Who's in control here?

Prime Minister Abe has been bizarrely hospitalized, and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yosano admits that Mr. Abe did not name someone to serve as the acting prime minister in his absence.

I guess Aso Taro is too busy getting ready to win the job legally to do his best imitation of Alexander Haig.

Mr. Aso, while still probably the front runner, will have to work harder to win the position than it appeared twenty-four hours ago. Fukuda Yasuo, member of the Machimura faction, has decided to throw his hat into the ring, and with the LDP pushing back the voting date until Sept. 23th, Mr. Fukuda now has more time to round up support among the prefectural chapters while consolidating his position in the parliamentary party. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that pushing the date back benefits Mr. Fukuda at Mr. Aso's expense.

The question I have is whether Mr. Fukuda can count on the Machimura faction completely, or whether there might be room for dissension. Mr. Mori, of course, backs Mr. Fukuda completely, and is undoubtedly thrilled at the prospect of having someone who might actually listen to him at the Kantei. Mr. Machimura, however, appeared hesitant to commit too quickly, stating that he wants to listen to the opinions of the members of his faction before making a decision.

I also think that it is important not to overlook the prefectural chapters, which are already in turmoil following the Upper House election. The costs of avoiding their input could be steep, and I suspect that the way the wind blows from the regions will influence the jockeying in Tokyo. Whether the wind will blow in favor of Mr. Fukuda remains to be seen.

In the midst of all this, the Koizumi Children have shown why they are a non-entity in the party. Short of Mr. Koizumi's returning to the fore, they seem to have no ideas and no standard bearers — and thus no chance of influencing the direction of the LDP, especially now that Mr. Koizumi has totally nixed their efforts to draft him. Between Mr. Fukuda and Mr. Aso, they have no one to back. (Perhaps Mr. Koizumi is sitting back watching his plans to destroy the LDP come to fruition.)

The man to beat

From Kishi scion to Yoshida scion: with less than a week until the LDP presidential election, it seems hard to conceive at this point how anyone will be able to stop Aso Taro, professed manga lover and friend of otaku (oh, and longtime foreign minister and current LDP secretary-general).

With Mr. Koizumi declaring that he will not cave to the "Draft Koizumi" movement that his "children" (including Koike Yuriko) have formed, Mr. Aso is the only henjin in sight, and after the bland pleasantries of Abe "beautiful country" Shinzo, a henjin just might be what the party is looking for. Sure, he has a history of inappropriate remarks — documented here — but it's all part of his henjin charm.

With less than a week, he seems well placed to rally factions to his side and stifle a dark-horse candidacy before it emerges. He probably has nothing to worry about from prospective challengers at this point, including Tanigaki Sadakazu, who has been campaigning since day he lost the last LDP president election, and Fukuda Yasuo, the longest-serving chief cabinet secretary ever. It is still unclear whether Mr. Fukuda actually wants to run, and Mr. Tanigaki, now described as being in the LDP's "anti-mainstream," has little or no chance of garnering the kind of support needed to overcome Mr. Aso, who is likely to receive the support of the Machimura faction (the LDP's largest, and Mr. Abe's own).

In the midst of all the maneuvering in Tokyo, it might be the LDP's beleaguered prefectural chapters that call the shots, seeing as how they absorbed July's blow as much as the national party. According to Asahi, they have reacted to Mr. Abe's resignation with "surprise and anger," and in the aftermath of the resignation, fifteen prefectural chapters from across the country have apparently begun considering throwing their support to Mr. Aso, just shy of a third of the total forty-seven.

With one day before campaigning officially begins, it may be Mr. Aso's race to lose. Not that he'll be winning a desirable prize. While stepping into the shoes of a prime minister who will leave office with a 74% unfavorable rating means that there is more or less nowhere to go but up, Mr. Aso will have to rebuild the LDP from the regions up, while fending off the DPJ in Tokyo.

(Wall Street Journal subscribers can read me arguing about the Abe succession here.)

The LDP presidential election

NHK has just announced that the LDP will be holding a presidential election next Wednesday, September 19, with the campaign period opening this Friday, September 14.

Expect the contenders to begin positioning themselves over the next few hours.

The LDP is certainly wise to waste no time in preparing to select a new leader. Mr. Abe's resignation may have already ruined whatever chances the governing coalition had in moving an agenda this Diet session, but the sooner he moves out of the Kantei the better.

Meanwhile, in the chaos of what's being called a "Nagatacho earthquake," the opposition will no doubt push hard for a snap election, arguing that a new government will enjoy no more mandate to rule than the outgoing Abe cabinet.

Abe's end?

1:18pm — Asahi reports that Mr. Abe has indeed delivered his desire to resign to the LDP executive. Press conference to come at 2pm.

One of my correspondents — and now MTC, by way of Kyodo — has informed me that Mr. Abe has offered his resignation.

The DPJ in Yoshida country

With the DPJ making the anti-terror special measures law the main point of contention for the autumn special session, it seems increasingly clear that the DPJ has found a solution to the problem of how to distinguish itself from the LDP. The DPJ's positions on social and economic policy not being all that different from the LDP, foreign policy is once again the main partisan cleavage in Japanese politics.

But this is not a return to the cold war, when pacifist left squared off against the nationalist right, to the benefit of the pragmatic LDP mainstream. The triumph of the revisionist right and its emphasis on a strong, global alliance with the US means that the LDP has vacated the center on foreign policy. As I noted in this post, the LDP is more uniform on foreign policy issues than in the past; while some LDP chiefs are pushing for compromise on the anti-terror law for political reasons, I have yet to hear a significant LDP politician dissent from the ideal of Japan's supporting the US (and others) with warships in the Indian Ocean.

Accordingly, with the LDP having moved to the right, especially in the six years since the 9/11 attacks, the center — the Yoshida line of a limited US-Japan alliance due to Japanese domestic constraints — has been vacated, and Mr. Ozawa's DPJ is preparing to occupy the center. The foreign policy debate that was once contained within the LDP is now the debate between the DPJ and the LDP. The DPJ is essentially calling for a US-Japan alliance restored to old limits, and a Japanese security policy that adheres to domestic constraints (and the added twist of UNSC approval). While the not inconsiderable support for constitution revision within the DPJ suggests that the party is willing to consider adjusting those constraints, the party's overall stance is that of moderation in the face of the overcommitment of the Koizumi and Abe governments.

Not surprisingly, then, one of the DPJ's first acts in the new Diet session was to submit legislation to end the JSDF mission in Iraq.

By shifting the emphasis to Japan's international responsibilities — "the promise to the world" that Mr. Abe made in Sydney, described by Asahi today as "selfish" — the government seems to be trying to reclaim the center (and it has Yomiuri's enthusiastic support). But a couple weeks of talking about Japan's obligations to the international community deriving from its position as a commercial power will not undo six years of emphasizing the value of the US-Japan alliance over all other elements of Japanese foreign policy, particularly with US officials having spent the last month practicing their gaiatsu.

The DPJ's stance is anything but radical (which is why Amaki Naoto is so disappointed in the party). It marks a return to the more moderate past — and, more importantly, a return to the thinking of the Japanese people. Washington might want Japan to change radically, but the changes envisioned by Koizumi and Abe are not sustainable over the long term; a correction is in store. Japan will change. It will take on a greater international role. But the change will be grounded in the moderate center, and will acknowledge and embrace limits on what Japan can and can't do internationally and in cooperation with the US.

The DPJ should use this Diet session to better articulate this vision for Japan's foreign policy: that much Yomiuri has right. I think the DPJ will find that it enjoys the support of the Japanese public, and also of some Americans (not to mention Europeans).

In the meantime, Mr. Abe, apparently determined to relive his grandfather's life, is set to sacrifice his political career for the US-Japan relationship, except this time, it is unlikely that it will be necessary for the people to encircle the Diet to make him go. (Having joked for the past year about Mr. Abe getting himself confused with Kishi, it's eerie that Mr. Abe's end may play out in a similar way.)

Mr. Abe's exit strategy?

The Sydney APEC summit has come and gone — with, to my surprise, only one appearance by the cast of The Chaser (I definitely recommend subscribing to the podcast of their show).

On the sidelines of the summit this weekend, President Bush and Prime Ministers Howard and Abe held their meetings. Not surprisingly, Mr. Bush reminded Mr. Abe about how important his administration finds Japan's contribution to the war on terror, with Mr. Abe telling his buddy George that he will do everything in his power to get the law passed to enable the MSDF to continue its participation.

(Not surprisingly, Asahi speaks of Mr. Bush's demanding extension of the anti-terror law, Yomiuri talks of Mr. Abe's promising support.)

But that's not all Mr. Abe said, apparently.

Reportedly the prime minister said that he is "staking his job" on the passage of the anti-terror special measures law. To have remained defiant this long only to now offer up his head in connection to a bill that looks increasingly certain to be defeated — it gives a little more credence to Peter Ennis's report that Mr. Abe may be gone by November, mentioned in this post. Is the prime minister trying to guarantee that the DPJ's opposition to the law's renewal will remain implacable? Is he deliberately trying to make his position untenable, intensifying opposition from the DPJ, from within the LDP, and from abroad in the increasingly likely event that he will be unable to deliver on his "solemn vow"?

When he says he'll give up his job if he can't get the law passed, does he expect that people will rally to his side, or is Mr. Abe preparing to go out in a blaze of glory, fighting a fight on behalf of the US-Japan alliance that he knows he can't win, a martyr to the idea of a more assertive Japan?

Can't go home again

In an essay in the forthcoming issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review that I co-authored with Doug Turner, we discuss that the challenge for the LDP going forward is reconfiguring the party's identity for the post-Koizumi era. Reform or reaction? Urban or rural? These are the questions that the party has to answer.

And yet the answer at the moment seems to be a return to the party's pre-Koizumi roots. Mr. Aso has come out and said that he has "no objections" to welcoming stalwart postal rebel Hiranuma Takeo back into the party's fold without conditions. It is unclear whether Mr. Hiranuma will accept Mr. Aso's amnesty, but the offer itself is a sign that the LDP is clueless about how to go forward.

As MTC notes, "Koizumi's expulsion of the opponents of reform demonstrated that the LDP had changed, that the party had tossed off its hidebound and self-serving ways. Now, if Hiranuma is back in, the whole bloody exercise becomes moot."

I can't help but wonder if the LDP thinks that all that is wrong is that a few bad eggs in the cabinet spoiled the party's image before the election, and that if it simply purges the perpetrators expeditiously whenever allegations of corruption (or incompetence?) become unmanageable, everything will go back to normal. While I don't think the Japanese people are exactly running into the arms of the DPJ, I do think that voters are not going to be especially forgiving of the LDP, particularly after the bait-and-switch act that followed the 2005 landslide.

So whose party will it be? Mr. Hiranuma's? Or the Koizumi children's? It certainly won't be Mr. Abe's, unless leaving the party more adrift than before his tenure counts as leaving his personal mark upon the party. At Contentions, Michael Auslin recognizes, "Abe has to start showing results," but then concludes that his efforts should be focused entirely on international initiatives. Forget structural reform. Forget education or health care. Mr. Abe should dazzle the people with the Asian community of democracies. Given the silence that greeted Mr. Abe's proposal, it's appropriate to ask if the Japanese people even noticed his remarks in New Delhi, and if they noticed, it's important to ask if they care.

Mr. Abe's — and the LDP's — problems will not be solved by prancing around on the international stage. At some point they will have to present a constructive, concrete agenda to the people that will, one way or another, settle the urban-rural question. Will the LDP be the party of Japan's urban future, or will it defend the interests of the dying rural past? (Mind you, I'm not treating the latter as a negative. Someone will have to represent the interests of rural Japan; the more interesting question is how.) The bizarre hybrid that is the LDP today, however, will not last. In fact, the current combination is pretty much guaranteed to leave everyone dissatisfied, hence the July defeat.

While Abe's away...

Prime Minister Abe, on tour in South and Southeast Asia, has left behind a political situation in Tokyo in which the only certainty is Mr. Abe's continuing ability to say no to those who want him to step down.

But in Mr. Abe's absence, his opponents are, as expected, on the move.

Mr. Ozawa, speaking to assembled admirers at his annual "Ozawa Ichiro political cram school," has continued to lambaste the Abe administration, suggesting that there will no letting up in the DPJ's push for an early election, and joking about the government's "brain death."

Within the LDP, meanwhile, criticism of the prime minister continues. Kosaka Kenji's anti-Abe study group has announced that it is in the process of preparing a policy statement to be released in early September that will criticize the "Abe line" on economic policy and reform. It does not look as if the Kosaka group's membership has grown since the initial announcement, but it will be interesting to see if an anti-mainstream position rooted in concerns about the toll of "neo-liberal" policies on rural Japan can gain traction within the LDP. I would not underestimate the presence of sympathizers within the party — but the question is whether the Kosaka group can serve as an effective rallying point without a standard bearer. A platform is useless without an effective leader to stand upon it.

I expect that the composition of the new Abe cabinet will determine the future of the new "opposition forces." Should they be locked out of power, as looks increasingly likely, Abe's critics — whether those who criticize his policy priorities or his leadership (or lack thereof) — could rally under the Kosaka group's banner and serve as an intra-party force pressuring the prime minister to shift to the political center as a way of disarming the opposition and shoring up the LDP's support in rural Japan.

In a move that tacitly concedes that bankruptcy of Abe's ideological, symbolic politics and the need to change course, outgoing LDP Secretary-General Nakagawa Hidenao has echoed the Yomiuri Shimbun, calling for an LDP-DPJ grand coalition. Keeping in mind that such a coalition is politically impossible for the foreseeable future, Nakagawa's embrace of it suggests that Abe critics and skeptics are desperately searching for a way to temper the prime minister and undermine the opposition at the same time. They better start looking for another approach, because a grand coalition just won't happen, as I discussed here.

More prime ministerial trouble

With Prime Minister Abe set to depart on his latest diplomatic jaunt on August 19th, the situation in Tokyo continues to worsen.

The latest scandal involves Defense Minister Koike Yuriko, who is in a showdown with Administrative Vice Minister Moriya Takemasa, a long-serving defense bureaucrat who rose from within the ministry's ranks (instead of being seconded from more influential ministries as many JDA personnel were throughout the cold war). Jun Okumura (here, here, and here) and MTC (here) have addressed this feud in considerable detail, and there are no details I can add to their thorough accounts.

Koike's move to circumvent proper channels in firing the unusually long-serving, politically connected vice minister — a move not coordinated with the rest of the government — has brought the criticism of the chief cabinet secretary, but Defense Minister Koike may well win out in the end, provided the Abe Cabinet survives (seeing as how it seems that she will be staying put). It is interesting that it took a squabble between politicians and bureaucrats for Mr. Shiozaki to criticize a cabinet minister, on behalf of a bureaucrat of course. Former JDA chief Nakatani Gen has criticized Prime Minister Abe for failing to exercise his power as head of the military, but then the prime minister has consistently failed to manage his government until it is too late, so Mr. Nakatani should hardly be surprised.

The consequences of the Koike-Moriya flap for the prime minister will likely be small — after all, it's not like bureaucrats are any more popular with the public than politicians, and Mr. Koizumi certainly showed that an enterprising politician can make political hay by attacking the bureaucrats. But it does contribute to the growing impression of a government unhinged, unchecked, unrestrained by any notion of democratic accountability, the rule of law, or common sense.

Meanwhile, another senior LDP leader has criticized the prime minister, with Lower House President Kono Yohei criticizing the prime minister's call for Japan to abandon the postwar regime as turning its back on the legacy of the Yoshida Doctrine.

I think it's great that LDP leaders have decided to criticize their leader's pet projects and slogans, as well as his decision to stay in power, but I can't help but wonder if public statements critical of Mr. Abe are having any effect, or if they're just raising the signal-to-noise ratio and making it easier for the prime minister to ignore critical statements. It's entirely clear at this point that public criticism of Mr. Abe from within the LDP will not be enough to unseat him; only action — concerted and public — will be able to override the premier's persisent "no." It is foolish, for example, to think that former Prime Minister Mori will be able to unseat the prime minister simply be voicing his displeasure in as many public fora as possible.

Japan goes on vacation, Abe's unpopularity stays put

Prime Minister Abe has decided to forgo taking a vacation at his summer home in Yamanashi Prefecture during the O-Bon festival period, although it is not entirely clear what he plans to do in Tokyo — apparently he'll be going to movies and plays. He told reporters, "Since I also have preparations to make for foreign travel, I think I'll hold off." The Abe camp added, "Since there was an election, he has a lot to do." (A few loads of laundry? Changing light bulbs at the Kantei?)

You have to wonder if the prime minister would be better off taking a proper vacation. Maybe a few days away from Tokyo would allow him to take in the many signals emanating from the Japanese people and his own party suggesting that he should leave office post haste.

The criticism continues to mount. Most recently, party chapters that were home to losing candidates in last month's election called for the prime minister's head, perhaps finding that it is increasingly difficult for them to rebuild support in their prefectures so long as Mr. Abe is the weary face of a beleaguered party. Although former MAFF Minister Shimamura Yoshinobu has announced the formation of a Diet members' league to support the prime minister (whose membership is as of yet unclear), that seems to be small recompense for criticism from within the LDP that has increased by the day since the election. I mean, when you consider the size of the LDP's caucus in the House of Representatives — 296 seats — the fact that, according to a Mainichi article, Shimamura is aiming at 100 members is revealing. Shouldn't the prime minister's support league be his party's caucus?

Still, much will depend on the reshuffle that is scheduled to come on 27 August, a reshuffle that looks ever more certain to see Foreign Minister Aso shuffled off to the LDP secretariat — a move that looks awfully similar to a demotion — and Internal Affairs Minister Suga elevated to chief cabinet secretary.

Ozawa attacks Abe — Mori does not disagree

Jiji reports on a meeting of members of the House of Representatives who have been elected thirteen times. The group? Ozawa, former Prime Minister Mori, Kokumin Shinto member Watanuki Tamisuke, former Prime Minister Hata Tsutomu, and DPJ member Watanabe Kozo.

Ozawa, not surprisingly, criticized the prime minister's inaction and lack of common sense; Mori, it seems, did not publicly disagree with Ozawa, noting the prime minister's lack of political experience. He also speculated on Abe's successor, floating the names of Fukuda, Tanigaki, and Aso and admitted that he doesn't know whether the coming cabinet reshuffle will succeed in rallying support for the Abe government and the LDP.

As others have mentioned, Mori is the man to watch when it comes to considering the future of the Abe premiership — and if he is unwilling to defend the prime minister from Ozawa, one has to imagine that Mori's patience with Mr. Abe is extremely short. (It must be, considering that he tried to push the prime minister out on election night.)

Just another sign of the sword of Damocles dangling over the prime minister's head...

A new phase in the battle to unseat Abe

Jiji and Mainichi report today on the creation of an anti-Abe "study group" composed of eight members from the Yamasaki, Tanigaki, and Tsushima factions, some of whom have already gone public with criticism of the prime minister.

The ringleader is former Education Minister Kosaka Kenji of the Tsushima faction, who was education minister in the final Koizumi cabinet, and the group also includes Mihara Asahiko, Gotoda Masuzumi, Tokai Kisaburo, Sonoda Hiroyuki, Yamamoto Koichi, Noda Takeshi, and Yosano Kaoru. It is a relatively older group, with thirty-eight-year-old Gotoda being roughly twenty years younger than Tokai, the next youngest member.

Mainichi reports that they desire above all a change of policy, and criticize Prime Minister Abe's insistence that the appropriate response to last month's defeat is simply to redouble his efforts in implementing his reform agenda (insofar as it exists). Interestingly, the group is echoing the DPJ's campaign rhetoric, questioning the excessive "market fundamentalism" of the Koizumi reforms.

The question is whether this effort will attract the support of LDP heavyweights, and whether it is capable of serving as the support base for an Abe successor. At present, I doubt that this small group will have much impact. But its creation is indicative of the low-intensity conflict underway within the LDP, and if Kosaka and company can convince silent sympathizers to rally to their banner, they might be able to put more pressure on the prime minister to resign. The key will be support, publicly and in great numbers.

The prime minister, meanwhile, reminded everyone of his inability to face reality by brushing off questions about criticism from within the LDP. According to Asahi, he told reporters, "To the last, I believe that the LDP is a party that is uniting and working together."

Yes, Mr. Prime Minister, united in search of a candidate who will be able to replace you.

This time around, definitely a farce

The Kishi (or is it Sato?) clan has an interesting relationship with the Japanese people, and with Prime Minister Abe digging in his heels despite a resounding vote of no-confidence on Sunday, it looks like the prime minister versus the people once again.

Of course, in 1960, the stakes were serious, the issues being matters of constitutional governance and Japan's position in the cold war — and Japan's wartime legacy, as embodied by Prime Minister Kishi, chief of economic planning in Manchuria and then architect of Japan's total war planning, signatory to the rescript resulting in the Pearl Harbor attack, and imprisoned Class-A war criminal.

And now, in 2007? The people have indicated their disapproval at the ballot box, without even having to bother with demonstrations at the gates of the Diet. The issues at stake largely concern the public's loss of confidence not just in Prime Minister Abe but in the governing class as a whole, as the Japanese people have struggled to deal with changing economic conditions. Insofar as Prime Minister Abe has failed to so much as even nod in the direction of popular anxieties, he ought to pay the price, legacy of short-lived premierships in the 1990s notwithstanding. That was then, this is now. Mr. Abe, of course, does not see it that way. As Asahi notes in its editorial today, "'I take the people's stern judgment rigorously and sincerely, and I should reflect, and while I reflect I will modestly fulfill my duty to reform and build the nation;' in a word, the tough election results are not an expression of non-confidence in the prime minister. He probably takes it as a scolding from the people."

Pathetic, really. Like his grandfather, Mr. Abe clings to an ideological perspective when all the people want is economic security; that is why the civil conflict that some feared in the aftermath of Kishi's resignation in 1960 never materialized, because the LDP opted for Yoshida protege Ikeda Hayato, who not long thereafter announced his income doubling plan — and the rest is history. Despite having dragged his party to a historic loss, Mr. Abe still doesn't understand that the vague ideological package that he peddles in Utsukushii Kuni e is of so little interest to the Japanese people that they haven't even bothered to oppose it actively. They see a prime minister obsessed with waging the battles of the past rather than running a government responsive to their concerns, many of which are the product of the policies of his predecessor.

And that is why Mr. Abe's tenure is doomed. Sooner or later, the LDP's chiefs, inheritors of a tradition of political survivalism almost without parallel in the developed world (except for perhaps Italy's Christian Democrats, as argued by Richard Samuels) will rediscover their survival instincts and find a way to ditch Mr. Abe. The question is whether they will do so in time to salvage the party's reputation in its formerly "iron jiban" in rural Japan — and whether it is still possible for the LDP to exercise the kind of unchallenged dominance over large swathes of Japan that it once did.

Does anyone really anticipate Mr. Abe's survival in the face of unremitting unpopularity among the people, control of the Upper House by the opposition, and growing fears within the LDP that their electoral prospects diminish with each passing day?

To once again borrow from Marx, if the resignation of Kishi Nobusuke was a tragedy, marred by violence and involving grand, historical stakes, the resignation of his grandson, whenever it comes, will be a farce, a product of his oblivious leadership in the face of public insecurity and his stubborn insistence on ideological governance when all the people want is a competent response to their concerns. And as a result, the conservative machine forged by Kishi in 1955 may well meet its doom with Mr. Abe acting as the unwitting and witless executioner.

Into the home stretch

The campaign is in its final days, the headlines continue to point to a disastrous loss for the LDP and suggest that even Komeito might lose a couple seats — and yet even if the DPJ wins, the outcome and consequences of the election are far from clear.

First, though, just some thoughts about how many seats the LDP might come away with: at a talk at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan last night, Futatsuki Hirotaka suggested that the LDP could win as few as five of the twenty-nine single-seat district elections, which, if you'll recall, is half my worst-case scenario prediction of ten. Toshikawa Takao of Tokyo Insideline, meanwhile, suggested that it is a real possibility that the LDP could win fewer than forty seats. Mainichi reports today that forty may be the line beyond which Prime Minister Abe will find it impossible to hold power.

At the same time, there has been some discussion of the LDP's "voiding" the election results procedurally by combining its Upper House caucus with Komeito's to ensure that the governing coalition would remain the largest single "party" in the Upper House, giving them the right to choose the head of the Upper House and thus wield power over the agenda. (The prevailing arrangement is that the largest caucus chooses the head, the second largest the deputy.) That said, if Asahi's latest prediction that the LDP and Komeito will win only a combined forty-eight seats to the DPJ's fifty-eight is accurate, with the DPJ having a greater number of Upper House members not up for reelection this year, that procedural "coup" would be impossible, just barely.

At the same time, however, I cannot help but wonder what will happen if the LDP somehow manages forty-five seats — undoubtedly after weeks of bleak news, that result would be spun as a major victory for the prime minister (and it would make the above procedural move possible, if the LDP was willing to risk public opprobrium for undermining the results of Sunday's vote).

If, however, the worst-case scenario occurs and the LDP wins fewer than forty — or even thirty-five seats — Abe will be finished, with Mori Yoshiro, former prime minister and current LDP kuromaku, acting as the executioner. (Mori, according to Jiji, has just predicted a dissolution of the Lower House in the event of a DPJ victory, due to the government's inability to pass legislation.) The panelists at the FCCJ last night, talking about possible successors, suggested that the LDP would unite quickly behind a mild, low-profile candidate who would be able to avoid the verbal gaffes and missteps of the Abe Cabinet, in other words, the party is unlikely to turn to Foreign Minister Aso (Toshikawa suggested that it might be Fukuda Yasuo's turn).

And what of the DPJ? There was plenty of skeptical talk last night about the DPJ, which remains riven with divisions and, in the words of Temple University Japan's Jeff Kingston in this FT article on Ozawa, "The DPJ is a party just waiting to unravel." If a Lower House dissolution and election in the spring looks to be increasingly likely, will the DPJ jettison Ozawa and opt for another leader to serve as a potential prime minister? Will the LDP push legislation that plays upon the divisions within the DPJ in an attempt to entice the more conservative wing of the party into secession? I think we can be certain of the latter, especially with the Yanai panel's recommendations on collective self-defense set to be discussed in the fall.

The one thing to keep in mind is that this drama is going to take weeks, even months to play out, with Prime Minister Abe potentially lingering on into September, until after the APEC summit in Australia.

What is interesting is how the sureties of the Japanese political system have collapsed. The LDP is facing open rebellion in the countryside that could claim the careers of even the most senior LDP candidates up for reelection. What is happening, it seems, is that pent-up outrage at the consequences of Koizumi's structural reforms has coalesced thanks in part to the pensions scandal, which seems to be playing the role of the proverbial last straw on the overladen backs of Japan's rural voters. (Structural reform: too incomplete to satisfy urban voters, complete enough to harm rural Japan.)

As a result, Ozawa's strategy of taking advantage of rural discontent means less emphasis on the kinds of policies designed to appeal to urban floating voters usually drawn to vote for the opposition.

It is hard to believe, however, that the rural desertion of the LDP will be a permanent change; undoubtedly the party's leadership will get the message, some heads will roll, and the LDP will have drawn the farmers back to the fold in time for the next Lower House election. At the same time, however, if the LDP responds with an orgy of pork-barrel politics, it may seal its doom in the medium and long term, driving urban voters more firmly into the arms of the DPJ. Whatever the case may be, it seems that the status quo is highly unstable, and Sunday may likely prove to be the catalyst for a series of changes that redraws political boundaries and new partisan divisions.

"Post Abe" comes early

Ampontan — aka the yarase blogger — appears to have abandoned Abe Shinzo for...Foreign Minister Aso Taro.

At least that's what I conclude from this love letter he wrote to Aso yesterday.

Is there any serious likelihood of Aso ascending to the premiership in the wake of a disastrous LDP performance next month? A commentator ("AC") on Ampontan's post beat me to the punch: "Aso has a well-deserved reputation as a loose cannon. Another problem with him is that he has long been openly campaigning for the position, something the LDP tends not to reward. If the LDP gets trounced in July and Abe is sent packing, I fully expect Mori and the other heavyweights to throw their support behind a nonthreatening caretaker who won’t further split the party. Aso is not that person. Machimura might be, and that’s my pick."

That sounds right. With the LDP hastening to return to its old ways, it seems extremely unlikely that in the next five to six weeks someone like Aso is going to be able to round up the necessary support across factions to position himself to lunge at the leadership should Abe falter (his own faction, the Ikoukai, likely being too small a base at present). AC may be on the right track with Machimura, head of the largest faction, cabinet-experienced, and a suitably mild placeholder to keep things steady while the dust settles in the wake of an Abe collapse.

Meanwhile, I have to imagine, ironically, that some older hands in the LDP wistfully recall Koizumi, who served as the perfect foil, allowing them to play down inter-factional disputes to focus on the party head who promised to destroy them. (In the same way that some American hawks wistfully recall the simple, clear days of the cold war.) Now, in the vacuum created by Abe's weak position within the party and in the political system at large, factional politics has heated up once again and life is a lot more insecure than when there was one, large prominent enemy. After balancing against and undermining Koizumi, the factions have returned to balancing against each other. Barring the emergence of a party leader who can draw upon the same fount of popular support as Koizumi — and I suspect that will be hard for anyone to achieve, given that voters may be somewhat more cynical post-Koizumi — Abe's successor will be a compromise candidate.