure and other regulatory interventions. Likewise, women were channeled into their prescribed roles through policies that tolerated gender discrimination in the workplace and through tax and benefit policies that discouraged full-time work and subsidized full-time housewives. (65)

(This section is from the conclusion of chapter 3, "Productive and Protective Elements of Convoy Capitalism." For an introduction to the Japanese welfare state, read the whole chapter.)

The system worked so long as Japan was kept in its postwar homeostasis, its economy relatively closed to the world, its firms restricted in their exit options and women pushed into and confined to household roles. It could not survive the transition to a globalized economy in which success depended more on openness. Accordingly, the task facing Japan's leaders is less the refurbishment of existing welfare institutions than the wholesale construction of news ones in which the Japanese state plays a much larger role than before, because firms and women are less willing to bear the bulk of the responsibility for welfare.

The problem, however, is that neither firms nor women have so many exit options that they can make a statement by leaving. The "hollowing out" problem is now well acknowledged, but the relocation of manufacturing facilities may or may not have been a response to high costs in Japan, as some FDI (such as to the US) may have been a hedge against protectionism; it is difficult to know precisely the basis for firms' location decisions. And it was years before outflows of FDI came to be seen as a problem by Japanese leaders. In the meantime, Japanese firms have not mobilized on behalf of deregulation to lower labor costs

In the case of women, the shrinking population problem, considered a consequence of decisions by Japanese women to not get married and to not have children, was similarly difficult to detect, and the government's response was similarly handicapped by limited exit options. What's needed are new measures that enable women to both remain in the workforce and have children. Working mothers, however, have exit options in the form of giving up work to become full time mothers or giving up motherhood to work fulltime. The result, argues Schoppa, is an insufficient number of working mothers to exercise voice and demand more support from the government.

To fortify his argument, Schoppa points to two cases in which the government was quick to reform, cases in which there were either plentiful or no exit options: the LDP's decision in the early 1990s to create a new eldercare system and the big bang financial reforms introduced in the 1980s and 1990s. In the former case, Schoppa argues that women in particular mobilized in support of more eldercare provisions because "with elderly relatives...women have no way out." Accordingly, they appealed to the government for help with providing for the elderly. On financial reform, firms became able to raise cheaper capital in other financial centers, diminishing the power of banks and the Ministry of Finance. The extent to which Japanese firms opted to exit made clear to both the banks and MOF that the firms were fleeing to escape the high cost of capital domestically, and both shifted accordingly in response.

But how long can this situation of moderate exit options persist? How much longer are Japanese firms willing to tolerate the high domestic costs that come with preserving the remnants of convoy capitalism? Is there a limit to their forbearance? Are Japanese firms silently abandoning the Japanese system by embracing ever increasing numbers of non-regular employees (part-time, temporary, or dispatched workers)? There is no doubt that this shift is underway. The report on the composition of the Japanese workforce by type of employment compiled by the statistics bureau of the ministry of internal affairs and communication — available here (Excel file) — shows the inexorable rise of the non-regular Japanese worker. In February 1988, regular employees constituted more than 80% of the labor force. Temporary workers provided by haken gaisha didn't exist. The number dipped downward during the 1990s, falling just below 75% in 1999. From the 1999, the decline hastened, falling below 70% by the end of 2002. The average figure for January-March 2008 is 66% regular staff, 34% non-regular staff. There are now reportedly 1.45 million dispatch workers and more than 10 million part-time workers (the number has fluctuated above 10 million since 1999). With this shift well underway, it is little wonder that Japanese politicians and citizens alike are concerned about the growth in inequality.

So why aren't these new permanently temporary workers using voice to demand the government's help, given that they have few or no exit options? This points to a deficiency in Schoppa's book, namely, voice is comparatively underexplored. Is the weakness of voice simply the result of some choosing to exit, thereby limiting the political clout of those who remain? Or do actors find voice options less attractive than exit options for other reasons? Do actors opt for exit because they convince themselves that you can't fight city hall (or Nagata-cho, or Kasumigaseki)? Is it a matter of lack of organizational skills or resources on the part of those who want the system changed, as opposed to those who want to protect their privileges under the existing system? Alternatively, could actors have opted for the wrong voice options, choosing for example to work with the LDP instead of exercising voice by working to see the LDP defeated by an opposition party more sensitive to their needs?

Schoppa suggests that politics is not to blame. "For the first time in the country's history," he writes, "individuals and firms have the wealth and freedom necessary to pursue private solutions to their economic problems — solutions that make perfect sense from an individual or corporate perspective but actually aggravate economic problems at the national level...the passion and energy that women and firms might have devoted to political campaigns to transform the system of convoy capitalism have evaporated." (204)

I find this unsatisfying and suspect that the problem may not just be the strength of reactionary elements — cited by Schoppa as an argument made by some political scientists — but a sense of resignation and powerlessness, even among corporate elites.

Accordingly, Schoppa's account is an important contribution to the discussion of why the Japanese government has struggled with reform over the past two decades, but it leaves a number of unanswered questions.

Nevertheless, I share Schoppa's bleak assessment for Japan's future if it fails to act now. The danger, he suggests, is that if these negative trends are not addressed now, they will lead to a downward spiral – a "race for the exits crisis" — that will result in "a steeper fall in fertility rates, high levels of emigration, a collapse of confidence in government bond markets, and capital flight." (206) At the center of Japan's problems is the central government's massive debt; the longer it persists, the greater the likelihood that the government will be handicapped in its efforts to provide a system of social protection desired by Japanese citizens. In order to save Japan from this crisis, he looks to its political leaders — and finds them wanting. He spoke of the promise of Koizumi Junichiro, but ultimately writes his government off as disappointing, having failed to provide a compelling vision of a new system.

"What Japan needs," he says, "is a political entrepreneur who can sell the public on the attractions of an alternative system that can provide social protection as well as growth, one that is clearly superior to a system of convoy capitalism that is headed toward collapse."

Surveying the contemporary political landscape, it is still difficult to see how this political entrepreneur might be.

One more month

As anticipated, the Fukuda cabinet has decided to extend the extraordinary (and extraordinarily long) Diet session thirty-one days, to 15 January, ensuring that the sixty-day rule will take effect and allow the House of Representatives to pass the new anti-terror special measures law.

As noted by MTC, the extension means that the Diet will recess for two days — when the LDP and the DPJ will hold their national conventions — before reconvening for the regular session of the Diet on 18 January.

Has the government, as suggested by Komeito, "crossed the Rubicon?"

It may look that way, especially since the decision to extend the Diet session — in effect a demonstration of the government's resolve to do whatever it takes to pass its bill — has coincided with the reemergence of the pensions scandal at the forefront of the national discussion. Mr. Fukuda has acted quickly in an attempt to soften the blow — in this week's mail magazine, he wrote, "As the representative of the Government, I offer my apologies to the people for the misconduct that has gone on for many years" — but his public support will probably drop some more, and, as suggested by Jun Okumura, Masuzoe Yoichi may be forced to offer up his head, an unfortunate consequence for the government.

Is this the beginning of a death spiral that will result in a dissolution, a general election, and possibly a change of ruling party? As reported by Mainichi, Komeito is evidently not convinced that the government will be able to avoid a snap election. And, of course, the LDP has given the DPJ yet another gift that will allow it to remain on the offensive against the government.

But I still think that should the Upper House pass a censure motion against the government in response to the re-passage of the anti-terror law in the House of Representatives, Mr. Fukuda will be able to ignore it and carry on with governing, at least for the time being.

It is interesting to see the approach that the prime minister has taken in response to the new pensions scandal. Aside from wasting no time in apologizing to the Japanese people, he has also wasted no time in making clear that the issue is the bureaucracy and its failings:

It turns out that in numerous cases these unidentified records involve rudimentary mistakes, including typos and record transfer errors, on the part of the Social Insurance Agency. The further we advance in our investigations, the more it has become apparent just how slipshod work had been at the Social Insurance Agency. Each and every one of the pension records is directly connected to the livelihood of a person. Nevertheless, the Social Insurance Agency failed to act in a manner consistent with this basic fact, which I find to be truly regrettable.

Is Mr. Fukuda able to take this approach — which Mr. Abe conspicuously did not take when first faced with this issue — because of the supposed respect he receives from the bureaucracy? (Remember back to September when this was mentioned frequently as one of the strong points of his candidacy for the LDP presidency.) Is it a matter of principle, a burst of Koizumism? Or is it simply an expression of LDP survival politics, an acknowledgment that the LDP is more than willing to jettison the bureaucracy's privileges to save itself?

Whatever the case may be, it would truly be a shame if Mr. Masuzoe — who, as I've discussed before, sincerely believes in the need to transform the bureaucracy to limit the kind of behavior noted above by the prime minister — were to be forced out of the cabinet as a result of the bureaucratic misdeeds against which he has railed.

Viva the lifestyle restoration!

Jun Okumura gives a thorough fisking to a BBC article that completely misses what's actually going on in this election campaign. In fact, the article seems to be little more than a bundle of cliches strung together with, as Jun notes, a few illustrative anecdotes.

All the BBC had to do to get this story right was look at the Yomiuri Shimbun's editorial today. Yomiuri complained, once again, about the supposed inadequacies of the national debate leading up to the Upper House elections. About the constitution, Yomiuri asks in its headline, "Why are we not debating the country's image in the future?"

The fact that this election hasn't been about the constitution, despite Prime Minister Abe's solemn declaration in January to make the election about revision, actually gives me hope for the future of Japanese democracy. In opinion poll after opinion poll, in every newspaper, the Japanese people have said "Thanks, but no thanks — we would rather talk about our pensions, education, and health care systems."

No one is spared Yomiuri's wrath for this intervention of the people's mundane concerns into an election that ought to be about the figure cut by Japan on the international stage. Prime Minister Abe? "Prime Minister Abe, who floated the idea of 'getting rid of the postwar regime,' simultaneously declared, 'constitution revision is the point of contention of the Upper House election.' The promise at the start clearly expressed the aim of proposing constitution revision to the Diet in 2010. But during the election campaign, it appears there has been a weakening of his attitude." Ozawa and the DPJ? "We also have doubts about the stance of the DPJ President Ozawa," due to his history of taking a firm stand in favor of constitution revision in the past but now backing away because of political opportunism (i.e., the desire to see power in the Upper House change hands).

It seems that the only party talking about constitution revision — judging from their campaigning outside the station on my way home tonight — is the Japan Communist Party, and obviously they are resolutely opposed to the idea.

Let me say it again: I think it's a cause for hope that the parties, especially the LDP, have been forced, in no small part due to the DPJ's questioning in the Diet, to bend to the will of the people and address the issues that are the source of widespread insecurity among the Japanese people. An election based on constitution revision, an abstract matter far removed from the lives of 127 million Japanese, would be a travesty, a sign of the moral bankruptcy of the political class in the face of mounting challenges. It's not entirely clear to me why an election grounded in strong doubts about political corruption and government failures in Tokyo is somehow removed from a consideration of Japan's "image in the future." Arguably, it has more to do with how Japan will be governed over the coming decades; the idea of Japan's being a regional or a world power with the aging Japanese public living in fear that they won't be properly cared for in their old age and with an attenuated LDP trying to hold power at all costs is laughable.

And so with nine days to the election, the DPJ has gotten its wish: this is a lifestyle election. Will the Japanese people take this golden opportunity and actually turn out to punish the government? And if given a stake in the leadership of the Upper House, will the DPJ be able to parlay that into a serious run for control of the Lower House?

Keys to victory

With less than two weeks to election day, the campaign is beginning to take shape. Allow me to play John Madden (substitute a TV sports analyst of your choice) for a moment and give you what I think are the LDP's and the DPJ's Keys to Victory.

Insert flashy opening montage + brassy theme music here.

For the LDP, the key seems to be if not changing the subject, at least spinning it in such a way that allows the LDP cast the pensions issue in such a light so that it reflects not on the LDP per se, but on the "postwar regime" as a whole, giving credence to Abe's "getting rid of the postwar regime" message. And so voters will hear speeches like this one by Nikai Toshihiro, chairman of the LDP's Diet Strategy Committee, described in an article in Asahi (not online).

"People who say they are worried about the pensions problem, please raise your hands." On the evening of the 15th, Nikai Toshihiro, the LDP's Diet strategy committee chairman, spoke before a crowd of 400 people at an official candidate's assembly in Osaka. Seeing no one raise a hand, Nikai continued. "No one, it seems. This is the reality. The 'head wind' is nothing to fear. An airplane flies straight into a head wind." (Note: head wind is the ubiquitous term being used by the media to described the conditions facing the LDP in advance of the election.)

「年金問題で心配だ、と言う人は手を挙げてくれませんか」。１５日夜、自民党
の二階俊博国対委員長は、大阪市内であった党公認候補の決起集会で４００人を前にこう訪ねた。誰も手を挙げないのを見て、二階氏は続けた。「いないでしょ。これが現実なんです。逆風は何も怖いことはありません。飛行機は逆風を突いて飛ぶんです」。

A chart published in the same article shows a gradual softening of public concern on the pensions and "politics and money" issues. The question for the LDP is whether public concerns are softening fast enough. With less than two weeks to the election (instead of one), the Abe Cabinet's delaying tactics may yet reap dividends. With each day that passes, with each campaign speech by LDP candidates and senior officials explaining to voters why the current problems are anything but the government's fault, public opposition is likely to soften further in the next two weeks. It will probably not translate into higher support for the government — but the government does not need to be loved, it just needs to not be hated with such a passion that people march to the polls on the 29th to send a message to the government. The government will probably be helped further by Mr. Abe's leaving the hustings in Kyushu to rush back to Tokyo upon receiving news of the earthquake in Niigata.

Indeed, if Asahi's latest poll is to be believed, getting Abe away from candidates might be the best thing that the LDP can do, with forty-five percent of respondents noting that their opinions of Abe have worsened following his handling of the ongoing Akagi affair.

Meanwhile in the face of the LDP's efforts to soften public outrage, the key for the DPJ is turnout, turnout, turnout — which means playing upon (and perhaps playing up) the fears and insecurities of voters. Having handled a succession of DPJ fliers and the party's manifesto, I can attest to the party's message as being little more than a drumbeat of worrying news about taxes and pensions. The latest looks like pensions passbook, with details inside about who is at risk from having their pensions vanish. In other words, for the headwind to persist, the DPJ needs to continue to huff and puff. (Don't take this analysis as criticism of the DPJ — there are problems, and the government should be held accountable. I'm just talking about campaign strategy.)

From where I stand, it seems that without more bad news, another two weeks of repeating the facts may eventually lose its efficacy as a way of raising turnout. Of course, the Abe Cabinet may yet oblige the DPJ with yet another scandal that helps the opposition make its point. But barring that, another thirteen days of mollifying words — delivered by LDP candidates themselves, many of whom have been elected two or more times and thus can somewhat distance themselves from the Abe Cabinet, if not the LDP — may be enough to undermine the DPJ's efforts and snatch a victory (or an outcome that can be spun as a victory) from the jaws of defeat.

As I made clear in my discussion of the campaigns in the twenty-nine single-member districts, victory for the DPJ is far from certain — and there is a floor to how low the LDP can go.

No one benefits from the pensions scandal?

The Asahi Shimbun published a chart today that shows public opinion regarding responses to the the pensions crisis (sadly, it does not appear to be online).

Asked if they appreciated the Abe Cabinet's response to the pensions scandal, 59% of respondents said they did not appreciate it to 24% who did.

That's not so surprising, but the following is:

Asked if they appreciate how the DPJ has wrestled with the pensions scandal, 45% said they did not appreciate it to 27% who said that they did.

The poll also shows that insecurity caused by the scandal has diminished only slightly.

Consider that given a scandal of massive proportions, the DPJ still cannot spark enthusiasm among voters for its program. Consider also that despite the three years since the last Upper House election, the LDP and the DPJ are in the exact same range of popularity that they were a month before the election three years ago (2004, DPJ-25% to LDP-24%; 2007, DPJ-25% to LDP-19%).

I think this illustrates a point I made yesterday: the public doubts the entire political class. After the mismanagement of the post-bubble economy, the clumsy responses to the Hanshin earthquake and the Aum subway attack, the worsening financial crisis in the late 1990s, and then the tease that was Koizumi, the Japanese people have had enough (and who can blame them). The pensions scandal is just another brick in the wall, and it was a mistake to assume that it would automatically cause a surge of support for the DPJ. And so while the LDP feels the loss of public trust more acutely than other party, clearly voters are not all that discriminating when it comes to casting doubt on Japan's political class.

And so now that the Abe Cabinet's "162 days of achievement" — the title of this week's Abe mail magazine (I kid you not) — are over, the political environment will become a little more ambiguous, and more challenging for the DPJ. Stories about the government's ramming bills through the Diet will be replaced by light-hearted stories about Koike Yuriko's experiences in her new job (like her struggles to find what to wear to her first review of the troops). The emanation of decrees from the Kantei will be replaced by the realities of the campaign. Politics will become local, momentarily, with candidates and their supporters interacting with voters, calling in favors, emphasizing their incumbency and long service to the people. Remember, this is what the LDP is good at: the DPJ is still not even close to the LDP when it comes to local organization, although the gap has closed somewhat. While Abe will do his best to make life difficult for LDP candidates — an article the other day, in Yomiuri I believe, quoted an LDP candidate in Shikoku discussing how inconvenient the prime minister's visit will be — in general the campaign machines will do their job, counteracting to some degree the pervasive gloom in the government camp.

The government may still be due for a blow, but a few weeks of softball news stories and asinine (dare I say apolitical) campaigning, combined with an election date selected to ensure that no one will be around to vote, may be enough to make the blow more like that of a pillow than a boxer's first.

And yet the DPJ just revised its target upward from 50 to 55? (Over)confidence? Braggadocio?

Calling out the generalissimo

The DPJ has issued another campaign flier featuring a comic strip that tells the story of how the Abe government learned of disappearing pension payments in December 2006 and covered it up until questioned by DPJ Diet members in May.

Here is the last panel:


This panel asks, "For what purpose is the election postponed?" In the foreground, Abe says, "The Diet session was extended in order to pass the administrative reform bill," to which the DPJ bluebird replies, "What administrative reform law! Didn't you just make a state-managed 'amakudari temporary staffing company [haken kaisha]?" In the background, meanwhile, Abe and his cackling LDP cronies talk about the real reasons for delaying the elections: "Let's delay the election by all means. The people will soon forget." "If we make it in summer," says his advisor, "no one will be here." The bluebird replies, "I wonder to what extent they look down upon the people."

This panel is interesting as much for what it reveals about the DPJ's fears approaching the election as for what it reveals about the DPJ's thoughts about the Abe Cabinet. Undoubtedly the DPJ leadership is gravely concerned that Abe's Diet extension stunt will work: the month will pass, memories of the government's incompetence will wilt in the summer heat, and the government will emerge from the election a bit scrapped up but still in command of the Upper House — with two years to do whatever they wish before having to face the voters again. But the party also, of course, sincerely believes that the Abe Cabinet's vision of Japan is one wholly at odds with the concerns of the people they claim to represent. Just in case readers are unclear on that, the flier's back cover removes all doubt:


There he is, the commander in chief himself, resplendent in a uniform not unlike those favored by Latin American strongmen (and labeled with his favorite phrase — hint, it contains the word beautiful), surrounded by symbols of his government's dismal failures: the lost pensions, which "broke future dreams;" the juminzei tax hike, which bullied the weak; the decision to approve textbooks that claimed that the military had nothing to do with ordering Okinawans to commit collective suicide; and the renewed dispatch to Iraq. And then there's the mug shots of his advisers, including Foreign Minister Aso, who suggested that Japan consider a debate on developing a nuclear arsenal, former Administrative Reform Minister Sada, who misused political funds, Tax Commission Chairman Honma, who had a discounted love nest in Tokyo, Health Minister Yanagisawa, who insisted that women are baby-making machines, and lastly, the late Matsuoka Toshikatsu and his expensive fresh water. It was printed too early to include former Defense Minister Kyuma in the rogue's gallery. (Meanwhile, the uniform is a not-so-subtle reminder of Abe's family history and the provenance of some ideas favored by him and his cronies.)

This is actually similar to a suggestion I made a month ago: the DPJ should make "a video compilation of all of Abe's apologies for gross mistakes made by his government, with a cameo or two from Ministers Yanagisawa, Kyuma, Aso, and, of course, Mr. Nakagawa." While this flier is considerably less effective than a video that would let Abe and his ministers speak for themselves, the idea is the same. Time and time again, the government has given the opposition ammunition for its campaign. It's about time they put it to good use, although, that said, it is unclear how exactly voters will respond to this. Will it be enough to make them put off their vacation, or else submit an absentee ballot to register their disgust with the generalissimo's government?

For the DPJ, the worse the better

With the Upper House elections little over a month away and public outrage over the pensions scandal seemingly unassuaged, the DPJ has found another angle to emphasize the government's indifference to the plight of the average Japanese citizen.

A comic strip, available online here, is being distributed to voters in a flier, the cover of which features a Japanese couple in distress, moaning that rising taxes and social security contributions are a major headache for their lifestyle: "These six years, the burden on people's lifestyle has risen nine trillion yen. This is the source of growing inequality!"

The growing tax burden refers in particular to reports that from this month, many Japanese are set to see their tax contributions rise as a result of recent adjustments in the balance between central government and local government taxation. The shift meant that from January many saw their tax burden decline as the central government's tax take fell; now, in June, their taxes will rise again rapidly. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, for a family of four with annual income of 5 million yen, the tax burden that was 10,950 yen until 2006 will rise to 14,100 yen. For a family of four earning 10 million yen annually, the tax burden will rise this month to 66,190 yen from 61,580 yen. (These numbers from an article in the Hokkaido Shimbun.) An article in Asahi (not online) notes that taxpayers have been swamping city offices with questions about the tax hike.

The DPJ's hope, of course, is that tax worries and anger at the government's handling of the pension scandal will combine to form a perfect storm that smashes the LDP next month.

It is important to remember, however, that the DPJ is hardly better off than the LDP, as an Asahi tracking poll showed the DPJ dropping below the LDP again, 24% to 23% in Upper House proportional representation races. The DPJ may well ride this storm to victory — but not because it is beloved by the voters. As a certain wise man noted in conversation last night, in any other democracy the opposition would be cruising to victory with 90% support, given the issues that the Abe government has laid at the DPJ's doorstep.

Meanwhile, it is far too hasty to write off Prime Minister Abe, contra this FT article that relies almost entirely on Abe rival Tanigaki Sadikazu to suggest that Abe could be made to resign if next month is a DPJ landslide. Clearly Abe is surrounded by a number of retainers who will be made to lay down their lives for their master (take a Nakagawa or two) — and even former Prime Minister Koizumi has suggested that Abe should not resign even in the face of a rout, arguing that "if prime ministers change every year or two, there cannot be reform." (Has Koizumi looked at what his successor is doing, or not doing as the case may be?)

While few seem to dispute that the LDP is the underdog going into this election, there is still considerable uncertainty about what is to come. Expect to hear more — day in, day out — about how LDP governments pick the pockets of the average Japanese family.

What grades will Abe bring home at term's end?

So the Diet session that was due to end this week has been extended an extra twelve days.

In a press conference on Friday, Prime Minister Abe tried to dispel reports of dissent within the LDP on the question of extending the session — there has been a steady drumbeat of stories in the major dailies on vocal opposition to the plan — and insisted that the extension is for the good of the nation.

Meanwhile, he suggested that the people not think about the delay in the Upper House elections in "technical" terms. (I assume that's what he would call this, eh MTC?)

An article in this week's Economist actually spells out the mood fairly well. Some nine months into the Abe administration, it's hard to enumerate exactly what this government has achieved that it can present to voters. The national referendum bill? Just like the opinion polls consistently showed, constitution revision is unimportant to voters, especially when compared with, say, pensions and health care (shocking, I know, that such matters would be important to a rapidly aging society). Extending the JSDF mission in Iraq? As argued in this post at Glocom's blog, it is unclear that the Japanese people are especially aware of the facts surrounding the mission in Iraq. The loophole-ridden political funds control law revision? The looming amakudari bill?

For a government bolstered by an unprecedentedly large majority, that is a tremendously meager legislative record, and when you add in the return of the postal rebels to the LDP, the backtracking on the highway funds reform, inappropriate statements by cabinet ministers, coddling by the prime minister of cabinet ministers accused of corruption, and continuing diplomatic isolation in the six-party talks, it is hard to see upon what the Abe Cabinet can campaign. The good fortune of governing at the same time as a growing economy? I guess that's the plan.

Meanwhile, this Diet extension has the unmistakable air of an undergraduate's asking for an extension on a paper the night before the due date — even though the date was clearly marked on the syllabus months before. (I had the stomach flu! It was that burger George gave me at Camp David!) Now Abe is scrambling to cobble together some legislative achievements to fling at the voters.

Teacher — his governing majority — may be generous, but will mom and pop (aka the Japanese voters), worried about making ends meet, be quite so willing to continue supporting Junior's "education" with so little to show for it?

Death of the 1955 system? Greatly exaggerated.

With Prime Minister Abe turning his attention and blame to the hapless bureaucrats in the Social Insurance Agency — those bureaucrats who have served as the fly in his constitution revision ointment — the Japan Times published a piece by Philip Brasor discussing the actual conditions within the agency, and the bureaucrats who lorded over citizens, namely the citizens who lacked the protection of company pensions.

Brasor's point: "What the pension crisis teaches us is that the main task of bureaucrats is not service but self-preservation, which makes them actually quite human, and also a bit pathetic."

Bureaucratic self-preservation is common to just about every bureaucracy in the world, but few bureaucracies enjoy the prestige and high status of Japanese bureaucrats. This is undoubtedly factor in the stunted development of Japanese liberalism. Both by undermining civil society and by co-opting politicians by helping them use the policy making system on behalf of private interests, bureaucrats have preserved their kingdom — and lorded over Japan's citizens. The bureaucrats are not entirely to blame for this situation, of course. They have just done what generations of Japanese bureaucrats have done. The blame, instead, falls on the shoulders of Japanese politicians, many of whom are former bureaucrats, who have utterly failed to use the power of the legislature to provide oversight for the bureaucracy and demand accountability. And some blame too should be laid at the feet of the Japanese people, who have accepted, willingly or not, the system whereby elected officials and bureaucrats have cooperated to serve anything but the public interest.

Similar to my argument here, through an utter lack of accountability from inside or outside government, Nagatacho and Kasumigaseki have colluded to misgovern Japan. Change of government in 1993 by no means ended this system. And now the consequences of this collusion is being felt directly, even painfully, by Japanese citizens.

The pensions fiasco and the crumbling LDP

Chris Salzberg of Global Voices Online provides the best single roundup of the widening pensions scandal I've seen. Every day brings new twists to this scandal, and Salzberg does a public service by assembling the story into some coherent narrative, with a healthy dollop of quotations from the Japanese blogosphere.

The most striking thing about this has been just how amateur the LDP's response has been: completely blindsided, the government has stumbled every step of the way. It took weeks — during which they were pummeled every which way — before the government got around to shifting the blame to someone else (Koizumi, Kan Naoto, etc.). You cannot apologize profusely and repeatedly and then shift the blame to someone else. You apologize for it, you own it.

The fact of the matter is that the LDP is not a modern political party. It has not made the leap to the "mass communication" age, Abe's appointment of a communications adviser notwithstanding, and is thus completely lost in a media environment in which no single voice can prevail. As the Koizumi era recedes into the past, it has become increasingly clear just how much everyone was "hoodwinked" by Koizumi: the modern, urban LDP that Koizumi represented was but a thin veneer covering the fundamentally rotten hulk that has covered Japan into the ground.

The pensions scandal has shown that the LDP remains, as always, a party more concerned with holding power than with good, responsible governance in service of a policy agenda. But whether the voters will punish the LDP for it next month remains to be seen.

Reading the proverbial tea leaves

In light of the new Asahi poll showing that the DPJ has expanded its lead in the proportional representation races for the Upper House, 29% to 23%, it is interesting to consider Shisaku's discussion of whether a Lower House election is also possible this year.

Now, I don't disagree with his conclusion: "damnably unlikely." With its Lower House majority artificially high due to the LDP's stealing "seats in the urban areas that by all rights should be Democratic Party seats," there's pretty much one way that the LDP's majority can go. (Hint, it's down.)

But then, a lot of people are talking about the possibility of an election. My boss, who makes no secret of his desire to attempt a jump to the Lower House at the next opportunity, anticipates the next election to be before the 2009 deadline, perhaps as early as the autumn. His staff — myself included — have focused on canvassing in the Lower House district in which he'd compete. For an election that is supposedly two years away, there is a tremendous amount of time and money being spent now.

That, of course, is no guarantee of anything, but it does show that people are taking the possibility of a Lower House election before the end of the year quite seriously.

Why?

Allow me to offer some thoughts. (Ed. — What have you been doing until now? It's called throat clearing.) First, it seems that the Matsuoka-pensions problem double whammy has changed everyone's thinking on the political landscape. A merely weak and unpopular cabinet seems to have been transformed into a powerless and unpopular cabinet, led by a prime minister who appears to be able to do little more than apologize, repeatedly. A gloom has descended upon Nagatacho. The Diet continues to sit, debate, and pass legislation — and may even do so for longer than scheduled — but there is no joy in Mudville. Think back to early May, when "Shinzo" was fresh from his summit with "George" and he was celebrating the constitution's birthday by proclaiming his intention to tear it to pieces. There was a buoyancy to this government that seems all but spent.

The DPJ is now the buoyant party, as it has grasped the government's gift with both hands and (to use another sports metaphor) is rushing for the end zone. It has been remarkably mishap-free in the weeks since the pensions issue broke, and that's important. Yomiuri might nag about how the DPJ is short on specifics, but for the moment the public seems less concerned about the DPJ's shortcomings than the fact that bureaucrats mishandled the pensions of millions — and the government was slow in responding to it.

So what is the significance of this? Well, if we go back to Gerald Curtis's account of how the 1993 change of government happened, we can recall that political change in Japan is overdetermined: a number of factors, many were apparent only in hindsight, combined to unseat the scandal-ridden LDP. And much depended on the tactical decision making of individual politicians, not least Ozawa Ichiro.

What do we have today?

Corruption-tainted cabinet. Sordid, messy incident involving a cabinet minister. Prime minister lacking popular appeal. Incompetent handling of major source of income for millions. Talk of the post-Abe period by cabinet ministers. Ozawa Ichiro at the helm of the opposition (whatever his failings, he is wily and unpredictable).

These factors may not add up to significant change — but then again, they might. There's enough uncertainty out there that I cannot rule out a Lower House election by some chain of circumstance that will look perfectly clear in hindsight, especially if the fears raised by the pensions scandal render the electorate impervious to the government's blandishments.

And people call Japanese politics boring.

Reverting to form

The responses of both the LDP and the DPJ to the unfolding pensions scandal are illustrative, depressingly, of how little the Japanese political system has changed.

The LDP's response has been nothing short of all-out panic. With Upper House elections little more than a month away, the LDP is trying to kill this issue as quickly as possible. Cabinet and LDP officials, from Prime Minister Abe down, have taken to making effusive apologies for the scandal that has sparked fears among the Japanese people that they will not receive their pension payments. (Yesterday it was Health Minister Yanagisawa; today it was Internal Affairs Minister Suga.)

In an article in Yomiuri's "Scanner" feature, meanwhile, it seems that I was right to think that this election will not be about constitution revision after all: "Until now, the prime minister has stressed three times his thinking that constitution revision is the main point of contention in the Upper Election elections; he had expressed no particular intention that the pensions problem should become a point of contention. But lately, in the face of a headwind, policy is changing."

Instead, it seems that the new direction is to act quickly to stifle the pensions issue, and then talk about innocuous issues with broad support (i.e., the abductions issue). Another article from Yomiuri, which also does not appear to be online, reinforces the idea that Abe will be talking a lot about abductions in the coming weeks — in part because Abe's special advisor on abductions, Nakayama Kyoko, will be running as a proportional representation candidate next month. At the same time, former Prime Minister Koizumi has hit the campaign trail, campaigning for a former member of his cabinet. It seems that Abe's people are, appropriately, more afraid of a drubbing next month than in having Abe overshadowed by his predecessor, and so Koizumi will be wheeled out in the hope that he will be able to rally support for his "children" and help the LDP retain their seats.

In the midst of all of the turmoil, it seems that whatever independence Abe had, for better or worse, is being subsumed by the LDP's burning need to win elections. The old hands seem to be taking control of the situation. It was for this reason that one should not be too quick to talk about how the policy making system has changed. In good times, with high public support, the prime minister may have a free hand to initiate some policies of choice, but when things turn bad, the leash is tugged and the system reverts to form; this happened with Koizumi to a certain extent as his popularity fell.

Abe's powerlessness will no doubt increase as he checks out of the country to hobnob with his fellow world leaders at the G8 summit in Germany. "Go on, play statesman with your friends, junior," the LDP bosses are no doubt saying, "we'll take care of everything while you're gone."

Meanwhile, the DPJ's role in all this has been depressing in an entirely different way. After months of dithering about how to contend the Upper House elections, the DPJ has sprung into action — but only after being handed an issue on a silver platter. Even if the DPJ manages to ride this issue to a major victory next month, its deficiencies as an opposition party will remain. Nevertheless, the mood within the party seems buoyant, and the party is straining to exploit this opportunity in any way possible.

Coming full circle

Back in November, I wrote, "The policy differences between the LDP and the DPJ are too slight for the DPJ to build a campaign on anything other than personality and competence at governing."

At that point, it was too early to tell just how incompetent the Abe Cabinet would be. But in the seven months since, time and time again Abe has demonstrated his basic inability to manage his cabinet, his government, and his party.

The latest example is, of course, the pension payments scandal. Shisaku provides an excellent breakdown of what exactly this scandal means, and readers will note that the second of his two points is "governmental competence." That is the proper basis for the DPJ's resisting the Abe Cabinet's plans to rush bills reforming the Social Security Agency and lifting the statue of limitations on payments through the Diet, although, as Mr. Shisaku rightly notes, resisting on when the public is demanding action is hard to do.

Will rushing bills through the Diet to quiet the furore prevent this from being an issue in July? Not if the DPJ begins, immediately, to illustrate how on issue after issue the government has failed to conduct policy with a basic amount of competence: the yarase mondai, road tax, the nuclear weapons debate, the feud with the Bank of Japan over interest rates, the various indiscreet remarks of ministers, the national referendum bill, and now the gross mishandling of pension payments. The DPJ should be reminding voters of how many times Prime Minister Abe has had to say something like, "People are saying, 'I made all my pension contributions dutifully and with all sincerity, and yet now I find I cannot get my full pension.' Such an outrageous situation is totally unacceptable. My Cabinet will ensure that absolutely no one loses out on their pension payments." Now there would be an ad (although, alas, negative campaigning is nonexistent): simply a video compilation of all of Abe's apologies for gross mistakes made by his government, with a cameo or two from Ministers Yanagisawa, Kyuma, Aso, and, of course, Mr. Nakagawa.

Meanwhile, going back to Ampontan's post earlier this week, if Japanese voters simply vote their pocketbooks, I wonder what higher tax bills from June onward will mean for the July elections. I mean, that's the reason why all discussion of the consumption tax has been postponed until autumn, right?

Does Abe have nothing to worry about come July?

From the English-language blogosphere's resident Abe apologist comes another post arguing that all is well in Abe's beautiful Japan.

Hey, Ampontan, do you do this pro bono, or is there some kind of secret yarase blogger program run out of the Kantei? If the latter, is it too late to sign up?

I think, if the price was right, I could write posts with titles like "Let us all thank our Dear Leader for making Japan so beautiful," "Never stop being so gorgeous Japan," and "How did you get so gosh darn beautiful in the first place?"

Scratch that. I would rather ask pointed questions than make excuses, even if it doesn't pay nearly as well.

Seriously though, does Ampontan really think that this whole sordid Matsuoka affair is going to vanish overnight? This is unprecedented in the political history of modern Japan: a sitting cabinet minister committing suicide, as investigators began to uncover gross misuse of his ministry to favor political supporters. While it remains too soon to tell what impact it will have on July's elections, it is also too soon to wave it off by suggesting that Matsuoka's death will "close the book" on the seiji to kane issue of which he was emblematic.

I love Ampontan's alternative: pocketbook issues are what matter, so let's all stop paying attention to the massive corruption — and the government's alleged role in covering it up — and talk about how Japan's economy is growing again. No mention, of course, about the lingering doubts about the depth and breadth of the recovery (Ken Worsley's Japan Economy News blog has documented the bevy of mixed signals on the "longest sustained expansion" in the postwar period). This just doesn't hold water. And Ampontan doesn't even ask the obvious question of whether the Japanese people, the people who will, you know, be voting in July, are actually benefiting from The Longest Sustained Expansion in Postwar Japan. [Ed. - Laying it on a bit thick, aren't we?]

Arguably that's why the pensions scandal — which Ampontan also seems to dismiss — is important. When people are economically insecure, they tend to worry about reports that their source of income may be disrupted due to government incompetence. Is it really appropriate to doubt that the pensions scandal might be important in a country in which the percentage of over-65s in the population is set to rise sharply?

All of which goes to say that it's impossible to say at this point what issue will move this election. In Japan, more than in the US, all politics is local (to use a quote from American politics that it's even more appropriate for Japan than the quote used by Ampontan for the title of his post), making it difficult to tell which issues that seem important at the national level will filter down to the local level and affect voter behavior.

But that is no excuse for saying that all is well because the economy is growing: there are plenty of reasons for Japan's voters to "throw the bums out," even if it is unclear whether they will opt to do so (another topic of discussion entirely).