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?

Regional decentralization is out of reach, for now

Bad news for Aso Taro: progress towards substantial decentralization may be impossible to realize.

So says the government's Prefectural Integration Vision consultation group, which released an interim report on Monday. The whole report is available for download here, in PDF format.

According to Mainichi, the group — which was formed in January 2007 under Mr. Abe — envisions the implementation of drastic reorganization of the relationship between central and regional governments by 2018, but it also announced that it won't have a final report ready for another two years. One sticking point is how the prefectures are to be reorganized. Not surprisingly, drastically redrawing the geographic boundaries of Japan's regional governments draws opposition from existing prefectural governments and bureaucrats in the central governments. Even the LDP and the government have differing ideas about a reorganization, with the LDP's Headquarters for the Promotion of Prefectural Integration calling for consolidating prefectural and local governments into 10 states and 700-1000 municipalities.

And the government's ministries and agencies are, of course, adamantly opposed to a transfer of authority to regional governments.

It's probably safe to say that without the bureaucracy's approval, regional decentralization will not happen.

As I've noted previously, decentralization could have considerable benefits for Japanese governance by bringing government closer to the people and making it more transparent. But there's a reason why this kind of change happens rarely, if at all. (The last major reorganization of regional governments, of course, was in the early years of the Meiji Restoration.) It is easy for politicians and business leaders to appeal to the example of the Meiji Restoration — not surprisingly, this interim report does — but it is considerably more difficult for political leaders to overcome institutional obstacles and implement Meiji-style reforms in the present political environment.

Who can overcome the opposition that proposals like regional decentralization necessarily attract? (And is there actually a majority in favor of sweeping reform? People may be unhappy with the current political situation, but that does not necessarily translate into support for broad change.)

Radical decentralization

Aso Taro, looking hungrily to his next bid for the LDP presidency, has continued his campaign to remake his image with an article in Voice in which he discusses the need for a radical reorganization of how Japan is governed, including both a consolidation of prefectures into larger "states" and a transfer of authority, including tax authority, to the regional governments. In case anyone needs a reminder of why this argument is important, The Economist has an article about the dependence of prefectures and localities on Tokyo here.

Not surprisingly for a contemporary Japanese politician considering radical changes to Japanese governance, Mr. Aso appeals to the Meiji Restoration, pointing to the effectiveness of the centralized system built by Meiji elites — and sustained by postwar elites — in first fending off the European empires and then promoting the rapid development of postwar Japan, making Japan, he argued, into what may have been the world's most efficient and equal society.

Facing the reality of faltering regions, however, Mr. Aso recognizes that drastic changes are needed to revitalize Japan; the central government is not up to the task:

In order to stop centralized rule, a drastic transfer of work on the domestic affairs side to the states is necessary. That is, public utilities, industrial development, and social welfare. Also, so that we can think for ourselves and work for ourselves, taxes must also be handed over...The central government will become much smaller scale, specializing in foreign affairs and the administration of justice — the work of thinking about Japan in the world.

The goal is to enable local and regional governments to undertake whatever measures they think will best promote the rejuvenation of their jurisdictions, i.e. the states will be the laboratories of Japan's recovery (and perhaps even democracy).

Meanwhile, in Tokyo the rump central government will be, in Mr. Aso's words, "small but strong."

As a federalist, I find much of value in this proposal. The central government has failed, again and again, for the past two decades (or more). The LDP has enabled and exacerbated these failures. Piecemeal measures have not been enough to correct these failures, and the bureaucracy remains opaque and all-too-unaccountable. Regional governments under Mr. Aso's system could have the same problems as the central government has had, but the hope is that by being closer to the people, they will be more accountable.

Incidentally, I imagine that Mr. Aso's conservative colleagues find some value in this new system, seeing as how it would allow them to continue to be blind to Japan's social and economic problems and focus exclusively on the question of Japan's place in the world. At the same time, this plan is a non-starter within the LDP, just as even modest decentralization faces fierce opposition within the party. I expect that even within the LDP's prefectural chapters this plan would draw opposition — look at how LDP members from prefectural assemblies rushed to Tokyo to show their support for the continuation of the special road construction fund.

For a politician bent on taking control of the LDP, Mr. Aso has opted for an unusual path to power.

Recommended Book: Democracy Without Competition in Japan, Ethan Scheiner

"First-rate economics, third-rate politics."

This phrase has long been shorthand for the LDP's half-century of nearly uninterrupted rule, despite corruption and high levels of unpopularity among the Japanese people (although of late there might be some convergence between economics and politics).

Japanese and non-Japanese scholars have concocted numerous explanations for the LDP's enduring hold on power. Some have suggested a cultural basis for Japan's "one-party democracy": the Japanese people are unwilling to vote for any party other than the familiar LDP. Others have pointed to the now-retired single, non-transferable vote/medium-sized district electoral system, although the LDP's endurance under the new system has surely weakened this hypothesis. Others have argued that the incompetence of opposition parties over the past fifty years is the most important explanation for LDP rule. Still others have dismissed the importance of politics altogether, viewing LDP politicians as little more than bagmen for the all-powerful bureaucracy.

In Democracy Without Competition in Japan: Opposition Failure in a One-Party Dominant State, Ethan Scheiner, a political science professor at the University of California, Davis, has developed a sophisticated argument on the failure of the political opposition to take power that demolishes these well-worn arguments.

The core of his argument is clientelism: the combination of clientelistic relationships between voters and politicians and Japan's fiscally centralized state that makes localities and prefectures clients of Tokyo has provided a solid foundation for LDP rule. For Professor Scheiner, opposition failure is not simply a matter of the failure of opposition parties to form national governments. Opposition failure begins at the local level. As a result of the clientelistic, fiscally centralized state, the quality most desired in local and prefectural elected officials has been connections to the national government that enable them to secure more subsidies from Tokyo for local projects. Not surprisingly, local LDP members with links to LDP Diet members have done particularly well in prefectural assembly elections, to the point that in the 2007 unified local elections, the LDP lost ninety-seven prefectural assembly seats nationwide and still held 1212 seats (to the DPJ's 375). Local opposition failure has contributed to national-level opposition failure by depriving opposition parties of "quality" candidates — meaning candidates who have been previously elected to public office and are therefore more trusted by voters — in HR races under both the old MMD and new SMD electoral systems.

Ah, you say, but what about wealthy, densely populated prefectures that are less dependent on Tokyo? Professor Scheiner grants that not all prefectures are equally prone to clientelism, and introduces the concept of parallel party systems. One party system, he argues, is quite competitive. In the approximately 200 urban and mixed SMDs and in PR voting in these areas, the DPJ has been fairly successful. Voters in these areas are response to anti-clientelistic appeals, explaining why the DPJ and Koizumite LDP candidates have had considerable success in urban Japan in recent years. The problem is in the rural SMDs that constitute approximately a third of the HR's 300 SMDs. Not surprisingly, support for clientelism remains high, and in these areas voters continue to elect LDP candidates at both the local and national levels. In fact, of 99 mostly rural SMDs, the LDP took 75 in 1996 and 77 in 2000 and 2003. One-party democracy exists in Japan, but not everywhere. However, on the back of its dominance of rural Japan, the LDP has been able to cling to power. As Professor Scheiner wrote, "Despite the fact that rural SMDs constitute only about 20 percent of all seats, rural SMD victories provide the LDP with nearly one third of all the seats it needs to win a majority. To win a majority, the LDP needs to take only around 40 percent of the remaining seats."

Professor Scheiner's thesis points at the way forward and illuminates some of the recent trends seen in Japanese politics. It explains why Mr. Koizumi's attacks on vehicles of clientelism were so vociferously opposed within the LDP, and why Mr. Koizumi may yet have succeeded in destroying the LDP as promised. It explains why the DPJ is attracted to decentralization (see this post by Jun Okumura), and why the LDP is becoming increasingly uneasy about the "nonpartisan" Sentaku movement that is pushing hard for decentralization. It also explains why Ozawa Ichiro has been spending his time touring the country, and why he has been so heavily involved in selecting candidates. Perhaps Mr. Ozawa learned from his experiences in the early 1990s, when he tried to take power by forming parties with inverted-pyramid structures: unseating the LDP will require political change at the local level in order to build up a stable of quality candidates for national elections.

I saw this dynamic at work in Kanagawa-4. The HC member for whom I worked is also the DPJ's presumptive HR candidate, making him a "quality" candidate according to Professor Scheiner's definition. His staff campaigned hard and successfully for DPJ candidates in local and prefectural candidates. Once elected, the newly elected officials began working more or less full time on behalf of my boss to bolster his support in the district.

Many expected that electoral reform, once implemented, would yield immediate regime change. Clearly that wasn't the case. But the combination of shrinking budgets, the Koizumi reforms, more effective campaigning on the part of the DPJ, and an LDP increasingly at war with itself over how to preserve the party's dominance of the rural third while remaining competitive in the other two-thirds of the country suggest that regime change is on the way. The DPJ's impressive showings in last year's local and HC elections may have been important portents of things to come.

Kan in the lion's den

On Friday, the National Governors Association held its second meeting in Nagata-cho in as many months, an emergency meeting to protest plans to end the special fund for road construction by redirecting gasoline tax revenue into the general fund. Higashikokubaru Hideo, popular comedian-cum-governor of Miyazaki prefecture, evoked the name of bankrupt Yubari City in calling for the preservation of dedicated road construction funds.

Kan Naoto, DPJ acting president, actually attended the meeting to defend the DPJ's position in a debate with Ibuki Bunmei, LDP secretary-general. Asahi described Mr. Kan as "alone and helpless" as he was showered with boos from the gathered assembly for pointing out the cost markups associated with bid-rigging.

The DPJ faces an uphill battle in convincing (mostly LDP) prefectural and local officials that it actually has their best interests in mind, that it wants to free dying regions from the dead end of economies rooted in inefficient construction and agriculture. Do the people of these areas actually profit from this construction? Or do bureaucrats who retire into positions in semi-public and private companies gain more?

Does anyone still think that this is Mr. Koizumi's LDP? Where, I wonder, are those reformers to stand up for smaller, more efficient government and an LDP standing on the side of urban consumers and taxpayers?

The enduring weakness of the parties

Over at Shisaku, MTC writes about l'affaire Ōe — Ōe being Ōe Yasuhiro, one of the three DPJ HC members who attended the gathering of prefectural assembly members mentioned in this post.

Kan Naoto has called for Mr. Ōe to resign his seat. That is unlikely to happen: MTC notes that since Mr. Ōe was elected last July — and since the DPJ has a plurality, not a majority, in the HC — the DPJ is likely to be stuck with him and his overt flirtations with the LDP until 2013. I'm also dubious of pronouncements issued by DPJ executives who aren't Ozawa Ichiro; Mr. Ozawa seems to have the last word in the party executive, if not necessarily the party.

Indeed, this episode is but the latest sign that the creation of top-down, centralized, programmatic parties that was supposed to accompany the emergence of a two-party system has not occurred as expected. Both the LDP and the DPJ (despite talk of Mr. Ozawa's "dictatorial" control of the party) remain deeply divided. The leaders of both parties have few tools with which to discipline unruly backbenchers. Take, for example, the LDP leadership's frustrations with the activities of Nakagawa Shoichi (discussed here). Apart from the blunt weapon of expelling party members, what can the leaders of both parties do to discipline "uncooperative" members?

Another round of population transfers between parties (i.e., another political realignment) might help centralize the parties, but I doubt it. Factions, whether based on personality, pork, or policy, will continue to exist, and individual members will continue to wield considerable power, both on the basis of their fundraising abilities and because the political system may be in for a period of weak coalition and minority governments whose need to preserve working majorities will give considerable leverage to rebellious backbenchers.

Abdicating responsibility

The government has submitted its bill extending the temporary gasoline tax for ten years as part of its bill related to the revision of the tax system. It is not clear, however, whether the government will give up on finding a compromise with the opposition and push for passage before the end of the month, giving it time to pass the bill again in HR over HC objections.

In the background of the bill's submission, some 500 prefectural assembly members — mostly LDP, with nineteen DPJ members (and three DPJ HC members) — met at the Kensei Kinenkan in Nagatacho to demand the retention of the special fund for road construction and to insist that the Diet pass the extension before the end of the fiscal year. The issue is the DPJ's proposal to shift funding for road construction to the general fund, meaning that the prefectures and the "road tribe" advocates in the LDP would have to compete with every other interest group to secure funding for their projects of choice.

And this is a bad thing? It seems obvious to me that in a period of tight budgets, when the nation has to make tough decisions about priorities and what deserves money, road construction should not be given special preferences, especially considering that Japan's road needs are not what they once were. Arguably, the steady flow of money into rural construction projects is an impediment to developing creative solutions to the rural problem. Are the residents of rural areas actually served by the construction of roads, or are the "interests of the people" used as window dressing for a system that enriches LDP members, bureaucrats, and construction companies? As this Asahi article makes clear, the LDP's rhetoric in this debate focuses on how the loss of the extra tax revenue will impact communities. I hope the DPJ will show, again and again, how this entitlement, like many entitlement programs, has had perverse consequences, hindering the development of rural areas rather than enhancing it.

According to a DPJ survey of the heads and deputy heads of its prefectural chapters, there is broad support for the DPJ's position on this issue, but as usual it needs to do a better job presenting its opposition to the public. As asked by the head of the Kochi prefectural chapter in response to the party survey, "Although this is an election in which a government will be chosen, is it good to focus the debate on a price reduction of 25 yen (per liter of gas)?" This issue alone will not sink the government. The task for the DPJ in advance of a possible general election is to make a coherent case condemning the failed governance of the LDP. The temporary tax should be but one plank in that case — it should not be the whole of the DPJ's case.

If the DPJ formulates its position carefully, it can change the debate from one that pits urban against rural into one that unites all Japanese against the government, pointing to how the government has substituted money for creative policy making, in the process abdicating its responsibility to lead and provide a secure future for all citizens. This debate shouldn't just be about the extra yen paid into government coffers. The DPJ should use this issue to indict the LDP for failing to adjust the nation's spending priorities in a period of both tight budgets and urgent policy needs.

Is the LDP doomed?

MTC makes the bold prediction that the LDP "faces annihilation" in the next general election.

I'm inclined to agree, simply because it seems that the LDP has finally exhausted the patience of the Japanese people — and the members of the LDP seem more interested in dividing into warring ideological camps than in making good policy in advance of a general election. The party elders seem equally aware of the peril facing the LDP. Not surprisingly, over the weekend both Foreign Minister Komura and former prime minister Mori insisted that there is no hurry to hold a general election, with Mr. Komura suggesting that the government should wait until the end of the term (i.e., September 2009) before dissolving the House of Representatives and holding a election.

Will the ideologues, I wonder, permit the government to wait that long before going to the people? Will 2008 be the year of the Nakagawa no ran?

Meanwhile, the gasoline tax issue is shaping up to be a massive boon for the opposition, not least because it will make it harder for Mr. Fukuda and the LDP to campaign on behalf of consumers and urban Japan more generally. That's what I conclude from a meeting at the Kantei with the National Governors Association, in which the governors, led by NGA Chairman Aso Wataru of Fukuoka (no relation to Taro, who is also from Fukuoka), informed the government that they support the extension of the "temporary" gasoline tax. (It's unclear from this Sankei article about the meeting whether the governors are unanimous in support of the tax extension.) The issue is increasingly shaping up to be a battle of consumers and gas-dependent producers versus regions hungry for infrastructure projects funded by the tax. It seems obvious to me which side is the better bet both in the short term, in a general election, and over the long term as the LDP and the DPJ vie for dominance.

The DPJ is set to get as much mileage out of the gasoline tax issue as possible (pun intended), and unlike in the debate over the refueling mission, the LDP may not be able to win the match by using the HR supermajority. A recent Mainichi poll found that even as 46% of respondents said they approved of the government's use of the supermajority on the refueling issue (to 41% who did not approve), 51% said they don't think it should be used for future issues (compared to only 38% who approve of its being used again). Mr. Mori thinks that there is no danger to the government from using the supermajority to resolve the debate over the gasoline tax, that the threat of an HC censure motion is nothing to fear. As I noted in the run-up to the re-passage of the anti-terror law earlier this month, on paper the DPJ's threat to censure the government isn't much of a threat. The government could theoretically ignore it. But a censure motion backed by massive public outcry against the government would be harder to ignore.

It is difficult to see how Mr. Fukuda, for all his good intentions, will be able to reassert his control of the LDP and regain the momentum in Diet deliberations.

The post-Koizumi LDP and the search for a new Japanese model

Yamaguchi Jiro, a specialist in Japanese and British politics at Hokkaido University, had an article in the November Ronza that has been published in translation at Japan Focus.

Yamaguchi competently explains the reasons for Mr. Abe's demise, and in the final portions of the essay, places Mr. Abe's decline and fall squarely in the larger narrative of the LDP's struggle to find its way in the aftermath of the Koizumi mini-revolution.

Koizumi’s structural reforms smashed the ‘vested rights’ of politicians and bureaucrats and promoted policy efficiency; but they also had a serious impact on people and regions that had enjoyed protection under the policies in place until then. Resistance to this continues to threaten the LDP. The opposition is gathering popular support by persistently questioning the harmful effects of the structural reforms. Faced with the contradictory vectors of inheriting the Koizumi government’s success or correcting its evils, the LDP is irresolute. There is no clear-cut course for post-Koizumi politics.

While Mr. Fukuda has stabilized the LDP's situation, he has made no progress whatsoever on tackling the fundamental dilemma at the heart of the LDP's troubles.

The LDP is still no closer to committing firmly to a future as an urban party. It has still not figured out how to split the difference between defending the interests of its traditional rural supporters and advancing a vision of globalized, liberalized Japan. Professor Yamaguchi suggests that the solution is policy shift: "If any sanity remains in the LDP, the natural thing to do is to change policy. In that event, the competition between the two major parties will be not just a clash of slogans but will have to evolve into concrete policy competition...It is no matter if policy differences are to some extent reducible to differences of degree. Concrete debate over differences in degree should be able to clarify alternatives."

The field of debate will be over the terms of Japan's new economic model (and will probably feature considerably less striking than the debates over the creation of new economic models in France and Germany). As the Economist's recent survey on business in Japan suggested, Japan is moving in the direction of a new Japanese model that borrows features from "Anglo-Saxon" capitalism. But the Japanese model will end up including more social provisions (once the government figures out how to pay for them, of course) and probably a great deal more government investment in encouraging development in blighted regions, even as Japan opens to more FDI and liberalizes its labor market.

The question is which party will devise the superior formula and the best way to sell it, together with the best messenger. On this point, Professor Yamaguchi also calls for a new way of Japanese politics that rejects the "telecharisma" of the Koizumi years. He calls for new thinking about selecting leaders — "What is called for is to evaluate leadership in terms of the ability to reflect seriously on issues and the existence of an ability to explain issues to the public" — and a new way of considering issues — "What is called for is concrete debate over problems faced by the people such as inequality, poverty, worries over social security and job insecurity, their recognition as policy issues, and the search for ways to resolve them." In this, he echoes Masuzoe Yoichi's argument in Naikaku soridaijin about the "wideshowization" of Japanese politics. But for all the laments of the policy intellectuals, it's unclear to me how Japan will escape the trivialization of its politics. The electorate still seems to move more according to whims and half-baked impressions than reasoned ideas about how Japan is and should be governed.

And as for a debate rooted in concrete discussions of policy, this seems unlikely for the time being. At present, the leaders of both the LDP and the DPJ are more tacticians than strategists. Neither has moved beyond reacting to the moment to formulate an agenda upon which to contest a general election, let alone an agenda upon which to legislate (and both parties remain mired in the war of attrition on the refueling mission, which has forestalled any effort to refocus on domestic policy).

Matsuzawa Shigefumi's experiments

Working out in Kanagawa-ken , I had the opportunity to become familiar with Matsuzawa Shigefumi, Kanagawa's reformist DPJ-backed governor. Mr. Matsuzawa, who worked for former Congresswoman Beverly Byron (D-MD-6) when he was younger and won three elections to the House of Representatives before being elected governor of Kanagawa in 2003, is one of those Japanese politicians who single handedly gives me some hope for Japan's future. (I suppose I might also group Masuzoe Yoichi in the same category.)

He recently made national news by pushing for term limits in Kanagawa (explicitly suggesting that Kanagawa should serve as an example for the nation, i.e., a laboratory of democracy), which prompted criticism from the national government. His push for term limits is wholly consistent with the reformist thrust of his businesslike campaign manifesto, which he has announced should be the yardstick by which his government is measured. This may sound simple, but look at the manifestos put out by both parties in 2007 and ask yourself whether they can really be used as yardsticks. Mr. Matsuzawa's 2007 manifesto also reminded voters of his 2003 promises, and showed whether he succeeded or failed at implementing his agenda. A token measure, perhaps, but I think it goes a long way to making candidates more accountable to voters — and I think it's no accident that Mr. Matsuzawa won reelection by a resounding margin in April.

With that as an introduction, I strongly recommend this challenging essay by Mr. Matsuzawa at the Genron NPO blog.

As the governor of one of Japan's most populous and economically dynamic prefectures, Mr. Matsuzawa takes aim at the notion of the revenue gap between urban and rural prefectures, suggesting that contrary to public perception, the gap between wealthy prefectures like Tokyo and Kanagawa and poorer, sparsely populated rural prefectures is not all that great, because urban prefectural governments have greater responsibilities (due to burgeoning populations) but get less revenue from the central government. Central government subsidies, according to Mr. Matsuzawa, effectively close the gap between urban and rural. He argues, in fact, that once central government taxes distributed to local governments are added to local taxes, rural prefectures like Shimane, Tottori, Kochi, and Fukui receive the most tax revenue per person, with Kanagawa receiving the least per person in all of Japan.

The problem, he suggests, exists, but is not as large as the media would have the Japanese people believe.

Accordingly, he is vehemently opposed to the government's plan to enable Japanese citizens to pay a portion of their taxes to places where they are not in residence (their former hometowns, for instance). Mr. Matsuzawa is quick to see that the costs of this plan would be paid by urban prefectures such as his own, which are swollen with "refugees" from rural prefectures who under this plan could send some tax money home, thereby depriving his government of revenue that rightfully belongs to it. Without denying the desperate economic conditions in rural Japan (for which he credits Mr. Koizumi and his attacks on public corporations), he attacks this problem from a variety of angles. He argues that this plan violates the basic principle of "no taxation without representation" — in other words, why should the vote of someone who pays full taxes to one prefecture be worth the same as someone's whose taxes are divided among jurisdictions ? (And from the perspective of a taxpayer, why should a taxpayer pay taxes to a jurisdiction in which he has no vote and thus no way of holding the taxing authority accountable?)

Moreover, Mr. Matsuzawa wonders how money will be transferred from one jurisdiction to another. Who will build and maintain a computer system to ensure that it happens smoothly? (And, I would add, echoing Mr. Masuzoe, can bureaucrats be trusted to handle the transactions without losing or embezzling the funds?)

I am not in a position to debate Mr. Matsuzawa's numbers, but he provides an important reminder that in the rush to solve the "Yubari problem," Japan's stressed metropolises must not be forgotten.

Mr. Matsuzawa, I think, represents the best of the DPJ. (Yes, he's officially independent, DPJ-backed, but as a former DPJ representative, it's fair to say that this distinction is meaningless in this case.) An urban governor, he is sensitive to the needs of urban voters and aware that jaded Japanese voters, disappointed by their government over and over again, desire accountable, transparent government, even if they can't quite articulate it that way. His critique is just one way for the DPJ to remind urban voters why they can't trust the LDP, ensuring that by the time another general election rolls around, the DPJ will be in a position to trounce the LDP in urban Japan.

The question is whether the DPJ, under the rule of Mr. Ozawa, the "king" of Iwate, can fully stake a claim as the true representative of the interests of urban Japan, or whether Mr. Ozawa's efforts to appeal to rural voters will undermine the party's message in the cities. If the latter — and I fully expect this to be the case — a general election campaign will be simply a matter of two nearly identical parties struggling to balance a message of reform in the cities with pork-barrel promises in the countryside.

In this scenario, urban Japan will, as always, lose.

"The state is less dependable than a convenience store"

Masuzoe Yoichi, minister of health, labor, and welfare and the LDP's resident political scientist, has an essay in the December issue of Chuo Koron in which he details the crisis of confidence in the Japanese state and calls for systemic change that will restore the confidence of the people in their government.

The title of his article — which I've borrowed for the title of this post — is based on the idea that somehow banks, post offices, and convenience stores manage to handle the transfer of funds without problems, but the national and local governments cannot transfer social security payments without embezzlement. In part one, he pins the blame squarely on bureaucrats.

"From old it is said, 'Kanson minpi [bureaucrats exalted, the people despised],' with the hidden premise being that bureaucrats are steadfast and the people terrible. However, now it is the exact opposite of that. Therefore, it is basically good to entrust "to the people that which the people can do."

In the second part, he discusses how the scandal-ridden Social Insurance Agency — part of his ministerial ambit — cultivates a culture of unaccountability for lower officials. As he writes, "In other words, since there are no orders from above and a lack of scrupulous oversight, it happens anyone can do whatever they want. The result is that this invites the occurrence of scandals like the sloppy management of records and embezzlement." He even goes so far as to suggest that the contemporary bureaucracy, as a system of irresponsibility, is "completely the same as the Japanese Imperial Army."

His solution is the implementation of a top-down system in which responsibility and accountability are clear.

In addition, he suggests that other checks on administration are needed, pointing to the example of the ombudsmen in Scandinavian countries. And he suggests that rather than viewing the nejire kokkai as a bad thing, it might be a good thing for accountability in Japanese governance. (Indeed, it was for this very reason that I think that a grand coalition would be a bad thing.)

In the third part, he explores the Japanese policy agenda, looking at the implications of the faulty social welfare system for the Japanese economy as a whole. He argues that consumer spending is low due to fears of inadequate care in old age. Ergo, if the Japanese government can alleviate insecurities about retirement, it can get people to spend more, jump-starting the Japanese economy. He suggests that an increase in the consumption tax rate from 5 to 10% is necessary, with the difference alloted to maintaining the social welfare system. Accordingly, the more people the spend, the better funded the welfare system. (This proposal strikes me as too good to be true — and it's not entirely clear to me why people wouldn't react to a consumption tax hike by spending less.)

Mr. Masuzoe concludes by calling for radical restructuring of Japanese sub-national governance, reorganizing prefectures into larger regions with radical subsidiarity, reducing the central government to nothing more than the cabinet office and the foreign, defense, justice, and finance ministries.

Mr. Masuzoe's heart is in the right place, so to speak. In particular, longtime readers of this blog will be aware of my belief in the importance of systems of accountability both inside and outside of government. Mr. Masuzoe clearly recognizes that Japan is missing the institutional checks present in other democracies that ferret out and punish wrongdoing by legislators and bureaucrats. Its courts are weak, its prosecutors face a standard of evidence that keeps many cases from going to trial, its agencies lack ombudsmen and inspectors general, its journalists and media outlets have all-too-cozy relationships with those in power (without a tradition of investigative journalism), and the political parties and the Diet, thanks to the LDP's nearly uninterrupted hold on power, are enablers of bureaucratic incompetence and corruption rather than a check on administrative abuses. NGOs are a recent arrival, and many depend on the government for funding.

In other words, this is where Mr. Masuzoe and other reformers should focus their attention. Regular alternation of ruling parties will help too, of course, but barring that reformers should push for the creation of accountability systems throughout the Japanese government.

Meanwhile regional subsidiarity strikes me as a scheme that would, if anything, ensure that certain rural regions that are already dying would have even less chance of reversing their fortunes. As MTC notes in the post linked to above, the central bureaucracy has much to answer for as far as the decimation of the Japanese countryside is concerned. But it is not altogether clear to me how removing impoverished regions from the hands of the central government and putting them into the hands of cash-strapped regional governments will make them any more likely to thrive. As a matter of principle, subsidiarity is great — after all, as students of the American progressive movement know, states can be the laboratories of democracy. But moving government closer to the people is no guarantee of good governance; I think it's just as likely that the mega-regional governments in Mr. Masuzoe's scheme could be just as prone to profligacy and venality as Tokyo has been.

In short, I agree with Mr. Masuzoe's diagnosis, but I don't think he paid nearly enough attention to the cure.

The end of Abe politics (for now)

Prime Minister Fukuda delivered his maiden speech to the Diet this afternoon, reopening legislative business after an unscheduled three-week abeyance.

If Mr. Fukuda was trying to differentiate himself from his successor, he succeeded admirably. Mr. Abe's way of politics was not just ideological, but inflexibly ideological. For Mr. Abe, it was always "my way or the highway" — but, perhaps to his surprise, it was the Japanese people who told him to beat it. Mr. Fukuda will, as expected, not be nearly as intransigent. (Sankei says exactly this, noting that Mr. Fukuda's "color" will be different from both Mr. Koizumi's "theatrical politics" and Mr. Abe's conservatism.)

The speech — available here — redounds with what will be the cardinal themes of the Fukuda cabinet: trust, sincerity, cooperation, reform.

The longest sections, perhaps not surprisingly, concern social inequalities and foreign policy.

On the inequality between urban and rural Japan, Mr. Fukuda acknowledges the existence of a "vicious cycle" whereby rural regions have stagnated economically, making them less attractive to the young, which has perpetuated economic stagnation and "grayed" whole regions of the country. He committed his government to accelerate studies of how to regenerate the regions, including transferring more tax authority and considering the agglomeration of prefectures into seven or nine super-prefectures (from forty-seven). And he acknowledged the importance of protecting small farmers and small- and medium-sized businesses — traditional pillars of LDP support — but was short on the how. Something tells me that the denizens of the shuttered shopping streets visited by Mr. Fukuda during the LDP presidential campaign are hungering for something more than words, although Mr. Fukuda's acknowledgment of the problem is a step above Mr. Abe. At the same time, however, he reaffirmed once again his commitment to reform — so it remains to be seen how he proposes to go about solving the "light and shadow" problem with reform, discussed at length in this article (two parts) in Genron NPO by Kato Koichi.

On foreign policy, he called attention to Japan's role in supporting the peace of the world, and highlighted the MSDF mission in the Indian Ocean and the North Korea problems as his government's highest priority foreign policy problems. On the former, he called attention to requests from the UN and countries participating in the reconstruction of Afghanistan that Japan extend its mission — and said, "I will expend all my energy explaining to the people and the Diet the importance of continuing the mission without a break, in order to receive their understanding." On the latter, he waffled, talking about the importance of the six-party talks to the peace of the region, but also speaking of the importance of ensuring that all the abductees are returned home. In other words, he ducked the looming question of whether Japan will actually begin playing a constructive role in the talks as they move ahead.

The rest of the foreign policy section was spent reassuring others. To the US, he pledged to strengthen bilateral trust in the relationship. To the people of Okinawa, he pledged to listen to their opinions on the realignment of US forces. To China, he pledged to continue the strategic relationship grounded in shared interests, and to South Korea, he pledged to forge a more trusting relationship in the near future. To ASEAN, he pledged greater economic cooperation, and to the WTO, he pledged to work towards a compromise that concludes the Doha Round. And he renewed the Japanese government's campaign for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

While the speech is about as vague as Mr. Abe's maiden speech to the Diet around this time last year, there is no question that Mr. Fukuda's priorities are wholly different from Mr. Abe's. Mr. Abe's vision of a "beautiful Japan" was delusional, and created a false impression internationally of a vigorous, energetic Japan rising. Mr. Fukuda acknowledges the reality of contemporary Japan as a deeply insecure place, whose people are worried about the future of their society and their livelihoods as they age. He doesn't seem to have many concrete answers for how to deal with those insecurities, but acknowledging that said insecurities exist is an important first step. He also recognizes that Japanese society has to change, and that change doesn't mean going backward, a recognition sure to make conservatives in the LDP apoplectic. He said, for example, "I am wrestling with the implementation of a 'men and women joint-participation society' in which all individuals, both men and women, can utilize their abilities and personalities and share joys and responsibilities. In this society [women] will be able to take sufficient maternity leave and then return to work, so to maintain an environment in which children can be born and raised safely." Not exactly a radical vision compared to innovations that have been implemented in workplaces in other developed countries, but it's radical enough for an LDP prime minister.

This is a good reminder of what Mr. Fukuda faces as he moves forward. He not only has to try to cooperate with a DPJ that has given few signs of wanting to cooperate, but he will likely have to fend off attacks from ideologues in his own party, who — as MTC reminds us — are still in fighting spirit, perhaps even more than ever after their man was hounded from the Kantei. (Undoubtedly, they will be raging about the absence of a mention of constitution revision in Mr. Fukuda's address; indeed, after a year of Mr. Abe, it's strange to see a policy address that, however vague, actually discusses matters of national concern.) In case anyone needs a reminder that the LDP's conservatives are still ready for action, bear in mind that Mr. Aso has already begun touring the country to build up grassroots support for his next run for the LDP presidency.

Whether or not Mr. Fukuda lasts long enough to make any progress on solving Japan's problems, it is refreshing to have a prime minister who is both aware of what the country's problems really are and willing to admit that he doesn't have all the answers.

Kono looks on the bright side of life

Kono Taro, wunderkind Lower House member from Kanagawa, and Aso supporter, looks at the bright side of Mr. Aso's defeat in a post at his blog:

In Saitama prefecture, with 10,055 and 10,498 votes, we lost by only a difference of 400 votes [Ed. — fuzzy math?]. If we had one won this, we would have taken three votes, giving us a total of 200, and influencing Saitama's Nakano, Imai, and Yamaguchi.

Our predictions were exceeded considerably, and we were in good spirits. Aizawa Hideyuki-sensei [Ed. — 89, LH, Tottori 2] made a toast and joked about not saying congratulations. Someone said it was like the wake of someone who died at 100 years of age, disappointing but sufficient. Someone else said, yes, ninety-seven years of age. The Saitama three laughed bitterly.

The received votes were Aso 197, Fukuda 330.

The party member votes were Aso 65, Fukuda 76.

But the actual numbers of party members' votes cast around the country were Aso 252,809, Fukuda 250,186. Aso won by more than 2,000 votes.

In Tokyo, Osaka, Kagawa, and Miyagi, where he made campaign stops, it was all Aso.

In Kagawa, Ehime, and Kochi, where there were no Diet members publicly supporting Aso, it was all Aso.

There were seventeen prefectures in which Aso won the vote among party members, eighteen where Fukuda won, and twelve prefectures in which party officials decided without regarding member votes.

The population of prefectures Aso won totaled 64,700,000, the population of prefectures Fukuda won totaled 37,890,000. (The remainder was 25,180,000.)

Among the ten most heavily populated prefectures, Fukuda won only fifth-ranked Saitama and seventh-ranked Hokkaido. Excluding the three votes Aso automatically won in ninth-ranked Fukuoka, seven were Aso's (Tokyo, Kanagawa, Osaka, Aichi, Chiba, Hyogo, Shizuoka).

I'm not sure how much significance one should attach to these numbers, but they do suggest that while an Aso insurgency didn't materialize, he did find not inconsiderable support among broad swathes of the country. His support in urban areas, however, may not matter much, because the challenge in a general election is appealing to nonaligned voters — not the party rank-and-file. For the immediate task at hand, healing the party's wounds in advance of a general election, means appealing to the rural rank-and-file, who have recently shown their willingness to desert the party.

Mr. Kono's remarks suggest relatively little ill will, meaning that the risks of an Aso irritant within the party are pretty much nil. He will return to the fold, chastened.

But as Asahi finds in its analysis of the vote, the result among Diet members was beyond the Aso camp's wildest dreams: "It's a protest vote against the contemporary LDP."

It's all about Koizumi

It is impossible to talk about the LDP today without acknowledging that the party — and thus Japan's political system — stands in the shadow of Koizumi Junichiro.

For his enemies in the party, branded by Mr. Koizumi as "opposition forces," he is the symbol of everything they loathe, enabler of what the French call "Anglo-Saxon" market fundamentalism. To the Japanese people and his followers within the LDP, he is the symbol for the changes Japan needs to make in order to remain successful, and a decisive break from the old way of politics. Despite withdrawing from the spotlight since leaving the premiership in September 2006, he is the man central to any discussion about Japan's political future, even if the man himself is likely to remain on the sidelines (and may even be out of the Diet by the next House of Representatives election).

Not surprisingly, then, both Mr. Fukuda and Mr. Aso are positioning themselves in relation to Mr. K. Mr. Fukuda, whatever his personal disputes with Mr. Koizumi, has positioned himself firmly in the Koizumi stream, with the caveat that "If problems arise, reform should be carefully amended." Mr. Aso, however, has been described as taking on a distinctly "leaving Koizumi behind" cast. Consistent with his "rural insurgency" campaign strategy, he is using phrases like "market fundamentalism" to argue for prioritizing the concerns of rural Japan over pushing ahead with painful reforms.

For the LDP's short-term political prospects, it cannot be an either/or decision. By dint of his charisma, Mr. Koizumi was able to forge a national movement under the LDP umbrella that could compete in the cities without chasing rural Japanese from the LDP. Absent that charisma? The increasing incompatible and contradictory interests of urban and rural Japan have become apparent. As Takenaka Heizo, Mr. Koizumi's former lieutenant, writes in Sankei, the legacy of Mr. Koizumi is as much about appearances as about substance: "In a democratic society, to make policy for the people, the government has the responsibility both to explain policy in a way that is easily understood by the people and to execute." For Mr. Takenaka, Mr. Abe's problem is that he failed to market his policies well, and poor personnel selections hindered his ability to execute.

And so the LDP's dilemma. One candidate says the right things and will undoubtedly be wise in his choice of advisers but is utterly lacking in charisma; the other desires a departure from Mr. Koizumi's path, but has popular appeal and the ability to attract voters to his side throughout the country, including younger voters in cities. For the time being, it seems like Mr. Fukuda will do, but it is unclear to me whether he will be able to reassemble the Koizumi movement that led the LDP to a historic victory in 2005. Is there a leader in the LDP who can? I'm skeptical, and so I wonder how much longer the LDP can last as a party that it is trying to compete in the cities without losing its rural supporters (or vice versa). The DPJ obviously faces similar pressures, but the LDP, as the ruling party, has more at stake.

The battle for rural Japan

The campaign for the LDP presidency officially opened on Saturday, and its contours are already apparent.

As now widely acknowleged, Fukuda Yasuo enjoys a commanding position thanks to support of every LDP faction but Aso Taro's.

Mr. Aso, therefore, will be campaigning as a rebel. Thanks in part to the rapid commitment of the factions to Mr. Fukuda, Mr. Aso has now started calling attention to the perils of faction rule, borrowing from the Koizumi playbook to campaign as the candidate for a new LDP. It is unclear whether he can succeed by taking this message directly to the party grassroots.

As Asahi found when it asked LDP prefectural chapter officials about the race, it's not exactly clear what they want from the next leader: "There are differing views: On the one hand, there is the view that approves of the factions' simultaneous embrace of Mr. Fukuda as 'resulting in party unity,' but there is on the other hand the objection that 'it's strange before a policy debate.'" For example, Hokkaido's officials mentioned leadership, while Tohoku officials mentioned the kakusa mondai. Outside of Gunma, Mr. Fukuda's home prefecture, Asahi did not find great enthusiasm for Mr. Fukuda's candidacy — and the process by which the factions rushed to his side seems to have raised eyebrows.

What will it take to placate the prefectural chapters? Will vague promises from Tokyo to listen to their concerns be enough to make them fall into line behind the will of the party elders?

Meanwhile, the discussion about what Fukuda administration's agenda will look like continues, and the consensus increasingly seems to be that it will be like Mr. Abe's, but stripped of ideological fantasies and vacuous slogans. Jun Okumura fleshes this out in considerable detail in this post.

This approach — reformist at home, moderate abroad — could be enough to ensure that the LDP remains competitive in urban Japan, putting pressure on the DPJ in the coming months to work with the government on the budget and related legislation, or else risk getting its hoped-for early election in circumstances more favorable to the government. But rural Japan remains the wild card. Was July's desertion a fluke, or will Mr. Ozawa's "back to the future" strategy actually serve to pry rural voters away from the LDP in general elections as well? If the latter, it's wholly unclear to me what Mr. Fukuda will do to regain the trust of rural Japan.

A potentially ominous sign for the government is MAFF's recent decision to begin working with the DPJ on agricultural policy. It is well known that in the past the bureaucracy has declined to work with the DPJ in drafting its own legislation. For MAFF to begin talking of "conciliation" with the ascendant opposition could well signal just how parlous the LDP's situation in rural Japan is. At the very least, it shows that Mr. Ozawa has actually seized the initiative on agricultural policy with the DPJ's plans for introducing an "income compensation" system, earning the support of sympathizers within MAFF, who are more than happy to support a plan criticized by the LDP as baramaki seisaku (i.e., throwing money around).

Mr. Fukuda, should he hold on to win, has his work cut out for him.

Looking at the 2007 single-seat districts

Over at Liberal Japan, Matt points to an article in the Yomiuri Shimbun pointing to a poll that shows DPJ support rising in both major cities and smaller cities and towns in rural areas. Based on this, he concludes — emphatically, by way of music videos — that the election is bound to be a landslide for the DPJ.




I wish I could be so optimistic.

The basis for his optimism is his conclusion that these poll numbers show that the DPJ's rural strategy is working; Ozawa's focus on touring the country rather than fighting in the Diet is set to yield major results for the DPJ. Now, I've praised Ozawa's choice of strategy before, and having looked through the DPJ's forty-six-page manifesto, including its three-plus pages on agricultural policy, I can confirm that the DPJ is indeed prepared to pump pork into the countryside, so that, er, they can continue producing pork for the cities. From biomass energy promotion to rice support to support for small-scale agriculture, the DPJ is prepared to pry open the jaws of the exchequer to prop up Japan's farmers. The manifesto also shows that the DPJ has borrowed the late Mr. Matsuoka's playbook in trying to sell agricultural support to precious urban voters on the basis of food security and the environment. (Mr. Matsuoka emphasized both during the Koizumi years, seeing the environment especially as a new way to keep the money flowing.)

But I disagree that one can simply call the election on the basis of a single public opinion poll. Accordingly, I looked at the twenty-nine single-seat electoral districts to see the potential for a DPJ landslide.

My conclusion:

LDP best-case scenario: DPJ 12 / LDP 17

DPJ best-case scenario: DPJ 19 / LDP 10

Barring a total collapse of the LDP, I expect the worst the LDP can possibly do in these districts is win a mere ten out of twenty-nine. In that scenario, the LDP would without question win fewer than the 15 PR seats it won in 2004, and assuming twelve seats from the two-seat districts and six more from the three- and five-seat districts, it would finish with around forty seats, falling far short of a majority.

In the best case scenario for the single-seat districts, the LDP would win 17 seats, perhaps repeat its 2004 PR performance and take one seat in each multi-member district and finish with fifty seats, enough to pull together a majority in the Upper House.

The reality will probably fall somewhere between the two, as I argued before. In other words, not a landslide at all.

Looking at the individual races is useful, because one immediately notices the number of senior LDP politicians up for reelection. Whatever the unpopularity of the government, each of these members enjoys the advantages of incumbency, and a number of them are norin zoku from rural prefectures, meaning that they have been well placed to provide support for their constituents. The DPJ has a difficult task ahead of it in many of these races, and I am not entirely sure that the candidates that the opposition has selected are up to the challenge.

Furthermore, the question of turnout remains. Will the opposition be able to bring out enough voters angry about the government to turn the tide to the LDP's worst-case scenario? And will they be angry enough by the time it comes to vote? Will weeks of campaigning, hearing from incumbents about how they have helped the prefecture, be enough to mollify public outrage?

What follows is my assessment of each of the twenty-nine single-seat elections. As you can see, I outline the facts of each race, and then make a prediction based on my own reasoning. Admittedly, a lot of it is guesswork and hunches. I'm sure many of you will look at my notes and make drastically different predictions. I am interested to hear, one way or another. As always, your comments are appreciated.

Sources: Yahoo Seiji, Za Senkyo, the LDP homepage, the DPJ homepage, and Japanese Wikipedia.

The 2007 Upper House Election Single-Seat Districts

Aomori: two-term LDP incumbent (60), facing a young (37) DPJ challenger with little political experience and with a Socialist in the field too, siphoning off opposition votes (and incumbent Yamazaki won handily in 2001, 100,000 more than the combined DPJ/Socialist vote total). Aomori's LDP governor won big in April.

My prediction: LDP

Akita: similar to Aomori, two-term LDP incumbent (57) is facing an independent (media personality Matsuura Daigo, age 37). The DPJ holds a single seat in the prefectural assembly, with the LDP holding a plurality and independents the next largest bloc.

My prediction: LDP
Optimistic prediction: Potential for an upset, with a media-personality independent winning in similar circumstances in 2004.

Iwate: "Ozawa's Kingdom" has a DPJ incumbent, Hirano Tatsuo (53), facing a younger LDP challenger as well as a Socialist candidate (in his first election in 2001, the Socialist candidate received 60,000 votes, making the margin of victory much closer [6,000 votes] than otherwise). The "counterwind" may mean that Hirano wins more resoundingly.

My prediction: DPJ

Yamagata: In this open seat, the DPJ is running Funayama Yasue (41), a retired MAFF bureaucrat who lost by a narrow margin in 2004, due to the Socialist siphoning off more votes than the LDP's margin of victory. This time the Socialists are backing Funayama.

My prediction: DPJ

Tochigi: Tochigi, shrinking from a two-seat to a one-seat district, features a showdown between a DPJ and an LDP incumbent. The LDP incumbent is Kunii Masayuki, an archetypal norin zoku — worked in agricultural cooperatives in Tochigi, elected to the Upper House in 1995, served in a number of agricultural policy posts within the LDP, in the Diet, and in the government since then (he's currently the MAFF vice minister). In other words, the kind of politician who has access to the levers of power that enable him to bring tangible benefits home to his constituents. Facing him is Tani Hiroyuki, a one-term DPJ incumbent, with long experience in politics at the local level.

Tochigi may be the most important of the twenty-nine single-seat districts. Facing a leading norin zoku, a man uniquely capable of ensuring that his constituents have the support of the central government, will the DPJ's rural appeal succeed? I doubt it.

My prediction: LDP
Optimistic prediction: A choice of Tani over Kunii could signal a desire among voters for a cleaner politics.

Gunma: With Kokumin Shinto carrying the torch for the opposition against future LDP giant and TV personality Yamamoto Ichita, this one might be one of the few seats that the LDP wins convincingly. (And adhering to the Okumura principle, Yamamoto has a brief article on the English Wikipedia, which informs us that he was once in a rock band. This leads me to add my corollary to the Okumura principle: Japanese politicians with Wikipedia entries in English and who once played in rock bands cannot lose.)

My prediction: LDP

Yamanashi: The DPJ may be well placed in the competition for this open seat, running the young (41) Fuji Television veteran Yonenaga Harunobu against a young (42) LDP activist and consultant Irikura Kaname.

My prediction: DPJ

Toyama: Toyama could be another pickup for the DPJ, with the DPJ supporting independent Morita Takashi, a young medical professional who emphasizes quality nursing care, against LDP incumbent Nogami Kotaro, who was first elected in 2001 — a Koizumi child — and whose record in his first term seems largely undistinguished. LDP candidates like Nogami are undoubtedly vulnerable.

My prediction: DPJ

Ishikawa: The open contest in Ishikawa features two relative heavyweights, the LDP's Yata Tomiro, a long-serving prefectural assemblyman who ultimately rose to the assembly leadership and has experience with agriculture faces the DPJ's Ichikawa Yasuo, a twenty-five-year MAFF veteran and three-term Lower House member washed away in the 2005 Koizumi landslide. Ichikawa probably has the edge here, and his victory would be an important step for the DPJ in the countryside.

My prediction: DPJ

Fukui: In Fukui prefecture, the DPJ is running another Lower House member defeated in 2005 against Matsumura Ryuji, two-term Upper House member, retired bureaucrat (National Police Agency) and vice minister of the Transportation Ministry (and let's not forget his various policy "activities" in various PARC committees). Both are hardly young, the DPJ candidate Wakaizumi 61, Matsumura 69. But like elsewhere, this may be an election that comes down to the national mood: when the citizens of Fukui vote, will it be based on their attitude to the government, or will it be based on their gratitude to Mr. Matsumura for his "service" to the prefecture? It may be contrarian of me, but I suspect the latter.

My prediction: LDP
Optimistic prediction: DPJ

Shiga: The DPJ is running Tokunaga Hisashi (44), a prefectural assemblyman who lost his first bid for the prefectural assembly in 1991, worked for a bit, became a secretary to a Lower House member in 1997, and won a prefectural assembly seat in 1999. His opponent is Yamashita Hidetoshi, first elected in a by-election in 2000 and reelected in 2001; he was parliamentary secretary in the Finance Ministry under Koizumi and chair of the Upper House's health and welfare committee. With Shiga one of the few growing prefectures in Japan (although part of that growth is foreign labor) and home to major corporations, one would it expect it to incline increasingly away from the LDP. It is difficult to predict based on recent elections, however, although the 2006 gubernatorial election, in which Socialist Kada Yukiko surprisingly defeated an LDP/DPJ/Komeito candidate suggests that floating voters may rule. Expect Yamashita to be one of the losing incumbents.

My prediction: DPJ

Mie: The incumbent is the DPJ's Takashi Chiaki, who worked with JA Mie, the prefectural federation of agricultural cooperatives, before being elected in 2000 in a by-election. His LDP opponent is Harvard alum (School of Public Health) and Rotary fellow Onozaki Kohei. While Onozaki is thirteen years' Takashi's junior, I have a hard time seeing the DPJ incumbent losing, no matter how many pictures of his children Onozaki puts on his webpage.

My prediction: DPJ

Nara: The DPJ candidate is Nakamura Tetsuji, another DPJ Lower House member unseated in 2005. Only 36, Nakamura has already served two terms in the Lower House and sat in the DPJ's Next Cabinet as next vice minister of Internal Affairs and Communications responsible for information and communications. (He was also a policy secretary straight out of university and apparently pioneered the use of the "mail magazine.") He is opposed by Matsui Masatake, a dentist and long-serving prefectural assemblymen who ultimately became head of the assembly. This looks like a win for the DPJ, but the DPJ contingent in the prefectural assembly held steady in April, and the DPJ did not field a gubernatorial candidate, suggesting a weaker local organization.

My prediction: DPJ

Wakayama: The Wakayama race pits Seko Hiroshige, adviser to Prime Minister Abe on communications, against the DPJ's Sakaguchi Naoto, head of an NGO that does post-civil war peace-building and reconstruction (during the 1990s he volunteered through MOFA to assist with precisely that). Due to Seko's presence in the campaign, the Abe Cabinet's record will undoubtedly be an important factor in the outcome. Seko was reelected resoundingly in 2001, with 319,080 votes, more than twice the total of the three candidates opposing him. That total will be diminished without Koizumi, but how much will his service in the Abe Cabinet harm Seko? (Sakaguchi's background may also make the Abe Cabinet's designs for Japanese security policy an issue, oddly enough.)

My prediction: LDP
Optimistic prediction: If anger at Abe is that deep, then expect Seko to pay the price.

Tottori: The LDP incumbent, Tsuneda Takayoshi, is another member of the LDP's Upper House class of 1995 and another norin zoku member, serving on a number of MAFF-related Diet committees and LDP policy making committees in his twelve years. (This following a career in Tottori's assembly, in which he also specialized in agriculture.) Kawakami Yoshihiro, his DPJ opponent, is a former LDP member elected in 2003 as an independent member of the Lower House. Kawakami then joined the Kamei faction, voted against postal reform and was "assassinated" in 2005. He joined the DPJ in 2006. I expect Tsuneda will hold on to his seat.

My prediction: LDP

Okayama: In Okayama, there is a five-way race (LDP, DPJ, Communist, Independent, a small party), with the LDP candidate being LDP Upper House Secretary-General Katayama Toranosuke. His DPJ opponent is Himei Yumiko, a judicial scrivener who has served in the prefectural assembly. If Katayama cannot hold onto his seat, the LDP is in major trouble.

My prediction: LDP

Shimane: Facing another member of the LDP class of 1995 holding a senior position, Kageyama Shuntaro, the opposition parties are backing Kamei Akiko, daughter of Kokumin Shinto Secretary-General Kamei Hisaoki, who has worked as an aide to her father but never been elected to office before. (After studying in Canada, she worked as a translator, including at the Nagano Olympics and the Japan-Korea World Cup.) I doubt the Kamei name will be enough to defeat Kageyama.

My prediction: LDP

Yamaguchi: In Prime Minister Abe's "home" prefecture, the LDP incumbent, Hayashi Yoshimasa, is another member of the class of 1995 and currently vice minister in the Cabinet Office (and another LDP Harvardian). His DPJ opponent is Tokura Takako, a community activist running for her first public office. Hayashi, reelected in 2001 by a wide margin, should be able to hold his seat.

My prediction: LDP

Tokushima: In Tokushima, yet another LDP incumbent from the class of 1995, Kitaoka Shuji is facing the DPJ's Nakatani Tomoji, a thirty-eight-year-old retired salaryman. Based on the previous two elections, Kitaoka might be in trouble. First, in 2001 he was reelected by what may be the slimmest margin for an LDP candidate in a year in which the LDP could not lose: 198,387 to 116,278, with 50,000 more votes split between three other candidates. This time, it is just LDP, DPJ, and JCP. Second, in 2004, in a campaign for an open seat, the LDP candidate won by the narrow margin of 166,032 to 153,057. An upset is not guaranteed, however, with only four DPJ members, including two incumbents, elected to the prefectural assembly in April (although a good number of independents were elected too, nine for the first time).

My prediction: DPJ

Kagawa: In Kagawa, LDP four-term incumbent and former Environment Agency Director-General Manabe Genji faces thirty-nine-year-old DPJ candidate Uematsu Emiko, who previously ran in 2004, losing narrowly to LDP incumbent Yamauchi Toshio, 204,392 votes to 197,370. Based on her own electoral record and her youth, together with the general mood, Uematsu may knock off the septuagenarian Manabe.

My prediction: DPJ

Ehime: The DPJ is facing senior LDP incumbent Sekiya Katsutsugu, an eight-term Lower House member-cum-two-term Upper House member, chairman of the Upper House's committee on constitution revision, and construction minister in the Obuchi Cabinet (I can only imagine the largess Ehime received then, with him as the construction minister and the government in a fit of Keynesian pump priming). The opposition parties have opted for an independent celebrity candidate to face Sekiya, recently retired Ehime FC footballer Tomochika Toshiro (32). In the 2004 Upper House election, Ehime was open, and the LDP candidate won by 50,000 votes. Sekiya will probably win comfortably.

My prediction: LDP.

Kochi: Two-term LDP incumbent Tamura Kohei, who has held a number of senior parliamentary, party, and government posts since being elected in 1995, is facing DPJ Kochi City Council Member Takeuchi Norio. Tamura could find himself in trouble; in 2001 he had a relatively narrow win over independent candidate Hirota Hajime, who went on to beat the LDP incumbent in 2004.

My prediction: LDP
Optimistic prediction: My gut tells me that the DPJ can pull off an upset against Tamura. If Chertoff can go by his gut, so can I.

Saga: Contending for the open seat in Saga are the LDP's Kawakami Yoshiyuki, a construction (later transportation) ministry bureaucrat turned vice-governor of Saga prefecture, and Kawasaki Minoru, a retired Bank of Japan economist. Kawasaki ran in 2004, and lost by a mere 20,000 votes. Yomiuri reported on 14 July that Saga looks to be a major battleground, with the government sending most of the campaign and a number of other senior LDP leaders to campaign for Kawakami. That could turn the tide for the LDP, meaning another close loss for Kawasaki. Of course, that the LDP has to fight hard for a prefecture it has long dominated is significant in itself.

My prediction: LDP
Optimistic prediction: Visits by Prime Minister Abe and others refuse to staunch public outrage, and Kawasaki ekes out a close win.

Nagasaki: In what may well be the "Kyuma election," DPJ candidate Okubo Yukishige, a prefectural assemblyman who lost to Kyuma in 2005, is facing LDP candidate Komine Tadatoshi, a school principal. With the DPJ having won handily in 2004 and the LDP tainted by Kyuma, I expect Okubo will prevail.

My prediction: DPJ

Kumamoto: In another test for the DPJ's agricultural strategy, the DPJ is contending with another LDP norinzoku giin incumbent first elected in 1995, Miura Issui. MAFF vice minister, member of various LDP agriculture policy committees, and a native of the late Mr. Matsuoka's Kumamoto prefecture to boot, Miura is another member capable of bringing public funds home to this rural Kyushu prefecture. Facing him is Matsuo Nobuo, a lawyer and onetime DPJ member of the Lower House — like others, he was first elected in 2003 but defeated in the 2005 landslide. Consistent with the results for other norinzoku members facing reelection, I expect that the voters of Kumamoto will send Mr. Miura back to Tokyo, even if Yomiuri finds that some are more concerned with pensions than with agricultural support. Miura may have to work a little harder, and the margin of victory may be narrower, but the interests will win out.

My prediction: LDP

Oita: The situation is somewhat turbulent in Oita, as the DPJ declined to support the SDP candidate, who is now running as an independent. The incumbent, meanwhile, is Kokumin Shinto member Goto Hiroko; she was first elected in 2001 as an LDP member, but left the party after the postal rebellion and joined Kokumin Shinto. I think it is an open question whether the voters of Oita will opt for her again, now that she's joined a marginal party. With the opposition split among two independents, Goto, and the JCP candidate, the LDP candidate, Isozaki Yosuke, a retired bureaucrat, could win more or less by default.

My prediction: LDP

Miyazaki: The race in Miyazaki is similar messy. The LDP incumbent, Kosehira Toshifumi, was first elected in 2001 with 199,171 votes. Two independents took 172,023 and 155,269 votes each. Kosehira, a norin zoku giin in training, holds positions on a number of PARC agriculture committees and sub-committees, and he may once again benefit from a divided race. The Socialists, DPJ, and Kokumin Shinto have endorsed Toyama Itsuki, a DPJ activist — who is running as an independent, to the chagrin of some DPJ members. Toyama may have an advantage going into the election, but three other independents and a JCP candidate could divert votes away, giving Kosehira a narrow victory.

My prediction: LDP
Optimistic prediction: The DPJ and its partners overcome divisions in the final two weeks of campaigning and present a clear challenge to the LDP, diminishing the appeal of votes for other independents.

Kagoshima: Kagoshima is a straight-up LDP incumbent vs. DPJ challenger vs. JCP challenger election. The LDP incumbent is Kajiya Yoshito, another incipient member of the norin zoku as the chairman of the Upper House agriculture committee and participant in the LDP's agriculture policy committees. Like Kosehira, Kajiya was first elected in 2001 with more than double the votes of his closest rival. The LDP candidate in 2004 received a similar number of votes, although with only DPJ and JCP candidates with whom to contend the margin of victory was smaller. Given that the LDP candidate in 2001 and 2004 received 435,300 and 455,591 votes respectively, and LDP candidates had a strong showing in April's prefectural assembly elections, Kajiya is probably safe from DPJ challenger Minayoshi Inao, a Rengo activist who was the DPJ candidate in 2004 (he received 315,560 votes).

My prediction: LDP

Okinawa: Ozawa has been repeatedly frustrated in Okinawa, losing a gubernatorial election and Upper House by-election since becoming head of the DPJ. The opposition is supporting indepdent Itokazu Keiko, who won the Upper House election in 2004 but left to contend for the governorship in 2006, which she lost. In that election, Itokazu received 309,985 votes, losing by fewer than 40,000 votes. But Itokazu actually received fewer votes in 2006 than she received in 2004 as an Upper House candidate (316,148 votes). However, Nishime Junshiro, the LDP incumbent, was first elected in 2001 with 265,821 votes, meaning that he has a lot of work to do to compete with Itokazu.

My prediction: DPJ

Election numerology

The press is filled with important numbers for the seventeen days of official campaigning. These are a few that caught my eye.

28%, 27% — 21%, 22%: These are the DPJ's and the LDP's poll numbers in proportional representation voting and electoral district respectively, as found in Yomiuri's latest poll. I should also add 33%, 34%, which are the numbers for undecided voters in electoral districts and proportional representation voting. What does it say about the DPJ that after months of good fortune, a poll — admittedly, in Yomiuri — shows that undecideds outweigh those committed to supporting the DPJ?

65%: In the same poll, the percentage of respondents who said that the pensions scandal is the top priority issue.

43%: In the Yomiuri poll, the percentage of respondents who said that the consumption tax issue is the most important election issue (it ranked second to pensions).

4.86: According to Mainichi, this is the discrepancy between the value of a vote between the prefecture with the fewest voters, Tottori Prefecture, with 248,091 registered voters, and the prefecture with the most voters, Kanagawa Prefecture, with 1,205,250 registered voters. The differential is over four for five other prefectures (Osaka, Hokkaido, Hyogo, Tokyo, and Fukuoka). That said, 4.86 is actually lower than the 2004 figure, which was 5.16. And so the balancing between urban and rural Japan continues apace, however slowly.

Looking at the big picture

The LDP-Komeito coalition, after weeks of wrangling with the DPJ, passed its version of a law revising the Political Funds Control Law over DPJ opposition.

The law stipulates that politicians' fund management organizations are to copy and provide receipts for expenditures above ¥50,000. Will it make any difference in stopping political corruption? In a word, no. As the Asahi editorial on the bill's imminent passage noted, the bill provides for transparency "in name only," with the giant loophole being that expenditures can be broken up into pieces smaller than ¥50,000 to escape detection (hence the DPJ draft calling for a ¥10,000 floor).

Meanwhile, the government's management of the legislative agenda has prompted public criticism from former Finance Minister Tanigaki Sadakazu, who criticized Abe for stubbornly insisting on passage of the "amakudari" law (another law that will most likely do little more than serve as window dressing for the cabinet in advance of the Upper House elections). Tanigaki's comments were met with rebuttals from Ministers Aso and Ibuki, as well as Machimura Nobutaka, head of the faction to which Abe belongs.

Far more interesting than the increasingly public political wrangling among senior LDP officials is another story that illustrates the vast divide between the world views of Asahi and Yomiuri.

Asahi gave front page coverage to a ruling by Japan's Supreme Court on a lawsuit that challenged the results of the 2005 Lower House election on the basis that the 2.17:1 disparity in the value of the votes of citizens in the least (Tokushima 1) and most populous (Tokyo 6) districts was unconstitutional. A favorable ruling would have invalidated the election results, and it seems unlikely that the court would have done so — but even so, the suit was dismissed by a 9 to 6 verdict.

But while the short-term impact of this issue is nil, this is yet another battle in the ongoing urban-rural war in Japan, as rural Japan — the LDP's depopulating base — continues to hold a disproportionate number of Diet seats and therefore a disproportionate share of political power, in the interest of ensuring that the views of depopulated regions are considered. The Asahi editorial on this subject is worth reading, as it shows that this issue will only grow in importance, as the disparity continues to widen (see this post on population change). As the population changes, Japan will have to consider how to ensure a better balance between urban and rural constituencies, and as the relevance of rural Japan diminishes, how to ensure that rural constituencies are not entirely forgotten. This also, of course, has implications for the growth of a two-party system; redistribution from depopulating rural prefectures almost necessarily means a loss of seats for the LDP, especially once the LDP's abnormal urban vote total in the 2005 Lower House election returns to earth.

Sooner or later advocates of further redistricting will succeed in having seats shifted from rural to urban Japan — although the LDP will work to push that day back as long as possible. But the urban-rural divide, and the impact a decisive shift to urban Japan will have on policy, will likely be one of the most important developments in political Japan in the medium to long term, certainly more significant than the legislation being rammed through the Diet by the Abe Cabinet in the final weeks of the regular session of the Diet.

And yet Yomiuri felt that its readers had no need to know about this court decision.