Moving on up?

With the DPJ's ranks swelling to 417 Diet members between both houses, some in the party are asking whether the party needs to move its headquarters into a larger space.

The DPJ currently rents eight floors in a twelve-story building across the way from the National Diet Library in Nagata-cho, with floor space totaling approximately 3000 square meters. Modest perhaps, but appropriate for an opposition party.

Compare that with the LDP's sprawling compound — with a security gate — not far from DPJ HQ, which is also twelve stories but which is owned by the party and has 13,657 meters of floor space. Is there a better example of the power wielded by the LDP as a party independent of the government than the scale of the party's headquarters? Twelve stories with plenty of meeting space for the party's many committees and subcommittees, easily accessible by car for bureaucrats coming from Kasumigaseki, and close to the Diet and Diet members' office buildings. It is a building designed for a permanent ruling party.

The DPJ may well need more space for its HQ, but I hope that it does not copy the LDP when it comes to choosing a new headquarters. Presumably it should rent space — after all, it might one day be in opposition again and need to move back into smaller space. And it should keep its new digs modest, lacking room for an extensive network of party policy committees. Why not put architecture to work for the party's goal of regime change, which, after all, is about subordinating both the bureaucracy and the ruling party to the cabinet? If the ruling party HQ is too small to accommodate large numbers of bureaucratic visitors, so much the better.

Japan's political world turned upside down

Despite a truly historic victory by the DPJ, the first time since the LDP was created that it has been defeated in a general election (and oh how it was defeated!), there is remarkably little to say.

After all, there were no surprises. The results were exactly as Japan's media organizations predicted. The DPJ finished within a range of ±20 seats from 300, the LDP flirted with 100 seats but will not end up closer to 120 seats, giving it slightly more than the DPJ received in 2005. The Japanese public made very clear during the months leading up to the general election that it was time for the LDP to go — and in the end, the voters booted the LDP from power without flinching. The bums have been thrown out, at last.

As expected, among the LDP members to lose are number of senior party leaders, several of whom did not manage to be revived through proportional representation. Several prominent reformists — Shiozaki Yasuhisa (who won by roughly 3,000 votes, around 1% of the vote), Nakagawa Hidenao, Ishihara Nobuteru, and Kono Taro — retained their seats. Aso Taro signaled his intention to resign as party leader fairly early in the evening, clearing the way for a fight, perhaps a prolonged fight depending on when the party has its election, to replace Aso. The LDP's institutional structure will presumably have to be reformed as the party moves into opposition, raising the question of whether the LDP will study the DPJ's internal structure.

As for the DPJ, it will end up short of a supermajority, but the party has won more than 300 seats, an extraordinary victory by any definition. Hatoyama Yukio and the other DPJ leaders plan to move quickly in preparing the party to take power, and the Japanese people will be watching to see what the party does with its new majority. The party has about a year until it will have to go before the public again, in the 2010 House of Councillors election — and the clock will be ticking. When talking about public expectations, it is important to stress that expectations are not necessarily attached to specific pieces of the manifesto, but rather are more holistic: the DPJ will have to do something tangible with its new power. It will have to show voters that it has at least taken the first steps in a new direction for Japan. Readers now know that I have plenty of doubts about Hatoyama's ability to wield such a majority — but of course, I am willing to be proved wrong.

The point is that the general election has posed no shortage of new questions that will only be answered with the passage of time. The election has been cathartic — despite having a sense that the DPJ would win as substantially as it did, anticipating the results did not make the returns any less exciting — but the coming months will be difficult.

The Japanese people choose

It is election day in Japan. After forty days of intense campaigning, the sound trucks are silent as the LDP, the DPJ, and a handful of smaller parties submit themselves to the judgment of the voters. After nearly four years, the Japanese people will vote for a new House of Representatives.

I had many ideas for how to write this post, but the answer appear to me when I entered the title. You see, the last post I wrote that began with the words "The Japanese people" was this post, "The Japanese people lose hope." That post, written in March when Ozawa Ichiro, then DPJ leader, was under siege due to the arrest of his aide due to alleged campaign finance violations, dissected a public opinion poll that showed just how disillusioned the Japanese people had become with their political system.

Five months later, things look a bit different.

I do not doubt that the Japanese people are still skeptical of the ability of the political system to deliver the results respondents said they wanted in the poll conducted by Asahi in March. But faced with a choice today, it seems that the voting public is prepared to choose hope not long after the public appeared to have lost hope in the possibility of improving society through politics. The crowds I saw gathered at Ikebukuro on Saturday night were not cynical or apathetic: cynics would have stayed home.

Today the Japanese voter faces a simple choice. On the one side is the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the long-governing, ever familiar LDP, for better or for worse an institution of Japanese life. It is a party that has spent the past forty days making few arguments for why it deserves a new mandate and many arguments for why the opposition cannot be trusted with power, even as the LDP spent the past four years doing little with the historic mandate it received in 2005. To the very last, the LDP has used its status as Japan's perpetual governing party to argue that only it can be trusted to defend the Japanese people, campaigning on the basis of fear of the unknown. Speaking in Yokohama Saturday, for example, Prime Minister Aso Taro said that thanks to the DPJ's "UN-centered" foreign policy approach, the government's bill authorizing maritime ship inspections was dropped, about which "North Korea was the most pleased." The LDP was making the same argument before the 2007 House of Councillors election.

On the other side is the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the decade-old leading opposition party that is now poised to take power for the first time. For the past forty days the DPJ has been relentlessly positive. Its leaders and candidates have refused to respond to the LDP's negative campaigning with a negative campaign of its own. Instead the party has campaigned on the basis of its manifesto. It has presented the DPJ as a brand with a common message from Hokkaido to Okinawa. The DPJ made sure that it put its manifesto into the hand of as many voters as possible, even as the LDP's gathered dust in campaign offices. One can question whether the DPJ will be able to follow through on its manifesto — indeed, should the DPJ win, it will sooner or later have to choose which portions of the manifesto to drop due to not having the money to pay for them. But the point is that the party takes its own manifesto seriously.

That does not necessarily mean that the Japanese public will be voting for the DPJ on the basis of the contents of its manifesto: as I noted at the start of the campaign twelve days ago, the same portion of the public doubts that the DPJ will be able to fund its manifesto as doubts that the LDP will be able to deliver on its promises. Instead, if the public chooses the DPJ today, it will be for two simple reasons, Seiken kotai (regime change) and Seikatsu dai-ichi (livelihoods first). The first signifies, of course, a change of ruling party, but no one should think that regime change begins and ends with today's general election. What the DPJ means by regime change is a set of changes to Japan's system of government, starting with placing the power to formulate budgets in the hands of the public's representatives in cabinet. At the same time, the DPJ promises to address the profound economic insecurity that has grown over the past two decades, the sense that life in Japan has gotten unmistakably worse since the end of the bubble economy — and the sense that even as life got worse, the LDP-led government did nothing to reverse the decline.

The DPJ may not be able to deliver on either part. It could fail. But failure is not preordained. And the fact that Japanese people finally appear ready to vote for a new ruling party suggests that the voters are not so cynical as to believe that meaningful political change is impossible. They may be skeptical, but, after all, skepticism is appropriate when a people to view their government.

If I have been criticized for one thing in the nearly three years that I have been writing this blog, it is for being overly partial to the DPJ. That may be the case, but if so, it is for a simple reason: when given a choice between the LDP and DPJ, there is no choice. The LDP is utterly bankrupt as a ruling party. It has indeed failed to address the most basic concerns of the Japanese people. A vote for the LDP is a vote for more fear-mongering and more cynicism, and an LDP victory would be a victory for the idea that Japan is in inevitable decline, that when given a real choice the Japanese people still could not detach themselves from the LDP.

A vote for the DPJ, meanwhile, does not necessarily signify an absolute vote of confidence in the ability of the DPJ to deliver on its plans, but it does suggest a belief in the possibility of a new direction for Japan.

It is common in Japanese politics for leaders to appeal to the Meiji Restoration, when Japanese elites decided to build a modern state. Hatoyama did just that on Saturday evening in a press conference following his rally. But this is not like the Meiji Restoration. This is the Japanese people choosing a new course, one that could result in the people being able to hold their leaders accountable more than at any time in the past.

Mr. Maehara's rebellion

On Monday, Suga Yoshihide, the deputy head of the LDP's election strategy committee, praised Maehara Seiji, deputy head of the DPJ for his comments about the DPJ's ability to govern and incoherent policy agenda in a speech in Kawasaki, Kanagawa. Mr. Suga said: "He spoke courageously. If someone like Maehara-san becomes leader, it will become a party that can be trusted and Japan will have a true two large-party system."

What better way to foment further turmoil by praising Mr. Maehara for his courage? I've noted previously that with the LDP in turmoil and the prime minister's popularity abysmal (but recovering slightly), the government and the LDP have pinned their hopes for a surprisingly strong showing in the next election on a divided DPJ that can be portrayed as incapable of governing.

If Mr. Maehara has any political sense, he would stop his rebellion now, unless, of course, he wants to give comfort to the LDP and deepen the impression that the DPJ is incapable of wielding power. The DPJ, it seems, is powerless to stop the wayward Mr. Maehara. The senior leadership appears willing to tolerate Mr. Maehara's public trashing of the party even as he serves as one of seven DPJ vice presidents. Indeed, it appears that there is little the party can do to discipline any dissenter, whether Mr. Maehara or the upper house members who voted against the party on road construction earlier this session. If Mr. Maehara is to be restrained, he will have to do it himself — or his peers, the DPJ's other wakate members, will have to lean on him.

Perhaps they can call attention to the behavior of his fellow young turk/former party leader, Okada Katsuya. Mr. Okada, who took the blow for the party in the 2005 election, is said to want to return to the leadership, but in contrast to Mr. Maehara, he has refrained from public criticism of Mr. Ozawa's leadership. A telling sign is the title of Mr. Okada's new (and first) book, Seiken Kotai (Regime Change). While he offers a "reform menu" for a DPJ government, including proposals for administrative reform, social security reform, fiscal reform, and regional decentralization, the title indicates that whatever his policy disagreements with the DPJ's current leadership, he remains committed to the party's goal of "regime change." He still believes that a DPJ-led government, whatever its flaws, would be better than a continuation of LDP rule (which, as we've learned this Diet session, means the continuation of zoku rule). It remains to be seen whether Mr. Maehara believes the same.

Indeed, Mainchi, in reporting on Mr. Okada's new book, contrasts Mr. Okada and Mr. Maehara, noting that Mr. Maehara desperately wants a complete debate on the party's policies and has indicated that he will stand in the September election if no one else does, while Mr. Okada remains committed to regime change first and has said nothing about running in September. I don't disagree with Mr. Maehara's belief that Mr. Ozawa should be reelected uncontested, but there are ways to do that without completely undermining the party.

Incidentally, continuing the discussion in this post, it bears mentioning that the clash between idealism and realism is not just within the party — it is within Mr. Ozawa himself, as I argued here. Mr. Ozawa's DPJ is politically schizophrenic in part because Mr. Ozawa is politically schizophrenic.

Idealism and realism in the DPJ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The beginning of divided government

The DPJ, now calling the shots on the administration of the Upper House, has announced the distribution of the chairmanships of Upper House committees, and in a gesture that strikes me as magnanimous, has given the chairmanship of the Budget Committee to the LDP. The LDP has named Konoike Yoshitada to fill the post.

While the House of Representatives has ultimate responsibility for the budget, it is important to remember that the budget committee in both houses is the main forum for questioning the government on all manner of subjects. With the LDP holding the chairmanship, it will have the power to end questioning and send the budget bill to the whole house.

As Asahi emphasizes in an article today (not online), Japan is in for an experiment in divided government akin to that seen in France and the US. I'm not sure if anyone really knows what will happen from Monday on: will the DPJ wield its new powers forcefully, or will it hold back, act cooperatively and let the government destroy itself? Inter-party cooperation is by no means a new phenomenon in Japanese politics, but the process is about to be turned inside-out. Whereas cooperation previously was the result of the LDP's trying to include opposition parties in the policy making process through compromises behind closed doors, cooperation and competition will now take place publicly, along the institutional battle lines between Upper House, Lower House, and government.

Indeed, Asahi's editorial today views the start of the special Diet session as the first act of a new stage of political reform.

"If there is misgovernment, the majority should be exchanged, and administration should change hands," writes Asahi. "This tension has activated Japanese democracy. This debate has proceeded from the introduction of single-seat electoral districts and the reorganization of political parties. With the reversal of the majority in the Upper House, the power to reject the governing coalition's bills has been given to the opposition. Without the opposition's cooperation, the government cannot be administered; the opposition bears this responsibility. This means that the circumstances coming into being should also be called 'half change of government.'"

Whether the experiment in divided government will be long-lived remains to be seen. The DPJ will continue to push for an early dissolution of the House of Representatives and a general election, and with the floodgates open on reports of corrupt practices by members of the government and LDP executives, the DPJ will have a lot of help from the media. The Nelson Report, citing the analysis of Peter Ennis of The Oriental Economist, suggests that Mr. Abe could be gone by November and that the anti-terror special measures law will be allowed to expire, giving the DPJ a not-inconsiderable victory.

Meanwhile, the Yosano-Aso team may have ignited a civil war in the LDP by inviting Mr. Hiranuma back to the party. Undoubtedly the younger members of the LDP can see the writing on the wall for their political careers.

It is unclear how much longer this turmoil in the political system will last, but the pressure for change appears to be swelling relentlessly; when all is said and done, Japan may find itself with a more transparent, dynamic political system.