November 24, 2006; Volume 02, Number 42
of the
Japan Considered Podcast
[Listen to the audio file by clicking here]
Clink Links Below for Today's Topics
Good Morning. From beautiful, but chilly, Spring Valley in Columbia, South Carolina. Today is Friday, November 24th, 2006. And you are listening to Volume 02, Number 42, of the Japan Considered Podcast.
Thanks for tuning in today. Good to have you. Without your interest, there’s little reason to continue to prepare these programs, and to speak into the microphone. I hope each of you in the United States had just the sort of Thanksgiving Day yesterday for which you had planned. And those of you around the world as well, who join us in celebrating our fourth Thursday of November National Day of Thanks. Lots to be thankful for, and good to be reminded of it from time to time.
Each week at this time we select three or four recent news items from Japan, and consider their longer-term significance for Japan’s domestic politics and conduct of international relations. We can’t cover everything. And the emphasis of our selection usually is quite different from that of the major news media outlets. So this isn’t the place to come to “keep up” with Japanese news. You can, however, find here interpretation of the longer-term significance of what’s going on in Japan.
Our audience for this program grows each week, with new subscribers and listeners popping up all around the globe. I never expected the project would attract so much attention when it all began a year ago. But still, we’ll never have a huge audience, given the specific subject matter, and our approach. We remain very much a “narrow-cast,” rather than a “broad-cast.” In the Podcast tradition. But at least we’re a genuine “podcast,” and not one of those “Pod-Re-Casts” we see in increasing numbers on the Web. This program is created from beginning to end for this specific program, and nothing else. My USC Japanese politics class students listen sometimes. But I suspect that’s because South Carolina students are generally polite people, and think they should. It’s not because the program is created just for them.
This past week in Japan again has been chuck-full of things to discuss. It just doesn’t let up. About all we’ll have time for today, however, is consideration of the significance of Sunday’s Okinawa gubernatorial election results. Lots to be said about that. Well beyond the reports of the vote tabulation that we’ve seen in the English language press. Other topics planned for this week will just have to wait.
The Okinawa Gubernatorial Election
Okinawa Prefecture elected a new governor last Sunday. The vote was close. Very close, in fact. More on that in a moment. But the ruling coalition-backed candidate, Hirokazu Nakaima, emerged the winner. Sending a collective sigh of relief through at least the Kantei in Japan, and probably even through the ministries and agencies of government responsible for national security affairs.
Japan’s national political media had been providing quite good coverage of the race for some time. All observers agreed this was an important election. Even more important than the other gubernatorial elections we’ve discussed here during the past few months. For several reasons.
Significance of the Okinawa Vote
First, the Okinawa gubernatorial election had potential significance for Japan’s overall national security. A good portion of U.S. military facilities in Japan have been located in Okinawa Prefecture. They’ve been a key issue during the tortuous bilateral negotiations over U.S. military realignment in Japan. Given the importance of the U.S. security guarantee in Japan’s national defense strategy, Tokyo would have been seriously inconvenienced had Okinawa’s voters elected a governor unalterably opposed to any U.S. military presence whatsoever in Okinawa.
Second, Okinawa’s economy needs help. Unemployment in Japan overall now is down to just over 4 percent. But Okinawa’s unemployment rate is nearly twice that, at 7.8 percent. The worst in the whole country. Okinawa’s economy since the end of World War Two has depended heavily on services provided to the U.S. military. In recent years, the Okinawa prefectural government, in cooperation with Tokyo, has made efforts to diversify, especially into tourism. But still, Okinawa depends heavily upon the U.S. military bases it hosts, and on subsidies from the central government, much of which is related to the presence of those military bases. A new governor with new economic development ideas would be most welcome to most of Okinawa’s voters.
Polls prior to the election showed without doubt that economic development was the issue of greatest concern to those likely to vote in the election. This was a message the winning side heard and responded to. The losing side focused their campaign energies elsewhere.
But that’s not all of it. This election had national political significance as well. Its outcome was important both to the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito, and to Ichiro Ozawa’s Democratic Party of Japan.
I’m tempted to conclude that it was more important to Ozawa’s DPJ. But that may not be true. Had ruling coalition-endorsed candidate, Hirokazu Nakaima, lost, most of Japan’s political press would certainly have explained it as a vote of no-confidence in the Abe Administration. Both in their conservative domestic economic policies and in their approach to foreign relations. Leading inevitably to a widely-publicized drop in the Cabinet’s public opinion approval ratings. Probably across the board. That would have slowed the Abe Administration’s pursuit of its political agenda to a crawl, and would have further complicated diplo-military relations with the United States. At a particularly delicate time in Washington. So, Sunday’s Okinawa gubernatorial win was very important to the ruling coalition.
Significance of the Okinawa Vote for the DPJ
But as important as it was for the Abe Administration, we’re more likely to remember this election for the effect it will have on the losers. The Democratic Party of Japan invested heavily in this race. And invested under the direction of Party leader, Ichiro Ozawa. They did it his way. And they lost. Second-guessing began almost immediately. Grumblings against Ozawa’s leadership from within the Party has already trickled, usually anonymously, onto the opinion pages of Japan’s media.
Ozawa believed it important for the DPJ to take a confrontational stance vis-à-vis the LDP in Okinawa as well as at the national level. He insisted as Party leader that he was willing to cooperate with anyone, including the Communists, who would join him in opposition to the ruling coalition. He rejected the idea of again compromising his principal of not co-sponsoring candidates with the LDP in prefectural and local elections.
And by late September, after some to-ing and fro-ing, Ozawa had the ideal candidate for a grand anti-Ruling Coalition coalition. Keiko Itokazu. Itokazu was tailor-made to stand against the government-sponsored candidate in Okinawa. In 2006. Given everything going on.
During 12 years of service as a member of the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly, Itokazu became well known for her role as a “Peace Bus” tour guide. She was a leading member of the Okinawa Social Mass Party, a party that takes its Leftist politics as seriously as its name implies.
Then, in 2004 Itokazu enjoyed a whopping victory that sent her to Tokyo as a member of the Upper House. So, she was female, a proven vote-getter, with a political history sure to be Left enough for even the most Left-leaning leaning DPJ members. She was sure to attract and maintain the support of Okinawa’s Socialists, Communists, and labor unions. And she was a known quantity within the Okinawa constituency. What more could the DPJ ask for?
In line with her past political activities, and as expected, Itokazu focused her gubernatorial campaign primarily on the U.S. base issue. She didn’t want them in Okinawa. She opposed the whole business. And promised to fight for their removal should she be elected. Polling data in Okinawa suggested that a majority of voting Okinawans agreed with her.
The Ruling Coalition-Backed Hirokazu Nakaima
But, as noted a moment ago, that same polling data also showed Okinawa’s potential voters were even more worried about their prefecture’s economic development than they were about the presence of the U.S. military bases. This was the message the ruling coalition-backed candidate, Hirokazu Nakaima, took to heart, and made the core of his campaign. He might fairly be accused of being intentionally vague during his campaign about the U.S. military base issue, when he could. But he made certain the voters in Okinawa knew he had plans to revitalize the Okinawan economy.
Nakaima appears to me to be a typical traditional LDP candidate. He’s 67 years old, and a former senior official of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. Now METI, of course. He served three years as vice-governor under former Okinawa Governor Masahide Ota, from 1990, and also served with distinction for eight years as president of the Okinawa Electric Power Company. An ideal background for a candidate emphasizing economic development in his campaign.
He certainly isn’t one of the new-style LDP TV media candidates. Just one example. I created an audio clip to play on the program in which Nakaima explained his position on the U.S. military bases. But the clip was so long, and the language was so convoluted, that I eventually discarded it as unusable. It was just what one might expect from a former MITI Shingikan. Hardly the stuff of a hard-hitting modern media-based political campaign.
But what Nakaima lacked in charisma he certainly made up in campaign strategy for this particular election. He managed to finesse the U.S. military base issue by opposing the specifics of the current government-backed plan. But he said he would be willing to discuss alternatives with Tokyo when the time came. This left him free to emphasize his plans for Okinawa’s economic development, and his qualifications to implement those plans during his campaign.
It worked. Just barely, but it worked. Nakaima ended up with 347,303 votes to Itokazu’s 309,985. A thin margin of only 37,300 votes. But, given the attention the race received, and the Opposition’s well-organized effort, it was still impressive. I suspect that the DPJ really expected to win.
Voter turnout among Okinawa’s one million eligible voters was high, at 64.54 percent. Meaning unaffiliated voters also were attracted to the polls this time. Exit polling suggested that Itokazu did twice as well among those unaffiliated voters as did Nakaima. Those same polls also concluded that Itokazu received at least 90 percent of the votes of Socialist and Communist Party members. But she still lost.
Significance of the Okinawa Vote for Ozawa’s DPJ
As noted a moment ago, we’re more likely to remember this election for its effect on the Democratic Party of Japan than for any other reason. But what will that effect be?
I wish I had a good source of “insider information” within the DPJ. But I don’t. I’ve talked this week with several savvy political observers in Japan about this, via the blessedly inexpensive SkypePhone. None of them would agree to go on the record with their comments. And, truth be told, none of them had anything particularly insightful to add on this point. So, even more than usual, this is night-flying without instruments. But Something has to be said.
Resurrecting the Parliamentary Boycott Tactic
First, and most obvious, the election result had to be an embarrassment to DPJ leaders who agreed with the decision to boycott Diet hearings on the Education bill. We considered this briefly last week. Were the DPJ to adopt the Diet boycott tactic employed long ago by Japan’s Socialist Party – and use it successfully! – that would be an important development in Japanese electoral politics indeed.
Well, they adopted it. Boycotted the Lower House ad hoc Education Bill Committee deliberations, and then the Lower House plenary vote, and then the Upper House preliminary discussions. Claiming the ruling coalition hadn’t allowed time enough to debate issues related to the Bill. Universal speculation in Japan at the time was the boycotting was intended to inspire widespread media criticism of the ruling coalition’s callous behavior. And that said media criticism would benefit the DPJ-backed candidate in the Okinawa gubernatorial election.
It didn’t work that way, however. Some of the more left-leaning Japanese political media dutifully criticized the ruling coalition’s parliamentary “ramming” tactics, as in decades past. But their criticism just wasn’t credible enough to help. The ruling coalition’s huge majority, the length of time already allocated for parliamentary debate, and the blatant political opportunism of the DPJ’s move, combined to neutralize the sting of those reports.
The DPJ leadership may well have “strategized” themselves out of their best opportunity to generate more media coverage of the Town Meeting Fixing Fracas. By deciding not to participate in the Diet debates. Were they to have stayed, at least their representatives would have been able to speak out about the problem, with TV cameras running. And their statements almost certainly would have given that potentially destructive issue more media coverage.
But the DPJ lost that opportunity by boycotting. Two days after the Sunday vote the DPJ and other Opposition parties agreed to return to Diet debate, indicating they recognized their mistake. And I doubt that we’ll see efforts to revive the antique “boycott” strategy in the near future. If so, that’s a good thing.
I’m pretty sure of that conclusion. I’m less confident about the following, however. That is, on what appears to be Ichiro Ozawa’s strategy of building a grand Ruling Coalition anti-Coalition, from any party or group of individuals willing to join. Ozawa has repeatedly stated his willingness to cooperate with any group that will join his effort to elect members of the Lower and Upper Houses of the Diet adequate to topple the current LDP and New Komeito coalition’s parliamentary majority.
This reminds me of nothing more than the traditional organizational strategy of the LDP. The “big tent” approach to political party building. Well, that would make sense. Ozawa learned political organization within the LDP. Indeed, he was a member – even a senior member – of the LDP for longer than many incumbents have been LDP members today. The LDP was incredibly successful with this approach. Nobusuke Kishi could sit comfortably with Takeo Miki and Kiichi Miyazawa to discuss LDP organization and strategy. Recognizing their ideological and policy differences, but choosing to ignore them for the sake of winning elections.
This “big tent” approach to political party management has come under fire, even for the LDP, in recent years. An excellent example can be seen today in the debate over whether the former “postal reform rebels” should be re-admitted to the LDP or not. And if admitted, under what conditions? Japan’s political press has closely covered this issue, with detailed speculation on how such an “opportunistic” move would damage the LDP’s public image. Those of us with memories long enough to recall the LDP’s behavior under similar conditions during the heyday of the 1955 System can only shake our heads in amazement.
Sooo, Japan’s electoral political environment seems to have changed. I believe it has. That which was accepted by the public as a matter of course thirty years ago, may not be as acceptable now. And that’s as important for Ichiro Ozawa’s DPJ as it is for Shinzo Abe’s LDP.
As we’ve noted so often on this program, Ozawa as DPJ president, is faced with incredibly difficulty problems of organization. His Party includes former Socialists – some of them fairly muscular Socialists – as well as more conservative younger members who recognize Japan’s new electoral political environment and believe their Party should play according to the new rules. The Left-leaning members of the DPJ may not represent anything approaching a majority in the Party. But they do maintain close ties to some of the more politically active labor unions throughout the country. An excellent source of campaign organization support. And a temptation for any Party leader.
Further, those connections sometimes work. It’s received little media attention, but on the same day Ichiro Ozawa’s candidate was disappointed in the Okinawa gubernatorial election, Hiroshi Yoshida won a surprising victory in Fukuoka City’s mayoral race. He beat ruling coalition-backed incumbent mayor Hirotaro Yamasaki by almost 20,000 votes. That with the support of the DPJ. It also seemed to work in the Fukushima gubernatorial race we considered last week.
Ichiro Ozawa is a brilliant political strategist. And, to say the least, flexible in his pursuit of political success. He may reflect on all of this and emerge with a better strategy for his Party. Or, he may dig in his heels and punish the messengers who bring him news of defeats. His future as DPJ leader will depend upon his reaction. Japan’s political media will be watching closely. I’ll keep you posted on developments, to the extent I can.
Again, that’s all we have time for this week. Next week may be a bit more quiet for political Japan, allowing us to get back to some topics long delayed. Such as the review of Yuriko Koike’s role in the Abe Kantei, and efforts under way to create a Kantei-based “National Security Council” of sorts to coordinate Japan’s international relations.
On a lighter note, I heard again this week from Gabriel Wiseman of North Carolina’s Wind Riders. They’re in the very early stages of planning a new album which may – that’s “m-a-y” – include their incredible rendition of “Paul and Silas.” It’s not on their just-released CD from CDBaby. A North Carolina plot, I’m sure, to make sure we buy two albums rather than just one! But their current album does include “You Can Share My Blanket.” Another incredible musical experience. Here are the closing bars to give you an idea of the sound. Ah, with music like this to listen to, life’s not so bad after all …
[bluegrass clip]
Goodbye all. Until next week.
