Masuzoe threatens the LDP

In a press conference at LDP headquarters Tuesday, Masuzoe Yoichi, the upper house member and former cabinet minister who is one of a handful of politicians respected by the public, said that while he will try to do what he can within the LDP, he said that his ultimate aim is a political realignment — and that he would not rule out any possibilities, including leaving the LDP to form his own party.

In the meantime, he is, in the best LDP tradition, forming a study group that will no doubt serve as a focal point for his reform movement.

Masuzoe has, of course, already criticized LDP president Tanigaki Sadakazu for his ineffectual leadership. The question, however, is what Masuzoe can do to realize a political realignment.

To do so he would have to be able to draw defectors away from both the LDP and the DPJ. Doing the latter will be difficult: Ozawa Ichiro has enough carrots and sticks at his disposal to ensure that the DPJ's backbenchers won't stray. Seeing as how the backbenchers thus far have little reason to defect for policy reasons, it is hard to see how Masuzoe could entice DPJ defectors. Which leaves the LDP. While Masuzoe is popular with the public and was a welcome presence on "two-shot" campaign posters for LDP candidates last summer, it is unclear just how much support he has within the LDP. He has prided himself on his independence, which has been good for his public image but bad for his ability to organize LDP members in a reform movement.

Given the current circumstances, a Masuzoe movement could wind up as little different from Watanabe Yoshimi's Your Party, which has been irrelevant since the Hatoyama government took power. And as I've previously discussed, reform within the LDP appears to be at a standstill. Tanigaki welcomed the New Year by calling for the Hatoyama government to resign, dissolve the House of Representatives, and call a snap election. (Seems a bit farcical for the LDP to challenge the DPJ on corruption.)

Reforming the LDP — or, alternatively, building a second major political party — will not be simply a matter of changing the party affiliations of politicians in Tokyo. Ozawa spent the 1990s trying to build a second major party in Tokyo and failed. Masuzoe will have to build a movement from the ground up, recruiting new candidates (preferably ones who are not hereditary politicians), crafting new policies that critique the DPJ's approach to public problems while offer constructive proposals, and genuinely starting a new style of politics. The DPJ itself is trapped between a new style of politics and the old way of politics, as Hatoyama's and Ozawa's scandals suggest. The DPJ's campaign over the summer pointed the way to a new, less personalistic style of politics in which political parties build and maintain national brands and in which national party leaders are capable of disciplining backbenchers and keeping them on message.

The biggest problem for Masuzoe may be policy. In the past I've referred to his way of thinking as "humane reformism." A critic of Koizumi Junichiro's populism, Masuzoe has, like the DPJ, stressed a focus on improving health and welfare services. I have a hard time seeing how the ideas expressed here, for example, are different from the ideas of Nagatsuma Akira's, Masuzoe's successor as minister of health, labor, and welfare. Like other rich democracies, political competition in Japan is increasingly based on valence issues, issues that the public is nearly uniformly opposed to or in favor of, perhaps with the exception of foreign policy. On the issues of greatest concern to voters, the two parties have either already converged or will converge to a narrow range, leaving the parties to compete in terms on issues like corruption, leadership, and the ability to follow through on its proposals. If the DPJ's reforms of the policymaking process stick, this last issue will be crucial. The flip side of the DPJ's introduction of political leadership is that it will be harder to blame the bureaucrats.

Given these constraints, Masuzoe may be better off staying in the LDP, getting it to take his ideas seriously, develop an LDP brand that can challenge the DPJ's on the issues voters are most concerned about, and change how the LDP practices politics so that the LDP can have at least some credibility when it challenges the DPJ on corruption. He is right to look the DPJ, which succeeded in part because it was more top-down and less hereditary than the LDP.

Mr. Watanabe's rebellion

On Wednesday the House of Representatives voted on a DPJ-backed resolution calling for an immediate dissolution of the lower house followed by a general election.

Watanabe Yoshimi broke with the LDP and voted for the resolution, backing his words with action. He stated that he was prepared for whatever punishment the LDP intends to mete out for his rebellion.

The LDP did opt to censure him. According to Asahi, the LDP has "admonished" Mr. Watanabe, admonishment being the second lightest of the LDP's punishments for disobedient party members. Nikai Toshihiro, head of the LDP's general affairs council, argued that Mr. Watanabe should be expelled from the party, but his proposal was rejected.

In a press conference after the vote, Mr. Watanabe made clear that his vote is not a prelude to a break with the LDP and the formation of a new party. He claimed that he acted alone, not bothering to consult with his fellows. Later in the press conference, he spelled out his credo: "...Party before faction, state and people before party. This is the starting point for a member of the Diet." It seems that Mr. Watanabe was acting in defense of Japanese democracy; he views a general election at this juncture as essential to making progress in solving the problems that plague the Japanese polity. A simple act, but considering that none of his colleagues joined him, an act that may have taken more courage than meets the eye. Despite the bold talk from other reformists, not one did anything more than offer tepid "understanding" of Mr. Watanabe's vote. Naturally his vote garnered praise from the DPJ — Hatoyama Yukio made a congratulatory phone call — which hopes to draw LDP rebels away from the party before a general election. Ozawa Ichiro suggested that if Mr. Watanabe is willing to leave the party, he will discuss electoral cooperation with him. (Not a particularly meaningful offer, I think: there is a reason that the DPJ has yet to pick a candidate to run against Mr. Watanabe in Tochigi-3, namely that Mr. Watanabe has been quite successful in past elections.)

This will not be last we hear of Mr. Watanabe. By giving him a light slap on the wrist, the LDP has ensured that Mr. Watanabe will defy the government again at his next opportunity. Mr. Watanabe dared the party to expel him, but it refused, perhaps out of fear that booting the rebel reformist could finally open the eyes of his colleagues that the party has no place for them. Of course, that may be too much to expect. The LDP, terrified that Mr. Watanabe will encourage others to follow him, acted quickly and softly in the hope of quieting talk of rebellion and not making Mr. Watanabe out to be a martyr. Time will tell whether the party's response will succeed. Mr. Watanabe said in an appearance on TV Asahi Thursday that there is the possibility of further defiance of the government when the second stimulus package comes to a vote next year.

Journalist Uesugi Takashi suggests that there is little danger of the bill's being rejected because the controversial portion — a fixed income and residential tax cut included to assuage Komeito — is not a separate bill but simply part of the larger supplemental budget bill (hence the DPJ's calling for the controversial portion to be submitted as a separate bill). Uesugi instead sees another battle over the plan to move highway funds to the general fund as the critical point when LDP reformists may decide to break with the party.

For now it is simply impossible to predict whether Mr. Watanabe will be able to gather enough rebels to deprive the government of its supermajority. It appears that Nakagawa Hidenao's argument that there shall be no moves towards realignment before a general election has won the day in reformist circles.

Nevertheless, I give Mr. Watanabe tremendous credit for standing up against the government. In what was, to paraphrase W.H. Auden, a low, dishonest year, Mr. Watanabe has provided a glimmer of hope that there might be a leader in either party capable of rising above the pusillanimity that has characterized the behavior of all too many leading Japanese politicians over the past year.

Political Japan awaits a black swan

"SOCIAL ENTROPY: A measure of the natural decay of the structure or of the disappearance of distinctions within a social system. Much of the energy consumed by a social organization is spent to maintain its structure, counteracting social entropy, e.g., through legal institutions, education, the normative consequences or television." – Krippendorff's Dictionary of Cybernetics

The LDP is in an advanced state of decay. Not surprisingly, as its death throes worsen, as the chaos within its ranks grow, more energy is being expended simply to preserve the fiction that the LDP remains a coherent party capable of governing its own members, let alone Japan. As entropy grows, so too does the energy dedicated to preserving the structure.

The signs of decay are everywhere.

At present the leading example is the developing Watanabe mutiny, which shows no signs of abating. Watanabe Yoshimi appealed to Prime Minister Aso for cooperation in a speech in Fukushima prefecture Saturday, but only on Mr. Watanabe's terms. Mr. Watanabe criticized Mr. Aso's new stimulus package as doing little to shift power from the bureaucracy to the politicians. "Change for this country," he said, "is truly desired." Behind Mr. Watanabe stands what AERA suggests is a group of forty-eight young reformists who share Mr. Watanabe's desire for wide-reaching reform and fear for their political lives. These forty-eight, including Shiozaki Yasuhisa, chief cabinet secretary under Abe Shinzo, are more than sufficient to overthrow the government by depriving the government of its supermajority. The question is whether they are willing to do so. The article makes a good point in suggesting that the reformists may have nowhere to go: with the DPJ running candidates in nearly 250 of 300 single-member districts, many of the Koizumians — particularly those in their first or second terms — face uphill battles for reelection and are hardly in a position to run to the DPJ. In Albert Hirschman's terms, their exit option is limited, so they are left trying to exercise voice within the LDP by forming study groups and publicly criticizing the prime minister. (And the DPJ will do everything it can to encourage the exercise of voice by LDP members — just as LDP officials have cheered for DPJ members opposing Ozawa Ichiro and criticized the lack of voice within the DPJ.)

Perhaps this explains Kan Naoto's inclusion in what is now being referred to as the YKKK. Growing out of the LDP's liberal dynamic duo of Yamasaki Taku and Kato Koichi, the final two letters are for Kan Naoto, DPJ executive, and Kamei Shizuka, founder of the People's New Party. Messrs. Yamasaki and Kato are apparently in touch with the latter two regarding the possibility of a post-election realignment. Asahi reports that Mr. Kato is open to leaving the LDP before an election — as are the other two (naturally) — but Mr. Yamasaki is reluctant, saying only that his goal is ending the divided Diet. Accordingly, Mr. Yamasaki joined the six other faction leaders to voice their support of the Aso government.

Based on the combination of names, the YKKK looks to me more like a way for a potential DPJ-led coalition government to pry away some LDP members than the basis for a comprehensive political realignment. The liberals are even more alienated within the LDP than the Koizumian neo-liberals, and have little to lose from leaving the LDP. It's little wonder that Mr. Kan would want to pry the liberals into the DPJ; not only would the bolster the party's numbers, but they would strengthen Mr. Kan's group within the DPJ. Not surprisingly, Mr. Kan has rejected the notion of a realignment before a general election. (I should add that this must be precisely what Ozawa Ichiro wants: all talk of a realignment is focused on LDP members defecting, as opposed to the dissolution of both the LDP and the DPJ during a realignment. The YKKK resembles less a multi-partisan alliance than the opposition parties looking to pluck low-hanging fruit from the LDP.)

The LDP's leadership, consistent with the notion of social entropy, is taking all of these threats seriously — these manifestations of entropy within the LDP. The party elders have closed ranks around the prime minister. Mori Yoshiro, don of the Machimura faction and a former prime minister who knows something about low approval ratings, most recently lashed out at Messrs. Yamasaki and Kato, as well as Nakagawa Hidenao. "Deplorable," he said. "Nothing but carefree, thoughtless politicians who have profaned all who have done the hard work of building Japan's politics." Ibuki Bunmei, Mr. Abe's education minister and LDP secretary-general under Fukuda Yasuo, has also spoken up on the prime minister's behalf, first by arguing that the party has no choice but to stick with Mr. Aso, because the public would be outraged if the LDP picked a fourth leader without a general election (how is four any less bad than three?) and then by warning that the YKKK could be like the KKK, "assassinating" young LDP members who follow them. It's hard to describe just how offensive this is, although MTC tries. But lame attempt at a joke aside, Mr. Ibuki couldn't be more wrong. Staying loyal to the Aso LDP — Mr. Aso's name has been inserted before the party's name in recent promotional material — at the same time that the party has moved ever further from the platform that got so many of the young LDP members elected in the first place seems like a terrible career move. Mr. Ibuki forgets that the party has systematically alienated its young Koizumians in the two years since Mr. Koizumi left office. How could the YKKK, or whatever alternative emerges, possibly be worse?

The LDP leadership's goal is to both close off exit options and stifle the exercise of voice.

None of this is to say that any one scenario is inevitable. There are number of possibilities for the coming year: a pre-election realignment that involves defection of the liberals and/or the neo-liberals; the creation of a neo-liberal third party before or after the next election; no change before a general election, in which the Koizumians are defeated; a fierce leadership struggle in the DPJ should Mr. Ozawa be forced to step down due to ill health. No one can say with any certainty which scenario will come to pass. The actors themselves don't know. The Japanese political system is waiting for a black swan of one form or another, the next jump in the history of Japanese politics. "History and societies," Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote, "do not crawl. They make jumps. They go from fracture to fracture, with a few vibrations in between."

What is certain is that the LDP establishment is losing its grip over the LDP and its constituent parts. They cannot silence mutinous backbenchers. They cannot stop backbenchers from forming study groups working at cross purposes with the government. When the right opportunity comes, they will most likely be unable to stop discontented members from leaving.

And they cannot stop voters and interest groups who have long supported the LDP from breaking with the LDP to support the DPJ.

The liberals step into the breach

Watanabe Yoshimi is not relenting in threatening rebellion against the Aso government.

Speaking at a fundraising party on Monday evening, Mr. Watanabe speculated openly about scenarios for political realignment. Edano Yukio, a DPJ reformist, was in attendance and stated that if Mr. Watanbe decides to leave the LDP for the DPJ, he should be welcomed with open arms.

Mr. Watanabe's three scenarios for realignment include (1) a franchise model, the creation of a new party bearing the LDP label (the Tokyo LDP, for example); (2) the amicable divorce model, freeing Mr. Watanabe to bargain with all possible partners; and (3) the "without means" model, jumping from the LDP without any guarantee of a successful landing.

It is unclear which scenario will come to pass, if any. Mr. Watanabe may be able to rely on the support of other young reformers, but it's by no means a sure thing. The Koizumi children and their fifty-something older brothers and sisters have shown themselves to be remarkably timid. The lot of them have been waiting virtually since Koizumi Junichiro's term as prime minister ended for someone to challenge the drift within the LDP. But even now, with Mr. Watanabe talking openly about challenging the government and leaving if the LDP they cannot make up their minds. Yamamoto Ichita has, for example, argued at his blog that Mr. Watanabe speaks only for himself — he does not speak for the reformists en masse. It may be that even Mr. Watanbe does not know what he wants to do. Sankei suggests that he may be driven as much by resentment at having been bounced from the second Fukuda cabinet at then-LDP secretary general Aso's urging as by policy disagreements with Mr. Aso. As such, it remains an open question whether he has the courage to act. He may yet tell himself that he has too much to lose from breaking with the LDP (although if he keeps talking he may lose more reputationally from speaking openly about challenging the government only to back down).

In the meantime, an older generation is also speaking of realignment, namely those old allies of Mr. Koizumi, Kato Koichi and Yamasaki Taku. The self-styled liberals have little to lose from publicly challenging the Aso government and threatening to leave the party. Both are their own men, insofar as LDP members are capable of being independent. Mr. Kato, having left politics for several years after being accused of corruption, is not affiliated with any faction and is something of an outsider within the LDP. Mr. Yamasaki is a faction chief, but as a liberal (and an advocate of normalization with North Korea), he is increasingly out of place within the LDP. Little surprise then that both men have been active in discussing a possible realignment. The latest is that Mr. Yamasaki appeared on TV Monday to argue for a new party drawing members from both the LDP and the DPJ that will be able to govern following the next general election.

I would argue that neither Mr. Kato nor Mr. Yamasaki is in a position to be the catalyst for a realignment. The problem with being independent is that there are few guarantees that anyone would follow them out of the LDP. Such is the paradox facing the LDP's malcontents today. A rebellion by Mr. Watanabe is meaningfuly precisely because as a promising future leader, a former cabinet minister, and an LDP princeling he has something to lose by rebelling against Mr. Aso and the party establishment. But for those same reasons he might ultimately decided not to rebel, especially if he is unable to rely on his fellow reformists for support.

The fall

The Aso cabinet is in free fall.

The Yomiuri Shimbun has released its December public opinion poll, which found that not only has the Aso cabinet's approval rating fallen by half since the beginning of November (from 40.5% to 20.9%), but the cabinet's disapproval rating rose by twenty-five points to 66.7% during the same span of time. The poll contains bad news for the LDP on every front. The DPJ has edged ahead of the LDP in baseline approval rating (28.2% to 27.2%) and opened a commanding lead in support in the next general election (40%, a ten-point increase, to 24%, an eight-point drop) — and, moreover, Ozawa Ichiro scored higher than Prime Minister Aso when respondents were asked who is the most appropriate choice as prime minister (Mr. Ozawa's support rose to 36%, a fourteen-point increase, while Mr. Aso's fell twenty-one points to 29%). This last figure is a critical indicator for the next general election, because voters have not only abandoned Mr. Aso, they also appear to be warming to Mr. Ozawa, depriving the LDP of the argument that no matter how unpopular the LDP is, the public still does not trust Mr. Ozawa.

(For the record, Asahi's monthly tracking poll recorded similar numbers. Twenty-two percent approval rating compared to a sixty-four percent disapproval rating and a dramatic fall and rise in support for Mr. Aso versus Mr. Ozawa for prime minister.)

The only heartening news — if one can call it that — is that more respondents preferred a political realignment over a DPJ-centered or LDP-centered government, or a grand coalition, the second-most preferred option.

Of course, a political realignment is not good news at all for the LDP, seeing as how for the moment the realignment could consume the LDP while leaving the DPJ comparatively unscathed. While Nakagawa Hidenao has spoken of uniting reformers from both parties, it appears for the moment that there is no better cure for the DPJ's internal disputes than the belief that the party is poised to seize power.

But the LDP's reform movement continues apace. Appearing on Fuji TV Sunday, Watanabe Yoshimi doubled down on his challenge to Mr. Aso, suggesting that he is steeling his resolve to overturn the cabinet and arguing that an election at the close of the extraordinary Diet session is essential if Japan's government is to be capable of formulating policy. As MTC argued recently, Mr. Watanabe may be poised to do what his father was unable to do — deliver the death blow to the LDP. It is yet unclear whether he will be able to muster the support to overturn the cabinet, perhaps by voting against the government when one of the bills requiring a second vote by the House of Representatives comes before the lower chamber. He may have some help from Kato Koichi, who could be prepared to make a second bid to overturn an unpopular LDP prime minister and has been in talks with the DPJ and the PNP about electoral cooperation and the formation of a new party. Nakagawa Hidenao, undoubtedly an indispensable player in any rebellion by LDP reformists against Mr. Aso, is reportedly skeptical about leaving the LDP before a general election, presumably because to do so would be to diminish his bloc's bargaining power. At this point the plan seems to be close ranks, prepare to contest a general election under the LDP's banner but in opposition to the standard-bearer, and then see the post-election balance of power. If neither the DPJ nor the LDP achieves a majority, the LDP reformists may make all the difference in determining who controls the government. (Koike Yuriko, one of his lieutenants and another player in the fight between reformists and the LDP establishment, is reportedly "tired" of forming new parties, given that she spent the 1990s jumping from new party to new party. Her attitude may simply be a means of reinforcing Mr. Nakagawa's efforts to proceed deliberately.)

Mr. Aso's allies appear to be closing ranks, with both Abe Shinzo — representing the conservative bloc — and Machimura Nobutaka — representing the party elders — criticizing Mr. Watanabe and the other reformist opponents of the Aso government. Yamamoto Ichita, a natural leader of the reformists, has also been hesitant to echo Mr. Watanabe's full-throated opposition to Mr. Aso. In a post at his blog, he relates what he sees as the honne of the young reformers. Mr. Yamamoto dismisses the idea of replacing Mr. Aso before an election, arguing that the public would be gravely insulted, even if an election were held immediately after the formation of the new cabinet. Furthermore, he suggests that it is unreasonable to think that the LDP will be able to fix its problem simply by finding a new, more dynamic leader (he dismisses this as the Kimu Taku option, referring to Kimura Takuya's teledrama Change). This sounds like another version of Mr. Nakagawa's argument. Hold steady and prepare for the next election, but be ready to act following the election.

In considering the rapid decay of the Aso government, it bears mentioning that the reformist rebellion is not primarily an opportunistic response to the government's falling popularity. As I have argued previously, the rift between the LDP's reformists and the rest of the party has been building for years. Mr. Aso may have forced the rift open by making it clear upon taking office that his government would move away from Koizumi-ism and consolidate the LDP's counter-reformation, making it clear to reformers that the party no longer had a place for them, but he did not create the conflict between the LDP's ideological tendencies. The poll numbers may have provided the reformists with an opportunity to launch their attack, thanks to the combination of public sympathy for their efforts to trigger a realignment and a government powerless to stop their machinations, but this conflict has been a long time coming.

With even the LDP executive beginning to contemplate holding an election in January instead of convening the regular session of the Diet immediately following the New Year holiday to pass a second supplementary budget, the conflict may reach its climax sooner rather than later.

It appears increasingly likely that Mr. Aso will go down in history as having presided over the destruction of the party whose creation his grandfather so vociferously opposed. There is a certain rhythm to history, isn't there?

Conservatives, Clientelists, and Koizumians

Asahi has published a long article illustrating the feeling of crisis that has descended upon the LDP, especially following Aso Taro's disastrous showing in the latest Nikkei poll (discussed here).

After months of building, it appears that the dissolution of the LDP may finally be in motion.

The LDP can be roughly divided into three broad groupings, with some overlap: conservatives, clientelists, and Koizumians. I provided an outline of these various divisions in an article published at the Far Eastern Economic Review's website in October, in which I argued that "it is best to think of the contemporary LDP as divided not by faction or policy group, but by broad ideological 'tendencies.'" The members of these groups have largely distinct visions for how Japan should be governed and how the LDP should wield power (with some overlap, especially on foreign policy), and it is increasingly difficult to see how these tendencies can inhabit the same party. Whereas the goal of keeping the LDP in power might have once served to unite various LDP groups — the party has, after all, always been divided along a number of fault lines — this goal is no longer sufficient to unify the party, perhaps in part because power is no longer shared evenly throughout the party. Over the past seven years, one tendency or another has been marginalized within the party. The Koizumi government was essentially a coalition of the conservatives and Koizumians to wage war on the clientelists, culminating in the fight over postal privatization. The Abe government rested on an uneasy truce among the three groups, with the Koizumians gradually being marginalized as his government proceeded. The Fukuda government saw both the conservatives and the Koizumians marginalized, resting largely on the power of party elders who still aim to keep the LDP in power and constitute a power bloc in their own right. By the end of the Fukuda government, the conservatives had regained some of their strength, taking important positions in the second Fukuda government before electing Mr. Aso with a coalition of conservatives, clientelists, and party elders. The Koizumians, marginalized virtually since Mr. Koizumi left office, have hinted at forming their own party (see this thread), but have done little more than talk.

Until now: Watanabe Yoshimi, a leading Koizumian and adminstrative reform minister under Messrs. Abe and Fukuda, appeared on TV Asahi Tuesday and suggested that he and his reformist colleagues could be prepared to leave the LDP and form their own party. Previously talk of a Koizumian party was fed more by media speculation about various study groups formed by reformists — the latest being Nakagawa Hidenao's new study group on social security — rather than by explicit threats by reformers to leave and form their own party. It's possible that Mr. Watanabe is bluffing. The party leadership certainly thinks he is. The clientelists, through the vehicle of the party's general council, is pressing for a three-year freeze in the the Koizumi government's 2006 plan to cut public works spending by three percent compared to the previous year and restrict the growth in social security entitlement payments. If the clientelists win, it may be the final indicator that the Koizumians are no longer welcome in the LDP, the beginning of the LDP's existence as a rump party of conservatives and clientelists.

The Asahi article suggests that Mr. Nakagawa — and Yosano Kaoru, who, as the leading "fiscal reconstructionst" is in some sense a tendency of his own — may yet have a role to play in destroying the LDP as it exists today, as they have links with each other and across the aisle to Ozawa Ichiro and former DPJ leader Maehara Seiji. The LDP's liberals (the LDP's truly marginalized group), namely Kato Koichi and Yamasaki Taku, may also be making their preparations to defect from the LDP.

Little wonder that Mr. Ozawa has now proposed a plan that is transparently an attempt to break up the LDP, calling for an all-party coalition government to govern until an election can be held (provided Mr. Aso resigns); in fact, Mr. Ozawa's scheme is so transparent I have a hard time believing anyone in the government will buy it. LDP members may be discontent with Mr. Aso, but that does not mean that they will run to embrace Mr. Ozawa.

But the point is that the Koizumians may finally be ready to fight back against their marginalization in the LDP by threatening the Aso government with defection (and the consequent destruction of the government's supermajority). They may be bluffing or not as eager as Mr. Watanabe to depart — Mr. Nakagawa is doing all he can to dampen rumors that he is moving against the prime minister — but the threat has been made. Will the LDP do anything to attempt to retain them?

If it doesn't, will the LDP as it exists today survive to contest the next general election?

The end is nigh

I have previously speculated on the consequences of Aso Taro's becoming prime minister for the future of the LDP.

In this post, for example, I wrote, "...If the conservatives retake control of the LDP under Mr. Aso and reunite with Mr. Hiranuma, that alliance could prove fatal for the LDP, as the readmission of Mr. Hiranuma and the other postal rebels could lead Mr. Koizumi and his followers out of the party, perhaps prompting liberals unconnected to Mr. Koizumi to leave too and drift towards the DPJ."

It seems that it may not even take Hiranuma Takeo's return into the party for Mr. Aso's election to be the catalyst for an exodus of reformers from the LDP.

The immediate catalyst instead is Koizumi Junichiro's decision to not run for reelection and let his 27-year-old (my near contemporary) son Shinjiro run in his stead.

As MTC notes, with Mr. Koizumi goes the last thread connecting his reformist followers with the party. Those reformists were undoubtedly aware that they had no place in Aso Taro's LDP; as Yamauchi Koichi wrote, Mr. Aso's new cabinet is purged of members of Nakagawa Hidenao's "rising tide" school. Instead there is an assortment of politicians looking to prime the pump a bit more, with Yosano Kaoru included in the mix to lend an air of responsibility to the proceedings. (I wonder why he is willing to participate in the farce, if he's serious about what he says about the need for fiscal retrenchment.)

The question now is whether Mr. Koizumi's followers leave before or after a general election. Why they would stay around to campaign under Mr. Aso's standard is beyond me. I do not expect them to join with Ozawa Ichiro's DPJ, which undoubtedly they see as little better (cf. Nakagawa Hidenao's posts on the DPJ). Will we see a three-way general election, with a Koizumian New Party the wild card?

Whatever the outcome, the LDP appears to be on the road to becoming a rump party comprised of an alliance between nationalist hawks and party stalwarts longing to break open the bank.

Even in his retirement, Mr. Koizumi retains his flare for the dramatic, in the process wrecking Mr. Aso's long-awaited opening night.

Hashimoto Daijiro: key to a DPJ government?

As noted by MTC in this post, Hashimoto Daijiro, who served as governor of Kochi prefecture for sixteen years (1991-2007), has announced that before the next general election he will create a new party dedicated to radical decentralization that will give prefectural and local governments the tools with which to tackle socio-economic problems that have thus far been ignored by Tokyo.

MTC sees Mr. Hashimoto's announcement as stealing the thunder of Hiranuma Takeo, who has been talking about forming a new conservative party for months without doing anything about it.

(That's what he gets for waiting for his friends in the LDP — why would they leave the LDP to join Mr. Hiranuma in the wilderness when Fukuda Yasuo could fall at any time? And so Mr. Hiranuma is stuck with the eccentric exiles from the LDP, hardly a catalyst for triggering a political realignment.)

I'm more interested in the consequences of Mr. Hashimoto's announcement on the DPJ's prospects in the next general election.

DPJ head Ozawa Ichiro has, as discussed here before, made a point during his two years as head of the DPJ of bolstering the party's position in rural prefectures, building a DPJ that can contend with the LDP throughout Japan, not just in urban areas. He has had considerable success thus far; rural voters may be losing their allergy to DPJ candidates, if the results of last year's local and upper house elections are any indication.

Will Mr. Hashimoto, as a popular longtime governor of a rural prefecture in Shikoku, and his new party dedicated to decentralization undermine Mr. Ozawa's efforts in rural Japan?

Alternatively, will Mr. Hashimoto hurt the DPJ in wealthier suburban prefectures like Kanagawa, prefectures that might resent how the central government channels their wealth to poorer areas?

In short, will the HNP be a significant enough presence in the next general election to divide the anti-LDP vote and save the LDP from itself?

Mr. Hashimoto had harsh words for both the LDP and the DPJ in his announcement Tuesday, and although he met with senior representatives from both parties in May — Yosano Kaoru from the LDP, Hatoyama Yukio from the DPJ — he denied that he was meeting with them to discuss cooperation with either.

While it's one thing to declare the formation of a party, quite another for the party to be a serious, viable contender in an election campaign, the DPJ should take the creation of the HNP seriously and view it as a serious threat to its bid to unseat the LDP in the next election. I expect that it does, and I expect that Mr. Ozawa is working on a way to join forces with Mr. Hashimoto and use his popularity as a weapon against the LDP.

But for now the DPJ and the HNP will be competing, not cooperating. The DPJ has already endorsed a candidate — Tamura Kumiko, who stood for election in Kochi-2 and lost by considerable margins in 2003 and 2005 — for Kochi's first district, the district in which Mr. Hashimoto will stand. Will the DPJ withdraw its endorsement and give its support to Mr. Hashimoto to cement an alliance with the HNP, especially given that Mr. Hashimoto stands a strong chance of winning the district? Is Mr. Hashimoto willing to consider an alliance with either the LDP or the DPJ (is his support for sale to the highest bidder, the party that will promise the most progress on decentralization)?

This speculation is perhaps premature, as it is unknown how many candidates the HNP will be able to field — and where it will field them. For now, the only sitting Diet member who has agreed to cooperate with Mr. Hashimoto is Eda Kenji, an independent representative from Kanagawa-8, the only non-LDP winner from Kanagawa in 2005. Will more come? And if so, from where?

The Koizumi mystery

I hesitate to link an article in Shokun!, but I think this short article raises an important point.

The article wonders about Koizumi Junichiro's support for Koike Yuriko as a candidate for the premiership and his renewed involvement in politics more generally, particularly his recently formed nonpartisan study groups that may resemble proto-parties. It dismisses Ms. Koike's prospects — citing Mori Yoshiro — and attributes talk of her candidacy to Mr. Koizumi's "loose tongue."

There is something to this complaint regarding the former prime minister. Since his resumption of political activity, the media has taken to reporting on his every word, no matter how mundane. Every public appearance and every prognostication on the political situation receives mention, which in turn heightens speculation about Mr. Koizumi's intentions, which in turn leads to greater coverage of his activities, and so on — a giant snowball of media speculation based on thin shreds of evidence. Perhaps observers of Japanese politics — myself included — speculate about Mr. Koizumi's plans because we want Mr. Koizumi to have plans to retake power in a triumphant flourish.

Mr. Koizumi may dream of a return to prominence. He may harbor plans to bolt from the LDP and form his own party. But he has also given few hints as to what his plans might be. Officially, he backs Prime Minister Fukuda and sees no reason why the government should yield to calls for an early election. That's the extent of what we know; the rest is speculation.

There is, of course, a place for speculation about possible realignment scenarios, but it is necessary to step back from time to time and remember just how little we know about the intentions of the figures likely to play important roles in a political realignment.

The balkanization scenario

Sasayama Tatsuo, onetime HR member from Akita who followed Ozawa Ichiro out of the LDP in 1993 and remained with him through the New Frontier and Liberal party eras before losing his seat in 2000, has an idea for the future of the LDP that has the virtue of at least being different.

Mr. Sasayama has a post at his blog entitled, "The time has come for the LDP to think about the road to survival by means of dividing the party."

The title says it all, doesn't it?

Mr. Sasayama's idea is that the LDP should divide into "holonic, small LDP-style, franchise-like parties" that will support LDP governments. (Unclear on the meaning of "holonic?" I had to look it up.) Mr. Sasayama does not indicate how this should come about: how should the LDP break up? how many franchises? should they be ideational franchises? demographic franchises? regional franchises? These questions are left unanswered.

However, this idea is still intriguing, not because the LDP leadership will decide to take this suicidal step — Mr. Sasayama admits that the party leadership might find this troubling — but because it's a plausible scenario for the political realignment that many (myself included) assume is coming before or after the next general election, despite the wishes of the LDP executive.

The formation of the People's New Party in the wake of the postal reform battle, the formation of the "True Conservative Policy Research Group" from the wreckage of the Abe cabinet, and Hiranuma Takeo's persistent threat to form his own conservative party suggest that it's not inconceivable for the LDP to splinter without the micro-parties merging into a new large party. Maybe a two-party system is not a guaranteed outcome of the 1994 electoral reform after all. Perhaps Japan's political future will look like India's present, with national parties forced to rely on smaller regional and ideological parties to form governments (making the current twisted Diet look like a paragon of efficiency).

There is, of course, some precedent for a balkanized Japanese political system. Japan's first postwar decade was characterized by smaller parties on both the left and the right. The merger of the Democratic and Liberal parties (the former being the product of a merger orchestrated by Kishi Nobusuke) in 1955 to form the LDP ended the balkanization on the right by submerging ideological and personality clashes within the party; the balkanization on the left persisted throughout the cold war due to divisions between the JCP and JSP, as well as divisions among the socialists, who but for a few years in the late 1950s were divided into the JSP and the DSP.

Would the split be the prelude to a new set of mergers into two new big parties or would it become a semi-permanent arrangement? And would the DPJ be able to stay intact while the LDP crumbled?

Realignment scenarios

After months of talking about forming a new party, Hiranuma Takeo, a leading LDP postal rebel who spurned LDP efforts to bring him back into the party during the Abe era, may finally be taking steps to create a new conservative party that may yet be a fly in the LDP's ointment.

Mr. Hiranuma has reportedly been in talks with other former LDP members — "independent conservatives" — to form a new study group. Partners in this endeavor include Watanuki Tamisuke, leader of the PNP; Kamei Shizuka, the PNP's secretary-general; Suzuki Muneo, the disgraced (and indicted) former LDP member, partner-in-corruption of the late Matsuoka Toshikatsu, and representative of his own Hokkaido-based New Party Big Earth; and Nakamura Kishiro, construction minister in the Miyazawa cabinet who was subsequently left the LDP, was arrested and charged with influence peddling in 1994, continued to win elections and serve as an independent HR member until 2003, when the Supreme Court rejected his final appeal and promptly stripped him of his seat and sent him to prison until 2004 when he was paroled (he won his seat back in the 2005 election).

These LDP castaways agreed to take a confrontational stance towards the "Fukuda cabinet's policy line," suggesting that this PNP+ grouping could be the beginning of Mr. Hiranuma's new party, throwing a wrinkle into a political realignment.

Or will it? While Mr. Hiranuma clearly has links to Nakagawa Shoichi and other conservative ideologues in the LDP, it is not at all clear that Mr. Hiranuma will be able to entice them to join his party, considering the ragtag group he has assembled around him. That won't stop the DPJ from looking to bolster Mr. Hiranuma's party in the hope that it will break the LDP. On Monday, Hatoyama Yukio, the DPJ's secretary-general, greeted the news of Mr. Hiranuma's group by calling for cooperation. I hope cooperation goes no further. For all Mr. Hiranuma's anti-LDP posturing, I suspect that his tune would change were Aso Taro elected as leader, suggesting that this gambit may be less an effort to create a third pole in the political system than to improve the terms for Mr. Hiranuma's eventual reunion with the LDP. Ibuki Bunmei, LDP secretary-general, has already come calling.

Mr. Hiranuma cannot possibly think that his party could become a significant third force in Japanese politics. Considering that it would be little different from the PNP, which has elected a grand total of eight representatives (four HR, four HC), why should anyone expect the Hiranuma new party to be anything but a guppy? Obviously that would change if the LDP's conservative wing were to leave the party en masse and join with Mr. Hiranuma, but at that point it would no longer be the Hiranuma new party but the Hiranuma-Abe-Nakagawa-Aso true conservative party, with the "H" increasingly pushed to the side.

The Japanese political system might have room for a third, swing party between two big parties, but I doubt that the swing party will have the ideological coloration of the Hiranuma new party.

The prospect of a Koizumi new party remains, to me, the more intriguing possibility. An article in the June issue of Bungei Shunjyu suggests (in part one) that Mr. Koizumi views the present crisis — a natural outgrowth of his ransacking of the LDP — as an opportunity to build a new political system, with Koike Yuriko acting as his stalking horse.

Another scenario discussed in the latter portion of the article is a bid by Ozawa Ichiro to pry the LDP's liberals away, similar to his failed attempt in 1994 to pry Watanabe Michio and his followers away from the LDP by promising Mr. Watanabe the premiership. The target for Mr. Ozawa's efforts supposedly is Kato Koichi, the once-promising liberal, although it is unlikely that the has-been Mr. Kato could bring significant numbers of LDP members with him.

Nevertheless, if the conservatives retake control of the LDP under Mr. Aso and reunite with Mr. Hiranuma, that alliance could prove fatal for the LDP, as the readmission of Mr. Hiranuma and the other postal rebels could lead Mr. Koizumi and his followers out of the party, perhaps prompting liberals unconnected to Mr. Koizumi to leave too and drift towards the DPJ.

But I still suspect that nothing will happen until after the next general election. Until an election is held, no group knows just how valuable its hand is. The size of the LDP's majority — if it retains a majority — will make all the difference when it comes to potential separatists considering whether to split (the same logic applies to Komeito's partnership with the LDP). The larger the majority, the stronger the LDP will be respective to potential splinter groups. Should the DPJ have a strong showing that puts it within striking distance of a majority, however, there will be a brutal war for the loyalty of possible defectors and Komeito (the latter especially in the event that the governing coalition retains a majority, but not the LDP independently).

The LDP's dilemmas

Yamamoto Ichita, taking a break from rocking out, writes of the divide between LDP veterans and youngsters in the debate over Prime Minister Fukuda's plan to shift the special road construction fund into the general fund from 2009.

The question is how the prime minister should proceed. At present, the HR will be voting next week to override the HC and pass the road construction plan in its current form, even as the prime minister has promised a new plan. Mr. Yamamoto himself sees no inconsistency in passing the existing plan and then revising after the fact; he recognizes, however, that the public doesn't see it this way. Mr. Yamamoto and other potential rebels want official decisions by the cabinet and the LDP executive in support of Mr. Fukuda's plan. Party veterans, according to Mr. Yamamoto, fear that giving Mr. Fukuda's plan official imprimatur also means giving opponents the opportunity to sabotage the plan. Mr. Yamamoto chalks up the dispute to differing perceptions of election timing.

Is it really as simple as that? This seems to be another example of the cautious/risk-taking divide within the LDP in the face of conservative reaction (in this case in the form of the road tribe resistance to reform). For the "veterans" — Mr. Yamamoto's word — a direct, open schism in the LDP as a result of fights in the party council and the cabinet is a greater concern than the possible electoral consequences of going forward solely on the basis of the prime minister's promise. The young reformists want official decisions, even if it means open confrontation with the opponents of road construction reform and a greater risk of failure. As before — see the case from 2005 when the LDP council forced revisions to the postal reform bills on Mr. Koizumi by virtue of an unprecedented majority (as opposed to unanimous) vote — the veterans are willing to violate procedures and customs if doing so minimizes the risks to the party (as they see it).

Without official decisions, Mr. Fukuda's strategy on his compromise plan amounts to telling the people, "Trust me." It entails back-loading LDP resistance to the plan, in the hope that somehow the resistance will be placated over time. The reformists' approach entails front-loading resistance, tackling it head on, at the beginning. Even if Mr. Fukuda's plan gets derailed while in deliberation, at least the "opposition forces" will be out in the open, enabling the prime minister to draw a firm line on reform, à la Koizumi, and possibly revive his crumbling cabinet.

And even that probably won't be enough to save Mr. Fukuda, given that the DPJ's obvious retort is if it can be done from 2009, why not from 2008?

Regardless, the party's dilemma remains. Tahara Soichiro points out in Liberal Time that although there is probably a majority within the LDP in favor of ousting Mr. Fukuda, but is deterred from pushing for his replacement for fear that the formation of a new government will prompt irresistible calls for a general election. No one in the LDP is ready to risk that, given that it could be a massacre for LDP and Komeito candidates.

But how long will Mr. Fukuda be protected by fears of a general election?

I still suspect that he has until July, after which the party will take its chances on a new leader — and perhaps even resign itself to a general election that I expect will trigger the realignment once the general election produces a nearly split HR. In short, Mr. Fukuda will most likely not have the opportunity to see his road construction plan through to fruition.

Nearing a climax?

Japan's political air is once again full of election talk as the end of April approaches, bringing the first by-election of the Fukuda era and the end of the sixty-day period after which the HR can vote again on the tax bill containing the temporary gasoline tax.

Ibuki Bunmei, LDP secretary-general, hinted in remarks in Nara-ken Saturday that the election will likely be held before the expiration of the term in September 2009, perhaps as early as this autumn. Mr. Ibuki suggested that Mr. Fukuda might act if he gets a tailwind so as to minimize the blow to the LDP in the general election that everyone knows is coming.

Asahi builds upon Mr. Ibuki's remarks, noting that he added that the party is encouraged by its strong favorable ratings in public opinion polls, many of which have consistently shown the LDP receiving more support than the DPJ.

Koga Makoto, the LDP's chief election strategist, who has been one of the leading advocates in the LDP for delaying until September 2009, has also changed his tune to echo Mr. Ibuki's line.

Mr. Ibuki's emphasis on the party's popularity, however, suggests a certain distancing from the increasingly unpopular Mr. Fukuda. I suspect that the earlier the general election, the greater the chance that it will not be Mr. Fukuda who leads the party into it, especially once the G8 summit has passed. Now that Mr. Fukuda has admitted that he underwent surgery for stomach cancer nearly a decade ago, there's even a convenient excuse for his stepping down, something like "health concerns brought on from the intense stress of the premiership."

But regardless of whether Mr. Fukuda will be at the helm for the next election, it is worth asking whether the LDP is right to feel confident about its electoral prospects based on opinion polls showing greater support than for the DPJ. Do the party support numbers recorded in polls actually have any meaning for how people will vote? Are the LDP and Komeito really willing to bet their two-thirds majority — which Mr. Ibuki admitted will likely not be retained — on the basis of there being some significance to the polls? I have a hunch that the polls fail to capture the extent of the public's discontent. I'm not convinced that the public is any less discontent than it was last summer when the LDP was trounced in the HC election. Will the public really be inclined to punish the DPJ more than the LDP?

The DPJ may not be able to win a majority outright, but anything close will be more than enough to topple the sitting premier, whether Mr. Fukuda or a successor, and possibly break the LDP as its contending sects battle for control of the party.

It is with this in mind that we head into the final weeks of the battle of the temporary tax and road construction. Ozawa Ichiro is still threatening a censure motion should the HR pass the tax bill again, although he has hedged on his threat by suggesting that the final decision will be for the party's HC members to make. Whether a censure motion will have any meaning depends, of course, on the government's response.

If the LDP's leaders are convinced that its popularity will win the day in a general election, perhaps they will call Mr. Ozawa's bluff.

And then?

Why a realignment is inevitable

Janne Morén's recent post on institutional loyalty (thanks for the reminder, MTC) provides an excellent argument for why to anticipate a new political realignment in the near future.

He writes:

If we return to politics, the situation shares some similarities and there is a clear possibility of a similar dissolution of loyalty between lawmakers and their parties. More and more of pre- and post-election resources are tied to the politician personally, and come from sources other than their party. A party of course offers their name - political branding - and a party affiliation is often necessary to partake in the give-and-take of parliamentary work (you need party support for juicy positions, just like you need a research affiliate for grants), but again, there is no real reason to stay with one particular party at any cost. The more an election costs the less beholden is the candidate. A veteran lawmaker (or dynastic scion) comes with his own district-wide name recognition, his well-tested local organization and a stable cadre of financial donors (legal or not; improper political donations are a leading cause of indictments here). An established politician may in fact need his party quite a bit less than the party needs him.

Lawmakers do shop around in Japanese politics; a not inconsiderate number of lawmakers have switched parties, sometimes several times, during their careers. And you can argue that the same mechanism is at play among internal party factions in the LDP, with individuals changing their allegiance in return for a cabinet post or committee membership. This, by the way, happens very rarely in Sweden, as most election costs are borne by the parties, not the representative. As internal cohesion weakens and parties become little more than amorphous blobs discussion clubs for mutual backing (the ideological range within both the LDP and DPJ almost beggars belief), the next step would be to dispense with party affiliation as a major criteria for case by case cooperation altogether.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why a political realignment is pretty near inevitable.

The LDP, and Japanese political parties in general, have never been known for their cohesiveness. Indeed, a longtime foreign correspondent once quipped to me about the LDP, "The party may be known as the Jiminto (自民党), but each member is his own Jibunto (自分党)." The prevalence of koenkai and hereditary Diet members in the postwar period meant that financial independence was common for LDP members; they depended upon the party for jobs and for pork.

What binds members to their parties today? The most important factor, at least for lesser-known members, may be the party's endorsement to run as a candidate (the "branding" factor). It certainly isn't policy: policy loyalty seems directed more at sub-party groups — factions or study groups — than the party at large.

That said, I do not think that party affiliation is on the road to irrelevancy. The situation described by Mr. Morén simply shows the failure of the current political arrangement. The LDP and the DPJ are fundamentally incoherent, divided as much or more within as between the parties. This fact is universally recognized, at least in the Japanese political world. Few doubt that a realignment is necessary. The question now is how the realignment will unfold: who will make the first move? What issue(s) will form the basis for the identities of the new parties? Taxation? Deregulation? The welfare system? Foreign policy?

Of course, the new (or newly transformed) parties will be divided in different ways — and members will still be financially independent from the party leadership. But they will likely inspire greater loyalty from their members than the current LDP and DPJ.

Election soon?

The signs of change in the DPJ's thinking on the timing of the next general election discussed here is now a definite policy shift.

As Mr. Ozawa told reporters in Kyoto Thursday, "We are struggling on the major premise of a dissolution this Diet session, although since the right to dissolve the Diet is held by the Cabinet, we don't know [what will happen]."

Mr. Ozawa might be encouraged by the findings of a recent Mainichi poll that shows that 44% continue to hope for a DPJ general election victory, compared with only 34% who want the LDP to win. (Interestingly, the poll also recorded a ten-point increase, to 15%, of respondents who want "another party" to win.)

Perhaps there is hope for Mr. Ozawa and the DPJ yet, although I remain convinced that the next general election will trigger a series of events likely to impact both parties profoundly, making it next to impossible to predict the post-election landscape.

And regardless, since the DPJ will not be fielding candidates in approximately fifty single-member districts, it is highly unlikely that it will win outright.

Hosokawa-Koizumi New Party?

Facta, a monthly, has a short item available at Yahoo! Japan's Minna no Seiji site speculating about a February meeting between former prime ministers Hosokawa and Koizumi.

Mr. Hosokawa, who after heading up the first non-LDP government left politics to seclude himself in Kanagawa and work as an artist, met secretly with Mr. Koizumi in late February. They purportedly discussed the formation of a new party that would aim to, of all things, roll back the 1994 electoral reform that was the Hosokawa government's signature achievement. The article suggests that the new party would rest on a foundation of Mr. Koizumi's followers and veterans from Mr. Hosokawa's Japan New Party, including LDP members Koike Yuriko, Ito Tatsuya, Kamoshita Ichiro, as well as DPJ members Hatoyama Yukio, Maehara Seiji, Edano Yukio, Noda Yoshihiko, and Ozawa Sakihito.

As with all-too-many political articles, there is a lot of rumor-mongering but very little concrete information. Why, for example, the fixation of returning to medium-sized, multiple-member districts? Is this interest strictly tactical, an acknowledgment that the current system does not favor the creation of a new party?

What about the defections? Would the individuals mentioned in the article actually be willing to defect? I'm especially curious about the DPJ members provided. I've written about DPJ disaffection with Ozawa Ichiro's leadership in the past — the article includes three members who have been especially vocal at times in their criticism of Mr. Ozawa (Hatoyama, Maehara, and Edano) — but will these members actually defect from the DPJ?

I find LDP defections much more plausible, especially by Koizumians. It seems highly plausible that in the aftermath of an election, when the LDP will likely be torn asunder by a bitter fight for control of the party, the Koizumians will split either to form their own swing party or jump to the DPJ, perhaps making the difference in control of the House of Representatives following a close election.

The pressure in the political system is unmistakably building, and the next general election will likely transform the landscape one way or another. But it's anyone's guess as to what the landscape will look like, because much will depend on the calculations of individuals, Mr. Koizumi included.

A Koizumi comeback in the making?

On Thursday I wrote that the fight within the LDP over administrative reform may be an opportunity for marginalized Koizumians to regain influence within the party.

It appears that they may be getting some heavyweight support: from Koizumi Junichiro himself.

Sankei observes that in the new year, Mr. Koizumi has been more active on behalf of his supporters, and wonders whether Mr. Koizumi's recent activities are part of the general ferment in Japanese politics.

His most recent appearance was a speech Friday evening at a seminar organized by HR member Hagiuda Koichi. According to Mr. Koizumi's office, this appearance was his first address at a Diet member's meeting since the end of his time as prime minister.

His message was one of caution. While some in the LDP may be encouraged by his remarks suggesting that there is no rush to hold a general election, others may be less than pleased with his endorsement of Prime Minister Fukuda's cooperative stance. While he called on the opposition to submit its own bills, especially on the gasoline tax/road construction issue, he also said that the LDP must be prepared to negotiate on a revised bill. Asahi reports that he also cautioned the government against overusing the HR supermajority.

Is this the beginning of Mr. Koizumi's second coming?

Sankei seems breathless at the prospect: "If Mr. Koizumi, his popularity undiminished even now, raises his voice, the political situation will immediately become fluid and anything will be possible. This being the case, we should not divert our eyes from these activities."

Mr. Koizumi, of course, provided no hints as to his plans at this juncture, saying only "my present role is supporting young people."

If Mr. Koizumi is thinking of returning, will the LDP welcome him back, considering how far it has distanced itself from his ideas and his adherents in the seventeen months since his premiership ended? Or would Mr. Koizumi follow in the footsteps of Theodore Roosevelt and form a new "progressive" party to stand on an undiluted reformist platform? What would both the LDP and the DPJ do in the event of a Koizumian "Bull Moose" campaign that tapped into the frustrations and hopes symbolized by the nascent and growing Sentaku movement? Depending on the LDP's success in shoring up its support in rural Japan — still an open question as far as I can see — the DPJ would likely suffer the most in a general election, once again being forced to run against Mr. Koizumi's reformism in urban Japan. I suppose there's the possibility that the DPJ and a Koizumian party could split urban and suburban seats and then form a coalition government that would marginalize an LDP increasingly limited to rural areas. (And how long would that rural support last with the LDP in opposition and thus stripped of the ability to transfer money?)

For the time being, this scenario remains a fantasy, but it is certainly a more plausible scenario than the scenario of a "true" conservative party led by Hiranuma Takeo playing anything more than a marginal role in a post-realignment political environment.

Tip of the iceberg

Following Prime Minister Fukuda's remarks Thursday at the LDP convention, Ibuki Bunmei, LDP secretary-general, has also warned darkly of the possibility of the breaking of the LDP.

Speaking in Utsunomiya, Mr. Ibuki said, "If the LDP wins, the DPJ will break. If the DPJ wins, in the LDP people who cannot persevere will spill out."

There are plenty of public signs of the gathering storm within the LDP, but if the president and secretary-general of the party feel compelled to take their fears for the party's future public, then the situation must be worse than even press reports suggest. Given the barely concealed vitriol of the conservatives, who seem to feel that Mr. Fukuda has taken their birthright — control of the party for which they and their ideological predecessors yearned for decades — I don't doubt it.

But Mr. Ibuki is right: I don't expect any movement until after the election. But he's wrong about the winner staying united, the loser dividing. What will count as a victory for the LDP? retaining the supermajority? Best take out the carving knives now. A simple majority for the LDP, without Komeito? A simple majority for the government, but only with Komeito's help? Undoubtedly different actors within the LDP will have their own ideas about what constitutes a win for the LDP in a general election. I expect that Nakagawa Shoichi and the other ideologues will do their best to spin just about any outcome as a defeat, giving them due cause to reassert control over the LDP, and push out their dovish rivals, with a mitigating factor being a strong election performance by the doves that bolsters their numbers within the party. Barring that, the LDP will be rocked by just about any outcome short of the miraculous retention of the supermajority.

As for the DPJ, if it loses — although, again, there is a question about the definition of what constitutes a win for the DPJ — the party will have to confront the question of who will replace Ozawa Ichiro. As revealed back in November, there isn't an obvious replacement, meaning that when Mr. Ozawa goes, there's bound to be chaos within the DPJ as the party's proto-factions search for a new compromise leader who can assuage all factions or purge the party's conservatives, sending them into the arms of the LDP.

The fantasies of "true conservatism"

For a glimpse into the twisted thinking of the Japanese right — the revisionist right — in the aftermath of the downfall of Abe Shinzo, there is no better place to look than the conversation between Sakurai Yoshiko and Hiranuma Takeo published in the January 2008 issue of Voice.

The bizarre, distorted facts and outright fictions published in this article brought me to the point of laughter on more than one occasion, although I didn't laugh nearly as much as the discussants apparently did, judging by the little parenthetical laugh marks that followed all too many of their remarks.

The discussion did, however, give me another reason to be glad that Mr. Abe was forced to resign (for whatever reason — these two think that fault for Abe's resignation lies not with Mr. Abe himself, but with his secretary, Inoue Yoshiyuki, who Ms. Sakurai describes as being "like [Koizumi secretary] Iijima," apparently a bad thing). It's not that their ideas are especially dangerous, it's that they're so irrelevant. They continue to insist that what they know what the Japanese people want, and that is the abductees brought home and the constitution revised. Ms. Sakurai at one point castigates Prime Minister Fukuda for failing to act on constitution revision, which, she reminds us, has been one of the core principles of the LDP since its founding in 1955. True, but so what? Why should a government in 2008 by following an agenda formulated before 1955 when it has to deal with the problems of 2008 and beyond?

How many elections does the LDP have to lose before they recognize that the Japanese people don't share their priorities? Did the July 2007 defeat not register?

Of course, the discussion inevitably turned to Mr. Hiranuma's planned "true" conservative party, because both the LDP and the DPJ are rotten (even if, they say, there are capable individuals within both parties). When asked about the timing of its formation, Mr. Hiranuma was reluctant to say whether it would occur before or after a general election. Undoubtedly he will have to make that decision with the cooperation of his friends within the LDP, who I suspect would prefer to wait until a general election before acting. Instead of forming a new party, it seems to me that the ideological right is starting to hope openly for an LDP defeat in a general election that will take down Fukuda and give them an opportunity to retake control of the party, purging "fake" conservatives in the process.

Towards the discussion, Mr. Hiranuma very nearly veered into relevance when he broached the question of economics, but it turned out he only wanted to castigate the Finance Ministry before directing the conversation back to more familiar ground, puzzlement over the reaction to Nakagawa Shoichi's 2006 calls for a debate about the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

I don't want to linger too much longer over this, but there was one more nugget worth mentioning. The two of course talked at length about the US about-face on North Korea and had a good laugh about Christopher Hill. Mr. Hiranuma also spoke about his recent trip to Washington along with other Diet members and the abductee families, where they spoke with members of Congress about resolutions in the House and Senate calling for a linkage between the abductions issue and the removal of North Korea from the state sponsors of terror list. For some reason, these ideologues really take congressional resolutions seriously. Mr. Hiranuma spoke with pride about how Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL-18) and Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) promised to push for these resolutions, and was impressed that the House resolution already had a whopping twenty-eight co-sponsors.

That said, they acknowledged the shortcomings of Diet members' diplomacy, thanks in part — wait for it — the influence of the Chinese in Washington, whose embassy has ten times more political specialists in their embassy than Japan's and who have significant numbers of Chinese-Americans whose support Beijing can apparently mobilize at will, as in the case of the comfort women resolution.

You would think from reading this interview that Japanese society was healthy and that there was not a long list of problems facing the government for years to come. And you would be wrong, just as the ideological right is wrong. The decisions made by the Japanese government in the coming years will determine whether Japan remains influential regionally and globally, whether it remains an economic power with a voice in shaping East Asia. Its power will not rest on a new constitution that enables Japan to send its robust military to fight abroad. It will not rest on its children being proud of being Japanese. It will depend on Japan's becoming a country that is more open to the world, more willing to take risks, better able to provide security for its aging citizens, and better able to educate Japanese children for the world in which they will live.

The vision of Mr. Hiranuma, Ms. Sakurai, and their compatriots in the mass media and the Diet is a vision from 1950. (I guess that's what they mean by "true conservatism). Too bad it's 2008.

The imperious Mr. Ozawa

I'm with MTC: the "can the DPJ govern" meme has been beaten to death.

The DPJ is here and it will in all likelihood be the largest party in the HC for at least the next six years. No amount of griping about the DPJ's unsuitability will change that. Even if the "realignment" happens, the change may be more in the way of "population transfers" than name changes.

For all of my own griping, I want to see the DPJ succeed. The LDP needs to lose and spend a substantial amount of time in opposition, if only to resolve its internal battles and allow the political system to move beyond the 1955 system permanently.

It is for that reason that I'm annoyed by Ozawa Ichiro's latest gaffe, his leaving HR deliberations on the anti-terror bill before it came to a vote.

As before, Hatoyama Yukio, DPJ secretary-general, has apologized for the DPJ president's behavior.

Why, I wonder, is Mr. Ozawa not apologizing himself? Would it hurt his party if he acted more modestly?

Between this incident, his disappearance on election night, his meetings with Prime Minister Fukuda, and his aborted resignation (embarrassing for the DPJ due to his being begged to return by party leaders), I find his arrogance hard to stomach. One could also add his policy shifts on the refueling mission, which have forced DPJ rank-and-file to shift positions to follow their leader just like Stalinists were forced to shape their arguments around pronouncements issued from the Kremlin, no matter how much they contradicted previous positions.

By acting imperiously and appearing to be accountable to no one, Mr. Ozawa gives the DPJ's enemies — those writers who provide a constant stream of articles for the conservative monthlies, for example — ammunition with which to undermine the DPJ. The more impetuous and uncontrollable Mr. Ozawa seems, the more the DPJ appears to be weak and subject to its leader's "dictatorial" control.

Mr. Ozawa's imperiousness may yet help the DPJ take power. He may yet impose discipline on a party that has been unruly since it first formed in the mid-1990s. The Japanese voters may have finally lost patience with the LDP, meaning that they're willing to forgive the DPJ no matter what Mr. Ozawa does.

But why does Mr. Ozawa have to make it easier for his party's rivals to question its ability to govern?