On the radio

I will be discussing the Japanese political situation on Newstalk K57 in Guam at 7:30am JST.

It appears that you can listen live here.

Fleeing a sinking ship?

A week after Nagasaki Kotaro — and his 3600 supporters in Yamanashi's second district — left the LDP, another Koizumi child has bolted the party.

Yamauchi Koichi, a first termer representing Kanagawa's ninth district, had, as discussed in this post, come to recognize the unpleasant situation for reformists in the post-Koizumi LDP. As he said in this post announcing his departure from the LDP, "The current LDP is like a different party from the 'Koizumi LDP' of the general election in 2005." He rejects the backsliding since 2005, and would rather campaign on his own than violate his principles. (Yamamoto Ichita describes Yamauchi, a member of his reform study group, as having a "pure heart.")

In short, Yamauchi may simply have uncommon courage for an LDP politician. He will face a particularly tough reelection fight: the DPJ candidate is Ryu Hirofumi, the incumbent who lost to Yamauchi in 2005 86,673 votes to 82,878 and was resurrected through proportional representation. And that's without considering the possibility that the LDP might send an "assassin" against Yamauchi.

As expected, there appears to be no plan in the works for a large-scale exodus of reformists from the LDP. Instead, it seems that following Tuesday's self-criticism session, the reformists have made a temporary peace with Aso Taro, perhaps following Nakagawa Hidenao's message that the DPJ must be stopped.

In other words, Yamauchi may not be the last reformist to leave the LDP before the general election, but he will most likely not have much company in exile. For many reformists, it seems that likely defeat with the help of LDP resources is preferable to near-certain defeat alone.

Aso gets his election

As planned, Prime Minister Aso Taro dissolved Japan's House of Representatives Tuesday afternoon.

Despite criticism from members of the cabinet last week, all signed the cabinet decision for dissolution. Before dissolving, Aso attended a meeting with LDP Diet members, humbly accepted their criticism, and then proceeded to dissolve the lower house.

The campaign will officially begin in twenty-seven days, on 18 August, but in the meantime the tasks for the LDP and the DPJ are clear.

Above all, the LDP has to unify: after a brutal and ultimately futile feud between Aso and his supporters, and the party's reformist camp, the LDP has to unite behind a single manifesto and behind Aso's leadership. The LDP's infighting has made it remarkably easy for the DPJ to argue that the LDP is incapable of governing Japan. The more the LDP fights with itself, the harder it is for the party to claim that the DPJ cannot be trusted with power. This will, of course, be the party's central message in the campaign (see this discussion at Mutantfrog of a new LDP Internet ad).

The DPJ, while it goes into the campaign season with a sizable lead in public opinion polls, cannot rest on its laurels. Needing to pick up an extraordinarily difficult 129 seats to secure a majority in its own right, the DPJ must not assume that the general election is already won. The LDP is still a potent adversary, especially if Tuesday marks the beginning of a genuine truce in the LDP's ranks. Accordingly, the DPJ's leadership recognizes that the party must not be overly optimistic as its candidates go out on the hustings.

As has long been clear, the contest over the next month is simple. Which narrative will win? Will the DPJ be able to make the general election a referendum not just on the past year of Aso rule, not just the past four years of LDP rule but on the LDP system of government more generally? Or will the LDP succeed in making this election about the dangers of abandoning the LDP for the DPJ's cloud cuckoo land?

Nakagawa Hidenao fights to the bitter end

In response to the LDP's decision to convene a closed-door gathering Tuesday that will enable LDP members to "exchange opinions" with Prime Minister Aso Taro, Nakagawa Hidenao demanded that the party open the event to the media.

The LDP executive dismissed his request, frankly arguing that airing the party's dirty laundry — more than it has already been aired — will have a negative impact on the party's performance in the general election.

Yamamoto Ichita defends his party's decision here, suggesting that there is little reason for the LDP to publicize what will likely be a brutal last-minute struggle between defenders and critics of the prime minister, pleasing no one but the media.

Normally I would oppose a decision to limit the transparency of the governing party, but at this point media coverage of the event would only be piling on, giving the media an opportunity for a feeding frenzy but doing nothing to inform the public. The LDP's divisions are no secret; the damage has already been done. To make Tuesday's discussion meeting public would serve only to provide the media with images of Aso's being lambasted by party members. The LDP has no obligation to make such an event public and its political logic is certainly sound.

Meanwhile, Nakagawa's push to make the event public is just one more act of desperation by a once-prominent LDP member who appears to have run out of options. With the discussion's occurring behind closed doors, Nakagawa's campaign to overthrow Aso will have reached its conclusion — having the public witness Aso's self-criticism session is Nakagawa's only chance to keep the flame of resistance burning.

But Nakagawa continues to insist that he will not leave the LDP, that he would rather work to reform the LDP than leave to form his own party or, given his recent tirades against the DPJ, join the DPJ. (The latest one is here.) Whether the party is interested in his efforts to reform it is another question. Kawamura Takeo, the chief cabinet secretary, said on TV Saturday that if Nakagawa and Takebe Tsutomu want to make their own manifesto, they ought to leave the LDP. Other LDP members have taken to the airwaves to reminder the public that Nakagawa was the party secretary-general who was "responsible" for the 2007 upper house election. Mori Yoshiro — apparently with no modesty himself despite having come close to setting the mark for the LDP's least popular leader ever — suggested that given his "prior conviction," Nakagawa should be more modest in his speech. Oshima Tadamori similarly reminded listeners at a speech in Iwate prefecture of Nakagawa's history. This reasoning is clearly specious: Nakagawa may have resigned to take responsibility, but the idea that Nakagawa is somehow truly responsible for the party's defeat is absurd.

But I understand the criticism being directed at Nakagawa. At this point Nakagawa looks more like a saboteur than a sincere reformer. Having lost his battle to unseat the prime minister and losing the battle to influence the party's manifesto, Nakagawa would fall into line if he were sincere about staying in the party. The damage has already been done. Nakagawa has managed to demolish the illusion — such as it existed — that the LDP is capable of governing itself or Japan. "The LDP," said Kan Naoto, "is completely losing its ability to govern." The DPJ will undoubtedly be repeating this message ad nauseam until the election, making the LDP's decision to shield Tuesday's meeting from the press politically obvious: why furnish the opposition with photographic and video evidence of the party's disunity?

Meanwhile, the anti-Aso opposition is in total disarray. Noda Seiko and Koike Yuriko, leading reformists, are now fighting not just over whether to form a new party but whether Noda called upon Koike to join her in forming a new party.

However, the reformists, for all their disarray over the past three years, may have completed Koizumi Junichiro's mission of "destroying the LDP." Aso is battered (in Mainichi's latest poll Hatoyama Yukio enjoys 28% support as the most appropriate choice for prime minister, compared with only 11% for Aso), the party's reputation is in tatters (Mainichi has the DPJ as the party of choice for 56% of respondents, double the LDP's proportion), and Yomiuri is finding that even prominent and long-serving of LDP members are having to campaign hard in their districts (a three-part series, here, here, and here). The race may tighten up a bit as the LDP puts the Nakagawa rebellion behind it, but barring some extraordinary political financing scandal that directly implicates Hatoyama, the DPJ is likely cruising to victory. The interesting question now is just how big a victory.

Ozawa will run in Iwate

After strong indications last week that he would switch districts, Ozawa Ichiro has announced that he will be running in Iwate's fourth district instead of switching to Tokyo's twelfth district, where he would run against Komeito president Ota Akihiro. I can only imagine the communication between the DPJ and Komeito in advance of Ozawa's decision.

The DPJ will presumably still field a candidate in the twelfth — or support a candidate from another opposition party — but not running Ozawa against Ota will at least leave open the possibility of a DPJ-Komeito rapprochement in the wake of a DPJ victory.

One way or another, a DPJ-Komeito partnership will take time to forge, but at least it won't be poisoned by Ozawa's having run against (and unseated) Komeito's president.

Aso will fight on

The anti-Asō rebellion was over before it even began.

Instead of a meeting of LDP Diet members that would meet today and debate whether to hold a party presidential election before a general election — thereby undoing the prime minister's plan for a 21 July dissolution — the LDP executive agreed to an informal, closed gathering of Diet members that will meet for two hours before the House of Representatives is dissolved on Tuesday. The party leaders claimed that Nakagawa Hidenao's petition fell short of the necessary 128 signatures to force a general meeting. Asō Tarō will attend, to "listen" to the opinions of LDP members. Presumably he will be apologetic for the party's electoral defeats and promise to try harder in the coming weeks, giving the meeting the air of a self-criticism session. (Hence its being held behind closed doors, as suggested by Yamamoto Ichita.) Then he will walk from LDP headquarters down the street to the Kokkai — a victory strut of sorts? — and dissolve the lower house as planned.

The opposition has not folded entirely, but it has been deflated considerably. After urging the prime minister to resign, Yosano Kaoru, the finance minister, declared that he is satisfied with the decision to convene an informal meeting. Ishiba Shigeru, the agriculture minister, similarly voiced his support for the prime minister, and like Yosano argued that the meeting will be an important first step for the party to unite under Asō.

The leaders of the movement now have to decide what to do next. Do they leave the party? Form a new party? Genuflect before Asō and the party leadership and promise to campaign hard for the LDP? Develop a separate manifesto while remaining under the LDP banner? Hatoyama Kunio, after having been unceremoniously dumped from the cabinet by the prime minister he had long stood by, now rivals Nakagawa as the prime minister's fiercest critic. At a press conference Friday, he spoke of forming an independent "group" within the LDP and said he would gladly form a new party if ordered to leave. (In other words: "You can't throw me out, I quit!")

Meanwhile, Nakagawa tried to resubmit the petition Friday but was rejected — and then disparaged the party's "compromise" as the worst possible outcome. He has given no hint to his plans. Kato Koichi, who in recent weeks emerged as a key Nakagawa ally, appears to have let Nakagawa do the talking, but I suspect that Kato is not long for the party anyway.

Takebe Tsutomu, no less outspoken in his opposition to the government, was explicitly told to leave the party by Oshima Tadamori.

Watanabe Yoshimi is eagerly waiting to welcome LDP exiles to his yet-to-be-named party, which is set to be born after the Diet is dissolved. Watanabe has reportedly been in discussions with Hatoyama Kunio and Hiranuma Takeo, the latter of whom is in the process of creating his long-discussed conservative party. An alliance is not necessarily in the works, although were the two to link up, it would basically result in an Abe-ist party. After watching the opposition to Asō fold over recent days, however, it is hard to see how many LDP members will leave to join either Watanabe or Hiranuma. Some might — Takebe, for example — but few seem to have the fortitude showed by Nagasaki Kotaro, who upped and left at the start of this week. It seems that candidates concerned about running under Asō's leadership will simply do the best they can to distance themselves from the prime minister without leaving the party.

As for Nakagawa, it is appropriate that onetime rebel Kato ("the ghost of rebellions past") became Nakagawa's ally in his fight against Asō, because Kato's present may be Nakagawa's future. Nakagawa has spent so much energy on trying to change the LDP and seems incapable of leaving the party. It's possible that he will remain in the party, isolated, another man who could have been king (or at least could have taken down the king).

And in the meantime, the LDP marches to what looks like certain defeat under its battered leader.

The emerging realism of the DPJ

As the general election approaches, there are signs that a new realism is afoot in the DPJ.

Mainichi reports today that the DPJ is prepared to remove the party's opposition to the MSDF's participation in the Indian Ocean refueling mission in support of coalition activities in Afghanistan, at least until the expiration of the current law. The manifesto, due to be released at month's end, will also include a call for cooperation with the US on reconstruction assistance in Afghanistan. This change accompanies a broader shift on the alliance, as the DPJ plans to soften the language in the manifesto concerning the realignment of US forces in Japan. The DPJ has not completely abandoned its concerns about the current plan for the realignment of US forces, especially Japan's financial contributions to the move to Guam — it is concerned with how Japan's money will be spent, if not with the Japanese contribution in general — but the party is clearly shifting its position on foreign policy.

There are other signs. Earlier this week Party President Hatoyama Yukio suggested that, in response to the confirmation of the existence of a secret treaty between the US and Japan permitting the "introduction" of US nuclear weapons, a DPJ government would be open to negotiating with the US to revise the three non-nuclear principles.

I have previously written of the party's shift on administrative reform, with Kan Naoto's stressing that the DPJ recognizes the talents and usefulness of the bureaucracy and will do more than just attack the administrative service. The party is beginning to make pieces of its 300-day plan public, including a plan to create a national strategy office to bolster the power of the cabinet. A similar realism has been at work in the more visible part of the DPJ program, the various spending programs included in the party's manifesto. After considerable debate about how the party will pay for the promises in the manifesto — including a 26,000 yen/month child allowance, ending fees for public high schools, its 1 trillion yen for direct subsidies to farmers — the party trimmed 4 trillion yen in new spending, from a total of 20 trillion yen, and clarified how the party proposes to pay for its new programs. In the course of clarifying how it will pay for its new programs, it has clarified the timing for their implementation. The debate over the manifesto included a debate between Hatoyama and Okada Katsuya, the secretary-general, over whether to include a promise to eliminate the gasoline tax surcharge from 2010, which Okada opposed due to what he sees as the illogic of eliminating the tax during a recession. But it is encouraging that the DPJ had this debate in the first place: these are appropriate debates for a presumptive government party to be having, and to have them without tearing the party to pieces.

The party is not without its problems on the policy front. For example, Sato Atushi, the president of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, aired concerns Thursday about DPJ plans for stricter financial regulation. Yamasaki Hajime, writing in Shukan Diamond, is concerned about DPJ-SDPJ plans for raising the minimum wage to 1000 yen and restricting the use of non-regular employees. On foreign policy it is not entirely clear the extent to which Hatoyama and Okada are bringing the rest of the party along on the shift on the alliance and the three non-nuclear principles. I suspect that the former is less controversial than the latter. The problem may be less the DPJ, however, than the Social Democrats, the presumptive DPJ coalition partner, which quickly criticized Hatoyama for daring to undermine the three non-nuclear principles. Indeed, this episode reveals the problem with the DPJ's new realism: the more the DPJ softens its more controversial positions, the greater the distance between the DPJ and the SDPJ. The SDPJ has released its memo, and the differences are obvious. While the DPJ has softened its stance on the US-Japan status of forces agreement and the realignment roadmap, the SDPJ wants complete revision of both and is absolutely opposed to a permanent dispatch law or any changes to the "brakes" on Japanese security policy.

A coalition with the SDPJ will be a problem for a more realistic DPJ, but just how much of a problem will depend on whether the DPJ wins an outright majority in the general election or whether it will require Socialist votes in both houses. Regardless of the outcome, however, the 2010 upper house election will be important as the means for the DPJ to free itself of the Socialists. As a result, a DPJ government would most likely focus little attention on foreign policy issues during the year leading up to the upper house election. Foreign policy "triumphs" would do little to help the DPJ win in 2010 and could undermine coalition cooperation when it is needed to pass other legislation more useful for winning elections. The SDPJ may have a price at which it would drop its opposition to some measure or another, but that price may be more than the DPJ would be willing to pay on a foreign policy issue. Incidentally, it also bears noting that — nuclear policy aside — the DPJ's shifts on the alliance are shifts that free the DPJ from having to act instead of committing the DPJ to certain policy approaches. It will be in a better position to do nothing (or nothing more than rhetorical actions, requesting negotiations with the US on Guam, for example) and claim that it is living up to its manifesto. Hardly sounds like a tsunami to me.

One area, however, in which the DPJ may be making a disastrous mistake is in having Ozawa Ichiro and Tanaka Yasuo, former Nagano governor, upper house member and leader of DPJ partner New Party Japan, run against Ota Akihiro, Komeitō president, and Fuyushiba Tetsuzo, a prominent Komeitō official and former cabinet minister. Hatoyama indicated that the DPJ is close to concluding a plan that would have Ozawa run in Tokyo's 12th district against Ota and Tanaka run in Hyogo's 8th district against Fuyushiba. That the DPJ is approving this plan is presumably a sign of the party's confidence regarding the election, because clearly the party feels that Ozawa can safely run for a new district while simultaneously campaigning around the country on behalf of DPJ candidates. But whether or not Ozawa and Tanaka win their seats, this decision will likely make it more difficult for the DPJ and Komeitō to conclude a post-election rapprochement. Given the widening gap with the SDPJ, the DPJ may find Komeitō a useful partner, if not as a formal coalition partner than at least as a silent coalition partner. The gap between the consensus DPJ position on foreign policy and the Komeitō position isn't all that great. But sending Ozawa — whose star-crossed history with Komeitō has poisoned the DPJ's relationship with the party — into battle against Komeitō's president could be disastrous for post-election efforts to build a working relationship. I don't expect a rapprochement to happen quickly in any event, but this decision is one more obstacle that could stand in the way of a relationship that could be an important one for a governing Japan.

Nevertheless, the point is that as the general election approaches and as the DPJ looks increasingly certain to take power, the party is moderating a number of policies that have been sources for criticism in the past. The DPJ is not a radical party — it is interesting in governing well, not in implementing a radical ideological program. Hence its emphasis on creating a Westminster system: its administrative reforms would be a radical departure from LDP rule, but in the name of creating orderly and functioning government.

SNAFU

Is the Nakagawa rebellion fizzling out already?

After loudly proclaiming that he had received enough signatures to force a meeting of LDP Diet members within in the next week, it turns out that Nakagawa Hidenao's campaign to unseat Asō Tarō is falling victim to the pusillanimity of his "supporters."

Some of the 133 signatories have claimed that they did not sign in the hope of unseating the prime minister but merely in the hope that it would force Asō to reflect on the party's defeats in local elections and resolve to work harder in advance of the general election. It seems that members of the Tsushima and Koga factions in particular are looking to remove their signatures from the petition. (Yamamoto Ichita has more on this here.)

What a sorry excuse for a rebellion, and a testament to Nakagawa's deficiencies as leader of the LDP's reformist anti-mainstream.

The LDP in ruins

On Wednesday, Nakagawa Hidenao announced that the movement to move up the LDP presidential election from September — in effect a campaign for a recall election aimed at Prime Minister Asō Tarō — reached its goal of signatures from more than one-third of LDP members in the upper and lower houses (one-third is 128 members). Among the 133 signatures received are those of two members of the Asō cabinet, Yosano Kaoru, the finance minister, and Ishiba Shigeru, the agriculture minister.

The rebels are urging the LDP executive to convene a general meeting of LDP members from both houses — and with Asō determined to dissolve the Diet Tuesday, they are running out of time.

Having one-third of the Diet caucus is sufficient to force a general meeting, but whether they will be able to secure a majority of Diet members plus the heads of the forty-seven prefectural chapters remains to be seen. But that said, this group includes more than just the Koizumi children, although they are certainly in the mix. There are enough signatories with cabinet experience and longevity that Asō and his allies cannot simply ignore them. (The complete list is available here.) There is certainly a reformist "color" to the list, but it is not necessarily a group of Nakagawa's compatriots. I would imagine a number of the signatories are there because they simply fear for the future of the party, not because they accept Nakagawa's ideological program. In other words, this group is not the beginning of a new reformist party.

This group, and Nakagawa in particular, is convinced that the LDP can be saved by throwing Asō overboard, indeed that the prime minister is the only thing standing in the way of LDP victory. As I argued here, I think Nakagawa's position assigns far too much blame to Asō for what is essentially a structural problem in the LDP. After going through three prime ministers in three years, it is hard to believe that the problem is simply having the wrong people at the head of the party. After watching the LDP's members war with one another simply to remove Asō, will the public be convinced that the LDP is a whole new party? If the party manages to unseat the prime minister and elevate, for example, Masuzoe Yoichi in his place, will the party instantly become more manageable? (Motegi Toshimitsu, a former administrative reform minister, and Sugawara Isshu, the LDP's deputy secretary general, met with Masuzoe Wednesday evening to urge him to run in the event that Asō falls from power.) Masuzoe's position would be particularly difficult given that he would be the first postwar prime minister from the upper house and has always prided himself on being independent from party (great as a crusading minister, bad in a party leader). He might be able to save the LDP in a general election, but when it came to governing he would presumably get ensnared by the same problems that have undermined previous LDP prime ministers.

At this juncture, however, Yosano has emerged as a key figure in determining not only whether Asō will survive, but also whether the prime minister will be able to go forward with a dissolution and general election as planned. Yomiuri reports that the finance minister met with the prime minister for forty minutes on Wednesday and urged him to resign voluntarily. Yosano also hinted that he might not sign the declaration dissolving the House of Representatives and stressed that the party leaders must listen to dissenting voices in determining how to proceed. Despite his long-running battle with Nakagawa — the war of Nakagawa's "rising tide" school versus Yosano's "fiscal reconstructionists" — Yosano is now a critical ally for Nakagawa inside the cabinet, seeing as how the reformists do not have one of their own in the government. But even Yosano cannot stop the dissolution, as the prime minister can dismiss him and assume his position if Yosano refuses to sign the order.

The battle is building to a climax. There will presumably be a meeting of LDP Diet members, if only to vote down the proposal. That would probably be the best outcome for Asō, given that he probably has the votes. Mori Yoshiro spoke of making a decision about a "recall" election on the basis of the opinion of all members, a reminder that two-thirds of the party's members did not sign the petition. And Asō has the upper hand, in that he only has to hold out until Tuesday and then he can dissolve the Diet, even if he has to dismiss members of his cabinet to do so.

On Thursday, Takebe Tsutomu likened the current situation to the bakumatsu, the end of the Tokugawa shogunate in the 1850s and 1860s. He may be right, but he should remember that it takes more than one group to produce political chaos. The Asō cabinet may be tottering and feeble, but the reaction it has engendered from within the LDP has mortally wounded the government, worsening the conditions that inspired the reaction in the first place. If the rebels fail — and it looks like they will, because Asō is nothing if not stubborn — they will have guaranteed the outcome they sought to avoid: the disastrous defeat of the LDP and the formation of a DPJ government.

The coming DPJ tsunami?

Daniel Twining, writing at Shadow Government, Foreign Policy's blog for Republicans in exile from government in Washington, argues that the advent of a DPJ government could represent a "tsunami" for the US and Japan.

Twining offers the standard Washington perspective on the DPJ: Japan has lots of problems, but who knows whether the DPJ can actually fix them.

Indeed, there is very little in this post that hasn't been said before — and which I argued against in this post.

But I want to respond to Twining's argument about how the DPJ "will pull its foreign and security policy further to the left — and further away from the broad consensus that has defined the U.S.-Japan alliance for three generations."

What is this consensus, you ask? Twining notes "the deference with which generations of LDP leaders treated Washington and the alliance framework that has made possible Japan's postwar prosperity and security." The use of the word deference is revealing. In short, the alliance has been unequal and should continue to be so: "expanding Japan's alliance roles and responsibilities to make that country a global security leader" but always remaining subordinate to the US, host to US forces, cooperating in US-led operations abroad, and altering its forces to conform to US wishes.

There are several problems with Twining's argument. First, before even looking at the merits of the DPJ position, it is worth mentioning that despite the fears of Twining and others in Washington, the most likely outcome of a DPJ government for the foreseeable future is the maintenance of the status quo. The DPJ has said that it wants to renegotiate the 2006 roadmap on the realignment of US forces and the status of US forces in Japan more generally. True, but will these be high priorities for a DPJ government? Any democratic government has only so much political capital to spend, and it is unlikely that a DPJ-led government will devote serious attention to Okinawa in the early years of its government. Okinawa is a low priority for voters outside of Okinawa prefecture, and will take a back seat to administrative reform, pensions, health care, and the economy. Beyond these specific issues, it is a mistake to anticipate radical chance on the alliance for precisely the same reason. Of course there are socialists in the DPJ, and the SDPJ will likely be included in a DPJ-led coalition. But as Twining himself notes, there are those "who support a more hawkish Japanese security policy."

The result will be equilibrium in favor of the status quo. Neither the left nor the right will be able to achieve radical changes in Japanese security policy. Any changes to Japan's foreign and security policy will be the result of top-down incremental changes — and the DPJ's leaders tend to fall somewhere between the two extremes. After flirting with "petite" nationalism earlier in his career, Hatoyama Yukio's foreign policy views are fairly pedestrian. Ozawa Ichiro is perhaps more controversial, but at the same time few Japanese politicians have been more misunderstood than Ozawa. (See my explanation of his "Seventh Fleet" comments here, here, and here, and discussions of Ozawa's thinking on foreign policy here, here, and here.) Okada Katsuya is also pedestrian in his security policy views, and recently echoed the Obama administration's rhetoric when he stressed the importance of US-Japan cooperation in areas other than security (discussed here). Incidentally, the advent of the Obama administration has arguably forced the DPJ to soften its rhetoric on the US: it was a lot easier to criticize Washington under the Bush administration. With the Obama's administration's having made a point of not treating Japan with a heavy hand in its first months (what I've called benign neglect), the DPJ has changed its tone on the alliance, and will undoubtedly continue to do so should it win next month.

The DPJ's leaders are hardly radicals. At the very least, the US-Japan alliance will remain an indispensable pillar for the indefinite future, especially because a DPJ government will be no more inclined than an LDP government to spend more on defense. The presence of hawks within the DPJ will probably ensure that defense spending does not fall further than it already has under the LDP, but a DPJ-led Japan will not be gearing up for the development of serious autonomous capabilities. But beyond that, it does seem to be contradictory for Twining to question the DPJ's ability to address "structural conundrums" but then blithely assert that the DPJ will single-handedly threaten the institution that has been the centerpiece of Japanese security policy for nearly sixty years.

Where does this conclusion leave us? Will the DPJ ask questions of the US that the "deferential" LDP (I think Twining and Ozawa would agree on this point) has not asked of Japan's ally? Of course. Will it be less inclined to support the US in wars far from Japan's shores, especially without UN approval? Surely. Will it look to deepen its cooperation with other Asian countries independent of the US? Absolutely. But these positions hardly constitute radical change, and it is hard to see why the Obama administration should anticipate an impending "tsunami" for these reasons.

Incidentally, what Twining fails to realize is that creating some distance between the US and Japan (or "making the alliance equal") is perhaps the lowest common denominator in the DPJ. Even the DPJ's conservatives don't want Japan to be too locked in to the alliance framework.

Which leads to the bigger question: is the DPJ's position actually bad for the US? It may be bad for the US-Japan establishment, which depends on the idea that the alliance is "intrinsically important." But what would the US lose if a DPJ government says no from time to time, or if it seeks an international role in regional or international fora that might involve staking out positions at odds with the US? Twining says that the Bush administration sought a Japan that would be a "global security leader," but in reality it seems that Twining wants a militarily capable Japan subservient to Japan, a vassal not an ally. It seems that it is impossible for the US to have a Japanese ally that is both a "global security leader" and deferential to the United States. If Japan is going to be a more capable global leader, it will from time to time disagree with the US.

As noted previously, the harder edges of the DPJ's position on the alliance have softened since Barack Obama came into office — and they will likely soften further once the DPJ is faced with governing. The result will be a Japan still allied with the US and still a "pillar" of US policy in East Asia, but reluctant to support security cooperation far from Japanese shores and largely uninterested in values promotion or a crypto-containment policy for China. Japan has already moved in this direction in the years since the fall of Abe Shinzo. Notice, for example, how little the prime minister has discussed his "arc of freedom and prosperity." Japan has not moved any closer to "remilitarization" under Fukuda or Asō. It has been slow to move on the 2006 road map. It continued to support the token refueling mission in the Indian Ocean, but offered nothing more in either Iraq or Afghanistan. It did send ships to Somalia, but only after China did, and even then its commitment was presented as being in Japan's national interest.

Twining, of course, believes otherwise: he tells us that Koizumi's successors "have been good men, and several, including Shinzo Abe and Taro Aso, have possessed a clear vision for Japan in the world." Why he says several when the only prime minister not included on that list is Fukuda is beyond me. (And this is particularly insulting, because I think of the three, Fukuda had the most realistic assessment of the problems facing Japan and had the most clearly articulated vision for overcoming said challenges. See here and here.)

The era of Japan's becoming a deputy to the US sheriff in East Asia has passed, and the sooner that both Republicans and Democrats come to recognize this, the better it will be for the alliance.

The LDP's disorder deepens, but it remains one party — for now

Asō Tarō's decision to dissolve the Diet on 21 July and hold a general election on 30 August rippled through the LDP on Tuesday, as the prime minister's critics increasingly recognized that with the political system shifting into election mode, the window of opportunity to replace Asō is closing.

Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintarō, whose position was directly undermined by Sunday's Tokyo assembly election results, was bitterly dismissive of the prime minister, labeling the decision as intended solely to shield Asō from criticism within the LDP, criticism that he added to by reminding reporters of the prime minister's struggles with kanji and his indecisiveness.

But while Ishihara's comments can be dismissed as bitterness from one unpopular leader trying to shift his share of the blame for Sunday's defeat to another unpopular leader, Asō faced more severe criticism from within the LDP on Tuesday. The conference of LDP members of both houses of the Diet met Tuesday, giving Asō's rivals an opportunity to criticize him to his face.

The man of the afternoon was Nakagawa Hidenao, the leader of the LDP's reformists and who at this moment has considerable power over the LDP's future.

Not surprisingly Nakagawa was angry about Asō's decision to react to the Tokyo election by calling an "early" election instead resigning. He wrote at his blog on Monday that the Japanese people had already rendered their judgment on Asō's leadership in local and prefectural elections in Shizuoka, Tokyo, Chiba, and Nara, and reiterated his argument that the only "honorable" course of action for the prime minister is resignation. In short, Nakagawa's argument is the polar opposite of the government's argument that local elections have no bearing whatsoever on national elections — local elections are explicitly judgments about the government.

On Tuesday Nakagawa rejected Asō's appeal for unity and once again demanded the prime minister's resignation, arguing that only the DPJ will benefit from an early election with Asō as the LDP leader.

Nakagawa was not alone in his criticism of Asō. Takebe Tsutomu, former LDP secretary general and Koizumi lieutenant, suggested that the prime minister acted "arbitrarily" in scheduling the election from 30 August instead of some date following the 10 September end of the Diet term.

The bitterness of the criticism from the senior reformists is an admission that they were outmaneuvered by Asō, who acted decisively for perhaps the first time since becoming prime minister, securing his position and placating his backers by scheduling an "early" dissolution followed by a long period before the election campaign officially begins on 18 August. [Readers will notice the quotes around early throughout this article, by which I am simply suggesting that early is relative: as far as I'm concerned this election should have been held months ago.] It is now highly unlikely that the LDP will oust Asō before the general election, despite Nakagawa's calls for his resignation.

It is beginning to occur to some LDP reformists just how isolated they are within the party. Yamauchi Koichi, a first-termer from Kanagawa, writes at his blog: "In the LDP, the structural reform group, which wants to build smart government that entrusts to the private sector that which the private sector can do, demolish the administrative corporations, cut the number of bureaucrats, and eliminate government waste, has become the minority group before we were even aware of it." (Why exactly did it take them so long to notice that they had become the LDP's new anti-mainstream? There were plenty of warning signs well before Asō set foot in the Kantei as prime minister, although for the first year after Koizumi Nakagawa Hidenao was too busy claiming that the Abe government was reforming "faster than in Koizumi-san's time" to notice that the LDP was reverting to form before their very eyes.)

Yamauchi's post is interesting as it shows a Koizumi child waking up to the predicament facing the reformists: "I'm afraid to say that it appears that both the LDP and the DPJ are at the point of 'Anti-Koizumi Structural Reform' and their thinking is converging in a similar way(?)." What's a reformist to do? Risk electoral defeat as a candidate for a party that has marginalized you and your peers? Join the DPJ, a party that rhetoric has it is no different from the LDP? Join with Watanabe Yoshimi in the hope that his nascent party might become the beginning of a powerful neo-liberal party?

In his futile campaign against the prime minister, Nakagawa Hidenao has been a poor leader for his fellow reformists. After all, as Nakagawa should himself recognize, the LDP's problems are more than skin deep. Why does he think that simply changing the face of the party will be adequate to revive the LDP's fortunes? Obviously he wants more than a change of leaders, but in the time to an election a change of leaders will be merely cosmetic and will ask voters to excuse the LDP's past and look to a brighter future under the new leader, assuming that the new leader can make the changes desired by Nakagawa. But the Koizumi experience suggests that changing leaders only takes the LDP so far. And does anyone see another Koizumi waiting in the LDP's wings anyway? (Yamamoto Ichita, another leading reformist, offers more criticism of Nakagawa's position here.)

The result is that it looks like it will be every reformist for him or herself: it appears unlikely that the reformists will leave the party en masse. Some will probably leave and join with Watanabe; perhaps others will stay and fight for the soul of the LDP; still others may soften their views. But I have a hard time seeing a repeat of 1993 when Ozawa Ichiro pulled his reformist faction out of the party as a group. It is wholly unclear which option Nakagawa will choose, which speaks volumes about Nakagawa as a leader of the reformists. The longer Nakagawa waits to make his intentions clear the more it looks like the same indecision that Asō is criticized for instead of wily gamesmanship.

Nakagawa's predicament comes through in this post at his blog Tuesday, in which he writes hysterically of his "mission to strive to the bitter end to prevent the birth of a DPJ government," a government he believes will utterly betray Japan's national interests. Rarely have I read something as unhinged as Nakagawa's anti-DPJ screed. He is convinced that the DPJ will ruin Japan (presumably more than it has already been ruined by the LDP?) — if this post does not rule out the possibility of Nakagawa's leading reformists into the DPJ, I don't know what does. Nakagawa is equally devastated by the LDP's failure to realize that it is imperative for to do whatever it takes to prevent the DPJ from taking power. But he offers no clue as to what he will do to "work vigorously on behalf of nation and people."

With the LDP's having successfully warned off reformists who might have been tempted to use the opposition's no-confidence motion to tweak the government — the LDP informed members that the party would withdraw its endorsement if they voted for the motion — but the day of reckoning is approaching. Or, given the confusion among the reformists, the days of reckoning.

Waiting for the reformists

The decision to delay the general election until 30 August means that there are weeks left for the LDP's warring policy groups to battle for the soul of the party.

It turns out that the twenty-seven days that will elapse between the dissolution of the lower house on 21 July and the start of the campaign on 18 August will be the longest such period under the postwar constitution. The 2005 election's twenty-one days is the current record.

In the meantime, Asō Tarō and the LDP will be tested. The first, and perhaps easiest, test will be the concurrent lower house no-confidence and upper house censure motions submitted by the opposition parties this evening. The DPJ and the other opposition parties presumably hope that they will present potential LDP rebels with an opportunity to break with the party. However, it will probably take more than a no-confidence motion for the DPJ to draw away potential LDP defectors. By acting immediately after the Tokyo election, Asō clearly knocked the intra-party anti-Asō movement off balance, which of course wanted to delay so that they might have a chance to unseat the prime minister and elevate a new leader. The reformists may simply not be ready to act so decisively against the prime minister, especially since the no-confidence motion will go to a vote in the House of Representatives Tuesday afternoon, followed by a censure vote in the upper house.

But Asō and the LDP could still face an exodus of reformists from the party. Is Nakagawa Hidenao truly ready to leave? Will other Koizumi children follow Nagasaki Kotaro out of the party, reasoning that they stand a better chance of reelection running independently? Will they join with Watanabe Yoshimi and his incipient party? Is Watanabe about to receive an influx of LDP members? If they do leave, it will force the LDP to debate borrowing from Koizumi and nominating "assassin" candidates to run against the reformists. At the same time, DPJ candidates would presumably have a harder time against independent reformist candidates who had broken away from the LDP than the same candidates struggling to distance themselves from Asō without leaving the party.

It is entirely possible that the reformists will stay and fight on within the LDP, perhaps issuing a policy document tantamount to a manifesto while still running as LDP candidates. As unpopular as Asō is, there are advantages to pursuing this course of action instead of breaking with the LDP outright, not least because it maximizes their post-election options.

There is a certain symmetry to this state of affairs, given that four years ago the reformists had the LDP's old guard on the defensive to the point of driving some of their number out of the party. The difference is that it is unlikely that the LDP leadership will actively seek to drive the reformists from the party, no matter what they do to distance themselves and undermine Asō.

Indeed, if this election is to spell the end of the LDP, there will also be a certain symmetry with the beginning of the LDP, which began with a merger among warring camps incapable of agreeing on a postwar conservative agenda. And, appropriately, once again a Hatoyama is poised to gain the premiership.

Celebrate the kaisan

Ken Worsley from Trans-Pacific Radio and I will be at the Cantina in Takadanobaba on Wednesday evening, when Guinness will be half price. Join us to talk politics or just to hoist a glass and celebrate the fact that we finally know when the election will be held.

And if you are interested in attending the July 25th bloggers party but haven't informed Ken and me yet, please send an email to observingjapan@gmail.com and japaneconomynews@gmail.com.

Aso pulls the trigger

Prime Minister Asō Tarō, facing open rebellion, has decided to exercise his nuclear option.

At an emergency meeting of LDP executives, the prime minister and the LDP agreed that the lower house will be dissolved on 21 July and the general election will be held on 30 August. Kōji will be on 18 August.

After two years of demanding a general election, the DPJ will finally get its chance to win control of the lower house.

Plenty will happen in the meantime, especially in the fight within the LDP. What will Nakagawa Hidenao and company do now that Asō has gone ahead and decided on an election, without the party's drafting a manifesto (as demanded by the Manifesto Association)? Nagasaki Kotaro, a Koizumi child from the South Kanto Block, announced Monday that he is leaving the LDP. Will others follow?

A decisive day?

Although the government parties rallied from behind as the night went on, the LDP and Komeitō failed to recapture a majority of the seats in the Tokyo metropolitan assembly, the goal set by the LDP.

NHK has called all but three seats, with the opposition parties currently holding sixty-five, one more than the sixty-four needed for a majority. With no DPJ candidates in contention for the remaining three, it's safe to conclude that the DPJ will finish the night with fifty-four seats, up twenty, making it the assembly's largest party. Komeitō came into the election with twenty-two seats, and may even gain one. The JCP came in with thirteen and will return either seven or eight. The LDP's loss may be as little as nine seats, but those are a huge nine seats.

A couple things of note:

• Despite fears that Komeitō may struggle to get its voters out due to the government's unpopularity, they still turned out for Komeitō candidates. On a bad night, this result is good news for the coalition. Or not: just because they came out for Komeitō candidates does not mean that they will show up for LDP candidates in the general election (or that they showed up this time).
• Communist boom? Not in Tokyo. Perhaps this result augurs well for the DPJ, which gained as much at the expense of other opposition parties as it did at the expense of the LDP.

The ball is in your court, Mr. Asō.

The LDP falls in Tokyo

As of this writing, the DPJ has surpassed the thirty-eight it held before the election, winning forty-two seats. It is twenty-two short of a majority, with seventy-six remaining. (Sankei is updating results here; Asahi is here.)

The DPJ will become the largest party in the Tokyo assembly, and given the disparity in the early results, it is hard to see how the LDP and Komeitō will retain a majority between them.

Ishihara Nobuteru, head of the Tokyo party, decided not to wait for all the results before apologizing to party supporters, attributing the results to "confusion" in the national party.

These are historic times.

Uh oh

NHK reports that turnout exceeded fifty percent. I can't imagine that's good news for the government.

On the eve of destruction?

The denizens of Tokyo have started voting for representatives to the metropolitan assembly, and the LDP is already explaining away a defeat. Turnout may be up compared with 2005, which, as Jun Okumura notes, bodes ill for the LDP and Komeitō.

Appearing on TV Saturday, Hosoda Hiroyuki, the LDP secretary general, said that the election will have no impact on national affairs, the LDP's refrain throughout the string of defeats in local and prefectural elections. Similarly, Prime Minister Asō, returning to Japan from the G-8 summit in Italy, stressed that of course he wouldn't resign if the coalition loses its majority in the Tokyo assembly.

I do not doubt Asō's resolution to stay. And he is far from friendless in the LDP — even Masuzoe Yoichi, dubbed his most likely challenger by the media, has backed off from open criticism, and Ishiba Shigeru, another potential challenger in his cabinet, recently voiced his support for the prime minister. Whatever unease the LDP's chieftains feel about having Asō as the face of the party in the general election, none seems to be excited at the prospect of a party leadership election before a general election. And why should they be? Rather than enabling the LDP to rid itself of Asō, a party election at this point would serve only to air the LDP's internal divisions even more than they are already being aired. There is some hope within the LDP that Asō will leave voluntarily, but it would strike me as uncharacteristic for the prime minister to bow out willingly.

And Asō still has his nuclear option, the power to call a general election. Yomiuri reports that the prime minister will base his decision regarding the general election on the returns in Tokyo. Regardless of whether the coalition wins or loses power in Tokyo, the election could impel Asō to call an early election. If the coalition wins, he may want to call an early election to take advantage of the temporary shift in the government's favor. If the coalition loses, he may want to call an early election to undercut the anti-Asō movement within the LDP. The question then is how the reformists will react to having no choice but to contest the election under Asō's leadership. Shukan Bunshun suggests that the reformists are thinking about contesting the election with their own manifesto, making them a virtual new party.

How likely is this outcome? I suppose we'll find out soon enough.

Who's afraid of the conservatives?

Yamasaki Taku, perhaps the leader of the LDP's remaining doves, spoke at a Genron NPO meeting Thursday afternoon at which he addressed Murata Ryohei's revelations of the secret deal between the US and Japan that permitted the US to "introduce" nuclear weapons to Japan. (Previously discussed in this post.)

"It is appropriate to approve this kind of action for US deterrent power," he said, in light of the nuclear standoff with North Korea, this kind of action being a revision of the non-nuclear principles to permit explicitly the introduction of US nuclear weapons into Japan as in the 1960 secret agreement.

Yamasaki is no pacifist, so this statement is not exactly a bombshell, but it does suggest that there is more to this debate than suggested in Armchair Asia's discussion of Murata's revelations. The anonymous author of Armchair Asia outlines Murata's conservative motives in this post, arguing, "In reality, it is part of a convoluted Rightist strategy to repeal Article 9 and create a military independent of the United States."

I do not disagree that Murata has a number of affiliations that strongly suggest his political leanings. The Shokun! article cited in the initial post — Shokun! obviously triggers various red flags — uses a number of conservative code words, "pride," "independent country," and the like. A subsequent post includes a translation of an op-ed by Okazaki Hisahiko, the notoriously hawkish Foreign Ministry OB who was once known as "Abe's brain," defending Murata's actions. (Available in Japanese here.)

But so what? Why should it matter that Murata is a conservative nationalist? And why should it matter why he decided to reveal the secret agreement (or why Okazaki has defended him)? After watching the Abe government blow up, it is hard to muster up the same concern about the influence of the conservatives. The author writes that of how Murata's remarks will be used by those "who want to use any means to repeal Article 9 and advance Japan's rearmament." Events seem to have taken care of both causes. As I have written previously, the economic crisis has greatly diminished the power of the conservatives even within the LDP, to the point that constitution revision might not even be included in the LDP's manifesto this year (if the LDP ever gets around to writing one).

Is Article 9 really at risk? Even in the best of times, it was unlikely that the conservatives would get what they wanted on Article 9. Oh sure, they could get the article revised, but the need to assemble two-thirds of the members of both houses plus fifty percent plus one of the Japanese public would guarantee that the article would be amended but not abandoned. Revision would likely shift the yardsticks, ratifying changes that have been made that appear to depart from the letter of the law, without removing all limitations on Japanese security policy. And, incidentally, I see no problems with revision of this sort. No document drafted by human hands is beyond revision. My problem is with those obsessed with revision, like Abe Shinzō, not revision itself.

In any case, with the LDP in its death throes, it bears mentioning that constitution revision is even less likely under a DPJ-led government in coalition with the SDPJ. A DPJ government is likely to take its cue from public opinion polls that show the percentage of respondents interested in constitution to be under five percent. Raising constitution revision would only serve to weaken the coalition and sow dissent within the LDP, while strengthening an opposition LDP.

The same goes for "rearmament," the second concern voiced by the author of Armchair Asia. The conservatives have been ascendant for roughly the same period that Japan has let its defense spending stagnate, which suggests, of course, that for all their rhetorical might their reach exceeds their grasp. Their reach will only decline further should the LDP lose power this year. They have allies in the DPJ, but if the DPJ is able to deliver on its plans for a government that unifies cabinet and party, conservatives like Maehara Seiji will find themselves straitjacketed by government service. And there is no chance that a DPJ government elected on a platform of Seikatsu dai-ichi would, upon taking power, proceed to channel significant sums of money into defense spending. Elected on a platform stressing butter, butter, butter and facing skyrocketing pensions costs, it is highly unlikely that the DPJ will decide to invest in guns once in office.

There may be more to rearmament than defense spending, but as with some limited form of constitution revision, what is the problem with Japan doing incrementally more without drastically increasing its spending?

To conclude a discussion that has run longer than I intended, the conservatives should be challenged but their strength and influence should not be exaggerated. And if Ambassador Okazaki wants an open debate, then someone in Japan ought to give him his debate.

Meanwhile, as I wrote in my original post on Murata, I think that whatever his motive, it is good that the Japanese government will be forced to address the role of nuclear weapons in the US-Japan relationship openly. It is entirely possible that the Japanese public — with a nuclear North Korea next door — will recognize a revision of the non-nuclear principles that explicitly permits the US to do what it has been doing all along will strengthen Japan's security. Despite the wishes of the conservatives, the public isn't exactly pressing for Japanese nuclear weapons as a substitute for US nuclear weapons.

It is encouraging that the two governments will hold a working-level meeting this month to discuss the nuclear umbrella, a discussion that is long overdue. One meeting will not resolve the paradox of Japan's trying to be the world's conscience on nuclear weapons while being defended by US nuclear weapons but it will at least help call attention to the paradox and force the Japanese public and their representatives to address it. The US should not be forced into a position where it would have to use nukes to defend Japan (at the behest of its elites) even as the Japanese public condemns the US. Explicitly permitting US nuclear weapons in Japan would certainly help make both countries responsible.

Observing Japan in Foreign Policy

My latest article, on the sinking ship that is Asō Tarō's LDP, is online at the Foreign Policy magazine website.

You can read it here.

(Alas, a mistake has been called to my attention, which I hope will be fixed soon.)

The LDP has exhausted its credit with the Japanese people

Asō Tarō and the LDP failed in the first of two electoral challenges that will precede the dissolution of the House of Representatives and the forthcoming general election.

Kawakatsu Heita, the DPJ-backed candidate in the Shizuoka gubernatorial election, defeated Sakamoto Yukiko, the LDP- and Komeitō-backed candidate, on Sunday, this despite a split in the DPJ vote in Shizuoka. The DPJ, of course, feels the wind at its back as it looks to Sunday's Tokyo assembly elections. Polls in advance of the Tokyo vote show that the DPJ may well succeed in becoming the largest party in the Tokyo assembly. Mainichi has the DPJ leading the LDP 26% to 13%, another 6% for Komeitō, and 43% undecided. But 55% of respondents said they would consider using their vote to judge the Asō government, which provides a hint to how those 43% might vote Sunday. Yomiuri finds that the DPJ enjoys a similar lead over the LDP, 29.4% to 16.9%, with another 5.1% for Komeitō. Asahi's poll also found undecideds leaning to the DPJ.

The DPJ has every reason to feel that its time has come.

Meanwhile, Asō, in Yomiuri's words, stands at the edge of a cliff. The prime minister, reacting to the news, said that the Shizuoka defeat does not mean that the LDP will lose in Tokyo Sunday — and once again stressed that regional elections have no import for national politics. The Shizuoka branch of the LDP thinks differently, blaming the defeat on the anti-government mood growing throughout Japan. What will be his excuse if the LDP and Komeitō lose Sunday? How many regional elections does the government have to lose before it has an impact on national politics? How many times do the voters have to opt for DPJ-backed candidates before the government will recognize these votes as directed at the LDP-Komeitō coalition? Perhaps Asō's excuse for an LDP defeat in Tokyo will be on account of his absence from the campaign trail, as he is now in Italy for the G8. (Although, come to think of it, his absence may give a bump to LDP candidates...)

We are, blow by blow, witnessing the end of LDP rule. The truce that was supposedly declared between the reformists and the traditionalists was remarkably short-lived: Nakagawa Hidenao was on TV Sunday calling once again for Asō's resignation. Resigning, Nakagawa maintains, is the honorable thing to do. Honor? What honor is there for the LDP in pushing Asō out of the way and elevating a new leader just in time to contest an election?

I think that Nakagawa and the reformists are increasingly beginning to recognize the position they are in: even with a change of leader their position within the LDP is likely to be greatly diminished. There are simply too many Koizumi children holding vulnerable seats (and often facing the DPJ candidates they bested in 2005, meaning that they are facing experienced challengers.) If they manage to influence the drafting to the manifesto, however, and the LDP manages to somehow scratch out a victory, the manifesto becomes a means to hold the LDP leadership accountable, even if the leadership does not come from the ranks of the reformists.

But more than that, the reformists are facing a situation in which they will lack bargaining power with the DPJ should they decide to leave the LDP after the election. If the DPJ wins a majority, it will have little need for LDP defectors. It presumably won't spurn them if they want to join the DPJ, but the defectors won't receive any special treatment from the DPJ. (I can imagine, though, that some DPJ members would be particularly reluctant to let a raft of LDP defectors join the party, thereby strengthening the Maehara group.)

Accordingly, it makes good political sense for the reformists to do what they can to improve the LDP's chances in the general election. Even if the LDP doesn't win, a better-than-expected LDP performance that deprives the DPJ of a majority gives the reformists bargaining power in case they decide to break loose from the LDP. I don't doubt that the reformists think they are sincere about changing the LDP, but how long will they continue to fight a losing struggle within the party? To what extent will they join with LDP members like Yosano Kaoru, who criticized the DPJ's manifesto as "virtually criminal" in its neglect of reality? If the reformists go to far in their criticism of the DPJ — and Nakagawa has certainly strayed in this direction already — they will make it that much harder to join the DPJ should they find the LDP inhospitable after an election.

But I think it is time for the reformists to drop the pretense that the way to change Japan is to change the LDP. Maybe Koizumi had it backwards: change Japan, change the LDP. In other words, it may take another party — for now the DPJ — to implement the political, economic, and administrative reforms that the LDP failed to enact, and in doing so the LDP will change as well in response to the new political environment.

Tokyo election open thread

I was walking in Takadanobaba this afternoon and noticed a keijiban for the Tokyo election. As I looked over the candidates, I was having trouble finding the poster for the LDP candidate, which struck me as odd. After looking carefully at the posters, I finally found him.

Why was it so hard to locate the LDP candidate?


Because the name "LDP" was written in the smallest possible font while still being visible. The tiny light blue writing in the lower right hand corner, beneath the "ichi" in the candidate's name, is the sole indicator of the candidate's party affiliation.

The logo on the DPJ candidate's poster was small, but was still recognizable as the DPJ's logo. Here are the two posters — conveniently next to one another — for comparison.



With that story for an introduction, I am making this an open thread for things seen and heard during the campaign for the Tokyo assembly. Post your stories in the comments. And if you have good pictures, send them along and I'll post them on the blog.

The Tokyo election truce

The campaign for the 12 July Tokyo assembly election officially began Friday, marking the beginning of what could be the Asō government's last stand.

The prime minister and his supporters are, of course, doing everything they can to dismiss the notion that Asō Tarō's fate somehow rests upon the party's performance in the Tokyo election, even while they lower the threshold for victory in the election to a simple majority for the LDP and Komeitō combined. Asō's refrain remains that the local is local, and the national is national, and never the twain shall meet — but given Asō's fragile position, the slightest blow can be what makes the difference in whether he survives to the LDP in a general election. The Tokyo party continues to insist that it is in control of the situation, that the national party's concerns are overblown. The LDP's majority in Tokyo, the local party maintains, rests on more than the position of the national leadership.

The DPJ has explicitly argued the opposite, making its slogan in the campaign "Change Tokyo, Change Japan."

Given the role played by the national party leaders and the national media in this campaign, it will clearly have ramifications beyond who controls the Tokyo assembly. This election is a crucial test of whether the Asō LDP has the slightest possibility of retaining the urban seats the LDP won in significant numbers in 2005, seats occupied largely by the reformist LDP members openly challenging the Asō government. If the LDP can win in Tokyo under Asō, it will go a long way to lifting the pressure on his leadership.

To that end, his reformist opponents have declared a truce in the war to overthrow the prime minister before he can call a general election. Representative Yamamoto Taku, collecting signatures within the LDP for a petition demanding that the party move its presidential election to before the general election, has announced that he will exercise self-restraint in the week leading up to the Tokyo election. Sankei reports that there is indeed a truce in the struggle, but suggests that it is nothing more than a truce — there is no hint that a lasting peace is in the works. The party's elders would of course love nothing more than a peace treaty before a general election, and are now working to delay a dissolution not only until after the Tokyo election and Asō's trip to Italy, but until after the Emperor and Empress return from a two-week trip to Hawaii and Canada that ends on 17 July. By then the party expects that remaining legislation will have passed the Diet. What is not clear to me, however, is why senior LDP leaders think that delaying the dissolution and the general election will be a cause for peace within the party. Presumably the more time the reformists have before an election, the more time they have to demand Asō's resignation and to make demands about the contents of the party's manifesto. In the best LDP fashion, the party has decided to postpone official discussion of the manifesto, pushing back the creation of a manifesto project team. The longer the delay, the more time the reformists will have to question the leadership. Nakagawa Hidenao has suggested the possibility of drafting a separate document, even as he said that he wouldn't leave the LDP (yet) — reinforcing the idea that the LDP is divided in all but name. Drafting an independent manifesto would of course help the reformists distance themselves from the prime minister, but even and especially if it helped more Koizumi children get reelected, it would only be setting the stage for a continuation of the intra-party fight after the general election.

The choice for Asō, in other words, is bleak. Win on the 12th and the pressure to delay the general election and accelerate the party election may recede, but the fight over the manifesto will intensify. Lose on the 12th and the pressure on Asō to resign or, failing that, on the party leadership to accelerate the LDP presidential election will grow inexorably. And to take Asō's own words, the local is the local. An LDP victory on 12 July will say little about the party's prospects in a general election.

There may be a truce in the LDP, but the worst fighting is yet to come.

Can the DPJ bring democracy to Japan?

My latest contribution to the Far Eastern Economic Review, co-authored with Colum Murphy, considers the possibilities of a DPJ government.

It is available online here, and will be the cover article in FEER's July/August issue.

Is it possible improve Japanese political financing?

Less than two months after succeeding the tainted Ozawa Ichirō as DPJ president, Hatoyama Yukio is mired in a scandal of his own, related to the use of fake contributions to cover for illegal transfers from Hatoyama's personal funds to his political support group.

Jun Okumura describes the scandal in painstaking detail here.

Asō Tarō naturally singled out Hatoyama for criticism, calling on the DPJ leader to provide a clearer explanation for what happened. This scandal, however, will not be the gift to the LDP that the Ozawa scandal was, which, after all, undermined the DPJ's promise that regime change would signify a dramatic change from LDP rule — covering up questionable contributions from a construction company being all too typical of business as usual under the LDP. Instead, the Hatoyama scandal looks like business of usual for all politicians under the current political financing system, the creative accounting that all political support groups appear to be both within the law and in the black. (With the added twist of the role played by Hatoyama's personal fortune in covering up for shortfalls.)

In hindsight, we should not be surprised that, given Hatoyama's wealth, the line between his personal funds and his political organization was blurred. But it's hard to get too worked up over a political funds scandal, not when the political funds control law appears to be honored more in the breach than in the observance.

I'd like to think that upon taking office the DPJ could fix the political financing system — which because it gives individual politicians a considerable degree of independence from their parties has certainly undermined the cohesiveness of the LDP — but it may be beyond reform. Short of banning kōenkai outright, which would be impossible and, beyond that, presumably unconstitutional, any reform at this point would be mere tinkering to refine the ability of authorities to uncover egregious abuses of the system.

What the government should do, however, is bring Japanese political activities into the twenty-first century. Make it easier for individuals to contribute to politicians, enable politicians to make more use of the Internet, a scalable method of reaching supporters and providing information compared with the labor-intensive and costly method of disseminating an endless stream of paper. It should also — as Ozawa has argued — lift the restriction on door-to-door campaigning, which is cheaper than distributing material.

If the DPJ and other parties are serious about political reform, they ought to lower the barriers to entry in Japanese politics, making it easier for outsiders, candidates without the "three ban", to enter politics. Doing so won't spell the end of corruption, but it would make it possible for candidates to be successful even without the cozy relationships with donors that lead to corruption.

Amano's election deepens Japan's nuclear paradox

After a long stalemate to choose a successor for outgoing director-general Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA's board of governors elected Japanese diplomat Amano Yukiya to the position by a single vote over the requisite two-thirds majority.

The prolonged dispute was the result of a split between developed and developing countries, the latter of which preferred South African candidate Abdul Samad Minty, who would have prioritized reducing the arsenals of the extant nuclear powers over preventing nuclear proliferation. Amano, meanwhile, is seen as the candidate of the developed world.

This image of Amano precisely captures the ambiguity in Japan's nuclear posture, namely the paradox whereby Japan often speaks as a moral arbiter on nuclear affairs due to its status as the sole victim of the atomic bomb while being defended by the one of the world's nuclear powers (and the sole country to use the atomic bomb in wartime). It is particularly ironic that Amano's election immediately followed revelations by former administrative vice minister for foreign affairs Murata Ryohei about the existence of a "secret" pact between the US and Japan permitting the introduction of US nuclear weapons into Japan without prior consultation.

Murata spoke of a "single sheet of paper," passed from administrative vice minister to administrative vice minister, which permitted the US to introduce nuclear weapons to Japan without prior consultation with the Japanese government, as was supposed to happen under the terms of a 1960 agreement concluded at the same time as the US-Japan mutual security treaty. Although it was already an open secret that the US introduced nuclear weapons into Japan abroad its warships despite the official bilateral agreement and later three non-nuclear principles (promulgated after the agreement), Murata's comments mark the first such admission by an administrative vice-minister. (Murata's remarks were preceded by the remarks of other former administrative vice-ministers last month, who spoke anonymously to Kyodo. Murata is the first on the record.)

Nevertheless, as a testament to how important the Japanese government finds it to downplay Japan's nuclear paradox before the public, Chief Cabinet Secretary Kawamura Takeo denied the existence of the secret agreement. Kawamura's denial of reality prompted criticism from Kono Tarō, chairman of the lower house foreign affairs committee, who said that the government's position contradicted the evidence (and common sense) and suggested that his committee would look into investigating the matter.

Clearing the air on the precise nature of the US-Japan nuclear relationship in the past would be an important first step in debating that relationship going forward. Should Japan formalize the secret agreement and revise the three non-nuclear principles to 2.5 principles, as some have suggested? Would doing so reinforce the nuclear umbrella, or would Japanese elites still voice doubts about the soundness of the US commitment to defend Japan?

Of course, at the same time Amano's selection as IAEA director-general may rule out major changes in Japan's nuclear posture for the duration of his term. It seems to me that it would be difficult for Japan to have the nuclear weapons debate desired by conservatives with a Japanese official the face of the global non-proliferation regime. Pressures to have that debate will no dout continue as North Korea and China continue to bolster their arsenals, meaning that rather than resolving Japan's schizophrenic relationship with the atomic bomb, Amano's elevation will only intensify the gap between Japan's aspirations to serve as the world's conscience on nuclear weapons and the reality of the role of nuclear deterrence in the defense of Japan.

Japan politics blogger party, the sequel

Following our successful nomikai in January of this year, some of us politics bloggers have decided to hold another party to give our readers an opportunity to ply us with drinks to put faces to blogs.

Once again we will be gathering at The Pink Cow in Shibuya, at 7pm on Saturday July 25th.

If you are interested in attending, please send an email — the sooner the better — to me (observingjapan@gmail.com) and Ken Worsley (japaneconomynews@gmail.com) so that we can get a rough sense of how many people to expect.

Along the same lines, if there is interest, I am considering doing a separate bar meet one night before the 25th. Anyone up for talking politics one night? Send me an email and I'll set something up.

Reaping the whirlwind

How can the LDP govern Japan when it can barely govern itself?

The war of attrition that has been waged between the Koizumian remnant in the LDP and the rest of the party since Koizumi stepped down as prime minister in 2006 has entered a particularly bloody phase as the Koizumians have decided to launch a final offensive in the hope of toppling Asō Tarō before he can call a general election.

Yamamoto Taku, the lower house member collecting signatures to "recall" Asō by forcing an early party election, has stepped up his effort in the hope of collecting the requisite 216 signatures (half the total number of LDP members of both houses and the chairs of the prefectural party chapters) by 13 July, the date of the general meeting of LDP members from both houses. Beyond Yamamoto's signature drive, on Tuesday afternoon a new study group — the Manifesto Association — held its first meeting. The association is a collection of nine different Diet members' leagues of the reformist stripe and plans to draft proposals for inclusion in the party's election manifesto. The association wants the party's manifesto drafted before the Diet is dissolved and an election called. Not surprisingly, many in the party suspect that this group has a not-so-ulterior motive of toppling Asō.

There is a certain symmetry to this explosion of open opposition to the Asō government and, by extension, the LDP establishment, which continues to back the prime minister. Four years ago it was the reformists who were in control of the party and the agenda. During the summer of postal reform, it was the reformists who were advancing, with the LDP establishment doing everything in its power to slow Koizumi's agenda — with the small band of postal rebels eventually emerging to challenge Koizumi openly. Indeed, it was around this time four years ago that the LDP establishment delivered a blow to Koizumi when the LDP's general council broke with precedent to hold a majority vote on proposed revisions to the government's postal privatization bills.

Since then of course the reformists have been in steady retreat against a resurgent party establishment, bringing us to this latest round of infighting, a last-ditch attempt by the reformists to steer the LDP in a new direction.

Whether by design or not, Koizumi appears to have destroyed the LDP. The reformist remnant that was supposed to be the vanguard of a new LDP appears to be better at destruction than creation, skilled at undermining governments deemed insufficiently committed to their reform plans but incapable of putting forward their own candidate for the party leadership or convincing other members of the party to embrace the reformist agenda as being beneficial for the party as a whole.

I am not questioning their policy ideas, which, after all are not altogether different from ideas being floated by the DPJ. The difference, however, is that the DPJ lacks the pathologies of LDP rule. The LDP has become ungovernable. No authority can bring recalcitrant members to heel. No leader can impose a unifying vision on a party home to fundamentally incompatible visions for what the LDP should be.

In some sense the decline of the factions is responsible for the anarchy within the LDP, in that conflict within the LDP used to be conducted among organized groups that obeyed certain basic rules and were fighting less over policy visions than they were fighting for control over party resources. Which is not to say that factional conflict was tame (cf. the Kaku-Fuku sensō), but that it lacked the ideological fervor that the Koizumians have brought to the LDP. Like the international system, a once orderly balance of power has given way to a unipolar factional system (with the Machimura faction playing the role of the US) sitting atop an unruly party in which factions exist alongside a myriad of study groups, non-partisan groups, policy zoku, and other smaller, less organized groups (much as nation-states and U.S. unipolarity exist alongside international organizations, terrorist groups and gangs, multinational corporations and the like).

Anarchy within the LDP has had severe consequences for Japan, having paralyzed the Japanese government just when Japan needed a government capable of assessing problems clearly and responding decisively.

And so we have the Asō government, which is fighting to the death for the privilege to lead the LDP to defeat. To save himself, Asō will say or do anything. The reformists, supposedly eager to save the LDP, will do anything to push their agenda and elevate another party leader, despite the obvious contempt such an act would show for the Japanese public. Asō still enjoys the upper hand in this fight, in that the reformists, while a vocal minority, are still a minority. They are making life difficult for the prime minister (while making life easier for the DPJ, which will face an LDP whose members have spent months fighting amongst themselves), but they cannot dictate terms to the LDP. Shiozaki Yasuhisa and company are deluding themselves if they think that the rest of the LDP will allow the reformists to dictate the party's manifesto, making this round of fighting especially futile. If the LDP were capable of drafting a manifesto that the whole party could accept — no matter how watered down its proposals — and agreeing to stand behind Asō, the party would at least make the DPJ fight for every seat and perhaps deprive it of a majority. As matters stand now, the DPJ stands a good chance of taking a simple majority on its own.

The question remains what will happen following an LDP electoral defeat. Will the reformists use the occasion to break from the LDP and form their own party? Will they continue the internecine fight for control of the LDP? With each act of rebellion against the Asō government, the reformists make it less likely that they will be a welcome part of a post-defeat LDP.

None of this is to say that Asō is an ideal leader or that there is a right side and a wrong side in the battle between the reformists and the party establishment. Rather, the problem is the LDP itself, that LDP government has meant brutal and ceaseless infighting within the ruling party, which has made for irregular and more often than not deeply ineffective government. That is reason enough for the LDP to be removed from power.