March 31, 2006; Volume 02, Number 13
of the
Japan Considered Podcast
[Listen to the audio file by clicking here]
Clink Links Below for Today's Topics
| Introduction |
| Japanesepod101 Japanese Language Instruction Podcast |
| DPJ's Maehara Resigns Presidency |
| Relations with China |
| The National Legislative Agenda |
| Concluding Comments |
Good Morning from the sunny campus of the University of South Carolina. Today is Friday, March 31st. And you are listening to Volume 02, Number 13, of the Japan Considered Podcast.
I’m Robert Angel, creator and maintainer of the Japan Considered Project, and producer of this Podcast. Thanks to all for tuning in again this week. Subscription numbers for the program continue to rise steadily. Though many more of you are downloading the audio files and the program transcripts from the website. Not a usual pattern for Podcasts in general. But the result, I guess, is the same.
Today we return to our original format. Normally on this program, we present commentary and analysis on three or four issues in the week’s news that seem to have enduring significance. Either for either Japan’s domestic politics, or for Japan’s foreign relations. During the last two programs, we deviated from that standard format with focus on the LDP’s presidential race. That’s a complex topic. Regular media coverage tends toward the superficial – and the predictable. So given its importance, it seemed to me worthy of more attention. We’ll mention the latest developments in the LDP presidential race in passing today. But I promise not to dwell on it for the whole program again.
This week was busy enough throughout. But today’s news brought events we simply can’t avoid. That’s why its foolish to try to prepare things in advance, I guess. Good lesson! So today we’ll consider developments in the DPJ’s bogus e-mail fiasco, relations with China, and some more factional maneuvering within the LDP. Finally we’ll have a look at the progress of the Koizumi Cabinet’s legislative program through the Diet. [Return to Topics]
I recently ran across another podcast that may be of interest to those of you studying Japanese language. It’s called Japanesepod101. All one word. You can find it with a search on Google, or on iTunes. Or, point your browser to www.Japanesepod101.com, and have a look. This podcast presents a daily – yes, daily -- Japanese language lesson in podcast form. A four-member team, each with obvious experience in this sort of thing, presents what they describe as lessons in “situational Japanese.” The programs are professionally presented, and even include lesson notes in PDF format, and a simple kanji exercise. So, go on over and have a look and listen if you’re interested in learning more Japanese language. Japanesepod101. [Return to Topics]
DPJ's Maehara Resigns Presidency
We’ve discussed the significance of the Hiroyasu Nagata bogus e-mail fiasco since its eruption in mid-February. Energizer Bunny-like, this issue simply won’t go away! And just today, Friday, there was another surprising announcement we have to consider. Early this morning, South Carolina time, NHK and the Japanese wire services began running coverage of DPJ President Seiji Maehara’s resignation.
[Maehara sound clip]
Resignation from the Party presidency, that is, not from the Party itself or from the Diet. And he took the whole DPJ executive committee with him. That included Party Secretary General Yukio Hatoyama. Maehara, Hatoyama, and Company said their decision to resign was, in part, necessary because they had failed to persuade Hiroyasu Nagata himself to resign his Diet seat. So they needed to assume responsibility for the Party’s e-mail mess. According to the announcement, the Party will select a replacement president next week.
Soon thereafter news came through that Nagata himself finally had agreed to resign his Diet seat. This was something the DPJ leadership, especially Secretary General Hatoyama, had been urging him to do, unsuccessfully, as late as this Friday morning. Upon hearing of Nagata’s resignation, the Lower House Disciplinary Committee announced that it would not summon former free-lance journalist Nishizawa as a sworn witness next week. That news must have come as a relief to DPJ Headquarters. Maybe they can get this issue behind them, as the expression goes.
Well, is any of this significant for the longer-term? I believe it is. Most important, Maehara’s resignation means the only participants in the next DPJ presidential election will be the Party’s Parliamentary Caucus. That is, members of the Lower and Upper Houses of the Diet. This will avoid direct involvement of the broader Party membership in the prefectural branches, as Maehara and his supporters had wished.
True, the Party may decide to elect an “interim” president who will only fill out the remainder of Maehara’s term. That would allow for election in September of a full-term president by a Party electorate broader than the parliamentary membership. That’s a likely scenario, in fact. But given the current atmosphere, the interim president almost certainly will be selected from among the senior veterans of the LDP’s factional wars. Ichiro Ozawa and Naoto Kan were the names most frequently mentioned today. I see another possibility in the recently appointed Diet Affairs chairman, Kozo Watanabe. A skilled interim Party president will exercise considerable influence over the nature of the next full Party presidential election, if so inclined. And it’s difficult to imagine a reasonable candidate who would not be so inclined.
The resignation of Maehara and his Party Executive Committee also is likely to reverse the DPJ’s official stance on issues such as constitutional revision and foreign policy. Issues such as relations with China and the military alliance with the United States. The LDP will face a parliamentary environment during the remainder of this Diet session quite different than it would have been had Maehara and his DPJ team remained in office until September. That probably explains why LDP Secretary General Tsutomu Takebe and his Komeito counterpart, Tetsuzo Fuyubayashi, decided to cancel their visit to Washington next week. Others can prepare for Koizumi’s visit to Washington, while they are in Tokyo helping to decide how the ruling coalition will cope with the new parliamentary situation.
So, viewed from the perspective of the “Factionist vs Populist” explanation I presented last week for the LDP, the resignations of Maehara and Company represent a substantial win for the DPJ’s “factionists.” We’ll see what happens late next week. [Return to Topics]
The relationship with the People's Republic of China is one of the most important in the world for Japan. Ambassador Mike Mansfield's oft-repeated admonition notwithstanding. China is a very large neighbor. The United States has known nothing like it in our national experience. China for Japan represents great opportunity, while at the same time representing great danger. The challenge for Japan's political leadership is to maximize the former and minimize the latter. Over-emphasis on either China’s opportunities or China’s dangers invites disaster.
It’s easy, perhaps natural, for those of us who presume to advise Japan on how best to conduct relations with China, to emphasize in our advice either the opportunities or the dangers. But it doesn’t seem to matter very much. Japan’s leaders listen politely, thank us for our advice, and then do what they consider appropriate. They don’t have the luxury of concentrating exclusively on either opportunities or dangers. They know well the long-term cost of losing their balance when dealing with China.
Japan’s efforts to balance management of the relationship with China was evident last week in a number of significant reports. Last weekend, Japan’s finance Minister, Sadakazu Tanigaki, and a large delegation of senior Ministry of Finance officials traveled to Beijing for meetings with China’s Finance Minister. Tanigaki and his associates urged their Chinese counterparts to allow the Yuan a wider band of fluctuation in international markets. The Chinese side expressed regret over Japan’s announcement earlier that week that the final decision on preferential yen loans to China would be delayed this year. The Chinese side added a sprinkling of regret over the Yasukuni Shrine visit. But the meetings went very well, all considered. No emotional outbursts from either side. Tanigaki and Chinese Finance Minister Jin agreed to hold bilateral Finance Minister’s consultations on an annual basis, the next meeting scheduled for Tokyo. That’s real progress! And some day may prove significant.
There was another positive development this week in the relationship with China. Today, Friday the 31st, the leaders of seven Japanese groups organized to promote friendship and cooperation with the People’s Republic of China visited Beijing. The delegation included senior Japanese Diet members as well as representatives from the private sector. It was headed by former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. They were scheduled to meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao. That was the first meeting Hu has held with Japanese leaders in some time.
Earlier in the week representatives of the delegation had asked that President Hu avoid mention of the Yasukuni Shrine visit issue in his official remarks. The fact that the request was widely published in Japan suggests to me that the organizers believed they had some chance of persuading him to refrain. Given the makeup of the visiting Japanese delegation, and their objective, this would have been an ideal time for President Hu to back down a bit from the hard line on Yasukuni without losing face at home.
Well, it didn’t work. Headlines following the meeting in Japan focused on Hu’s insistence that he would agree to meet Koizumi only if Koizumi first agreed to stop visiting Yasukuni Shrine. The Chinese English language press, and some of the international press covering the event, reported this as a “concession” on China’s part. Of course, it wasn’t. And most of Japan’s media recognized it as affirmation of Hu’s long-standing position. They realized he rejected this unusual opportunity to demonstrate more flexibility. Still, the rest of the meetings went quite well.
Not all news this week from Tokyo concerning relations with China has been that positive, however. Details of two important reports on Japan’s overall foreign relations were released during the week. Both had important cautionary sections on China’s expanding military presence in Asia, and the lack of transparency in China’s military spending. This has long been of concern to Tokyo. Recently Tokyo has been more open in expressing those concerns.
The first was an early draft of the Foreign Ministry’s 2006 Diplomatic Bluebook. According to Yomiuri, this year’s Bluebook will include explicit expressions of concern over the lack of transparency in China’s military budget, as well as the rapid increase in its size. “Lack of transparency” is a diplomatic way to say the Chinese are not making public all of their military spending, and that they are hiding some military projects that might alarm neighboring countries. The 2006 Hakusho also will include expression of concern over China’s passage of the “Anti-Secession Law” in 2005 which states that China will use non-peaceful means if necessary to cope with any efforts by Taiwan to break away from China.
The second report was the National Institute for Defense Studies’ authoritative “East Asian Strategic Review for 2006.” It was published on March 28th. The Institute is the Japan Defense Agency’s main policy research center. An English language translation of the executive summary is available now on their website. I’ll put a link to it in the show notes. And the full report is available in Japanese on the site as well. This report too expressed concern over China’s military build-up. With special attention to concern over Taiwan. The Institute’s executive director, Shigekatsu Kondo, presented a summary of the report to the Foreign Correspondents Club in Tokyo on Monday, the 27th. So there was no effort to keep the report and its expressions of concern over China’s military quiet. Quite the contrary.
Now, it must have been pure coincidence that the May 2004 Shanghai Consulate Suicide Incident would come back into the news this week. Well, it did. And in a big way. Yomiuri Shimbun in its Friday morning edition carried a detailed story on the suicide of the Shanghai consular official. The paper had received copies of the suicide notes left by the code clerk. The notes proved, the article concluded, that the official had indeed been driven to suicide by China’s intelligence service. Chinese government spokesmen denied the involvement of their intelligence service again. But given the evidence, their denial only made them look worse. Better to have followed standard procedures and simply refused comment! From the very beginning.
Within hours, both Foreign Minister Taro Aso and Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe had supported the conclusion that the Consulate official had been pushed to suicide by Chinese intelligence officials trying to gather information about Japan’s activities clandestinely, and deplored the effort. Subsequent Japanese media reports on the incident re-hashed the lurid details of the Chinese operation. They also included recollection of the anti-Japanese riots in China in April 2005, and the May 2002 incident in which Chinese police forcibly entered the Japanese Consulate in Shenyang to remove North Korean asylum seekers. All serious violations of diplomatic protocol and international law. With no apologies received from China to date.
The Foreign Ministry today, the 31st, took decisive action in response to the Shanghai Consulate Suicide Incident. They established a high-level team to discover the identity of the person who leaked the suicide notes to the Japanese press!
On a brighter note, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has named Yuji Miyamoto the next ambassador to China. Miyamoto is a well-known member of the Foreign Ministry’s China School. His selection was opposed by some Tokyo hard-liners out of fear he would be too “soft” once he arrived. His appointment should please Beijing, and facilitate good relations. Perhaps he can help Beijing to understand the fundamental changes that have occurred in both the formulation and conduct of Japan’s foreign relations. Including relations with China. Tactics -- and even strategies -- that were successful during the 1970s and 1980s, now seem to be counter-productive, and should be replaced. [Return to Topics]
The National Legislative Agenda
Since eruption of the bogus e-mail scandal, Japan’s communications media has been criticizing the DPJ for failing to participate effectively in parliamentary debate. Good point. While most everyone in Japan, including the media itself, has been captivated by the e-mail scandal, the Koizumi Cabinet has continued to steer its comprehensive governmental and economic reform agenda through the Diet. Many of these issues are fundamentally important and require more comprehensive discussion.
For example, on Monday, the 27th, the government’s FY2006 budget cleared the Upper House, and became law. This budget was the first in eight years to come in below 80 trillion yen. This reduction alone tells us significant changes in allocations have been made, and probably in priorities. Prior to the vote, LDP members were more active in debating the controversial elements of the document than were the Opposition!
Late last week the Cabinet submitted its package of reform measures to the Diet for discussion. They will be debated in the various committees and subcommittees through June, at least. These include plans to significantly reduce the number of government personnel during the next four years. And measures to privatize government functions wherever possible, and reduce the cost of government. Everyone agrees that the consumption tax rate will have to be raised to keep Japan’s government solvent. The disagreement is over how much it should be increased, and the amount the cost of government can be reduced before that decision is made.
Efforts to reach agreement on revision of the Constitution continue as well. Earlier in the month the leaders of the Social Democratic Party and the Japan Communist Party met to discuss how they might cooperate in the effort to prevent Constitutional revisions such as re-writing Article IX. Long-time observers of Japan’s socialists and communists will recognize just how remarkable that meeting was, given the long-term personal and institutional enmities between the Parties. But the Socialists have been reduced to a shell of their former influence. And the Communists have their own problems. Effective efforts to stymie revision plans will require the support of a more capable DPJ.
Yesterday, Thursday the 30th, the Lower House Special Committee on the Constitution, the Committee chaired by LDP Veteran, Dr. Taro Nakayama, released an interim report on their deliberations. The Committee has reached agreement “in principle” between the ruling and opposition parties on how the popular referendum required for constitutional revision will be conducted. Rather than a single up-or-down vote, the Committee has agreed to issue-specific votes. But it has rejected the Opposition’s proposal to include other issues in the referendum. This represents significant progress. Constitutional revision too is an issue that cries out for comprehensive debate in the Diet.
In spite of the LDP’s overwhelming win in the last general election, anti-LDP and anti-Koizumi reform forces were optimistic at the beginning of the year. They believed the LDP’s September victory was a fluke. They further believed the LDP was especially vulnerable to attacks in three areas: growing income inequality intensified by Koizumi reforms; inattention to public safety as noted in the tainted beef and condo earthquake vulnerability scandals; and foreign relations problems, especially with China and South Korea. The LDP leadership believed it too, and did their best to prepare for the attacks.
Who in January, or even early February, could have guessed that a relatively junior member of the Opposition would frustrate those plans with a public accusation of corruption against a senior LDP member? An accusation that sounded plausible, but that proved unsupportable.
The national media have tried to compensate for DPJ inadequacy with their own efforts. They’re still trying to persuade the public that Japanese society now suffers from a dysfunctional income gap. And that Koizumi’s reforms are responsible for making it worse. Asahi Shimbun and Tokyo Shimbun have done their best, commissioning special public opinion polls, publishing article after article on the plight of Japan’s poor. And directing their spotlight on the excesses of the newly-rich – best illustrated by Livedoor’s now-disgraced president, Takafumi Horie. There’s probably some truth to their assertions. But that’s a hard sell in an economy that everyone agrees is growing respectably, if not spectacularly, at last. And when the unemployment rate has declined to a point not seen since 1998. Even skillful public relations can accomplish only so much. Maybe the upcoming change in DPJ leadership will, at least, give us more genuine debate in the Diet. [Return to Topics]
That’s all we have time for again. We’ll have to consider Japan’s relations with North Korea next week. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a few bars of unsurpassed bluegrass from Tony Rice ringing in your ears. This is from “Big Black Train,” the version he did with the Bluegrass Album Band for Rounder Records back in 1989. Have a listen.
[bluegrass clip]
Goodbye all. Until next week. [Return to Topics]
