January 13, 2006; Volume 02, Number 02
of the
Japan Considered Podcast
[Listen to the audio file by clicking here]
Clink Links Below for Today's Topics
| Introduction |
| Relations with China |
| LDP Presidential Race: 2001 Background |
| Concluding Comments |
Good Morning from the overcast, but unseasonably warm, campus of the University of South Carolina. Today is Friday, January 13 th, and you are listening to Volume 2, Number 2 of the Japan Considered Podcast.
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Spring Semester Classes here at USC began this week. Students are back, and the campus is a cheerier, active place to be. Nothing appears as desolate as a university campus with no students. This semester I’m teaching an upper-level undergraduate class on Japan’s international relations. It has nearly 50 students enrolled. And that’s even after they got to see the syllabus and course requirements yesterday! Really, it looks like a good group again this semester. Last term I had about the same number enrolled for Japan’s domestic politics. I look forward to meeting this new crowd every Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next few months.
What a time to be studying Japan’s foreign relations! I can’t recall a period during the past 40 years in this field that offered more interest – even excitement – than now. As we have discussed on this program nearly every week, Japan is changing -- and changing in ways important to the conduct of foreign relations. That rate of change has seemed more rapid during the past five years than it was in the past. Our challenge, as interested observers and analysts, is to discover which changes are most important, which are only superficial, and which ones are most likely to endure.
Lots going on in Japanese politics and international relations the past few days. First, a few updates for issues we have discussed on this program in weeks past. Then a look at developments since the beginning of the year in the race within the Liberal Democratic Party to replace Junichiro Koizumi as Party President, once his term expires this September.
Efforts continued by Japanese and Chinese representatives to restart discussions of the potentially serious conflict over exploitation of natural resources in the East China Sea. Japanese officials traveled to Beijing for talks on Monday, the 9 th -- “unofficial talks,” to be sure. Most of Japan’s press described the talks as failures, since both the Chinese and the Japanese sides emphasized what an effort they made to scold their opposite numbers for untoward shrine visiting or failure to adequately protect consular officials. But, once the dust cleared, it appeared that the two sides agreed to resume official vice-ministerial-level talks within a month, talks that have been stalled since last October. Given the gravity of the issues involved, that accomplishment for me represents important progress, more than justifying the cost of the Beijing meetings.
Prime Minister Koizumi, however, remains firmly committed to his Yasukuni Shrine visits, and continues to express bewilderment over Beijing’s efforts, as he describes them, to politicize “a matter of the heart.” Reaction within Japan to his position remains constant. Those opposed, continue to oppose. Those who support his position, have continued their support. This suggests Koizumi has little motivation to announce a change of heart. True, Jiji news service reported today a nationwide January poll showing a 1.5% drop in public support for the Koizumi Cabinet since December. But there was no indication this decline was due to Koizumi’s continued Yasukuni visits.
The other issue currently entangling Japan’s relations with China is more interesting for those of us trying to understand the operation of Japan’s government, including the evolving relationship between elected politicians and appointed bureaucrats.
That is, ongoing response to public revelation late last year that an official in Japan’s Consulate in Shanghai, China, had committed suicide back in April of 2004. The unfortunate official left notes explaining he did so in response to efforts by a Chinese government official to force him to reveal secret information about the internal operation of the Consulate and Japan’s conduct of relations with China.
There appeared to be nothing surprising in Japan’s official demands for explanation from Beijing, or in China’s response to the revelations. Japan demanded an explanation of why China had failed to ensure the security of a Japanese diplomat, and suggested that he had been the victim of a blackmail attempt by China’s intelligence service. China denied that the official’s suicide was prompted by untoward pressure from a Chinese intelligence officer. All of this at high-decibel levels of inflammatory language.
According to subsequent reports in the Japanese press, nearly all based on anonymous sources, the information leaked to the weekly news magazine in the first place had to come from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs had not informed the Prime Minister’s Office, or the Prime Minister, about the incident when it occurred, or during the subsequent 16 months, so they couldn’t have known , and revealed the information themselves. That was confirmed by the official Foreign Ministry spokesman on January 11 th. He justified keeping knowledge of the Shanghai Consulate Incident within the Ministry on the grounds that the Foreign Ministry is the government body charged with coordination of Japan’s foreign policy.
Office of the Prime Minister, or Kantei, public reaction to this explanation revealed that the current Prime Minister’s Office, at least, doesn’t see it that way. Chief Cabinet Secretary, Shinzo Abe, flatly stated on the 11 th that the question of whether such incidents should be reported must be re-examined. Prime Minister Koizumi was reported to be “furious” when told that the information had been withheld from him and his immediate advisers.
Clearly, Tokyo’s handling of this Shanghai Consulate Incident demonstrates that Japan’s central political executive, or Kantei, is determined to exercise greater responsibility, or even tighter control, over the activities of Japan’s bureaucratic ministries and agencies. It also demonstrates that traditional bureaucratic distrust of Japan’s elected politicians lingers on in Kasumigaseki. Japan’s celebrated career bureaucrats still consider themselves better qualified to handle Japan’s national and international affairs than their elected superiors. And, they will assume considerable risk to maintain the independence of their ministries.
We are bound to see more of this sort of conflict between the central political executive and Japan’s powerful ministries and agencies in the future. Or at least for as long as Junichiro Koizumi and those who share his views of responsible parliamentary government maintain control of the premiership. Indeed, efforts reported late last year to bring management of Japan’s foreign aid – policy formulation and implementation – under tighter Kantei control through the work of the Harada Commission offer additional evidence of this important trend.
To date there have been no reports of public opposition to the centralizing efforts of the Kantei, or demands that the Koizumi Cabinet respect the integrity and independence of the Ministries, beyond those coming from the Ministries themselves. This could quickly change were officials of the Prime Minister’s Office discovered to be manipulating privileged information for personal, or untoward political, gain. But that’s yet to be reported. Differences in policy objectives or perspectives don’t count.
Indeed, Japan’s attentive public now seems ready to accept the presence of a prime minister willing to define policy positions and actually lead the nation in that direction, rather than a more traditional model of extending one’s time in office by balancing the contending policy positions of others. If this is correct, it represents a significant change in the way Japan’s government works, change that will be reflected in the conduct of foreign relations as well as management of politics at home.
LDP Presidential Race: 2001 Background
Now, let’s take a look inside the Liberal Democratic Party, the LDP. There the competition to succeed Junichiro Koizumi as Party President, and therefore, Japan’s Prime Minister, is well under way. Koizumi’s second two-year term as Party President ends in September of this year. Party rules limit LDP presidents to two successive terms of two years. In November 1986, that succession rule was relaxed to give Prime Minister Nakasone an additional year in office due to his high and rising public popularity and the messiness of the competition to succeed him. While it’s theoretically possible that the same courtesy could be extended to Koizumi, he has said unequivocally that he is through in September, that he will not serve another year. Therefore, it appears that in nine months the LDP will hold its first election to pick a non-incumbent Party President since Koizumi’s selection in April of 2001.
Given the importance of the issue, it’s no wonder that speculation about this change in Japan’s political leadership has filled the political pages of Japan’s newspapers and magazines for some time. A few brave souls have made unequivocal predictions of the outcome. But more experienced observers, even when pressed, admit that too many things could happen between now and September to make a responsible prediction at this time. (Professor Nat Thayer noted in a recent Japan Considered interview that his friend, Yasuhiro Nakasone, was fond of saying that in politics “Issun saki wa nami,” or “All is darkness one inch in front of your nose.”)
So, recognizing my inability to out-guess Japan’s own political experts, I will resist the temptation to make an unequivocal prediction here of the outcome of the LDP presidential race – which at any rate would be worth just about as much as you are paying to hear it. Instead I will focus on what we can learn about Japan’s political processes from observing how the race is being conducted.
For as long as I can remember, one always has been safer emphasizing continuity than dramatic or sudden change when interpreting politics in Japan. “Evolution, not revolution,” has, for many decades, been the rule. That’s still a good rule, I think. But in spite of that, I believe that during the past five or ten years Japan has experienced fundamental changes in political leadership, and – perhaps more important for the longer term -- in the Japanese public’s expectations of their political leaders . If so, we analysts ignore these changes at our peril.
We can see evidence of that change clearly in the role played by Japan’s prime minister and cabinet in domestic political affairs and in diplomacy. The central political executive under Prime Minister Koizumi has provided Japan with considerably more active leadership than did all of its predecessors, with the possible exception of Prime Minister Nakasone during the 1980s. On one issue after another, from budgets to relations with China, the Kantei has articulated the Koizumi Administration’s intentions, and has insisted that Japan’s ministries and government agencies carry them out. I plan to devote another program to this change in Japanese national political leadership behavior. It’s enough here to note its importance. Japan behaves quite differently as a result. And that more than justifies studying t he process of selection.
How are Japan’s prime ministers selected. Well, Formally, they are selected by majority vote of the Lower and Upper Houses of the Diet, with the Lower House dominating. Only Members of the Diet are eligible to serve.
With the Liberal Democratic Party enjoying a majority in the Lower House, then, the leader of the LDP will be selected as Prime Minister. This naturally raises the stakes of LDP party presidency elections enormously, and the intensity of competition reflects that.
LDP presidential elections are governed by Party rules. Currently, each LDP member of the Lower and Upper House casts one vote. LDP organizations in each Prefecture each cast three votes, and are responsible for establishing the rules by which they determine the votes they cast. So, prefectural chapters get 141 votes, while LDP Diet members will cast just over 400 votes. But even though the prefectural chapter votes under current rules amount to only a quarter of the total, their potential influential is significant beyond that number.
We can understand why by recalling the election that gave Koizumi the LDP presidency in April of 2001. In early 2001, Yoshiro Mori was serving as prime minister. A plain-spoken, hearty man, inclined to speak his mind, during his brief period in office he lurched from semi-crisis to semi-crisis, crises that usually resulted from some unfortunate off-the-cuff comment to journalists. By mid-February public approval figures for the Mori Cabinet had dropped into the single digits. A combination of scandals over expensive golf club memberships and Mori’s immediate reaction to the collision of an American submarine with a Japanese fisheries training vessel, sealed his fate. By March of 2001 it was clear that Japan was about to have a new prime minister. And on April 6 th, Mori officially announced his intention to resign as soon as a successor could be chosen.
The Party Presidential election date was set for April 24 th, a Tuesday that year. By then each Prefectural Chapter of the LDP would have determined the way its three votes would be cast, through procedures determined at the prefectural level. As it turned out, a combination of public pressure and internal party politicking in each prefecture resulted in decisions of each prefectural headquarters to hold what they described as “primary” elections in which all Party members cast a vote for their favorite candidate. The winner got either all three votes – as happened in most cases – or the three votes were divided proportionally among the top vote-getters. In 2001, this resulted in a Party Presidential Election in which Upper and Lower House LDP Members would cast 346 votes and the LDP Prefectural Headquarters together would cast 141 votes, for a total of 487.
As Prime Minister Mori’s popularity plummeted in early 2001, preliminary jockeying for position began in the succession race within the LDP. Several candidates were prominently mentioned, including Party Elder and consummate political operative, Hiromu Nonaka, and former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, and a couple of stalking horses. Nonaka and Hashimoto both were reasonable candidates under the traditional prime ministerial selection method that emphasized experience, and above all, support of one of the LDP’s larger factions – usually as head of that faction.
After all, Parliamentary Members would cast over 70% of the total votes in the presidential election. Most LDP Members belonged to factions. Factions had controlled Party President selection for decades. That was the primary reason for their existence – at least from the perspective of the Faction Leaders who organized and funded them. And while Prefectural Party Branches would cast about 30% of the votes, LDP Parliamentary Members normally exercised strong influence over their decisions.
In addition to the names of Nonaka, Hashimoto, and a couple others, the name of Junichiro Koizumi began to appear in the media not long after the beginning of the year. Knowledgeable observers immediately recognized the futility of his candidacy. He was a third-generation Lower House Member from quite a safe constituency. At the time he served as titular head of the Mori Faction. But he espoused ideas about Party Reform so radical that it was hard to take him seriously. For one thing, he said the LDP’s faction system had to be destroyed to allow the Party to adapt to Japan’s changing political environment. He insisted on the importance of clearly stated policy intentions. But everyone knew that in a Party as large as the LDP, it was essential to be as vague as possible about policy intentions in order to avoid offending important constituencies!
As the weeks of early 2001 passed, Koizumi continued to preach the need rebuild the LDP, while expressing support for his faction leader, Prime Minister Mori. Some print and electronic journalists featured his ideas, often as counterpoint to stories about the behavior of the “serious” candidates to succeed Mori. By early April it was clear that the combination of Koizumi’s reform proposals and his non-traditional behavior had struck a positive note with Japan’s public, even if the LDP’s leaders resented his criticism.
Prime Minister Mori’s April 6 announcement of his intention to resign released Koizumi of his obligation to support Mori’s premiership, and overnight the field of serious candidates for the LDP Party Presidency had been reduced to Koizumi and former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. Koizumi found it increasingly easy to get press coverage – and increasingly positive coverage, at that. Journalists who opposed the ruling LDP found it convenient to criticize the Party through favorable coverage of Koizumi’s reform proposals. The Japanese public responded positively to his insistence that the LDP should reject the sort of politics that the Factions represented, and appeal for votes on the basis of policy proposals rather than on personalistic relationships that were expensive to maintain.
But figures don’t lie, as the saying goes. Hashimoto, with strong factional support, superior funding, and past service as prime minister, was the obvious front-runner in the race. Nearly all political pundits, at home and abroad, expected Hashimoto to sail to a smooth victory in the April 24th election. Koizumi was the ideal opponent, since he didn’t have a chance of winning but gave the proceedings the appearance of a genuine contest. I certainly shared that perspective at the time, and unfortunately said so.
Those of us who understood how politics really worked in Japan, and who therefore recognized Hashimoto as the obvious successor to Mori, failed to take into consideration the changing expectations of the Japanese electorate, and the potential of the LDP prefectural headquarters’ “primary” elections to affect the outcome of the April 24th ballot.
Koizumi and his immediate supporters, of course, recognized that public approval was the only real asset he had. And they prepared to make the most of it. Public popularity had never been the LDP’s strong suit. Nor had they ever had to worry much about it, since the other parties were even less attractive as alternatives to LDP rule. But by early 2001, public approval figures for the LDP as a whole were dropping to levels that began to concern even the most hardboiled of Party Veterans. It was one thing to see 9% approval ratings for the Mori Cabinet. But it was quite another to see public approval for the LDP itself fall off a cliff. It was, after all, the Party name one painted on the side of one’s campaign trucks.
Soon before the April 24 th contest , the LDP lost two gubernatorial elections they had intended to win. One in Chiba; the other in Akita. Emboldened by the shock of those losses, Prefectural Party Branches, perhaps with the encouragement of younger, more vulnerable LDP MPs, demanded a more open Party presidential selection process than that which had given the top job to Yoshiro Mori. They further demanded three votes each in the election, rather than two. The Prefectural Branches decided to further strengthen their influence by selecting their candidates by what came to be called “primary” elections, to be held on the weekend before the LDP Presidential election vote.
With the encouragement of LDP Maverick, Makiko Tanaka, daughter of the legendary LDP leader, Kakuei Tanaka, Koizumi resigned his membership in the Mori Faction, vowing never to return. Under Makiko Tanaka’s tutelage, he then began a whirlwind national campaign tour reminiscent of American presidential politics at its most frenetic. Tanaka at the time was the most popular elected political figure in Japan. They made quite a pair. The press loved it. As, apparently did the attentive public.
Eight of the prefectural branch “primaries” were held on the Saturday before the main vote. Koizumi’s strategy of appeal to the public through the communications media and public appearances paid off. He won all eight races, astounding Hashimoto and the other candidates. They had expected their organizational supporters to massage the prefectural vote in their favor, through means fair and foul. After all, they had paid most of the Party Membership Fees themselves! This Saturday performance undoubtedly helped the following day when the remaining prefectural races were held. Koizumi emerged as the overwhelming victor, winning all but two of the prefectural contests, and winning by surprisingly large margins as well. The LDP’s well-oiled vote mobilization machine clearly required drastic maintenance.
The LDP’s faction leaders recognized soon thereafter they risked open revolt if they tried to force their members to vote for a hand-picked candidate other than Koizumi. Better to release their members to “vote their conscience” and to maintain their Faction’s structure, than to demand the allegiance of Faction members who were likely to bolt anyway, out of fear their constituents would brand them hacks and turn them out of office in the next election. Koizumi, as we know, was elected in a landslide. The LDP survived. Indeed, thrived. LDP factions survived, and Japan’s domestic politics returned to something approaching normal.
Conditions today are quite different than they were in 2001. Koizumi is likely to leave office on rising popularity, rather than with single-digit public approval ratings. We’ve had four years of Koizumi-style central political leadership. We will not see a repeat of that surprising performance this September. But at least a few of the LDP’s leaders, in addition to the Prime Minister himself, seem to remember the lessons of 2001. LDP Secretary General, Tsutomu Takebe, for example, has been calling for greater public participation in the September Party Presidential Election, perhaps even including non-LDP members. Quite a radical proposal. Seems at least he has learned his lesson.
But we’re out of time. So that that will have to wait until next week. Thanks for tuning in again. As always, drop me an e-mail at japanconsidered@gmail.com with your comments and suggestions. I read them all. And click over to the Japan Considered Project website at www.JapanConsidered.org for more information on Japanese domestic politics and international relations.
Let’s close this program with some more progressive bluegrass, this time, Billy Parks’ “That Memphis Sound” with Washington, D.C.’s Dirty River Band. A great group that will have out their first CD early this year.
