Aso's beautiful country

MTC has a must-read post on a New York Times editorial rebuking Aso Taro for his "pugnacious" nationalism.

Mr. Aso, MTC argues, differs from his fellow conservatives in his patriotism. Aso, he writes, "is infatuated with Japan, with what it is, whatever it might become. His is not the defensive possessiveness of an insecure man. He wants to share with everyone his enthusiasm. He hopes that everyone in the world can come to see his country the way he sees it: as flawed, yes, but for the most part wonderful, kind, quirky, appealing and charming. Like a lover, he underplays the faults of the object of his desire."

This is an absolutely critical point in understanding Japan's new prime minister.

He is not merely the ideological twin of Abe Shinzo.

Recall that Mr. Abe's book is entitled Towards a beautiful country. That "towards," in Japanese a simple へ, carries decades worth of baggage. Mr. Abe does not particularly like Japan as it exists today. Why else would he be so eager to cast off the postwar system, as he promised over and over again? His love is for the Japan that could be if only the country would follow his ideas. In some way the postwar system is a cul-de-sac for Mr. Abe, an extended detour from the path Japan ought to follow. Mr. Abe's nationalism is about reclaiming the past to provide a guide to the future. [It's possible that the へ in the title is "To," as in a dedication "To a beautiful country," but I think that in light of Mr. Abe's slogan "building a beautiful country" and various statements over the course of his government, "towards" is accurate.]

By contrast, Mr. Aso freely embraces the products of the postwar system. Indeed, Mr. Aso thinks that the products of the postwar system make Japan one of the best countries in the world. In his 2006 book Aso Taro no genten - Yoshida Shigeru no ryugi (Aso Taro's origin — the way of Yoshida Shigeru), he is full of praise for Mr. Abe's "postwar system." He praises Japan and its citizens for mottainai, energy conservation, the education system, cleaniness, industriousness, health, middle-class consciousness, and non-ideological thinking (this last is slightly ironic). This is the essence of Mr. Aso's (and Mr. Yoshida's) use of the phrase "latent power": the essential qualities of the Japanese people — some examples he gives are an aethestic sense and sensitivity — are a source of strength, and by implication, if only the government can use its power to ease the insecurities of the people and enable them to tap this latent power, Japan will once again retake its rightful position as a world leader. He does not appear to accept the argument made by various conservatives that the virtues of the Japanese people have been corroded by peace, prosperity, and the influence of American culture. His is not a cowering conservatism with a worldview full of bogeymen, whether the United States, China, or the Japanese left (Nakayama Nariaki's sneering at Nikkyoso, the left-wing Japanese teachers' union, is an example of this last point). As such, pride is different for Mr. Aso. He is proud of Japan as it is. Not Japan as a platonic ideal that the Japanese people can reach if only they listen to their (conservative) leaders. Not Japan as it was. Japan as it is today.

The result is, as MTC observes, a certain lightness in Mr. Aso's treatment of history. Unlike his comrades, he is not obsessed with the past. He respects the contributions made by Japan's war dead (as he makes clear in this speech on Yasukuni) but he appears more interested in reclaiming what one might call the Japanese dream than in refighting Japan's culture war.

Back in the Abe days, I linked to a review of Nicholas Sarkozy's Testimony by Bernard-Henri Levy, in which BHL speaks of M. Sarkozy's desire to overlook the blackest moments of the French twentieth century and look to a brighter, more glorious future. I suggested that M. Sarkozy shared this desire with Mr. Abe. But I may have been mistaken — Mr. Abe is obsessed with the blackest moments of Japan's twentieth century, if only to cast them in a different light, relativize them, or otherwise make them seem not quite as black. Mr. Aso is less interested in revising than in moving on, much like President Sarkozy. Now, as I wrote in the aforementioned post, I disagree with this desire to move on, but it must be said, as MTC notes, that there is a big difference between wanting to move on and wanting to revise the past.

I have plenty of areas of disagreement with Mr. Aso — notably absent from his list of Japan's accomplishments is its peacefulness (at least in part a product of his grandfather's and successors' decisions to institutionalize Japan's free- or cheap-riding on the US) — but I will not criticize him for his nationalism, which is at least rooted in Japan as it is.

Meanwhile I wonder if the differences between Mr. Aso's nationalism and Mr. Abe's nationalism are a result of the legacies of their prime minister grandfathers. Yoshida Shigeru virtually built the postwar system that Mr. Abe so despises. He laid the foundation for Japan's becoming the country of which Mr. Aso is so proud. Kishi Nobusuke raged against the Yoshida regime and the constitution that undergirded it (although he made his own contributions to the postwar system).

Mr. Aso may ultimately represent an attempt to merge these two traditions, an unabashed constitutional revisionist who is also unambiguously proud of the postwar system.

A new era dawns?

On the brink of today's LDP election, the government dissolved the "Building a beautiful country" planning group that was to be the vanguard of Mr. Abe's campaign to leave the "postwar regime" behind. The Abe revolution is over.

But what will replace it?

As LDP members vote today, I think that my assessment is correct: an Aso insurgency has not materialized. While Mr. Aso may get a few more defections from among Diet members than initially expected after the factions threw their weight behind Mr. Fukuda, it seems that Mr. Fukuda still enjoys the support of more than two-thirds of Diet members, and the early returns are strongly in Mr. Fukuda's favor — Asahi reports that he has already secured 61 votes to Mr. Aso's 44. Even if Mr. Aso were to sweep up the remaining prefectural chapters (and receive all three votes from each), his victory would be relatively small, winning fewer than two-thirds of the prefectural vote, not nearly high enough to embarrass the faction heads and Mr. Fukuda.

Now to governing. It is unclear what the rise of Mr. Fukuda, the awkward, impolitic reluctant politician — he has actually said that he doesn't really want the job — who apparently resembles Homer Simpson and wears glasses that haven't been style since the 1970s, if ever, presages. To take up Devin Stewart's post asking whether "it's 1975," the emergence of Mr. Fukuda might suggest to some that Japan is going back to the future politically (given the role of the factions in Mr. Fukuda's candidacy).

But for Japan, the US (the subject of Stewart's post), and for Europe, there is no going back to 1975. I view this question from a "Tofflerian" perspective (Future Shock and The Third Wave in particular). The crisis faced by the industrial democracies in the 1970s was effectively the end of industrial society — the end of plans, the end of confidence in the ability of technocratic elites to control reality. Whatever the superficial resemblance of current events to the 1970s, it is only that. The challenge of the present in Japan, the US, and throughout Europe is to build a new order for the post-industrial age. The problem is probably most acute for Japan, which has been slow to de-centralize, is more hierarchical than the other post-industrial democracies, and has had a relatively higher share of its population engaged in agriculture. Of course, in cultural terms, Japan is probably leading the way into the future as its cities grow and urban culture evolves (and influences the rest of the world).

The challenge for Mr. Fukuda, and for his successors for years to come, is to build political and economic institutions for an urban, post-industrial Japan: an education system that prepares children for work other than that in large, hierarchical organizations; trade policy, especially in agriculture, that acknowledges that Japan will not be self-sufficient and thus puts consumer interests ahead of producer interests; a pension system in which the burden for supporting retirees shifts from the private sector to the government. The list goes on and on. Japan is in dire need of institutions befitting an urban society.

Mr. Koizumi understood that without change the LDP would be unfit to lead Japan into a new era. Does Mr. Fukuda recognize this, and is he prepared to do something about it?

Beautiful no more

Since election night, there has been a conspicuous absence from the pronouncements of the Abe government: we no longer hear Mr. Abe speaking of building a "beautiful country."

Mainichi suggests that the Abe camp has been reflecting on the meaning of the slogan, despite Abe's assertion that he doesn't think the election results repudiated his "course of reform." Seko Hiroshige, Abe's media advisor, is responsible for the "Building a beautiful country project," and he has suggested that the government think about how to build a beautiful country that pays mind to the concerns of Japanese citizens — a nod, as Mainichi notes, in the direction of the DPJ's "lifestyle is number one" campaign slogan.

At the time of the Abe Cabinet's inauguration, the "beautiful country" slogan was merely baffling and something of a joke; as the cabinet's popularity has tanked, the joke has become less and less funny and more a symbol of the extent to which the government was totally out of touch with the Japanese people and even members of the LDP. In short, with the electoral defeat and the coming cabinet reshuffle, the slogan should be heading to ignominious retirement. And yet it's not: the project is, according to Mainichi, considering some 3500 reform proposals that will be announced around the same time as the reshuffle.

Perhaps the new cabinet will be less tolerant of governing by vague slogans and will force the prime minister to reconfigure how he presents his agenda to the public. There are, however, few signs as of yet that Mr. Abe is going to defer to the judgment of the LDP elders. Yomiuri today speculates on some possibilities for the new cabinet, but there seems to be nothing definite. Some names mentioned by Yomiuri are former Foreign Minister Machimura Nobutaka, LDP policy chief (and Abe ally) Nakagawa Shoichi, Niwa/Koga faction chief Niwa Yuuya, and former Kokutai chairman Ooshima Tadamori (possibly to return to the same post), as well as Nikai Toshihiro.

There are fewer hints as to who will take which portfolio. There is a suggestion that Machimura will be the chief cabinet secretary — Shiozaki seems to have little chance of survival — because "the only true support for the prime minister is from people in the Machimura faction." Nakagawa, meanwhile, will likely take an economic portfolio (or the MAFF portfolio, which his late father held) in the hope of not weakening the impression that it is Mr. Abe's cabinet.

With a week remaining, no one should anticipate — in case anyone did — that the impending reshuffle will be the key to giving the Abe cabinet some traction, because it seems that Mr. Abe will continue to rely on those who support him unquestioningly and reject those LDP members who have criticized his government, especially since the election.

And as for those 3500 proposals under consideration? There is no reason to expect that Mr. Abe is prepared to abandon the "no reform without growth" formula that has characterized his government since day one.

A journey to the center of Mr. Abe

I mentioned earlier that I was in the process of reading Prime Minister Abe's Utsukushii Kuni e [Towards a beautiful country], the book he published in advance of last autumn's LDP presidential election and that was a popular seller after his inauguration as the Japanese people tried to figure out just who their new prime minister is.

Well, I've finished my slog through it, and I cannot deny that for all the interminably boring bits — and there were plenty — it was an incredibly useful book to read.

This books reads like the prime minister's stream-of-consciousness. He jumps from topic to topic, draws on memories at random, and refers to recent Hollywood movies (Terminal, Million Dollar Baby) and American and British politicians and political events (Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill, Arthur Greenwood, Ronald Reagan, the Iran hostage crisis, among others) to make his points. There are chapter and section headings, but they tend to be of a general nature, giving Mr. Abe's mind plenty of room to wander. One might argue that referencing Hollywood movies was an attempt by the prime minister to seem more a man of the people, but the references (and plot summaries) are labored and don't add anything to the text — they certainly struck me as strange. All of this makes for a bizarre book, certainly not the kind of book one would expect from a man on the brink of being chosen as the leader of a world power (the same probably goes for Foreign Minister Aso's new book).

Having said that, I want to make a couple more serious points about the content of the book, to add to those I've made on previous occasions.

First, Abe's view of the state is deeply unsettling. He references Hobbes's Leviathan to make the case for a strong state that is capable of securing the lives and property of its citizens. But aside from a offhand remark about Kant to dismiss his ideas, his view of the state stops with Hobbes. It's almost as if he was in a class on political theory, paid close attention at the start ("this Hobbes guy is great"), missed a couple weeks, poked his nose in for Kant, didn't like him, and decided to cut the rest of the semester. No Locke, nothing about the American founders except to praise them for building a strong state via the constitution and note the importance of the Declaration of Independence to Americans, no Rousseau, no French Revolution, no Mill — you get the idea.

It's one thing to not bother paying tribute to Western political theory, but to cherry pick from the Western political tradition, borrowing from a seventeenth century thinker whose society was actually in dire need of a leviathan around the time he was writing, is revealing. To Abe, the state's duty to protect its citizens is all-important. To him, the central dilemma of modern Western political philosophy — the search for a balance between liberty and security — does not exist. What matters is security. And so there is no compromising over North Korea's abductions of Japanese citizens. And there is little tolerance for dissenting opinions. Abe seems to have little tolerance or understanding for those who view the world differently than him (and his grandfather), castigating journalists and liberal academics at one point or another for their views. While he claims that to defend Japan is to defend "liberty and democracy," he does not spend all that much time talking about what those mean to him and to Japan.

In all honesty, Abe would probably fit right in at the Bush-Cheney White House.

Take this line, for example: "The state and the people should not have a conflictual relationship, they should have a complementary relationship." I find this line revealing not only concerning Abe's political views (he takes the idea of the emperor as the symbol of this relationship seriously), but also concerning the political development of Japan. This idea strikes my American ears as unusual, and I think it would find a mixed reception throughout the West, even in relatively more statist continental Europe. While the US probably goes too far in the direction of anti-statism, the basic idea of the state and its agents and representatives serving the people and being held accountable by the people (necessarily conflictual, no?) is fundamental to American (and liberal) political thought.

Abe rejects that, however. The divide is not a divide — not governed and government, but state and people living in dynamic unity. There is nothing about how democracy squares with this vision of the state, but I can imagine based on what Abe has said and done since becoming prime minister. Just yesterday LDP Secretary-General Nakagawa Hidenao provided the perfect expression to illustrate Abe's political thought:

President Ozawa says, "We will bring about the reversal of government and opposition parties and a two-major-party system, and establish democracy in Japan." Whichever country, whatever era is he talking about? He probably bears a grudge to the LDP. The goal of politics is not the reversal of government and opposition parties and a two-major-party system. What kind of Japan to build is most important. Democracy is not established? Democracy is established in Japan.

I wrote back in January, after the prime minister's speech to open the new Diet session, that Prime Minister Abe fancies himself some kind of twenty-first century genro, a statesman rising above low, democratic politics and plotting the course of the ship of state for the next 50 to 100 years. There is nothing in his book to dispel that impression.

Meanwhile something he wrote about the LDP caught my eye, because it pertains to Japan's alliance with the US. He suggests that the two reasons for the union between the Liberal and Democratic parties to form the LDP, a union engineered by his grandfather, were to achieve high economic growth rates and to restore Japan's independence, with revising the occupation-era constitution and education law being key aims for the restoration of Japan's independence. To Prime Minister Abe, Japan is only de jure independent because it still is governed by a constitution drafted by foreign, by American hands. In other words, the occupation never ended.

He later gets around to dedicating a whole chapter to the "Composition of the US-Japan alliance," but spends a good chunk of it talking about the drafting of the constitution by SCAP, and then talking about how Japan should be able to act more assertively abroad — but not necessarily in cooperation with the US. Here's what the prime minister has to see about his country's relationship with the US:

While it goes without saying that the utmost self-help effort for the security of the homeland, the fight to "defend one's own country oneself," is essential, if one thinks about nuclear deterrence and the stability of the Far Eastern region, the alliance with the US is indispensable, and if one takes into account US influence in international society, its economic power, and its unsurpassed military power, the US-Japan alliance is the best choice.

Moreover, I must clarify the point that today, the US and Japan share the basic viewpoint of liberty and democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and freely competitive market economics. This is a common understanding among the world's liberal countries.

While that statement seems fairly innocuous as rhetoric about the US-Japan alliance goes, it needs to be unpacked, because what seems like a fairly confident statement of support of the alliance with the US is actually quite brittle. The key is the idea of the alliance as a "choice." Obviously in mundane legal terms, the alliance is the product of the 1960 treaty, approved by both countries' legislatures without coercion, whatever the controversy in Japan surrounding the treaty. But in practical terms, it is not often that one hears Japanese or American statesmen speak about the alliance as a "choice," subject to prevailing conditions — if those conditions change, a different choice could be made. One wonders what would happen if the US no longer appears to be the best choice, as it may already be becoming (see Nakanishi Terumasa in the July issue of Voice). What happens if the US can no longer be relied upon the provide nuclear deterrence and/or stability in the Far East (note that stability is a flexible term that could mean very different things to Washington and Tokyo)?

The second paragraph, meanwhile, contradicts the first in a way. If the alliance is a choice — the product of US predominance that makes alliance profitable for Japan — then why even bother talking about shared values? The first paragraph makes clear that the alliance is not, in fact, indispensable; it is indispensable only in prevailing conditions. Talking about shared values suggests something enduring, like, say, the US-UK relationship, which, whatever the vacillations from administration to administration and cabinet to cabinet, is about as enduring a feature of international relations as one can find. A British prime minister might discuss his government's priorities (Brussels vs. Washington), but to talk about the alliance with the US as a "choice" suited to the circumstances would sound ridiculous.

No, Abe's clarification about shared values of "liberty and democracy" — a phrase that Abe seems to use frequently in lists without ever bothering to define, as if the definitions of these concepts are crystal clear — seems to me more like window dressing than a new basis for the alliance, as the subsequent paragraph makes clear:

Then, what should we defend? It goes without saying, the independence of the state, namely the sovereignty of the state and the peace that we enjoy. Practically speaking, our lives and property, and our liberty and human rights. Of course, the culture, tradition, and history of we Japanese can be included among these things that should be protected...

At no point in this paragraph is it clear that he is talking about "we" as the US and Japan. The first "we" could be the alliance, the second just "we Japanese," — or else both could be applying to "we Japanese," with the second used for emphasis. Whatever the case, it strikes me as ambiguous, and this list of security interests does not necessarily seem dependent on the alliance, depending on who or what is threatening a given interest.

Now, mind you, I have no problem with Japan acting more independently to secure its interests, within the alliance if possible, without if absolutely necessary. What I reject is achieving more independence by subterfuge and deception. Instead of pretending to be the good ally while using closer alliance ties as a way to prep Japan for a more independent role, the Japanese government, if it in fact desires a new arrangement, ought to be more forthright about it.

Those are my most important responses to Mr. Abe's little book. If you have the time and the inclination, it's worth a read, even with his premiership on the ropes. (Indeed, the prime minister might not be in power by the time the English translation appears in the fall.)

What does beautiful country mean anyway?

Writing about the LDP's keys to victory on Monday, I suggested that LDP candidates might benefit from Prime Minister Abe's leaving the campaign trail to go to Niigata, and that in any case one might expect to see candidates try to distance themselves from the prime minister and his deeply unpopular cabinet (and that the longer the tenure, the easier time they'll have of that).

Now, Mainichi reports, Tamura Kohei, the two-term LDP representative up for reelection in Kochi Prefecture, who I predicted could be at risk of defeat, has stated publicly that he "does not really understand the meaning of 'beautiful country.'"

Expect more of this. And expect that if the government scrapes by with a majority in the Upper House, Abe and company will be taking credit for a victory that will be earned on the basis of LDP candidates effectively deserting the party president. Makes one wonder exactly what kind of mandate that would be.

How to make Japan more beautiful with just 155 promises

The LDP has released its platform for next month's Upper House elections, 155 promises to build a beautiful country, society, livelihood, and furusato (not to mention "beautifully vigorous regions living in symbiosis with nature" [no. 52]).

As the puerile overuse of the word beautiful [Ed. — At least it's not kawaii (cute); hey, kawaii kuni e has a certain ring to it] suggests, Abe's stamp is all over this document; the promises are similarly vague and all over the map. Just skimming the document, it's immediately apparent to see why the DPJ has a hard time opposing the LDP on policy terms. There's something in here for everyone, and much of it is hard to oppose. I mean, really, is there anyone who is opposed to building a Beautiful Japan? (Ironically, the only ones who might have a problem with it are the LDP-supporting construction companies who have spent decades paving over what actually made Japan a beautiful country.)

The FT's David Pilling, reporting on the platform, notes, "Mr Abe has stuck to his agenda, which critics view as a lurch to the right, in spite of strong evidence that his concerns do not match those of voters." Pilling is wrong, however, in his suggestion that Abe has stuck to his guns on constitution revision in this report. While the first plank calls for the "Promotion of the enactment of a new constitution," the only other plank that seems to mention revision is no. 13, which calls for the rebuilding of the legal foundation for national security.

Sure, constitution revision is in there. That is to be expected. But how many members of the cabinet have been talking about constitution revision lately? The revision issue, which did at one point look like the main focus of the campaign, has dropped off the radar screen, no matter what position it takes in the manifesto. Burying the pension issue at no. 60 does nothing to change the fact that it is, as noted in an Asahi Shimbun article, "issue number one and issue number two."

So while I have only skimmed the document, it does seem that Abe's stamp is all over this document, but less in terms of his "conservative" agenda than the fact that it is twenty-four pages of saccharine mush. It also reiterates much of what has already been said by the government in the past eight months.

That undoubtedly suits the LDP's purposes. Bury the unpleasantness, sugarcoat everything, and just get through the elections with as little damage as possible.

I will write more if I find something of interest upon closer reading.

What if they had a debate...

Prime Minister Abe and DPJ President Ozawa had their long-anticipated head-to-head debate yesterday, reportedly the longest length of time ever in a Diet session without a direct clash between party leaders.

That according to a handy table provided in the print edition of the Asahi Shimbun, which indicates that the previous record was in 2002, when Prime Minister Koizumi and current DPJ Secretary General Hatoyama Yukio waited until 10 April to debate. Another table shows readers that compared to the Ozawa-Abe debate in November of last year, Ozawa bested Abe again in terms of time used, 28:43 to 16:05 (compared with 25:55 to 19:42 in November). A third chart shows that the time was divided between arguing about Abe's "beautiful country" vision (about eighteen minutes), education problems (about seven minutes), regional decentralization (sixteen and half minutes), and the scandal regarding liver damage from drug poisoning (three minutes).

Having dissected the minutiae of the debate, however, one can then turn to the editorial page of Asahi — and Yomiuri — and find the usual complaints about how nothing of substance came out of the debate.

Wrote Asahi: "Although it seems that this debate [on Abe's emphasis on the emperor system in his book] was becoming very interesting, Mr. Ozawa quickly turned to a different subject, and his half-baked finish was extremely disappointing." But as if that wasn't enough to anger the Asahi diehards, Ozawa also failed to take a sufficiently strong position on constitution reform: "Well, what do the DPJ and Ozawa, who has perhaps been an advocate of constitution reform for many years, think about the 'postwar' era? To begin with, what stance will they take against Abe's manner of constitution revision? Will they approve? Will they oppose? Ozawa has kept this mostly to himself...Although this was question time, since Ozawa did not state his attitude on the fundamental hinge issue of constitution reform, this was meaningless."

Yomiuri was also dissatisfied with the overall quality of the debate, noting that "it is extremely difficult to say" whether there were differences between Abe's and Ozawa's visions of Japan's future and important policy positions, but it also takes a special relish to criticizing Ozawa and the DPJ for "insisting upon drastic reforms" but "not referring to concrete proposals." The Yomiuri editorial also quotes Ozawa's 1993 book, Blueprint for a New Japan, on the importance of quality debate in the Diet, showing that in every democracy, the longer a politician serves, the easier it is for critics to dredge up old speeches and writings and use them as weapons. Noting that during his time as the head of the Liberal Party Ozawa emphasized the importance of question time, the editorial suggests that that Ozawa is gone. Restating the importance of direct confrontation in the Diet — "Question time is a good opportunity for the opposition to clarify how it differs from the governing party and to announce its presence" — the editorial hints at discontent within the DPJ over the wasted opportunity.

Having seen the outcome of direct debate between Abe and Ozawa in the Diet, I feel vindicated having argued that the DPJ may well be better off have prioritized campaigning around the country over vigorously challenging the government in the Diet. Direct debate has shown Ozawa to be inadequate to the task of presenting the DPJ as a serious contender for government and made the DPJ look confused and divided on the important policy questions of the day, just as I anticipated.

Considering that this debacle coincided with Asahi polls showing that support for Abe continues to rise and that the DPJ still has a lot of work to do to win support before July's Upper House elections, it seems increasingly clear that Ozawa's days as head of the DPJ are numbered, regardless of July's results.