Politics in Japan

The Kamikaze election

As the economy sinks, the prime minister appears ready to go down with it

Nov 17th 2012 | TOKYO | from the print edition

THE prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, has suddenly settled a question that has hung over Japanese politics since the summer. He has promised to dissolve the lower house of the Diet, or parliament, on November 16th—so as to hold a general election exactly a month later.

The move was greeted with glee by Shinzo Abe, who hopes to lead the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) back to the position of power it occupied for nearly all of the 55 years to 2009. It raises another big question for Mr Noda, though. Why hold an election, so soon, that polls suggest he is bound to lose?

The answer reveals a lot about the prime minister, a man who seems prepared to take his party down in flames in order to do what he thinks is the right thing. Many within the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) had urged him to cling to power for as long as possible, hoping that Mr Abe, who fluffed the job of prime minister from 2006-07, would stumble again in opposition.

Yet Mr Noda (pictured above, right) overrode their objections and set only two conditions for dissolving parliament. First, he wants the LDP-led opposition to join the DPJ in voting in the Diet to issue bonds that would cover the budget deficit—and so avoid Japan’s version of the “fiscal cliff”. The opposition has already agreed to that.

Secondly, he wants a commitment in the next parliament to reduce the number of MPs. Japan needs to redraw the electoral map after the election, in order to avoid a constitutional crisis related to voting disparities between heavily populated and depopulated areas. For Mr Abe (pictured, left), that appears a small price to pay for something the LDP craves: a return to power.

Standing opposite Mr Abe in a face-to-face debate in the Diet, Mr Noda sought to justify his timing by declaring that he was honest. He had made a promise in August to the LDP that he would dissolve parliament “soon”, and he intended to stick to it. Those who know him say that he is also driven by a desire to make tough decisions about Japan’s future, however unpopular they appear to members of his party.

Earlier this year he persuaded the DPJ and the LDP to join forces to raise the consumption tax (a tax on sales), starting in 2014, even though this went against his party’s 2009 election manifesto. The deficit-financing bill will apply until 2015, such that future governments will not be hijacked by the issue as the DPJ has been.

Some decisions confound those in his own party who have seen his government’s support plunge to 18%, according to the latest poll. They also fear holding an election during what may be the start of Japan’s third economic recession in four years. On November 12th it was reported that GDP in the third quarter fell by 0.9% compared with the previous three months. Fourth-quarter data augur ill, too.

If that were not bad enough, many colleagues also fear that Mr Noda will campaign to take Japan into negotiations on a free-trade deal with America and ten other countries, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Though on November 13th a poll in the Asahi Shimbun, a newspaper, said 48% of those surveyed approved of the TPP, it is a highly controversial issue whose opponents shout much louder than its supporters. Mr Noda’s hopes of making the TPP an election issue were bolstered on November 15th, when Mr Abe, whose party panders to protected rice farmers, appeared to soften his opposition. He said he may support TPP if Japan can exclude some items from the negotiations.

Mr Noda may not be all lofty ideals. There may be a smidgen of political calculus there. A swift election would make it hard for Japan’s array of smaller “third” parties to band together and pose a serious challenge. And it would give Mr Abe a chance to mess things up in government before an upper-house election due by the end of July. Some speculate that Mr Noda may have a plan up his sleeve later to forge an alliance of pro-TPP types from both main parties.

In the meantime, though, Mr Noda appears to be on the verge of handing power on a plate back to an LDP that has barely reformed itself since it was driven out in disgrace three years ago. That, for all his good intentions, would be a legacy of failure.

from the print edition | Asia

The Kamikaze election

Nov 21st 2012, 09:10

It has been 3.5 years since Yukio Hatoyama led DPJ to win the election while ending the LDP’s long-term monopoly.

In 2009, a very richer Taro Aso lost the bet on the by-election. At the present, with few political grade, Yoshihiko Noda faced the similar kind of difficulties. At the beginning of DPJ’s governing, many Japanese should have expected the termination of game that “oligarchy-like” congressmen take “shogun’s toy” in turns all days. However, the scandal and the uncertainty of welfare policy helped increase the disapproval rate of governing DPJ. Half a year ago, the bill of raising consumption tax passed in parliament, making sure that DPJ has no road to return.

Soon, the original two-party system shook. Ichiro Ozawa, Taro Hashimoto and Ishihara Shintaro built castle who respectively formed Your Party, Japan Restoration Party and the Sunrise Party, in the process of recombination and for a third-force alliance. In the following 3-4 weeks, a certain scale of battle between daimin (local faction) is playing from Kanton to Kansei, or from Hokkaido to Okinawa.

On Monday, according to NHK World, cabinet support rate hit new low at 22% and a disapproval rate reached a new high 61%. This terrible number showed the formidable DPJ that is hard to continue its regime. On the next government, 7 percent favored a Democratic Party-led government; 22 percent said they want a government led by the Liberal Democrats; 30 percent chose a grand coalition of the 2 parties while 26 percent wanted other parties to take power.

From the above number of public poll, Shinzo Abe may return to the seat of prime minister. In terms of interior politics, as Asahi Suimbun reported, he called for easy monetary policy and aggressive moves against deflation have driven up stock prices and hammered down the yen’s value. By contrast, Abe’s right-winged style is unwelcomed in Asian nation. Yesterday, Abe announced the plan of “possible recovery” of long-range missile with nuclear power and the thought of atomic bomb. Besides his grandfather’s (Kishi Nobushuki) negative sound of world war two, Abe faced the diplomatic difficulties although he can be smoothly elected.

Japan’s government derives from the system of cabinet; therefore, the aspect of party are more important than that of personal style while running election. Therefore, the unity of interior party are key point of winning election. Yesterday, Yukio Hatoyama decided not to run the election. This is a sorrow if looking back on a victory photo in 2009’s August, in contrast of Taro Aso in the shadows. There is few prime minister in Japan’s history owning conspicuous political grade. The economic growth with right-winged ideology is deduced from LDP’s political guideline as DPJ is inclined to pay attention to social welfare. But Noda did against the previous commitment in 2009’s alteration of party in congress. The bad credit and stagnant political practise have Japanese ordinary vote back to LDP. During Noda’s 1.5-year tenure, he seems to know the only that walk away but lose the truth of democratic politics.

Now, Noda is walking on a way of road hog. More unfortunately, he must be working hard in Tokyo’s Chibaken, as he did during the past several years, but he must schedule Tokyo’s Disney Resort more for the full-dimensional electorate. Instead of a strong leader, Japan nowadays needs a long-life government which steers in the Pacific Ocean peacefully with America and China.

Everyone owns the right of choosing the better atmosphere politically; moreover, everything meets their time while fading away. I’m so impressed of Koizumi Junichiro’s splendid dynasty - although Yasohiro’s offensive language - about the continuous economic growth and the entertainment-stylish political means. Few prime minister like him watched both interior and foreign affair on balance. For China’s development, Yukio Hatoyama and Naoto Kan were the better leader, who can ease tension, than most of previous prime minister. Both of DPJ’s prime minister haven’t special interest in that temple, practicing the politics of Tokugawa’s Edo-era style .

As a whole, Japanese wanted to recover “the stability” 10 years ago compromising between the ideal and the reality. The decline of Japan’s economy is going on, keeping away from the “Yamato Nadeshiko” (The gold fan in Nippon) played mainly by Matsushima Nanako whose role was finally married to a fisherman, rather than any fish in the gold house or luxrious limousine, from the chase for fantastic livings to the state of common place. With Misia’s “Everything” - even Julee Karan’s newly-released Jazz version, remember the good time again and get the “greater feeling of missing you” - even with a little pain in the chest. Yeah, white lies are never euphoria lasting forever while standing by anyone who you love is the good.

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筆者在回覆原篇的兩天後，編輯在紙本版有做更深的分析，側重小黨或是以大阪維新黨為首的第三勢力，在當時的執政黨，野田佳彥為首的日本民主黨，和安倍晉三的日本自由民主黨之夾殺的影響力。

Japan’s elections

Pole dancers

Small parties with vague manifestos hope to entice fed-up Japanese voters

Nov 24th 2012 | TOKYO | from the print edition

THE old joke about Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is that it was neither liberal, democratic, nor even a proper party. Cobbled together from a ragbag of anti-socialist factions in the 1950s, the LDP nevertheless held together for over half a century before coming unstitched in 2009. Now, history seems to be repeating itself, as 14 different political parties have mobilised since Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, called a general election for December 16th.

As Mr Noda’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) weakens, most of the newer parties are on the right, united in their desire to revitalise Japan, a strategy reflected in some of their names: Sunrise, Restoration, Renaissance. The question for Japan’s voters is whether anything else unites them?

Just three weeks before the lower-house election, the party leaders are struggling to form what Japan’s media call a “third-pole” alternative to the DPJ and the LDP. With many voters wanting to punish the DPJ but not wanting to return to the LDP, opinion polls suggest the two main parties may win fewer than half the votes between them. So the rest have plenty of scope to become influential if they can ally with each other, or with one of the mainstream parties.

That has created a frenetic speed-dating game in which they try to hook up with the most dazzling partner, whatever the potential policy clashes. Just days after Shintaro Ishihara, an anti-China warhorse, resigned as Tokyo’s governor and formed the right-wing Sunrise Party, he joined with the Japan Restoration Party (JRP) of Toru Hashimoto, the mayor of Osaka, and became the party’s president. It didn’t appear to matter that the two men had to fudge some policies to agree to the match. Mr Hashimoto dropped the JRP’s insistence that Japan phase out nuclear power by the 2030s, and Mr Ishihara has appeared to soften his opposition to joining a free-trade deal championed by America, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Smoking something

The “HashIsh” merger surprised two other parties that had been pursuing possible alliances: Your Party, which is pro-TPP and anti-nuclear; and Taxcut Japan, which had been talking to Mr Ishihara.

The intensity of the jockeying is partly because there is so much to play for. Opinion polls indicate the LDP has a support rate of about 25%, as much as double that of the DPJ, though the popularity of LDP leader Shinzo Abe has fallen recently, whereas that of the DPJ’s Mr Noda has risen since he dissolved parliament. With so many voters undecided, Michael Cucek, author of Shisaku, a blog, says the third parties are likely to create coalitions of convenience, held together by policy sticky-tape, outsized personalities and stodgy patriotism. It is even possible that pro-business elements of the LDP and DPJ may try to forge some form of ad hoc voting bloc after the election—though hopes of such a “grand coalition” have failed in the past.

As for the outcome of the election, the only safe prediction is that it will shift politics to theright. Mr Ishihara, who triggered a row with China over disputed islands that has done huge damage to business, has no regrets. Since stepping down as Tokyo’s governor last month, he has vowed to change Japan’s “ugly” war-renouncing constitution and take an even tougher stand against China. He has said Japan should consider developing a nuclear weapon and he denies that Japanese soldiers carried out a massacre of civilians in 1937 in the Chinese city of Nanjing. Takashi Kawamura, head of Taxcut Japan and mayor of Nagoya, a city twinned with Nanjing, has also said he doubts the massacre took place.

Perhaps wary of committing itself early, Your Party has pulled out of merger talks with the JRP. After election night, however, policy will again become flexible as the backroom dealing begins. “It will depend on the individual leaders of each party,” says Keiichiro Asao, a Your Party lawmaker. Nothing to worry about there then.

from the print edition | Asia

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