May 26, 2006; Volume 02, Number 20
of the
Japan Considered Podcast
[Listen to the audio file by clicking here]
Clink Links Below for Today's Topics
Good Morning again from the beautiful campus of the University of South Carolina. Today is Friday, May 26 th, 2006. And you are listening to Volume 02, Number 20, of the Japan Considered Podcast.
Thanks for dropping by again today. Your interest in the program is what keeps it going. Without listeners, there’s little point in me talking into the machine. Speaking of listening, those of you who subscribe directly through iTunes or another podcast catcher, may not realize that a full text transcript for each program is available on the Japan Considered Project website. Just point your browser at www.JapanConsidered.org. Then click on the podcast graphic on the home page, or on the left-hand nav bar “podcast” entry. That takes you to the podcast page that has the transcripts. And, of course, links to the other audio files as well. At the request of a long-time listener, I added an archive section that provides an index to every show since the beginning. That’s November 18, 2005. Transcripts are available for all shows from the beginning of this year.
While you’re at the JapanConsidered Project website, click again on the “Interviews” page. By the time most of you hear this program, I should have the interview with Japanese/Chinese translator, Tom Coffey, up and running. Tom is one of the very few professional translators who works in both Japanese and Chinese, and does both incredibly well. I’ve known Tom and admired his work for years. But I still had some difficulty persuading him to do an interview for Japan Considered.
Whereas most of us, given the chance, are inclined to exaggerate our linguistic abilities in Japanese, Tom is just the opposite. He insists that he is only “competent,” and not “fluent” in Chinese and Japanese. Well, if that’s true, it’s a level of competence that gives the term entirely new meaning. During this interview Tom gives us insight into this very important aspect of the Japan Studies enterprise. And he offers a number of suggestions for aspiring translators. He also describes the on-line language resources, including dictionaries, that he finds most useful. That alone is worth the price of admission! So, go to the web page and click on Tom’s interview. It’s another winner in the series.
Lots going on again this week in Tokyo, and abroad that affects Japan. So we’d better get right to it. We’ll begin by considering preparations for Prime Minister Koizumi’s visit to Washington in late June. And what those preparations tell us about Japan as an actor in international affairs. Then we’ll move to the long-anticipated meetings between Japan’s foreign minister and the foreign ministers of Mainland China and South Korea. Finally we’ll look in on the LDP presidential election, and the significance of that contest for the future of Japan’s political system. And I’ll try to keep all this as close to the planned twenty minutes as possible. [Back to Topics]
Koizumi Late June Visit to Washington
On Wednesday, the 24 th, the White House made the long-anticipated announcement that Prime Minister Koizumi is expected to visit President Bush in Washington on June 29 th. Koizumi is scheduled to arrive in the United States from Canada on the 28 th for this official visit. Observers on the Japanese side have noted the visit will include a White House dinner that evening. And President Bush is expected to accompany Koizumi the following day to Memphis, Tennessee. Koizumi, known in Japan as a great Elvis Presley fan, plans to take this opportunity to visit Mr. Pressley’s home and museum.
Japan’s political press is comparing arrangements made for Koizumi to those made recently for China’s President Hu Jintao. Dinner as opposed to a lunch; a Japanese flag prominently displayed across the street from the White House, as opposed to no Chinese flag; possibly even an invitation for Koizumi to ride to Memphis with President Bush in Air Force One. Should anyone miss the point, the Bush Administration has repeatedly said it has a close friend in Japan.
All flourishes and ruffles? Just another high-stakes mutual admiration society? Purely symbolic? I think not. Japan, with the more active Koizumi in the premiership, has become an important and reliable component of the Bush Administration’s war on global terror. President Bush and other senior Administration officials recognize and appreciate that contribution. Let’s hope Koizumi’s successor is able to maintain the quality of this bilateral relationship. The last prime minister I recall who came even close, was Yasuhiro Nakasone. Nakasone did his best, during the era of his service, to provide the level of central political leadership Japan’s formal political system calls for. And he too enjoyed a warm personal relationship with the incumbent American president, Ronald Reagan.
Lest we forget, differences of opinion do exist between Tokyo and Washington on significant issues. The American export of beef to Japan. Settled for the moment. But it’s been settled before. Reconfiguration of American military forces on Japanese soil, and the sharing of the cost of that reconfiguration. The participation of Japanese personnel in the effort to democratize Iraq. Concern over the direction of the current government in Iran, and Japan’s energy project there. The nature and timing of United Nations reform, and Japan’s status on the U.N. Security Council.
This is quite a list of issues, some of them significant. But the atmosphere surrounding preparation for Koizumi’s trip to Washington seems to be different, and more healthy, than that I recall prior to visits from earlier Japanese prime ministers. My observation, of course, is made from quite a distance. Based only on Japanese and American media reports and my sporadic telephone chatter with participants in the arrangements and their more immediate observers. So I may be missing something.
But I hear much less discussion of thinly veiled threats by U.S. Administration officials to “unleash the Congress” on Japan if the Prime Minister doesn’t arrive in Washington with policy concession gifts suitable to the occasion. That sort of talk used to dominate prime ministerial visit preparations in years past. Well, one elderly, undoubtedly well-meaning, Congressman did demand publicly that Koizumi renounce visits to Yasukuni Shrine if he expects to be invited to address a joint session of Congress.
The Kantei’s reaction to this demand was informative, I think. Rather than going into what I used to call “America Complaining; Japan Explaining” mode, and promising never to offend international sensibilities again, chief government spokesman, Shinzo Abe, when asked during his regular press briefing, simply said the Government of Japan had no intention of asking for such an invitation. So the issue was moot! All handled in a quiet, subdued fashion that took the wind out of a potentially divisive issue. No hysterical public defense of national sovereignty, and diplomatic etiquette. Just a simple statement that defused the issue.
Japan, under more dynamic central political leadership, is a different sort of actor in international affairs than was Japan under its traditional post-World War Two LDP Factionist prime ministers. Some folks in Washington seem to have recognized the change, and that’s a good thing for all concerned. [Back to Topics]
Foreign Minister Taro Aso Meets his Mainland Chinese and South Korean Counterparts
This week Japan’s Foreign Minister, Taro Aso, managed to meet his Mainland Chinese and South Korean counterparts for discussions on the sidelines of the Asia Cooperation Dialogue meetings being held in Doha, Qatar. Announcement of plans for the meetings was widely interpreted by Japan’s political press as progress in the bilateral relationships. China since May 2005 has refused Japan’s invitations to hold bilateral ministerial-level talks. That, Beijing explained, was because Prime Minister Koizumi has refused the Chinese demand that he refrain from paying respects to Japan’s war dead at Yasukuni Shrine, visits that offended the Chinese people.
Koizumi from the beginning flatly rejected the Chinese demand, suggesting, quietly, that it bordered on Chinese meddling in Japan’s domestic affairs. Instead, Japan’s Kantei countered the Chinese maneuver with intensified expressions of concern over the dramatic increases in China’s military spending, the haziness of Beijing’s public explanations of that spending’s real magnitude, and the purposes to which all of this new military capability would be put.
Further, consider the Kantei’s reaction late last year when the Japanese weekly magazine, Shukan Bunshun, published a potentially explosive article. The article revealed that a Japanese diplomat working in the Shanghai Consulate committed suicide in May of 2004. It appeared, from the notes he left for colleagues and family, that he was driven to this tragic end by the efforts of Chinese intelligence officers to compromise him.
Once the incident was confirmed by the Japanese Foreign Ministry, the Kantei senior leadership responded sharply, but diplomatically. They commented that, if true, the actions of the Chinese intelligence service officers violated the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. And they ordered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which obviously had known about the incident since it happened, to demand an explanation from their Chinese counterparts.
China’s leadership appears to have been thrown off balance by this change in Tokyo’s behavior. Japan’s previous regimes had been willing to accommodate Chinese demands in order to maintain bilateral relations. So Beijing continued their vociferous public demands that Prime Minister Koizumi renounce his visits to Yasukuni Shrine. Well, it’s true that their efforts earned the sympathy of anti-Koizumi groups and individuals who’ve found it a convenient issue with which to attack Koizumi. And somehow Beijing’s international PR specialists have been able to get nearly all of Japan’s political journalists to add a near-set-phrase at the beginning of their articles attributing tension in the bilateral relationship to Koizumi’s Yasukuni visits. It’s as if a tension-free bilateral relationship would suddenly bloom were Koizumi only to announce suspension of those appalling visits!
This extraordinary PR coup, and the eager adoption by Koizumi’s political opponents of what he’s labeled the “Yasukuni Card,” seems to have obscured the effect China’s continued demands was having on Japan’s attentive public opinion. The longer and louder China complained about the Yasukuni visits, the lower China’s public opinion ratings fell in Japan. It took some time for China’s leadership to realize that their Yasukuni Shrine tactic had backfired. But it now appears that China’s leadership has recognized the significance of that miscalculation, and is prepared to move on to substantive issues.
According to Japanese press reports and subsequent official statements, much of the 90-minute meeting between Foreign Minister Taro Aso and China’s Foreign Minister Li was consumes by restatement of the two sides’ positions on the Yasukuni Shrine visit. But more encouraging, the two sides did agree that their ministerial-level meetings should continue, and that it was time to expedite bilateral negotiations over the exploitation of natural resources in the East China Sea. They also agreed to establish special emergency communications links to facilitate rescue operations in the East China Sea should mishaps occur. That’s better than nothing. And, in fact, the special communications links could help to avert disaster should Chinese and Japanese military vessels collide accidentally while steaming around the disputed East China Sea gas fields. This all is an indication that even greater progress may be made in the future. [Back to Topics]
Developments in the LDP Presidential Succession Race
We reviewed the formal election procedures for the LDP presidency on this program back in March. But to refresh memories, LDP Party rules stipulate that presidents can serve only two, two-year terms. Under exceptional circumstances, the LDP delegation of the Lower and Upper Houses can vote to extend the second term one more year, for a total of five years. But this requires a two-thirds vote, not a simple majority.
These elections are conducted in two steps that include both the LDP national parliamentary delegation and rank-and-file Party members in the 47 prefectural branches. Each member of the LDP delegation in the Lower and Upper Houses casts a single vote in the final election, for a total of about 405 votes. An additional 300 votes, then, are distributed to the LDP's prefectural branches, apportioned among them according to prefectural population.
This creates a total LDP presidential electorate of just over 700 votes. If no candidate receives a majority on the first ballot, a run-off contest between the two top vote-getters must be held. This majority rule increases the importance of the eventual number of candidates running in the election. Each additional candidate inevitably bleeds off some votes, making it more difficult for a strong candidate to receive a majority on the first ballot, and creating all sorts of complications. This may well explain the presence of lesser candidates in the race. They realize they have no hope of winning. But they hope to influence the process significantly after forcing a run-off.
The prefectural branch elections, of course, are held first. The prefectural chapters will schedule their votes over the weekend, September 16 th and 17 th, with final tallies due by Tuesday, the 19 th. Prefectural chapters, each according to their own rules, either give all of the prefecture's allocated votes to the highest vote-getter, or apportion their allocated votes among the candidates according to the percentage of votes they received in the prefectural poll. With the prefectural vote totals known, the Lower and Upper House members of the LDP then gather at LDP Headquarters on September 20 th to add their votes to the total for the final election.
Since its creation in 1955, the LDP has been a top-down political party dominated by the members of its parliamentary delegation. And the parliamentary delegation has been dominated by the personalistic factions about which so much has been written, in both Japanese and English. One must study those factions to understand Japan's parliamentary politics.
Professor Len Schoppa identifies nine current factions in the excellent chart he provided for the Japan Considered “Occasional Papers” page last week. I’ll put a link to the page here, and one in the show notes as well. According to Professor Schoppa’s calculations, these factions range in size from 11 members in the Kono Faction to 87 members in the Mori Faction. Also significant, Professor Schoppa identifies 72 members of the LDP as unaffiliated with a faction. That’s almost 18% of the total LDP parliamentary delegation! In 1998, for comparison, there were only 20 LDP parliamentarians who were not affiliated with a faction. More about that in a moment.
The public reputation of these factions has never been very high. They have been more tolerated as necessary evils than considered forces of good. Indeed, they've been most often associated in the past with the Japanese equivalent of the politics of "smoke-filled rooms," behind-the-scenes deal-making, and even political corruption. Nonetheless, these personalistic factions have served as the primary engines of competition in the selection of the LDP's president. This competition, during periods of LDP Lower House majority, also selected Japan's prime ministers.
Japan's political reformers have long demanded that the LDP's factional politics be cleaned up. Several incoming prime ministers have pledged to abolish them. Yet they remain. And, I suspect, they are likely to remain. Though their importance will be somewhat diminished. Junichiro Koizumi, like so many of his prime ministerial predecessors, assumed office pledging to “abolish factions.” His pronouncements were largely dismissed as over-heated election speech rhetoric. That proved a mistake.
Koizumi has continued his public opposition to factional domination of the LDP, and by extension, his opposition to selection of Japan’s prime minister by agreements among LDP faction leaders, since assuming office. He has urged Members of the Lower House newly elected in the September 2005 election to reject invitations to join one of the LDP’s factions. Most recently, during his Golden Week trip to Africa, he said there was nothing to stop Takeo Fukuda and Shinzo both from announcing their candidacies for the LDP presidency, even though they both belong to the same faction. This again surprised Japan’s political journalists, though such a position was perfectly consistent for Koizumi, given his opposition to faction domination of the LDP. Faction Leader Yoshiro Mori was even more shocked, realizing full well that emergence of two candidates from his faction would likely split the group, reducing the faction’s clout, and his own clout as a faction leader.
If LDP presidents – and by extension, Japanese prime ministers – are not to be chosen through consultation and maneuvering for votes among the personalistic factions, just how will they be selected? It appears to me that Koizumi and those who support his objectives intend to increase the importance of rank-and-file Party members in the selection of the Party president, while reducing the importance of the faction bosses. They are motivated, I believe, by two objectives. First, to make the LDP and its leaders more appealing to the general voting public. And second, to allow the Party presidents – and prime ministers – ultimately selected, greater independence from the faction bosses in issues of personnel selection, policy formulation, and policy implementation.
All else constant, a Party presidential candidate whose election depends upon his or her appeal to the Party’s rank-and-file nationwide, should prove more appealing to the general public, than a Party presidential candidate required to appeal to only to four or five of the senior-most parliamentary members of the Party. So, Koizumi and his allies hope to create more popularly appealing LDP leaders – and, under current conditions, prime ministers for Japan – by increasing the electoral clout of the rank-and-file Party membership at the expense of the most senior Party leaders. This shift in strategy has been necessitated by a number of factors. They include the 1994 change in the Diet electoral system that introduced single-member districts, the growing percentage of unaffiliated, or “floating voters,” in the national electorate, continued urbanization of Japan’s population, and possibly even advances in politically relevant communications technology.
Also, as Koizumi has demonstrated ably during his incumbency, a prime minister less dependent, in the short-term, at least, upon the good will of the LDP’s faction leaders to maintain his position, is free to pursue a policy agenda designed more to appeal to Japan’s attentive public. More “populist,” as opposed to “factionist,” to use the terms I’ve tentatively applied to these approaches.
This, again, all else constant, should boost the effectiveness of Japan’s central political executive. It should accelerate the speed of the notoriously slow Japanese decisionmaking process. It should allow – even require – incumbent prime ministers to pursue reforms that have broader public appeal. Even when such reforms are resisted by narrowly focused but well financed special interests, or by portions of the government bureaucracy that service those special interests. [Back to Topics]
Lots more left to say on this topic. But we’re well over time as it is. Next week we’ll consider a few alternative scenarios for this September 2006 LDP presidential election. No iron-clad predictions, I’m afraid. Just a few “what-if” sorts of speculations that will help you to draw your own conclusions, and follow the race as it unfolds.
As always, send your comments and suggestions to me at RobertCAngel@gmail.com. I’m grateful for them all. I’m especially eager to hear from anyone who’s been doing work that’s taken them to LDP prefectural offices around the country since the September 2005 general election. As noted a week or so ago on this program, it’s hard to find information in either English or Japanese on these branch offices. And they’re an important part of the overall picture.
We’ve run so long there’s no room this week for a closing bluegrass clip. Sorry about that. We should have better luck next time.
So, goodbye all. Until next week. [Back to Topics]
