May 12, 2006; Volume 02, Number 18
of the
Japan Considered Podcast
[Listen to the audio file by clicking here]
Clink Links Below for Today's Topics
| Introduction |
| Developments in the LDP Presidential Race |
| The National Legislative Agenda |
| Concluding Comments |
Good Morning again from the sunny but cool campus of the University of South Carolina. Today is Friday, May 12 th, 2006. And you are listening to Volume 02, Number 18, of the Japan Considered Podcast.
Thanks for tuning in. I’m Robert Angel, creator and maintainer of the Japan Considered Project, and creator of this Podcast. A hearty South Carolina welcome to any newcomers we have today, and to all of you long-time listeners. Well, “long-time” is a bit of a stretch since I’ve only been doing these programs since November 18 th of last year. This, in fact, is our 25 th regular weekly program. I guess that’s a milestone, of sorts.
Apologies to all listeners who had difficulty uploading the transcript of last week’s program. The Japan Considered Project webpage ran out of allocated space on the University server once again. So files uploaded weren’t “served,” as it were. This has happened before. So I’ve done my best to encourage the server space allocators to allocate us enough space to prevent it from happening again in the future. They do their best with the resources they have at hand ….
As has happened for every post-Golden Week week that I can remember – and that’s a few! – Japan’s political journalists and commentators seem to have spent this week going through their notes, trying to make sense of what happened while they were away. A week seems like a lifetime in this business. And that’s especially true when change has been as rapid and obvious as it has been in political Japan during the past few years.
This week we’ll return to domestic politics, with consideration of developments in the LDP presidential race. We’ll follow that up with a look at Japan’s legislative agenda – legislation under consideration, and the strategies of the Ruling Coalition and Opposition in pursuit of their agendas. Finally, if we have time, we’ll note developments this week in Japan’s prickly relationship with the People’s Republic of China. There seems to have been some progress there. We’ll consider just what’s behind it and what it means for Japan’s overall conduct of foreign relations. [Back to Topics]
Developments in the LDP Presidential Race
Competition to succeed Junichiro Koizumi as president of the Liberal Democratic Party is well under way. It attracts much of the attention of Japan’s political journalists and commentators. That’s only natural, since the winner of that party presidential competition is most likely to become Japan’s next prime minister, given the LDP’s overwhelming parliamentary majority.
A gaggle of the lesser candidates, those with the least chances of winning, have announced their candidacy for the LDP top spot. Even 42-year-old Taro Kono, the son and grandson of celebrated LDP leaders, on Thursday announced his decision to enter the race. He’s said to be particularly interested in promoting small government and pension reform. LDP rules require Party presidential candidates to collect the endorsement of twenty LDP members of Parliament, however. That may prove an insurmountable barrier for the Younger Kono, one that other lesser candidates may find difficult to overcome as well.
Neither of the two main contenders – the main contenders, at least for now – have made an official announcement. They are, of course, current Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, and Abe’s immediate predecessor as Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yasuo Fukuda.
We’ve discussed the backgrounds of these two main candidates in earlier programs in this series. Both are impressive figures. Both are highly qualified to succeed Koizumi. If the race does continue to favor these two “non-candidates,” Japan is assured a responsible and competent prime minister after September. To make that point, Fukuda arrived in Washington on Wednesday. He’s well known there. And since his arrival he’s held meetings with Secretary of State Rice, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney, and a number of influential Washington figures who now are out of government. The meetings appear to be going well. During meetings with the Japanese press, Fukuda has maintained his customary low-key posture, never once stumbling over an issue or curve-ball question.
Serious candidates in the Party presidential race must differentiate themselves from the other candidates in order to compete effectively. And, of course, the news media accentuates – even exaggerates – those differences to create the impression they have a real race to report on. The result is the appearance of greater distinctions between, or among, the candidates than there really is. Truth be told, the differences between Abe and Fukuda on key policies are distinctions only of degree. Both share the fundamental principles that have guided the LDP throughout the post-WWII era. Indeed, no serious candidate for the LDP presidency promotes radically different policies. That’s a good thing for Japan. It indicates a broad political consensus of the sort that favors non-violent democratic politics. It doesn’t mean, however, that the two candidates will enter office with the same sort of support, or the same expectations of their supporters. But more on that later.
Prime Minister Koizumi’s casual comments during his Golden Week tour of Africa about Fukuda’s candidacy for the LDP presidency continued to echo through Japan’s political world this week. Yesterday, the 11 th, Yoshiro Mori called a mid-day meeting of the Seiwakai, the faction he leads. The faction to which both Shinzo Abe and Yasuo Fukuda belong. There he stated clearly he will not try to unify the faction’s membership behind a single candidate for the LDP presidency. Indeed, he even denied ever saying he intended to do so. Everyone knows he had such intentions. And everyone knows this announcement amounts to an important concession for Mori, leader of the LDP’s largest faction.
Mori recognized that he was between a rock and a hard place, as we’d say OverHome. A battle between two prominent Seiwakai members, Abe and Fukuda, would risk splitting the faction, whose members would line up on either side of the contest. But, Mori also recognized that he risked an even more disastrous split were he to try to force unanimous factional support for either of the candidates, and to fail.
I believe Mori’s statement on Thursday represents significant change in the influence of LDP faction leaders. Control of LDP presidential selection has been the most important function of LDP factions in the past. Certainly not their only function. But the most important. So, Mori’s announcement is likely to inspire a glut of media articles over the next few weeks predicting the impending demise of LDP factions. Those articles will be premature, if not misguided. Like the LDP itself, factions have demonstrated remarkable durability. Their role in selection of the LDP president may change. But factions are likely to endure within the LDP. And who knows? If they survive, they’re bound to continue to have at least some influence over LDP presidential selection.
But for me, the most significant aspect of Faction Leader Mori’s statements at the mid-day meeting of the Seiwakai on Thursday received relatively little attention in the press. That was his explanation for his decision. Mori said he could not endure the thought that his effort to unify the faction behind one candidate or the other would make his Seiwakai appear to have the “old character of the LDP.” Koizumi on May 2 nd, had said that efforts to prevent Fukuda from running for the LDP presidency smacked of the old way of doing things, of faction leaders deciding among themselves who should lead the Party and Japan. Factionist versus Populist politics. Once again we can see the distinction clearly.
LDP factional politics traditionally receives the lion’s share of Japan’s political journalists’ coverage. That’s only natural. But this time around, I wish there were more articles on goings-on in the LDP prefectural chapters. That’s hard material to get, I know. Most of Japan’s best political journalists are based in Tokyo. They do their best work there, and dread dispatch to the hinterlands. Where they have few contacts and are not known at the local watering holes.
But it would be nice to know more about what the managers of the LDP’s prefectural branches think about the upcoming party presidential race. More about Party rank-and-file membership trends. Who’s paying for the memberships now, for example? Is corporate sponsorship as important as it was in the past? What’s going on with the Koenkai? And, more about the extent to which the main “non-candidates” have begun to create local support groups. If they have.
I’m sure the editors of the major newspapers and wire services would respond that it’s just too early to begin spending their scarce news-gathering resources on coverage of the hinterland. But such information would be helpful even now in understanding how the first critical part of the LDP presidential election process will play out in September. [Back to Topics]
The National Legislative Agenda
For most of us who observe Japanese politics from a distance, the LDP presidential race is easy – even fun – to follow. It's also fairly straightforward to report on. Like a boxing match. But Japan is a parliamentary system, not presidential. So, even more than the United States, Japan’s national legislature constitutes the core of the political structure. The prime minister, is just that -- a prime minister, selected by majority vote of the parliament -- and not a popularly elected president.
So to know what's really going on in political Japan we have keep track of the parliamentary agenda, of the legislation and issues being considered, and the interplay there among the various party and individual actors. Explaining this is more like covering a contract bridge tournament than a boxing match.
But it’s much easier to do these days than it was in decades past. Today anyone with a n internet connection can view video of key parliamentary debates . The full printed Diet Proceedings now are available on-line through the excellent National Diet Library website. It even includes an electronically searchable index. Those of us of a certain age will recall spending days and weeks, if not months, pouring through shelf after shelf of hard-copy editions of similar records, and being grateful to have access to them when we did. Now, the click of a mouse provides much more. Understandably, but unfortunately for many of our listeners, most of this information is available only in Japanese language.
One interesting exception is the Internet TV service of the Lower House. I’ll put the site link in the transcript and show notes. [Link to Lower House Internet TV] Here, titles of the various Committee Hearings are provided in English. A click on the monthly calendars on the left-hand side of the page takes you to the recordings of hearings available for specific days. Titles are given in English. The hearings themselves are in Japanese, of course. But even non-Japanese speakers can learn a lot from watching how the individuals conduct themselves, and how debate is carried out. A great experience for all.
The Legislature is where we see – or should see – the clash of Japan's major political parties. Political parties are engines of conflict, organizations created and maintained to pursue the objectives of their members. Including the primary objective of gaining control of the institutions of government. Japan's parties are no different.
With Ichiro Ozawa at the helm of the DPJ, we are likely to see more competition, or conflict, in Japan’s Parliament. Ozawa has stated publicly that he believes the DPJ should be more confrontational in its dealings with the LDP. Those familiar with Ozawa will have little difficulty believing he will make that happen.
Late last year, flush from a stunning Lower House election victory, the Koizumi Administration had great expectations for the regular Diet session scheduled to begin this January. Koizumi and his allies believed they would be able to push through a number of controversial bills, with only a minimum of opposition. These included reforming the Imperial House Law to allow female members of the Imperial family to ascend the throne, upgrading the Defense Agency to full ministerial status, revision of the 1947 education law to include greater emphasis on encouraging patriotism in Japanese school children, the various bills required to implement Koizumi Administration governmental reforms, including such measures as reduction in the number of government personnel, tighter restrictions on post-retirement amakudari practices, and even major progress on Constitutional revision. All of these, and more, were on the Koizumi Cabinet’s legislative agenda at the beginning of this regular Diet session in January.
Prospects were bright for passage of a majority of these bills, if not all, by the scheduled end of the regular session on June 18 th of this year. Koizumi was poised to leave the Premiership in a blaze of legislative glory.
Poised, that is, until eruption of the infamous Nagata e-mail fiasco on February 16 th. Even the DPJ concluded that Nagata was dealing from something less than a full deck. The aftershocks of Nagata’s parliamentary stunt pitched Seiji Maehara from the DPJ presidential chair. During his short tenure as DPJ leader, Maehara proved himself a sincere, but somewhat inept practitioner of Populist politics. He devoted his talents and resources to reconstruction of his Party on the Populist model, while maintaining a relatively accommodating relationship with Koizumi’s LDP in the management of parliamentary business. Accommodation that allowed the LDP to pursue its legislative agenda with a minimum of opposition.
That all ended with selection of Party elder, Ichiro Ozawa, as Maehara’s successor. “Accommodationist” is hardly the adjective that springs immediately to mind whenever Ozawa’s name is mentioned. Ozawa proved himself content to continue the delicate balancing act necessary to maintain DPJ cohesion, and less concerned about Party reform, populist or otherwise. He immediately shifted from parliamentary accommodation to direct confrontation with the LDP, sensing vulnerability on a variety of fronts.
On Tuesday, for example, Ozawa announced that the DPJ will not co-sponsor a bill that would establish rules for conducting the constitutional revision popular referendum, an important step in the constitutional revision process. This came as a surprise to LDP and Komeito negotiators who for some time had been working with DPJ representatives to create a bill acceptable to the DPJ as well as to the ruling parties. No go, Ozawa announced on Tuesday. And if the ruling coalition submitted the bill independently in this session of the Diet, the DPJ would submit its own bill. It seems unlikely now that any referendum bill will be passed in this session of the Diet, even if it is extended.
Similar problems with Ozawa’s New DPJ can be expected on other potentially controversial LDP legislative proposals. These include the Defense Agency upgrade, reform of the 1947 education law, medical insurance reform, and the bills necessary to implement the Koizumi governmental reform proposals. No more free ride for the Koizumi Cabinet legislative agenda. And quite a different sort of parliamentary politics for at least the next month.
It’s hard to predict how this intensification of Parliamentary conflict will affect Japan’s attentive public. Most of Tokyo’s political journalists and commentators appear to be delighted with the change. At last they have a genuine “fight” to write about. One easily explained as a personal battle between Koizumi and Ozawa. No more contract bridge tournament analysis. And, many of Japan’s mainstream media journalists personally oppose Koizumi’s “small government” reforms, and conduct of foreign affairs, on ideological grounds. So, a confrontational DPJ – even a DPJ headed by Ichiro Ozawa – is likely to enjoy good press for some time to come. The effect on Japan’s attentive public, however, is more difficult to predict. We’ll have to wait to see. [Back to Topics]
Well, once again, we’ve run out of time. Consideration of changes in Japan’s relationship with the People’s Republic of China will have to wait until next week. We’ve had some interesting developments on this front. But next week we’ll be able to include the results, if any, of bilateral negotiations over the East China Sea gas field exploitation dispute. So, stay tuned, as they say.
Thanks for listening again this week. I appreciate your interest. And continue to send your comments and suggestions for the program to me at robertcangel@gmail.com. That’s robertcangel – all one word – at gmail.com. I read them all, and consider each one while planning future programs.
Let’s go out this week with another short clip from the Seldom Scene’s anniversary album for Sugar Hill Records. Listen to these harmonies from “Leavin’ Harlan.”
[bluegrass clip]
Goodbye all. Until next week. [Back to Topics]
