Abe's Anxious Commitment

Can He Take Back Japan? is purported a book review in The New York Review of Books (November 6, 2014 Issue)of Chewing Gum and Chocolate: Photographs by Shomei Tomatsu. The book is an excuse for Ian Buruma to examine the policies of the conservative nationalist Abe Administration. He homes in on the contradiction between Abe's desire for national pride and his fear of losing American protection. Abe's government has tested and prodded the relationship. It is not indedence that that Abe wants, but unconditional love--the freedom to do anything it wants. Abe will not jettison the US, Buruma believes. Neither the US nor Japan is that independent. And this is the problem with Asia. With everything Buruma, the essay below is elegant and perceptive.

“China! China! China!” That is how a former Japanese diplomat summed up his country’s foreign policy preoccupations this summer in Tokyo. A quick glance at what’s on sale at Japanese bookstores proves him right: pile upon pile of books about the “threat” of China, the “power” of China, China’s “hatred” of Japan, the “downfall” of China, the “triumph” of China, and so on.

Smaller but still considerable piles of books in a market that is struggling like everywhere else concern a subsidiary branch of the China obsession: books about the awfulness of Korea, for sucking up to China and for hating Japan. There have even been reports of demonstrations here and there of Japanese screaming: “Death to the Koreans!”

Relations among the countries of East Asia are tense, to be sure, with Chinese and Japanese military planes stalking one another over disputed islands in the East China Sea, and the South Korean President Park Geun-hye refusing to talk to the Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo because of territorial (more little islands) and historical quarrels. It cannot be easy for Japan, which had become so used to being the wealthiest, most dynamic, most modern nation in Asia, to see China’s power grow by the day. A younger generation of Japanese, tired of being told by foreigners to feel guilty about a war most of them know very little about, appears to be receptive to a dose of nationalist reassertion.

And so the second administration of Abe Shinzo (the first lasted only one year and ended rather shamefully in 2007) would seem to have arrived at just the right time. Reelected in a landslide in 2012, Abe promised to revive the lackluster economy, and also to be a tough nationalist. There would be no more apologizing for the past or kowtowing to foreigners. Abe vowed to “take back Japan.”

This meant, for one thing, that in 2013 he would visit Yasukuni Shrine, where the souls of soldiers who have died for the imperial cause, including war criminals, are remembered. He would revise the postwar pacifist constitution, written by Americans in 1947 (in rather poor Japanese) to take away Japan’s sovereign right to wage war. A new secrecy law has been passed, making it a punishable offense to leak state secrets or to publish them. There were plans to review apologies made by former Japanese governments for what was done in World War II—plans that ran into such opposition abroad and in Japan that they had to be abandoned.

Some of Abe’s cronies have openly questioned Japanese war guilt. Hyakuta Naoki, a board member of the national broadcasting company NHK, has stated that the notorious Nanking Massacre of 1937, when at least tens of thousands and probably many more Chinese were brutally murdered by the Japanese, never occurred. The head of NHK, Momii Katsuto, has argued that the systematic use of Koreans and other foreign sex slaves in Japanese Imperial Army brothels was an entirely normal enterprise. Few are in doubt that these views reflect those of the prime minister himself.

No wonder, then, that the South Koreans are upset, and the Chinese are warning the world, for their own self-serving reasons, naturally, that Abe is about to revive Japanese militarism. In fact, Abe has never gone that far. But his stated goal has consistently been to change the postwar order, to restore full Japanese sovereignty and national pride. Not only does he want to do away with official pacifism; he also wants to give young Japanese a new sense of patriotism. The so-called “Tokyo Trials View of History,” used to promote pacifism by recalling Japan’s dark wartime past, is dismissed by Abe’s followers as left-wing propaganda. It is time for a national reawakening, a new beginning.

All this would indeed be alarming if Abe’s program weren’t so riddled with contradictions. For even though he loudly proclaims his intention to overturn the postwar order, the main pillar of that order is still very much intact. As a result of its pacifist constitution, Japan is highly dependent on the US for its security. This would be the first thing one would expect a Japanese nationalist to want to change. And some do. The former governor of Tokyo, a right-wing popular novelist named Ishihara Shintaro, for example, makes no bones about this. “Taking back Japan,” he said, “should mean absolute independence.”

But Abe has shown no such intention. Since he cannot get the requisite two thirds of the Japanese Diet to agree to constitutional change, all Abe has achieved is a “reinterpretation” of the constitution, allowing Japan to help friendly troops or United Nations peacekeepers in case of an attack, and only when specifically asked to do so. Even as he huffs and puffs about taking back Japan, Abe has done everything in his power to tighten Japan’s relationship with the US, in security and trade; he is a champion of the “Trans-Pacific Partnership,” which includes Japan, the US, and ten other countries. Even the law protecting government secrecy came about after the US exerted pressure to safeguard shared intelligence. Far from wanting more independence from Washington, the main fear among Abe’s conservative advisers appears to be American weakness, the possibility that a war-weary US would not immediately come to Japan’s rescue in case of a conflict with China—over a few disputed rocks in the South China Sea, for instance.

Dean Rusk, who negotiated the US–Japan Security Treaty as assistant secretary of state in 1951, once called Japanese strategy “schizophrenic.” Japan, he said, was like “the man who wanted to sleep with a woman one night without having to say hello to her in public the next day.” What he meant then was that Japan’s eagerness for US military protection sat uneasily with its proud and sometimes moralistic pacifism. The same metaphor could be applied to Japan today, but with a new twist. Now it is Abe’s stated aim of restoring sovereignty that doesn’t quite square with his anxiousness to preserve Japan’s status as a kind of US military protectorate.

For more than 150 years, Japan has placed itself awkwardly between Asia and the West. To understand Japan’s current problems with China, one has to understand its tortured relationship with the US, the first nation to defeat Japan in a war. Not that China’s relations with the US are any more straightforward. The Chinese, feeling hemmed in by unfriendly powers, would dearly like to drive a wedge between Japan and its Western protector. At the same time, China is probably happier with the US as a Pacific policeman than it would be with Japan as a revived military power, even though China is also making a point of defying US policies in the Pacific.

One way to understand postwar Japanese attitudes toward US dominance in cultural, social, as well as military affairs is to look closely at Tomatsu Shomei’s extraordinary photographs taken of American military bases in Japan and Okinawa in the 1960s and 1970s. They have been described as pictures of hate, but that is to miss the deep ambivalence toward the US that was typical of Tomatsu and others of his generation.

Yes, there is the nasty image, taken from below, of a US army boot about to descend on the photographer’s head, with laughing crew-cut heads peering down, as though they represented the brute force of America stomping on poor wormlike Japan. Or the less contrived and even more shocking image of a B-52 bomber swooping over a steaming rubbish dump in Okinawa with an old woman in rags looking up. But there is also something alluring about the pictures of neon-lit bars in naval towns like Yokosuka, “home of the seventh fleet,” or the black GIs striking Black Panther poses, or even the graphic panache of huge Coca-Cola signs, dwarfing a line of shabby little Japanese umbrellas. The young Japanese men in several photos, mimicking an American fantasy in their cream-colored jive suits and shades, are a little pathetic but also touching. You sense that Tomatsu understood their vulnerability because he shared their fascination. (Chewing Gum and Chocolate, a new compilation of his photographs, has been superbly edited by Leo Rubinfien and John Junkerman.)

All Tomatsu’s pictures were taken after the Allied occupation of Japan (though not yet Okinawa) was long over. Japan became independent again after signing the Peace Treaty of San Francisco in 1951. But for many men of Tomatsu’s generation the occupation was never really over; it continued inside their heads. Occupation was the title he chose for the pictures he took around the US base towns in Japan and Okinawa. Tomatsu was fifteen when Japan was defeated and the US troops arrived, casually tossing sticks of gum and chocolates at the children running after their jeeps. The rampant conquerors, who could often buy the favors of local women with a pair of silk stockings or a Hershey bar, were for young Japanese men a source of deep humiliation. But they also came with jazz music, easy manners, cool clothes, a promise of democracy, and what seemed then like vast wealth. Tomatsu puts it well:

I always say that my Occupation series is on the border between love and hate. I can neither reject nor affirm the occupation. Of course I reject it, but there are many elements that I have to affirm. Immediately after the defeat, some people called the occupying forces an army of liberation. Those words imply an affirmation, and I experienced that very feeling.

For people on the left, including members of the Communist Party, which had been banned by the wartime Japanese authorities, the occupation really was a liberation. Political prisoners were released and trade unions reorganized. Land ownership was radically reformed. Women got the vote. In fact, the new Japanese constitution was a very progressive document. Despite General MacArthur’s own reactionary views, the politics of the early years of American tutelage were those of the New Deal.

That is why Japanese liberals felt so betrayed when the cold war put an end to all this. Love turned to hate when “red purges” took place in unions, educational institutions, and even movie studios. Japan—to the huge profit of the Japanese business elite—was dragged into American wars in Korea and Vietnam. Even as Republicans like Richard Nixon publicly stated that the pacifist constitution had been a terrible mistake, it became a badge of honor for the Japanese left. And in fact mainstream conservatives, who were more than happy to let the US take care of security while the Japanese got on with business, supported official pacifism too. They did not necessarily like the Americans, but they could profit from them.

But not everyone on the right was happy. Ever since the end of the war, a vociferous minority felt not only that Japan had been robbed of its sovereignty, but that a sinister alliance of foreign occupiers and Japanese leftists had destroyed the moral foundations of the Japanese polity, including the sacred imperial institution. Taking back Japan, for them, did not mean being pro-American. Such sentiments are still heard today. Here, for example, is Sugiyama Katsumi, managing director of the Defense Research Center in Tokyo, whose words are worth quoting, not because they represent mainstream opinion, but because they reflect a small but insistent current in conservative Japanese politics:

America’s fundamental strategy towards Japan is containment. For the last seventy years the US has continued to regard Japan as an enemy country. The reason for the continued presence of US troops in Japan is not just because Japan is strategically indispensible, but because it is viewed with the deepest distrust.

Ishihara, the former governor of Tokyo, is of the same persuasion. And Prime Minister Abe’s strident opinions about constitutional and cultural revisions suggest that he is too. In fact, however, his policies show that he is still firmly planted in the conservative mainstream. He would much prefer to be protected by the US, even if that means remaining under Washington’s thumb, than to make independent arrangements with Japan’s immediate neighbors.

And so Abe has to contend with furious demonstrations from people on his left; one middle-aged man actually set fire to himself in protest against tinkering with the pacifist constitution. But he is also attacked from the right for being such a pushover, relatively politely by Ishihara, and less so by extreme right-wing groups whose khaki and navy blue sound trucks drive around Tokyo blaring wartime military marches.

Can Kan Survive?

Getty Images

By tomorrow we will know if the Kan government has survived. On Thursday, June 2 the opposition LDP and New Komeito coalition promises to bring a no-confidence motion to a vote. How many rebels within Kan’s own party, the DPJ, will join is the question. Note, it is not “whether” but “how many.” No matter the outcome, Prime Minister Kan’s leadership is shaken and the DPJ is shredded.

The G8 Summit and the bilateral with President Obama was important for Prime Minister Naoto Kan. They bolstered Japan’s international presence as well as the beleaguered leader’s image. At home, Japan’s triple disasters have created profound physical and psychological damage. Japanese remain panicked about the continued radiation from Fukushima.

Kan is under heavy criticism for his allegedly bungling responses, particularly to the nuclear accident. Kan and his cabinet have been pummeled daily in the Diet and the press. The U.S.-Japan summit meeting thus turned into an anchor of calm for Japan in a sea of political chaos at home.

Japan needed the personal assurances of its good friend and ally, the U.S., that the bilateral relationship remains high on the President’s agenda, including assistance to help its long-term recovery. That being said, the bilateral meeting did not address pending problems, nor was it supposed to. It simply gave Kan more time to work on domestic issues such as the future course of the Futenma relocation issue and Japan’s preparations for possibly joining TPP – hopefully by the Prime Minister’s official U.S. visit, now delayed to September.

That is, if Kan can survive politically beyond tomorrow.

Kan’s visible presence among the G8 leaders, his speeches that showed Japan’s resolve, and promises on the energy front were impressive. It was also good for the Japanese people to see their leader no longer in a crisis-management mode, but actively engaged in fulfilling the international responsibilities of his position. Press reaction initially to his summit diplomacy was positive. The media have been far less friendly, though, on the highly volatile issue of managing the nuclear crisis set off by the Fukushima disaster.

Kan may have bought some time with the U.S., but the political opposition in the Diet has not given him any slack. He returned from France not only with heavy Summit homework to address, but also a Diet in turmoil, key bills in limbo, and a reinvigorated opposition camp ready to submit a no-confidence motion against him. The irony of the U.S. President praising Kan’s leadership, when it is under severe attack at home, was not lost on the Japanese media.

It is likely that some of the anti-Kan forces in the DPJ, mostly loyal followers of former Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa, will bolt from the party to support the motion. DPJ leaders have warned that they would throw any rebels out of the party. Nevertheless, former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has also indicated that he will support the no-confidence motion. Further, on Wednesday evening three Vice Ministers and two Parliamentary Secretaries turned in their resignations to the government. The five men, all close to Ozawa, said that they had to resign in order to vote for the no confidence motion.*

As of today (June 1, U.S. time), it still seems unlikely that there will be enough rebels (85 or so needed) to allow the motion to pass. Conventional wisdom, however, has the number at around 50. Kan told the Diet he was not about to resign with his job of reconstructing Japan undone, and the DPJ has warned that the Prime Minister might dissolve the Diet as punishment to the rebels and the LDP.

But an election could be political suicide for the DPJ. At least four political pundits have predicted that if there were a snap election, the DPJ would lose badly, with the LDP winning big enough to put it back into power with the Komeito. Recently, however, the Japanese Supreme Court ruled the previous Diet elections unconstitutional. They can prohibit another election until the Diet fixes the apportionment inequalities in the voting system. It is anybody's guess how this political drama will play out, but the mood of the public is very negative that at a time of national calamity the politicians are playing a game of chicken.

Assuming he survives this ordeal, Kan must then start to work on delivering on his G8 Summit homework. His still-to-fleshed out energy plan, announced at the OECD, is bold and ambitious, but the target, for example, of doubling reliance on renewable energy by 2020 is seen as admirable as it is unattainable. And whether the Japanese economy – and society – can take another 10 years of austere restrictions on energy – another target – remains to be seen. There is fear in industry that power restrictions and rising costs could drive even more production offshore.

On the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Kan would like Japan to join, but the domestic obstacles to including agriculture among Japan’s concessions remain even more formidable now after the earthquake that destroyed precious farmland in the north. The delay in TPP preparations also has given anti-TPP forces the advantage in their campaign to convince the public that joining would “destroy” Japanese agriculture. The new arrival sections of bookstores are already filling with such propaganda.

It is the herculean task of finally resolving the Futenma base relocation issue that may ultimately make or break Mr. Kan. Committed firmly to implementing the current relocation plan, the central government must now do the kind of heavy lifting in Okinawa that it previously was loathe to do – namely, convince the governor and local officials to allow the base to agree to let the base be moved to another part of Okinawa and not out of the prefecture.

Defense Minister Kitazawa’s meeting last week with Okinawa’s Governor Nakaima went predictably nowhere. Whether the exhausted Kan Cabinet, assuming is survives the June crisis, has the will and the energy to devote to convincing Okinawa to swallow a very bitter pill that is likely to include offers of significant economic measures to affected areas to win them over remains unclear. And frankly, neither the DPJ rebels nor the too long ruling and opposition LDP have proposed better solutions.

Spiteful politics is no way to run a country.

William Brooks

APP Senior Fellow

Mindy Kotler

APP Director

*The five, all Lower House lawmakers, are Shozo Azuma, senior vice minister at the Cabinet Office, Wakio Mitsui, senior vice minister of land, infrastructure, transport and tourism, Katsumasa Suzuki, senior vice minister of internal affairs and communications, Akira Uchiyama, parliamentary secretary of internal affairs and communications, and Takeshi Hidaka, parliament secretary of environment.

Hatoyama's next decision: Go now or in July

It's cost him a the respect of two nations and a coalition ally, and it looks likely the Futenma flap will cost him his job.

After months of efforts in vain to find a spot to relocate Futenma Air Station anywhere but inside Okinawa, Prime Minister Yukio Hatayama has reluctantly concluded that something close to the original plan for a replacement facility at Henoko in Nago City is the only practical solution, and an agreement with the US is now in the works.

Opting to revisit the original plan to put relocate Futenma to the Camp Schwab vicinity at Henoko came after the Hatoyama administration's attempts to obtain the cooperation of new candidate sites for relocation – such as Tokunoshima Island in Kagoshima Prefecture--failed one after another, mainly due to opposition from local governments and residents. Swallowing his pride, the Prime Minister even journeyed to Okinawa over the weekend to personally apologize – with TV cameras rolling – to Governor Nakaima for reneging on his campaign promise to remove Futenma from Okinawan soil. The governor was predictably angry and uncooperative, and public outcries of “betrayal” from Okinawans dominated news coverage of the event.

Though he made the only decision he felt possible, Hatoyama is being attacked for it by even the liberal press. The usually Democratic Party of Japan-friendlyAsahi Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun, severely faulted him in editorials for his decision to keep Futenma inside Okinawa, though neither paper offered any other solution. The conservative Yomiuri Shimbun, usually harsh toward the DPJ government on this issue, soundly scolded Hatoyama in its editorial for the long delay, but supported his decision to opt for the alliance over local interests.

The reaction of the former ruling Liberal Democratic Party was disappointing. Instead of applauding a decision on Futenma for a plan that they had favored, the LDP opportunistically used the occasion to blast Hatoyama for callous treatment of Okinawan sensitivities. The former ruling party is even threatening to file a no-confidence motion against the Prime Minister.

Okinawa may have their issues with a DPJ government that promised change but delivered the opposite, but the prefecture from the start has rejected any pragmatic resolution. The governor previously supported the Henoko plan negotiated and approved by his successor in 2006. Now, he has joined the crowd calling for Futenma’s immediate closure and removal from Okinawa.

The Hatoyama government is to blame for raising false hopes, and then wasting everyone’s time while it scurried around looking for relocation sites outside of Okinawa. It also needlessly tried US patience by reneging on the old agreement only to come up in the end months later with a resolution that is almost the same as before. Such a decision arguably could have been made last December. Of course, at that time, Hatoyama was besieged by the Social Democratic Party, which wanted the base moved to Guam and threatened to bolt the ruling coalition if he made a decision that kept Futenma in Okinawa. The SDP is no longer needed in the coalition now, the budget and other major legislation having been passed. The DPJ can find other, more cooperative coalition partners among the small parties after the July election.

Still, even at this late point, Prime Minister Hatoyama should be praised for finally displaying leadership and making a pragmatic decision and then swallowing his pride to apologize face to face to the Okinawa governor. Yes, it was probably the only choice he could have made under the circumstances; the only other alternative would have been to ask the US to send all the Marines home so he could close the base.

The Prime Minister cited the need to maintain “military deterrence” as his chief reason for not siding with Okinawa on this issue. He probably knew that was the priority all along. But it is tempting to speculate that the latest round of scary saber rattling by North Korea, torpedoing a South Korean patrol boat and killing 46 sailors, may have added impetus to Hatoyama’s resolve to side with the alliance in resolving the Futenma issue.

The Alliance may have suffered a bit of damage by this affair but that will heal. The real collateral damage is a major loss of trust in Okinawa for a party that was seen by many as the prefecture’s white knight on US base issues. Now, Futenma may be more than just a symbol of the base problem. It may in effect have become a rallying cry for a nascent political movement in Okinawa that not only rejects a pragmatic solution for the long-delayed reversion -- in effect keeping the citizens of Ginowan City near the base in perpetual limbo -- it also may seek the long-term goal of removing the US military presence from the island prefecture. Such goals and activities are not new in the history of base negotiations in Okinawa, but this inchoate movement, fueled by the DPJ government’s inept handling of the issue and anger at its broken promises, could escalate. 

The LDP’s tack in the past was to offer economic incentives to placate Okinawa whenever the base problem heated up, essentially capping strong anti-base movements. But the DPJ has been loathe to use such devices. Moreover, the locals were never given a say, reading about most proposals and now the final decision in the newspapers, which has only added more fuel to the fires of outrage. If the new relocation plan is ever to have a chance of being implemented, the ruling party may now have no choice but to belatedly enter the realm so masterly managed by the LDP in the past and offer lavish economic measures.

As for Prime Minister Hatoyama’s political fate, his popularity has already plummeted to 20% or below in the polls, and his party’s support ratings are even below the LDP’s in some surveys. Hatoyama’s controversial decision is not likely to endear him to a public that has already given up on his administration. Having made the decision, and assuming that a US-Japan agreement is in its final stage, the Prime Minister may indeed decide that the situation has become untenable and resign to let a fresh face take the party into the general election in July.

It may come down to a question of whether to resign before the election to take responsibility for breaking his promise to Okinawa, or having to resign after it to take responsibility for a poor showing for his party. In either case, Hatoyama gets no respect for a decision he promised and delivered in May.

Dr William Brooks
APP Senior Fellow

Voters driven to distraction as Hatoyama destination is becoming known

There does not appear to be any way for Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama to head off the political train wreck coming his way.

With his popularity having reached even more dangerous lows – 20 to 24 percent range -- in the latest polls, an inquest panel’s finding this week that DPJ Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa should be indicted for his money scandals, and news of his seemingly desperate decision on Futenma relocation that is only likely to bring the wrath of Okinawa down on his head, the Prime Minister seems to be coming off the rails. He has no allies in the press, with even liberal dailies friendly to the DPJ decrying his mishandling of the issues. The Western press continues also to hammer him for allegedly creating a crisis in the US-Japan alliance over the Futenma issue.

The consensus in the press, and among a growing number in his party, seems to be that Hatoyama simply cannot lead his party into the summer Upper House election with a support rate now around 20% and falling. The result would be a disaster. It would not be surprising to have him first seal up a highly unpopular deal on Futenma and then, taking responsibility for breaking a campaign pledge to move the facility out of Okinawa Prefecture, resign his seat as prime minister to make way for a more popular leader. Rumors have Finance Minister Naoto Kan, a popular figure in Japanese politics, to take the driver's seat prior to the election campaign period.

After months of hemming and hawing on where to relocate Futenma, a Marine Corps base located in downtown Ginowan City on Okinawa, and floating just about every conceivable site proposal ranging from Kyushu to Guam, the Hatoyama government, reportedly has decided, apparently in desperation, to return to square one and opt for the original relocation plan from 2006 with some modifications.

Since Hatoyama promised in last year’s election campaign to move Futenma out of the prefecture, his reneging will inevitably outrage Okinawa, where only last week approximately 90,000 demonstrators* angrily protested against any agreement that resulted in Futenma being relocated inside the prefecture. The DPJ’s coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party, already has flatly come out against the plan. It is no wonder that the controversial decision was leaked to the press at the start of the Golden Week consecutive holidays, when people are on vacation and less attentive to the news.

According to the business daily Nikkei on April 29, the US government has been informed that: 1) the current plan to reclaim land along the shore line of Camp Schwab will be revised and altered to a more environmentally-friendly construction method that would involve installing a pier supported by posts; and 2) a portion of the training by the helicopter unit will be carried out on a scale of up to 1,000 troops on Tokunoshima, an island in Kagoshima Prefecture. Prime Minister Hatoyama plans to visit Okinawa May 4 to explain the new plan to Governor Nakaima. Working-level talks on the new plan will start possibly in early May.

The revised relocation plan, the third iteration since the 1995 SACO agreement, is a combination of a 1996 proposal to build a sea-based runway off Henoko and a 2006 revision to build the runway along the shoreline of Camp Schwab, with parts of it jutting into the sea. The revised plan if implemented would finally allow for the closure of Futenma, eliminating the potential danger there of another helicopter crash like the one in 2004 into an adjacent university campus, where miraculously no civilians were hurt.

The proposal to remove training to Tokunoshima, which has an existing runway, is an obvious attempt to convince Okinawa to somehow swallow the decision not to remove the helicopter unit from the prefecture. Even if the U.S. concurs with the new plan, there is no guarantee that the residents of Tokunoshima, half of whom turned out recently to protest any relocation of Marines to their island, will change their tune. And Okinawans, too, seem unlikely to forgive Hatoyama for a decision that the residents will paint as a betrayal of trust. Implementing the third iteration of the Futenma relocation plan may prove to be just as elusive as its predecessors.

Ozawa once more on hot seat

Hatoyama also faces the nation’s severe judgment for keeping in place a party leader who most Japanese want to see out of power, as the polls have repeatedly shown. The latest blow for the Prime Minister was the news on April 28 that an inquest panel had ruled DPJ Secretary General should be indicted for alleged violation of the Political Funds Control Law, even though the Tokyo District Prosecutors Office earlier this year decided not to prosecute, citing insufficient evidence. Prosecutors are now obliged to reinvestigate the case, which makes it all the more likely Ozawa will eventually be indicted. Though editorials and the public in the latest polls are clamoring for Ozawa to quit his post, the DPJ powerbroker continues to stonewall.

The Japanese public, which will soon go to the polls in the Upper House election this summer, have not only given up on the Hatoyama Cabinet, they also have turned aside from the DPJ as the party of choice. The latest round of opinion polls released this week all show Hatoyama’s popularity at an abysmally low 20-24 percent range, reminiscent of the status of the last three LDP prime minister’s before they left office.

The surveys also show rapid decline in the DPJ’s support rate, with voters either joining the unaffiliated ranks or opting to support small splinter parties. The former ruling LDP, now in shambles with defectors leaving to form mini-parties or become independents, has little appeal for disaffected voters. Even if the DPJ switches to a more popular leader and rids itself of the albatross that Ozawa has become, it seems unlikely that it will score a victory in the election, though it is too early to predict how bad the result will be. Japanese politics seems to settling into yet another long, hot summer of voter discontent.

Dr. William Brooks
APP Senior Fellow

*Japan's National Police Agency, however, estimates the crowd to be closer to only 25,000 and the US Consulate on Okinawa estimates it to have been 40,000 to 45,000 people.

Ozawa: Master chef of a party with too many cooks

Six months in, and Ozawa seems to be the only chef barking orders in the DPJ kitchen.

Effective power in the Hatoyama administration seems to be subtly shifting in the direction of the Democratic Party of Japan, a domain controlled by DPJ Secretary General Ozawa.

Faced with criticism that his government’s policymaking process has too many cooks, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama in early March ordered the creation of a new policymaking mechanism that on the face of it looks like a crisp sharing of government-party responsibilities.

But looks can be deceptive. It turns out to be mainly a DPJ dish that will place policymaking control essentially into the hands of Ozawa. According to the Nikkei on March 9, Hatoyama ordered the establishment of a Council on Government Commitments (Seiken Kouyaku Kaigi), which he will chair. But the business daily sees the Council as mainly a rubber stamp for policy proposals set by the organ under it, the Manifesto Planning Committee (Manifesuto Keikaku Iinkai). This body split into government and party sections is charged with drafting a government new manifesto or set of campaign pledges for the Upper House election in July.

Though the new menu looks good on paper, it may further erode the Prime Minister’s top-down control on policymaking. The DPJ came into power last September promising to reform the policy-formation process by wresting power away from the bureaucracy and placing it in the hands of politicians. Specifically, the party promised to centralized policy under the Cabinet and the party’s leadership in the Diet. It said it would strengthen the Prime Minister’s Official Residence (Kantei) functions by creating a national strategy bureau headed by a cabinet-level official. The bureau has yet to be created by law.

In most key decisions, the Hatoyama administration has disappointed the public by indecisiveness, inadequate policy-making and consensus-building mechanisms, and, in the budget compilation done without bureaucratic oversight, runaway pork-barrel spending.

The structure of policymaking is clearly lacking a master chef. The Government Revitalization Council under the prime minister has taken the place of the party’s Policy Research Council (Seisaku Chosakai). The new process dealt with such policy issues as budget screening to root out waste and inefficiencies and compiling the national budget. But in each case in which the new formulation process was applied, the politicians at the top tended to accept recommendations from the working groups below instead of seriously evaluating and selectively adopting them. There also appeared to be a clear lack of prioritization in the mix.

Hatoyama ordered the establishment of the Council on Government Commitments to shore up the structural weaknesses of his administration, but the council with him at the head exists only to approve proposals coming up from the real center for policy making, the council, the Manifesto Planning Committee under it. This body will be split between party and government members and co-chaired by DPJ Deputy Secretary General Takashima and Minister for National Strategy Sengoku. Feeding ideas and proposals into the party side will be a newly created Diet members’ study group on policy (Seisaku Kenkyuukai), in which ordinary DPJ lawmakers may participate. This group also will present general proposals to a separate policy council representing the various ministries and agencies.

The scheme does not allow ideas to flow in from the bureaucracy. On the government side of the planning committee, proposals will flow in from three study groups – national life, growth and regional strategy, and decentralization and regulatory reform – that have the participation of ordinary DPJ lawmakers. The study groups also will assist in the drafting of the manifesto. The set up does not have provide for input from the party on the foreign and security policy front, so it is unclear whether the manifesto, at least, will address anything but a purely domestic agenda. Since Sengoku is not expected to play a major role, the DPJ deputy secretary general, Ozawa’s subordinate, will be the key person in the planning committee. Once ideas and proposals are fed into the planning committee, it chooses which ones to accept and incorporate into the manifesto. According to Nikkei, the council may be charged with drafting manifesto-related bills for submission to the Diet.

But the process only flows upward, for there is no vetting under this scheme of bills to the DPJ members before they are presented to the Diet. LDP governments used to do so by presenting bills to the Policy Research Council; but the DPJ abolished a similar council. Since the manifesto, despite its role as the official policy platform of the Hatoyama government, is always written by the party, the role of the government side in the planning committee is expected to be nominal, with the real work done on the party side.

Since last September, the only growing center of power in the party has been the office of the secretary general under Ichiro Ozawa, the party’s most experienced politician. To counter Ozawa’s growing influence, some senior DPJ lawmakers have asked that the party’s Policy Research Council be revived to serve as a counter. Those legislators would like to use that body’s consensus-building function to restore the power balance in the party. Meanwhile, Ozawa has used his office to unify policymaking under his control, extending even to local chapters. Moreover, he commands the respect and loyalty of some 140 lawmakers elected last summer whom he had handpicked as candidates – the so-called “Ozawa’s children.” Most if not all of them are centered in the party’s Diet Affairs Committee.

With the objective being to prepare for the July election, what seems to have been strengthened by Hatoyama’s new policy-making process to draft a new manifesto is the office of the DPJ secretary general, Ichiro Ozawa, the chief strategist and planner for the election. It is unclear how much substantive policy input will come from him directly, but with his deputy co-chairing the planning committee that is tilted already toward the party, Ozawa is certainly in a position to wield significant influence regarding the manifesto’s ultimate contents.

Ozawa seems unstoppable. Despite the public and the media’s critical view of his unwillingness to explain his role in the money scandals that have put three of his former aides in jail, there are no signs that he will step down before the summer election. He has even ignored a call for his resignation from the DPJ’s Gifu Prefecture chapter. Polls show at least 70% of the public want him to resign.

As Ozawa himself has stated, he would only resign if it were found he had done something wrong. The prosecutors by not indicting him, citing insufficient evidence, gave Ozawa the out he wanted. He continues to insist that he is totally innocent.

Moreover, since Hatoyama also has his money scandal, Ozawa could argue that his resignation would not help the prime minister in the polls. Ozawa apparently believes that by election time, the public will have forgotten the sleaze and will rediscover their taste for the cabinet and the DPJ. He continues to reiterate that the party will win the coveted sole majority in the Upper House race.

Ozawa’s major undoing may be the press adding spice to the stew. Just about every magazine has relentlessly run articles exposing or denouncing his past and present political misdeeds. Takashi Tachibana, the famous prize-winning journalist whose investigative journalism brought down Ozawa’s mentor, Kakue Tanaka, for his role in the Lockheed Scandal in the mid-1970s, has taken off against Ozawa recently. In an article for Shukan Gendai (January 9), Tachibana examines the power structure in the new government and concludes that Ozawa has become the real power in the party and government, seeing Hatoyama almost as a figurehead.

Given a daily diet of such fare, will the voters send the DPJ dinner back to the chef, and look for a more palatable party?

Dr William Brooks,

APP Senior Fellow

DPJ sees weapon of mass persuasion in LDP support of Iraq

Offense is the best defense, as the DPJ is learning from the LDP's playbook.

The "lies" of the 50-odd years of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party rule remain a popular topic for DPJ lawmakers. In part, the Democratic Party of Japan came into power rightfully promising to pursue the issue of a democratic government’s transparency. But the temptation to keep alive the memory of “LDP perfidy” in front of the voters has been hard for the party to resist, particularly with the Hatoyama cabinet’s popularity sharply eroding in the polls.

Last week, the establishment of an investigatory panel to examine recent LDP foreign and security policy decisions, followed the conclusion of one confirming old state secrets and deals with the United States. This time the focus is the Koizumi government’s decision to send troops to Iraq in support Washington’s request for “boots on the ground.”

At the same time, poll numbers here have continued to show that public support for the Hatoyama Cabinet is rapidly eroding and now in the 30-40% range. The Asahi reports that Cabinet support now at 37%, and may soon slip below 30%, traditionally a danger zone for previous governments that soon toppled afterward. Jiji Press surveys find support at 30.9 pct in March, down 4.8 percentage points from the previous month. The disapproval rate rose 3.8 points to 48.5%, according to the Jiji poll released on March 12th. Public support for the Hatoyama cabinet has dropped to half the level when it took office September 16,, 2008.

On Tuesday, March 9, a Hatoyama government panel released its report confirming the existence of a secret Cold War deal allowing the transit of nuclear-armed US vessels through its ports. This ended decades of official denial, although the existence of the pact was an open secret since the U.S. government had declassified relevant documents years ago, and a number of scholarly works on the subject have since been written. (See also Nautilus report, Japan Under the US Nuclear Umbrella.)

The panel also confirmed the existence of other pacts, more like memorandums of understanding, relating to the use of US military bases in Okinawa in the case of an emergency on the Korean peninsula and to the cost of the 1972 reversion of Okinawa from US to Japanese control. For historical reasons, it was important for Japan to search its archives for documents comparable to the ones in the US long ago released to the public.

Foreign Minister Okada’s explanation of the investigative process as historical and not political have helped, but the strong image left behind from the DPJ’s campaign rhetoric and subsequent charges against the LDP is that previous governments deliberately lied to the public about something they knew to be true.

A new phase of LDP bashing may now be about to start. On March 13, NHK TV reported that Upper House DPJ lawmakers launched a working group in the party’s policy deliberative council (seisaku shingikai) to probe into the propriety of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s decision following the initial ending of US-led military actions in Iraq to support the reconstruction of that country by sending Self-Defense Forces.

The Ground Self-Defense Force sent troops to Samawah, Iraq for local-assistance projects, such as repairs and water-supply purification, and an Air Self-Defense Force was sent to Kuwait to airlift goods and personnel, mainly US troops, into Baghdad. Both efforts ended in 2008 without casualties or incidents.

The legislator’s panel was formed, according to NHK, because of deep doubts about the Constitutional legality of the SDF missions in Iraq. The SDF was sent under a 2003 Special Measures Law for Iraq ordered by Koizumi. The Cabinet Legislation Bureau, the government's constitutional watchdog, never challenged the law.

One of the reasons then cited for Japan's supporting the war was the alleged presence of weapons of mass destruction, later proven untrue due to false intelligence reports. The DPJ would like to prove that justification for the missions based on such assumptions was improper. The panel will summon experts, as well as relevant officials from the Foreign and Defense ministries to present their views of the decision-making process and rationale.

Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada may have prompted the formation of the panel on March 10 when asked in the Diet about Koizumi's decision to send troops. He responded “I am keenly aware that he too easily made the decision, and I would like at some point to look comprehensively into how the government was involved, for the sake of the future.”

With the conclusion of the Hatoyama government's probe into secret nuclear pacts between Japan and the US coinciding with a decline of voter confidence in the ruling DPJ, the need to discredit the LDP remains. The logic in the DPJ seems to be that voters still need to be reminded as to how the LDP treated them with condescension and contempt.

The Koizumi decisions on supporting Iraq’s reconstruction by sending troops, never popular with the public but tolerated, appear to be a good new way to again beat up on the LDP.

Dr. William Brooks

APP Senior Fellow

Ms. Mindy Kotler

APP Director

Photo: President Richard Nixon and Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato meeting at the Western White House in San Clemente, California in January 1972. Nixon and Sato worked out the final details of the Okinawa reversion agreement during these meetings. [Source: Collection RN-WHPO: White House Photo Office Collection (Nixon Administration), 01/20/1969 - 08/09/1974; Richard Nixon Library - College Park, College Park, MD]

Hatoyama will weather the storm

Is Yukio Hatoyama and his administration "embattled" and drowning in a deluge of bad press?

Sorry to rain on the naysayers' parade, but the answer is "no," and nor do the fundamentals of Japanese politics appear completely against him. Unless the Democratic Party of Japan splits or the Tokyo prosecutors indict Mr. Hatoyama, he and his party will weather the storm. At first glance, this analysis seems overly sunny. The dramatic losses of the Nagasaki gubernatorial and the Machida City mayoral elections in Tokyo to LDP candidates do poke holes in the DPJ umbrella. With no more Lower or Upper House by-elections on the horizon, the Nagasaki gubernatorial election was presented as a bellwether prelude to the Upper House election in July.

But let's catch our breath here. There were seven candidates splitting the Nagasaki vote and five in Machida. The campaigns happened in the midst of the worst of the money politics accusations and indictments. The economy remains shaky and unemployment is only just beginning to drop.

In an Asahi Shimbun poll published Feb. 22, the rate of public support for Hatoyama’s cabinet fell below 40% for the first time since its launch. In this telephone-based nationwide public opinion survey conducted Feb. 20-21, the cabinet's support rate was 37%, down from the 41% rating in the previous spot poll conducted Feb. 5-6. Yet, this same survey showed that the LDP’s support rate had plateaued at 18% and the DPJ, maintained 32%. A similar Kyodo news poll found that Japanese still favor the DPJ over the LDP by 34% to 23%.

Nevertheless, the election defeat has given the DPJ and its Party Secretary Ichiro Ozawa pause. Ozawa’s soiled boots are visibly beginning to harm his party. The relentless negative press has worn on both Ozawa and the DPJ.

But in the DPJ’s favor is the continued disarray of the LDP. With six months left to the Upper House elections, the LDP shows neither the imagination nor leadership to move beyond its minority status. The result is that a number of LDP politicians – both Lower House members defeated last summer and incumbent Upper House members seeking re-election later this year – have resigned from the party and started plotting their comebacks under the DPJ coalition.

In the Upper House, on February 17th, these defections allowed the DPJ to gain a majority, thus dominating both houses of the Diet. In the more powerful Lower House, the DPJ’s 308 seats are considered a good indicator of the Party’s staying power. The result is both corporations and professional associations are moving toward the DPJ. The Japan Dental Federation recently dropped the LDP after decades of support to announce that they will back the DPJ in the Upper House elections in July. The new head of Keidanren, Hiromasa Yonekura, has pledged to explore ways to strengthen cooperation with the government by taking a pro-consumer stance.

DPJ party leaders believe the party can recover from its election defeats and regain the people’s trust. There is still a lot of time before the Upper House election and the 2010 budget will soon pass, putting DPJ policies into practice. The government will find a solution to Futenma and the Toyota mess is pushing politics off the front page. The DPJ rank and file are standing firm in support of Ozawa.

The Economist’s Banyan sees Hatoyama out as prime minister before the end of spring. He thinks a grand coalition is around the corner. But, for that to happen, a flood of lawmakers would need to exit the ruling party and the economy implode. That simply does not seem to be happening.

Although Ozawa's tenure is increasingly tenuous, one lesson learned from the brief respite from LDP rule in the 1990s was that you never step down, ever. Ideological differences on security policy and other issues do exist within the DPJ. Yet, for now all the major DPJ groups have effective representation in the cabinet, and no one really has anything to gain by dropping out and joining forces with a flailing and unpopular opposition.

Everyone is staying put.

Michael Penn,

APP Nonresident Fellow,

Shingetsu Institute

Mindy Kotler,

APP Director

Picture from here.

DPJ Seven adding to Hatoyama's fifth column

Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa may be off the hook, for now, from the Tokyo Prosecutor’s Office, but the fate of the leadership of the ruling party, especially scandal-weary Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, is looking ever more unhealthy.

Ozawa and Hatoyama face increasing opposition within their own party. There are several DPJ groups directly questioning Ozawa’s honesty and leadership, and indirectly, the Prime Minister's judgment.

In the spirit of true political gamesmanship, Hatoyama appears this week to have reached out to his critics. Two weeks ago, we noted a group of outspoken DPJ members calling for Ozawa to “fulfill his accountability.” Led by former Deputy Speaker of the Lower House Kozo Watanabe, they are referred to as the Seven Magistrates. Six of the members of this anti-Ozawa group met after the annual DPJ Convention (Shinji Tarutoko did not attend) on January 16 to voice their concerns over the Hatoyama-Ozawa tag-team.

English-language sources are scant on this powerhouse of senior party members, which takes its name from the Seven Magistrates of the old LDP Takeshita Faction, prominent in the 1980s. Both Ozawa and Watanabe were members. Watanabe coined the term for his group critical of Ozawa formed following Ozawa’s 2006 re-election to the DPJ Presidency. Watanabe’s group ramped up its anti-Ozawa rhetoric during the scandal last year that ousted Ozawa from the DPJ presidency.

The DPJ Seven share common members and goals with the conservative Ryoun-kai Faction. Yukio Edano and Yoshito Sengoku belong to both groups and Ryoun-kai head Seiji Maehara joined Edano in his criticism of Ozawa for the recent land purchase scandal. Ryoun-kai is the next largest faction in the DPJ. Ozawa’s, the Isshin-kai, is the largest. The DPJ Seven with membership of the Ryoun-kai Faction are:

• Kozo Watanabe, Fmr. Lower House Vice-Speaker
• Katsuya Okada, Foreign Minister
• Yoshihiko Noda, Senior Vice Foreign Minister
• Koichiro Gemba, Lower House Finance Committee Chairman
• Yukio Edano, (Ryoun) Fmr. DPJ Policy Research Committee Chairman
• Yoshito Sengoku (Ryoun) State Minister for National Policy
• Shinji Tarutoko, Lower House Environment Committee Chairman

A table (Japanese only) of Ryoun-kai members’ views on security and historical issues taken from a 2006 Mainichi survey can be found here – the topic for a future blog post.

Former DPJ Policy Research Committee Chairman Edano, one of the most vocal against Ozawa and the leader of Ryoun-kai sister group Kasei-kai, was promoted on Wednesday to Minister of the Government Revitalization Unit. This is either a move by Hatoyama to distance himself from Ozawa or to simply to co-opt and silence an opponent. Edano’s predecessor, Sengoku, took a more cautious tone against Ozawa following the DPJ Convention.

Hatoyama is walking a fine line in maintaining the DPJ by balancing pro- and anti-Ozawa groups. Although Sunday’s Mainichi magazine rumored that Hatoyama might purge anti-Ozawa forces from the Cabinet in April, it also noted that “ruthless” Hatoyama could get rid of Ozawa if approval ratings further plummeted. One litmus test for the Cabinet’s future will be the February 21 Nagasaki gubernatorial election.

This week, Tarotoku has been making the rounds of policy officials and experts. He was invited to Washington as the guest of the think tank CNAS, which was founded by now-Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell.

It looks like everyone on both sides of the Pacific is hedging his bets.

Michael DavidsonAPP Visiting Fellow

Mindy KotlerAPP Director

Playing safe is dangerous game for Hatoyama

Prime Minister Hatoyama has asked Japan's new public enemy No. 1 to remain by his side at the heart of Japanese politics.

Despite the national clamor for him to quit his post as secretary general of the Democratic Party of Japan, Ichiro Ozawa formally announced on Monday that he will hang in as the chief strategist for the Upper House election this fall.

The public is upset, with up to 74% wanting Ozawa to resign to take responsibility for the arrest of aides for illegal money transactions, according to polls. Over 80% remain unconvinced with his explanations in the surveys. All major dailies, too, weighed in over the weekend with the blunt suggestion to Ozawa of either explaining himself fully to the Diet or stepping down.

Even more dangerous for the powerful politician, cries for Ozawa’s resignation are starting to rise in his own party, most recently from DPJ policy chief Yukio Edano in a much televised public speech over the weekend. Edano belongs to a wing in the party that includes Seiji Maehara, a former DPJ president now in the Hatoyama cabinet. Ozawa’s arch enemies in the party are now likely to become more vocal in their criticism, fearing the worst in the upcoming election.

Creating further controversy, Ozawa’s former private secretary turned DPJ lawmaker Tomohiro Ishikawa, indicted for not reporting a $4 million political donation, also announced from Hokkaido, where he is sequestered after posting bail, that he would “hang in there” and not resign his Diet seat. But A group of Diet members from the opposition camp are preparing a resolution demanding that he quit.

Hatoyama may not realize how serious the situation has become. The daily scene of gridlock in the Diet as deliberations on the budget stall over the Ozawa scandal has eroded the public’s confidence in the DPJ administration. The latest round of opinion polls released over the weekend show further erosion of the Hatoyama Cabinet’s once sky-high popularity, with disapproval now outweighing support in most surveys.

The Yomiuri poll was typical with 47% against (up 5 points from January) versus 44% for. The public is questioning the cabinet’s ability to manage policy imperatives. According to the Yomiuri poll, 68% of the public were concerned about the future of the US-Japan relationship under the Hatoyama administration.

The subject of last Sunday’s talk show on NHK, Japan’s equivalent of BBC, was how to recover the public’s trust in politics. With representatives of every political party represented, the discussion turned into a Ozawa bashing session. Hatoyama, who has a money scandal of his own, didn't escape the blows. The lone DPJ member, an uncomfortable-looking Banri Kaieda, was forced to defend the indefensible as best he could.

A party which came into power last August 30 vowing to usher in change is now locked into a scenario reminiscent of the party it replaced. The DPJ was supposed to root out political corruption of the kind associated with the kingpins of the Liberal Democratic Party.

Prosecutors last week decided not to indict Ozawa, citing “lack of sufficient evidence.” The verdict was widely interpreted as not exonerating him from any culpability, and the public, as seen in the polls, agrees.

The hemorrhaging of his party’s public-support lifeline will continue. An NHK poll released Monday showed the support rate of the DPJ also is dropping sharply, accompanied by a spike in those who say they support no party. It was unaffiliated voters turning out in droves who propelled the DPJ into power last August. Their fickleness could do significant damage to the party in July’s Upper House race.

Young people in particular seem to disappointed with the DPJ. An NPO poll of college students of voting age (summarized in the national daily Mainichi on Saturday) found only 21% support for the Hatoyama cabinet, and another 45% sitting on the fence.

So far, the prime minister has continued to let matters run their course, unwilling to make tough decisions that might shore up his sagging public support and silence critics in the party who may want him, too, to step down. If he continues to play it safe, deferring to Ozawa’s judgment, he must steel himself to face the consequences in the election come July.

Dr William Brooks
APP Senior Fellow

Ozawa's headlines, Hatoyama's headaches

Not a day goes by without the words "scandal" and "Ichiro Ozawa" making the headlines in Japan.

Although three former close aides of the Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General have been arrested and one already indicted over political funding violations, Ozawa maintains his innocence. After questioning him twice, Tokyo prosecutors have concluded that there is insufficient evidence to indict him.

But this does not leave the DPJ kingmaker off the hook, even the DPJ’s coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party, is calling for him to testify before the Diet and fully explain his role over such matters as his explanation that the $4 million dollars entrusted to an aide for land purchases came from an acquaintance who has since died.

Ozawa adamantly refuses to resign, insisting that he must stay on to fulfill his party’s destiny of winning big in the Upper House election this July. Outside perhaps of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama (pictured) and a small coterie of Ozawa associates in the DPJ, no one seems willing to repeat his denials within earshot of the public. Liberal Democratic Party President Tanigaki, acting these days as chief inquisitor in repeatedly demanding a full explanation in the Diet, calls the government the “Ozawa Cabinet” - a jibe at the de jure prime minister.

Ozawa told the press February 4, “I will stay on in my post and work to recover the people’s trust.” The public, however, is not willing to cut him any slack, as seen in the business daily Nikkei’s opinion poll on Jan. 28, in which 65% said he should resign. The same poll found 83% wanted Ozawa to explain all of the allegations.

But Ozawa's woes are also Hatoyama's - 69% criticize his handling of the Ozawa issue. Disapproval of Hatoyama’s Cabinet rose five points to 47%, while the support rate slipped five to 44%. In the last four months, Hatoyama’s support has plummeted 30 points in the Nikkei survey. Why? “Lack of leadership” according to 59%.

The daily ordeal of grilling by the opposition, and even coalition lawmakers, in the Diet is taking its toll on Hatoyama. The press is depicting Hatoyama as losing his cool – though he has tried to keep his emotionless expression in response to sharp questioning.

But more is to come. With Ozawa’s former private secretary turned DPJ lawmaker Ishikawa now indicted, the Diet is moving to force him to resign his Diet seat. This would put even more pressure on Ozawa to take political responsibility and resign. And all this before new allegations of yet another money scandal involving Ozawa have played out in the press.

And it could get still worse for the DPJ. Assuming that Ishikawa resigns before March 15, there would be a by-election to fill his Diet seat on April 25. If the DPJ candidate lost, it would have serious consequences for the party's electability nationally. Some in the party reportedly are already questioning whether the prime minister is a liability going into the summer election, according to press reports.

The bottom line? The swing voters who make up at least a third of the national electorate are departing the DPJ in droves. These are the voters who put the LDP prime minister Junichiro Koizumi in power. It's not unthinkable that an unpopular prime minister and scandal-ridden kingmaker could find an altogether different destiny from the one they had imagined come July.

Image from here.

Dr William Brooks

APP Senior Fellow

Hatoyama fiddles as Ozawa scandal burns

Allegations of dirty money smearing postwar Japan's biggest political heavyweight have been dominating the national agenda this week.

The only relief for Ichiro Ozawa was the reappearance of the US base relocation issue, which has been wrestling Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's decision-making skills, when voters in Nago City elected a mayor opposed to moving the Marine base to the outskirts of his city.

Japanese voters are being treated to televised scraps in the Diet reminiscent of when the Liberal Democratic Party was in power. Then, LDP prime ministers were regularly pummeled by such Democratic Party of Japan leaders as Hatoyama, but this time, the boot is on the other foot. During January 21st’s Diet session, LDP President Sadakazu Tanigaki and other opposition leaders formed a tag team that had Hatoyama on the ropes for almost four hours about his and Ozawa’s political fund improprieties.

This week another group, with Upper House LDP lawmaker Yoichi Masuzoe in the lead, has relentlessly pursued the prime minister, tying up the Budget Committee from making progress on the second supplementary budget to stimulate the economy.

The LDP has been having a field day with the Ozawa scandal. Last Thursday, a group of lawmakers took a half-day bus tour to the various properties that Ozawa owns in Tokyo, with a cavalcade of press people in tow. Then, early this week, another group of LDP legislators braved the bitter cold and snow to visit the remote mountainous area of Iwate Prefecture, Ozawa’s home turf, to poke holes in a monsterous dam scheme. The project allegedly was rigged in part by Ozawa’s local office secretary, who is now in jail for his role in the scandal. Some local companies with contracts have implied Ozawa’s direct involvement, as well.

These were obvious political stunts by the LDP, but they could add to the level of public distrust and disappointment with the DPJ for being just as susceptible to such shenanigans as were the LDP power brokers of yesteryear.

Meanwhile, the tabloid weeklies, always a bellwether for popular sentiment, have been mercilessly attacking Hatoyama and Ozawa, revealing juicy details about the money scandals. The magazines have assailed the power relationship between Ozawa, the DPJ Secretary General, who is seen as manipulating the Hatoyama government behind-the-scenes, and the prime minister, depicted as weak and indecisive. One weekly, the Shukan Asahi is already predicting that the DPJ will go down to a “crushing defeat” in the July Upper House election.

A prominent political blog, Masaharu Miyazaki`s International News Quick Read (Japanese only), even has a political scenario that envisions Hatoyama, hounded by scandal and low popularity, stepping down this spring to let Naoto Kan, now finance minister, take the helm. While such gloom and doom may be premature, there is cause for worry since such cynicism about incumbent administrations and predictions of their imminent demise cannot help but be self-fulfilling.

The Nago City mayoral election in Okinawa in which the winner has pledged to reject the Henoko relocation plan has made Hatoyama’s decision in May even more difficult. Still, since the incumbent mayor only lost by about 2,000 votes in a low-turnout election, the result should not be taken as a mandate to scrap the existing plan, as the coalition partner Social Democratic Party is urging.

Hatoyama has refused to rule out Henoko. Thus in May it is still possible that he will come down in favor of it, with conditions. Okinawans would not be happy, given the track record of flip-flops on the issue, and the SDP could even bolt the coalition. But Hatoyama could still earn respect for having finally made a clear-cut decision. He could persuasively argue that a Henoko decision came as the last resort after all other options, though relentlessly pursued, had failed.

Ozawa is a harder case. Following his voluntary questioning by prosecutors, his fate is in the hands of the people, and he might even decide to step down if the next round of polls shows a strong desire for such a course of action. But if he decides to stay on to run the July Upper House election, Hatoyama may be helpless to stop him.

There is no one in the DPJ with the wherewithal to hold him back.

Dr William Brooks
APP Senior Fellow

Japan polls: The rot has stopped

The Hatoyama Cabinet's opinion poll numbers this month have stabilized. In one poll, Kyodo’s, the negative trend has even reversed. The fortunes have apparently reversed in the heretofore declining support rates for the ruling Democratic Party of Japan and the growing support for its opposition rival, the Liberal Democratic Party.

What has not changed, however, is the public’s concern about the prime minister himself, particularly his failure to pay taxes on political donations, and his policy stances, most notably, the postponement of a decision on whether to honor the LDP agreement with the US to relocate a US Marine base to another spot in Okinawa.

Support slide continues in NHK poll

NHK’s latest opinion poll, released Jan. 12, finds the public’s support for the cabinet of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama dropped four points to 52%, while the non-support rate rose two points to 36. Since November, support has dropped by 13%; non-support has risen by 15%. Party support basically has stayed the same since December, with the DPJ now at 34.9% (down 0.7%), and the LDP at 18.3% (up 1.2%).

But when the support rate is disaggregated to focus on unaffiliated voters, the force that propelled the DPJ into power in the Lower House election last Aug. 30, the NHK poll shows a sudden reversal of the Prime Minister’s popularity with the non-support rate at 46% and the support rate at 38%.

Asked about why they did not support the Hatoyama Cabinet, 46% of that segment of the public cited the lack of capability of implementing policy, and another 26% said they did not have any expectations about its policies. On the question of what they hoped to see tackled by the cabinet, 23% of the public listed social security, such as pensions and health care, 23% wanted elimination of waste of tax money, and 21% said jobs and the economy.

The poll also indicated that the public is increasingly dissatisfied with the results of the Hatoyama economic team. Queried about the recent appointment of Naoto Kan, national strategy minister, to fill the post of finance minister vacated by the now hospitalized Hirohisa Fujii, 65% of the public were unhappy with handing Kan another portfolio, calling it “inappropriate.” A majority of the public, 56%, were also negative about the size of next fiscal year’s budget, a record 92 trillion yen. Only 35% of the public supported such a level of spending.

On Prime Minister Hatoyama’s explanation that he did not know anything about the secret transactions involving his mother’s political contributions to him that got his former private secretary in trouble with the law, 78% remain unconvinced. But only 17% would have Hatoyama resign over it, and 35% would have him stay. The lion's share - 43% - were undecided.

In a second part of the poll released on Jan. 13, NHK’s sampling of opinion found the nation split down the middle on the broad question of whether they felt “politics has changed.” Fifty percent of the public said they felt it had changed, while 47% said it had not.

Yomiuri poll sees support rising slightly

The Yomiuri’s Jan. 11 poll found support for the cabinet had inched up in January by a point to a healthy 56%. The non-support rate also was up a notch to 34%. Oddly, the support rate for the DPJ dropped from 43% in Dec. to 39%, while the support rate for the LDP dipped to a record low of 16%, down two points from last month. If the Upper House election were held today, 35% said they would vote for the DPJ and 20% for the LDP. Most of the rest of the population, unaffiliated voters, are not sure.

On the appointment of Kan to replace Fujii as finance minister, 47% indicated approval, while 33% were opposed. This is in stark contrast to the NHK poll, which had a solid majority against the appointment. In many cases, however, the questionnaire itself could lead respondents to choose a certain answer. One could conjecture that this may have influenced one or both of the sets of divergent answers.

Despite the cabinet’s support remaining stable this month, Prime Minister Hatoyama remains unpopular. The Yomiuri poll found only 18% of the public crediting him for his leadership, and 73 saying that he had none. Asked who they thought was the most influential politician in the DPJ, 68% chose Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa. Only 10% chose Hatoyama.

Kyodo poll reverses the trend

Kyodo’s January poll, released on the 11th, shows a slight recovery in the Hatoyama Cabinet’s popularity, in contrast to other polls indicating continuing decline (for another take on this poll see the blog Shisaku. The cabinet support rate rose 3.6 points from Dec. to 50.8% in the latest survey. The non-support rate was 33.2, down 4.9 points. The survey also showed a rise in the DPJ’s support rate, up 2.6 points to 38.7%. The LDP’s support rate in contrast plummeted 6.4 points to a low of 17.3% -- about where the DPJ used to be during its worst years in the opposition camp.

Oddly, despite its apparent good feelings toward the cabinet and the ruling DPJ, the public had only harsh views toward the way Ozawa has been responding to his cash scandal, in which his former secretary has taken the blame for illegal land transactions and shady political contributions. Asked about his explanation denying any connection, an overwhelming 85.4% of the public thought that Ozawa’s explanation was “insufficient.” On the question of whether he should resign, the public was split, with 35.1% answering that he should resign his party post, 25.3% saying that he should even resign his Diet seat, and 34.6% indicating that a full explanation and resolve to improve the situation would suffice.

The unanswerable Futenma question?

Each of the polls had a question about the pending issue of the relocation of the Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station in Okinawa. In the NHK poll, the public took a stern view, with 56% unhappy with Hatoyama’s decision to postpone a decision on the relocation until May, with 37% in favor. The Yomiuri poll found the public split three ways, with 47% wanting the current plan to be implemented, 30% seeking relocation outside of Japan, and only 13% (14% last month) willing to see the facility relocated elsewhere in Japan.

Hatoyama may have improved his cabinet’s support rate in some of the polls this month, but the prime minister is not out of the woods by any means, remaining vulnerable over the political funds scandals. If the support rate in the polls were to sink below 40%, it could have an impact on the next election in July for the Upper House. Still, the polls also show that people are willing to give him and his cabinet more time, but that they remain adamant about keeping the Futenma base out of their own backyard. It is most likely that Hatoyama will still be in place come the Upper House elections in July, but his cabinet's popularity could make or break the DPJ in the election.

From this vantage point, Ozawa's goal to land 60 seats and control of both houses of the Diet seems distant to say the least.

William Brooks

APP Senior Fellow

More Twitter

An enterprising soul is already translating into English Japanese Prime Minister's Tweets on Hato Cafe. See here.

There is also an aggregator of Japanese politicians' tweets, Japanese only, here.

If all that gets too tiring, then jump to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's News Twitter Feed here. It unfortunately ends in July 2009. We liked this tweet:

Ignorant talk from US about change in DPRK dismissed as ridiculous day-dream!

Unhappy New Year for Hatoyama's foreign policy

A New Year, a new pessimism.

At least, that seems to be the case for Japan's editorial writers. This is surprising given the initial burst of national optimism following last August’s landslide victory by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in the House of Representatives election, ending over 50 year of Liberal Democratic Party rule.

Two conservative dailies, the Yomiuri and Sankei, bemoaned the apparently sorry state of US-Japan relations. In two editorials between Dec. 31 and Jan. 4, both newspapers castigated the DPJ and Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama for its handling of foreign relations and exhorted the government to get a grip, before it was too late.

In its New Year’s editorial, Yomiuri editors thundered that the Hatoyama administration lacked a national strategy, risking casting Japan “adrift on the rough seas of global politics – a dreadful situation.” Sankei, in a December 31, editorial also berated the government for causing the “United States to become more distrustful of Japan.” The daily warned: “For the sake of the security and national interests of Japan, the Prime Minister should make decisions that place top priority on the Japan-US alliance.” It chided that more attention was being paid to India and its strategic interests than to Japan’s ally, the United States.

Both dailies have had long ties to the previous Liberal Democratic Party government but interestingly, a similar critical tone is present in the more liberal papers Mainichi and Asahi. The Mainichi, in a rambling January 1 editorial that even referred to the Nara Period in the 8th Century, urged Japan to engage in a “year of rebuilding,” by putting everything into overcoming a mountain of domestic and external challenges. The rebuilding would also involve savoring Japan’s cultural heritage and exporting aspects of it abroad. Yet, the overall tone was pessimistic: “The road to rebuilding the economy is long and far; doubts remain about fiscal resources to back the budget; and the government has brought on the predicament created by its mishandling of foreign policy and relations with the US.

“There must be a deepening of the US-Japan alliance, which is the axis of Japan’s diplomacy. There needs to be a recovery of the relationship of trust between the two countries that has been shaken.” The relatively liberal Asahi, Japan’s second largest daily, focused its New Year’s editorial on how to best broaden the US-Japan relationship. The focus was on cooperating on such global challenges as President Obama’s call for a nuclear-free world, global warming, and dwindling energy resources. The Asahi editors asked: “In the midst of such tectonic shifts, how can Japan help maintain peace and prosperity in the world, and play a role in stabilizing it?”

Noting that with North Korea possessing nuclear weapons and China engaged in a military buildup, the editorial was unequivocal in its support for the alliance. In language that seems to chide the Hatoyama administration for letting relations with the US slide, the daily noted that the Japanese people were satisfied with US defence of Japan, while balancing the security treaty with war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution. Asians were also generally pleased with the security arrangements and their stabilizing impact on the region, the Asahi added. The editorial concluded that even though US-Japan interests may not always converge, there was no other option for Japan.

The business daily Nikkei has emerged in recent months as a sharp critic of the Hatoyama administration. The editors have a long record of strong support for the alliance. Although the business daily, unsurprisingly, focused its January 1 editorial on the sorry state of the economy and the need to rebuild for future generations, it also touched on the alliance. Noting that the security treaty marks its 50th anniversary this year, Nikkei suggested there was “need to give thought to making the alliance more meaningful, taking a future-oriented perspective.”

In a companion editorial on January 3, the daily observed: “Japan-US relations are now neither ‘equal’ nor ‘close’ as Prime Minister Hatoyama wants. The cause is the prime minister’s words and actions centered on the relocation of Futenma Air Station. The alarm bell was sounded, but the prime minister did not hear it.”On Japan’s Asia diplomacy, Nikkei warned: “At a time when Japan is turning more toward Asia and away from the US, ironically, Asia is turning toward America. We fear that Japan could become isolated by this misalignment.”

In all, Japan’s mainstream press is decidedly negative toward the Hatoyama administration. There is a surprising emphasis on foreign policy, especially with the United States. A general pessimism about the future is being wrapped around a criticism of the emerging policies of the DPJ. Although opinion polls still show strong support for the new government and little support for an air base in Henoko, the major dailies do not reflect this public acceptance of the fledgling government.

Picture from here.

William Brooks
APP Senior Fellow