Category: Rightwingers

Koizumi’s very well-funded think tank kicks off

Koizumi is the flagship advisor to a newly-established think tank. The XX, which will be chaired by economist Naoki Tanaka, who was close to the Koizumi administration. Here’s one of the initial reports from soon after Koizumi left office:

Sunday, October 8, 2006

Major Japan Firms To Set Up Think Tank, Invite Koizumi As Adviser

LONDON (Nikkei)–Toyota Motor Corp. (7203) and other leading Japanese companies plan to establish a think tank possibly by the end of this year and invite former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to become one of its advisers, The Nihon Keizai Shimbun has learned.

The firms aim to use the research organization to heighten the ability of the private sector to make policy proposals to the government as well as make their opinions known overseas.

The new entity will be modeled on the Brookings Institution and other U.S. research and policy bodies that participate in policy formation in Washington. It will conduct in-depth studies on international matters ranging from natural resources, currency and energy to diplomacy, security and the environment.

Promoters of the plan, including Toyota, Canon Inc. (7751) and Nippon Steel Corp. (5401), whose top executives have headed the Japan Business Federation, Japan’s top business lobby, have already begun soliciting other large firms to help fund the project.

The think tank will be headed by Naoki Tanaka, a noted economic analyst, according to the plan, which the group hopes to make public possibly early next week.

During the Koizumi years, the LDP had tinkered with the idea of forming its own think tank to build intra-party policymaking capabilities vis-a-vis the bureaucracy, but it never ended up happening. A well-known private, conservative think tank that makes its presence felt could achieve the same purpose. There are lots of think tanks in Japan now, but many are either tied to universities, major corporations, and specific commentators and lack the same prestige, power, personnel, and policy clout of the US model.

Except it seems like the only major outlet reporting on last night’s kickoff ceremony is the sensationalist Gendai:

Former PM Koizumi Raises 2 billion yen

Since leaving office, Koizumi has stayed out of the public eye, save for Diet appearances. Last night (Mar 12) he showed up at the kickoff ceremony for a private think tank, an event that was attended by business and industry heavies. What was most surprising was his ability to raise cash. The 4 founding companies have invested 100 million yen, and the 80 member companies have contributed 20 million yen apiece for a total of 2 billion yen. Naoki Tanaka, a commentator cose to the ex-PM, will serve as chairman. The chairman’s salary is 50 million yen annually, and Koizumi himself, who will serve as an advisor, will reportedly receive substantial advisor’s fees. Despite this, the think tank is designated as a “voluntary organization” and not a foundation or political organization. What’s going on here?

Americans might be somewhat used to the idea of former political leaders finding second careers as lobbyists after they leave office, but the Japanese press can always score some cheap points by accusing someone of making too much money.

But as much as I want to defend Koizumi, I have to wonder why this venture is launching with so little fanfare or detail. It doesn’t even seem to have a website yet. Is it truly going for a Brookings-style approach, or will this end up as Koizumi’s shadow war room to try and influence the government from behind the scenes (like former PM Nakasone’s organization)? I don’t think I’m alone in echoing Gendai’s sentiments — どうなってんのか？

Gendai is up front about its sensationalism

The latest Nikkan Gendai daily e-mail magazine tries to get to the bottom of the recent scandal involving MAFF Minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka’s creative accounting (his funds management body “booked costs totaled 44.76 million over 11 years through 2005” that were supposedly incurred in an official Diet office that members use for free):

[Matsuoka’s] appointment as Minsiter was Bush’s will?!

It’s hard to imagine why the now-desperate Agriculture Minister “Something something regenerated water” Matsuoka was ever appointed to the Cabinet, but getting to the bottom of things, it looks like it was all “the gift of foreign pressure” from the US. Reportedly, the MAFF ministerial post was Matsuoka’s “merit badge” for playing the consensus-building role to re-re-open US beef imports to Japan in July 2006. President Bush, who hails from Texas, a state with a large ranching industry, exerted his will, and ex-PM Koizumi backed him up… or so the story goes. Doesn’t it just seem like that’s what must have taken place? (いかにもありそうな話ではないか。)

Once again I have to appreciate Gendai’s nerve, much in the same way I have to respect Weekly World News for continuing to put Batboy on the cover every week.

No cabinet reshuffle…for now

Japanese PM Abe chose to use the newspaper holiday to respond directly to recent speculation that a cabinet reshuffle is in the works.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Abe: No Cabinet Reshuffle Before Upper House Election

TOKYO (Kyodo)–Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Sunday that he has no intention of reshuffling his Cabinet before the House of Councillors election to be held this summer.

”I am not at all thinking about reshuffling my Cabinet, and the election will be held under the current Cabinet,” Abe said in an NHK program.

Speculation about a Cabinet reshuffle is rising as the premier’s popularity tumbles in part due to a series of gaffes by his Cabinet ministers.

The upper house election, seen as a make-or-break test for Abe, is set for July. This is preceded by unified local elections in April.

Earlier this month, Yuya Niwa, chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s General Council, indicated that Abe may reshuffle his Cabinet in late April.

This makes sense. Abe can ignore public opinion polls to a certain extent, but elections reshape the political landscape and have a direct effect on his ability to govern. They also serve as an indirect referendum on how the top leadership is doing. The “late April” theory is based on how Abe would react to a poor showing in the unified local elections that are to be held in April. Without getting into a numbers game, there’s no guarantee that the LDP will do well in the local elections, but their chances are much better than they are of the party keeping its seats in the upper house election scheduled for July. By ruling out personnel changes at this stage, there will be fewer opportunities for people to call for Abe’s head moving into the upper house elections, which allows the PM to push forward with the constitutional amendment process. Even if Abe otherwise loses mometum, he is eager to push for progress toward revising the constitution while he remains in office.

So what happens after July? Neither major party (LDP or DPJ) is enjoying a very positive image right now. The LDP has been embroiled in scandal, but many similar scandals are bouncing right back in the DPJ’s lap, earning them the title of “boomerang party.” And on top of that, recent regional political developments, including the election of unaffiliated Miyazaki Governor Sonomanma Higashi and the rejection of major party official backing by both of the main candidates in the upcoming race for the Tokyo governor’s office, are giving rise to speculation of voter dissolutionment. These developments make any predictions difficult, but suffice to say that if Abe’s LDP fares as poorly as they are fearing then a cabinet reshuffle would be a kind prediction of Abe’s fate.

Right now the LDP only maintains its majority in the upper house through its alliance with the New Komeito, and if the LDP loses still more seats it would have to rely on them even more. So on top of the familiar political problems, such a situation might inspire the Komeito to want more direct say in policymaking, or in other words more cabinet representation, especially since they’ve been against some of Abe’s least popular actions, including the readmittance of anti-postal privatization Diet members to the LDP. If I were them, I wouldn’t hestitate to say I told you so, and if the LDP does badly enough the Komeito might have to start considering whether to start eyeballing the DPJ (since the Komeito is essentially interested in teaming up with whoever is in power to maintain political cover for Soka Gakkai).

Some foreign observers are optimistic about the Abe administration and dismiss the questions of Abe’s leadership as “shallow”:

The fourth credibility problem is reform policy. PM Abe’s formation of many competing study groups is a huge step forward. These groups institutionalize the progress made in the Koizumi years. However, investors have yet to see much concrete economic legislation as a result. In addition, PM Abe’s slippage in public opinion polls raises questions about the outcome of the July Upper House election. Once again, I am optimistic. Much of the criticism of PM Abe is, in my view, shallow, and the election is likely to come out well. However, investors need evidence.

It’s true that Abe needs to put something out there in terms of reform without letting the public fixate on scandal after scandal. And who knows, maybe he’s got some last-minute cards up his sleeve, though he’d have to get creative since there aren’t any really sexy economic reforms on the horizon. But while legislation might quell investors’ fears, the public continues to cry for blood. And fact is, the “shallow” bickering over who said what offensive thing hints at deeper discords in the Ade administration, which the Shisaku blog has down cold:

Abe needs a ugly, old, leather-skinned Chief Cabinet Secretary—an ancient reptile of a pol who could grab Abe by the collar, drag him in the Prime Minister’s office, throw him into the big chair there, press down on Abe’s left shoulder with his right hand, get right in the PM’s face and tell him, “Your mouth is making my life difficult. Now you’re going to go out there and say the following to the press. Not one word less. Not one word more. OK? And then when you’re done, you will come right back here—because you and I are going to call in a few of your ministers for a little talk. Now get out there.”

Shiozaki Yasuhisa is not that person. He is a smart, careful, well-spoken, good-looking conservative with a sense of Japan’s place in the world. However, he does not scare Abe in the least—and that’s what Abe needs, to be a little less blasé about his and his government’s conduct.

I assume Shisaku’s referring to Abe’s statements that have led to a flare-up of protests over his approach to the comfort women issue, because he’s been talking about them recently with the same wit*:

Stupid man. Stupid, incurious, arrogant, dogmatic man who deserves to lose in July.

Why has his prime ministership replicated intellectual trajectory of the Bush presidency, only at 12 times the speed?

But the Japan Times reminds us that the coverage of these issues for the TV-watching domestic audience is rather subdued, and these foreign policy issues will likely barely register in the public’s mind come July. Still, I think the criticism of Abe’s political insensitivity is valid in a host of other areas (comments on White-collar overtime exemption – somehow good for fighting a low birth rate? – and readmitting a political ally to the LDP who Koizumi kicked out for opposing postal privatization because “he agrees with me”?). The leathery father figure just isn’t there for him.

So now that Abe’s dug in his heels and refused to budge on a possible cabinet reshuffle, we can look forward to 4 more months of 5 million yen utility bills, birth-giving machines, hamstrung economic reform, and blank stares from zombie Abe. But hey, if he can push through the public referendum bill it might have all been worth it to him to mess up everything else and lose the upper house. As an admitted voyeur of the whole process, I have to admit it would be more fun to watch him freefall than to make a comback.

*I’m assuming Shisaku is a he. I have no clue who writes that blog.

Have you been missing my running commentary on Abe? Just read the Economist instead

The Economist this week reports on my favorite topic: the “gossip-mill” among Japanese political circles. This week the mill is speculating on the prospects of Abe staying in office beyond the upper house elections. Of all the recent English-language weekly articles on Abe’s trouble, this one sticks the closest to how the political debate looks from the Japanese perspective. In other words, they’re trying to beat me at my own game, and I like it:

THE gossip-mill is grinding away, and the man whose career could soon pop out the other end in fragments is none other than Shinzo Abe.
…
[Abe’s] decline [in public support] may explain why on March 1st Mr Abe chose to undo much of what he had achieved through his October visits to Beijing and Seoul, by publicly denying one of the many Chinese and Korean grievances: that Japan’s Imperial Army forced hundreds of thousands of women, mostly Chinese and Korean, into prostitution during the 1930s and 1940s.
…
The Japanese public has turned against Mr Abe not because of foreign policy or historical debates but for economic reasons. For all the government’s boasts that Japan is enjoying its longest period of growth since 1945, the Japanese are not feeling much benefit in their purses and wallets.
…
In this respect, things were no better under Mr Koizumi, but at least he seemed to be doing something about it by shaking things up. By comparison, Mr Abe looks clueless.

I’ll reproduce the closing section in full because it is so, so tasty:

Dreaming of Lionheart

Actually, his problem is subtler than mere cluelessness. He is torn between dealing with the politically potent topic of inequality—in an ageing Japan, the income gap is widening—and making further reforms to encourage future growth. The only thing he has done so far has made both problems worse, however: his government clamped down on the interest rates chargeable by consumer-finance companies on loans to Japan’s poorest borrowers. This looked popular, but some say it has choked off their borrowing and helped to depress consumer spending.

Worse still, when he has had a political clue it has led him in the wrong direction. Mr Koizumi pulled off the remarkable trick of attacking his own political party, eventually kicking out LDP Diet members when they rebelled against his flagship programme of postal privatisation. That laid the ground for his triumph in the 2005 general election. Mr Abe, keen to curry favour with his party’s old guard, has now readmitted 11 of the rebels. At a stroke, that has changed his public odour from breath of fresh air to the usual LDP halitosis.

Whether he will actually be dumped, however, depends on how badly the LDP fares in the July Upper House elections. Fortunately for Mr Abe, the opposition Democratic Party of Japan is also in disarray, with its leader, Ichiro Ozawa, in poor health and at war with his own colleagues. Yet that may not save Mr Abe, such is the mood against him. Strange stories have been circulating about how cabinet ministers have so little respect for him that they do not bother to stand up when he enters the room. The rival most often mentioned as his budding successor is Taro Aso, the bumptious foreign minister, who is also a conservative and currently cuts a more dashing figure than his boss.

Another name, though, is increasingly being whispered: Junichiro Koizumi. There is no real prospect of tempting him back, at least not yet, for the great man is said to be having far too much fun as Japan’s most eligible bachelor. But how he is missed.

For all its great attempts to read the tea leaves, the article completely neglects to mention the possibility of a cabinet reshuffle, which seems to be the dominant theory these days (probably from LDP sources who want a crack at a ministerial post). Given that the internal conflicts in the Abe administration go far beyond a failure to rise when Abe enters the room, a 2nd cabinet may seem in order. Abe has expressed intentions to stay in office for a long time, but so far he and his people have lacked the savvy to keep his achievements in focus and maintain the public support so crucial for staying in office.

Recently, Abe reached out to Koizumi, who according to reports met Abe and LDP Sec Gen Hidenao Nakagawa for dinner last night and encouraged Abe to stay on as PM even if his party loses the upper house elections. Abe listened to Koizumi lecture on strategy the whole time, including lines like “It’s been written that a ‘draft’ is blowing between the kantei and the LDP, but when I was in office is was a thunderstorm. Just pit the kantei and the party against each other and stir up a typhoon” (according to Nakagawa at least). In such a dire environment, it’s only natural for Abe to get advice from someone who was relatively good at “[seeming] to be doing something…by shaking things up,” even if some people would point out that the LDP was actually losing seats to the DPJ in every election under Koizumi except for the 2001 upper house elections that were aided by “Koizumi fever” and the landslide victory in the 2005 lower house election that Koizumi successfully turned into a referendum on postal privatization.

But at least Koizumi started out with low expectations and managed to stay in power, as opposed to Abe’s quick decline and non-stop crisis mode. At any rate, whether Abe can pull off Koizumi’s tactics without actually being Koizumi (or having Koizumi team members on board) is beyond me, but then I’m not the one playing this game.

Abe’s turn to get SLAMMED

I wanted to go back to ignoring the recent flap over a House resolution to condemn Japan’s supposed failure to adequately deal with the “comfort women” issue. But how can I sit quietly when the Prime Minister himself is getting SLAMMED?

Growing Chorus Slams War-Brothel Remarks Japanese P.M. Under Fire For Comfort Women Remarks
AP

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – March 3, 2007 – South Korea again criticized Japan’s prime minister Saturday for disavowing his country’s responsibility for using Asian women as sex slaves for Japanese troops in World War II.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday there was no proof that so-called “comfort women” were forced into sexual slavery during the war.

The remark triggered outrage throughout Asia.

Abe’s statement is “aimed at glossing over the historical truth and our government expresses strong regret,” said a statement from South Korea’s Foreign Ministry.

Ibuki sticks greasy foot in mouth

Readers of The Japan Times may already have noticed Japan Education Minister Bunmei Ibuki’s controversial statement that “Japan has been historically governed by the Yamato (Japanese) race. Japan is an extremely homogenous country. In its long, multifaceted history, Japan has been governed by the Japanese all the way.” While there is plenty to criticize about this quote (for example, exactly how far back is “all the way?” most of the criticism is really pretty obvious and not that interesting.

However, what has not yet been reported in English is another statement that Ibuki made in the same speech.

According to the Yomiuri:

He went on to compare human rights to butter. “If you just eat nothing but butter every day, then you will develop metabolic syndrome [ed: like diabetes I guess]. Human rights are important, but if you eat too much of it, then Japanese society will develop “human rights metabolic syndrome.”

I would like to thank Minister Ibuki for that delicious metaphor.

Shiozaki out, Takenaka in? Who’s to blame for Abe’s sputtering?

Though the Japanese media has been running speculation of a cabinet reshuffle or other personnel changes in the Abe cabinet since January at least, the Daily Yomiuri has come out with one of the first English-language pieces discussing the possibility that I’ve seen from a major media outlet. According to the Yomiuri, the blame for the many mishaps that have dogged the Abe administration is falling on Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki, who would be “the main target for reshuffle”:

Shiozaki has been criticized for his lack of ability to coordinate the Cabinet’s crisis-management and damage-control systems. When scandals involving Cabinet ministers emerged, Shiozaki only said they should be held accountable for the alleged scandals.

A chief cabinet secretary is supposed to have the Prime Minister’s Office report all the facts to him, conduct investigations based on them, check whether the government can overcome opposition grilling in the Diet and media criticism, and decide whether to protect the cabinet ministers in question or have them resign. But things are different under the Abe Cabinet.

Partly because of lack of political experience, Shiozaki has failed to keep a tight grip on the reins of the bureaucrats in Kasumigaseki and coordinate policies with the ruling parties sufficiently. It is worrying that he is so inflexible in his thinking. Because of his inability to delegate, he inserts study meetings into holiday schedules. Thus, he has less leeway of mind than the play of a steering wheel.

The Asahi, never to be outdone, has its own English article on Shiozaki-directed criticism. I feel like this report is more balanced and attributes the criticisms to actual sources rather than editorializing within the article. It also draws different conclusions, saying that Shiozaki has become a Rumsfeldian sponge for criticism from Abe’s critics:

On Jan. 14, LDP Policy Research Council Chairman Shoichi Nakagawa berated Shiozaki in a telephone call, telling him that his habit of setting up task forces one after the other to deal with major policy issues could easily result in a storm of media criticism.

Shiozaki was clearly taken aback, according to sources.

Some lawmakers say the task force policy serves only to make some Cabinet ministers less willing to follow the party line.

For example, Shiozaki has proposed setting up task forces on strengthening cooperative relations with Asian nations, another to deal with the declining birthrate and yet another to consider how to revive economic growth.

In spite of these problems, LDP lawmakers thus far have refrained from criticizing Abe directly.

They fear that if they do so, they will be branded as trying to engineer a coup against the Cabinet.

For this reason, they are sharpening their knives against Shiozaki, whose job makes him the government’s most senior spokesman.

Shiozaki has been getting panned in the media since the Abe cabinet’s inception for being the most arrogant and domineering personality in a cabinet that’s full of them. While the Yomiuri article cites “failures” without really going into detail, it is pretty representative of the type of reactions the “hated Chief Cabinet Secretary” (as he was described in a January Bungei Shunju article) has been getting. He’s been accused of both dominating Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy meetings that are supposed to be the domain of Minister of State Hiroko Ota, taking the initiative on North Korean abduction issues, as well as crowding out Special Advisor Hiorshige Seko, who’s supposed to be in charge of PR. While the economic reform agenda may yet be the underappreciated gem of the Abe administration, it’s clear that Abe’s PR response has been just awful.

There’s a great piece detailing who did what in all the Abe blunders of the past 5 months entitled “Support Rates Plummeting, the ‘Abe Kantei’ is no Longer Functioning” that ran in the March issue of Bungei Shunju that you can read in Japanese here. I want to summarize one incident mentioned in the article over which Shiozaki was judged to have messed up playing the role of nemawashi (consensus-builder): the attempt by Abe in late November/early December to move a special account dedicated to road construction to the general account, including the national gasoline tax. Though the highway public corporations were privatized in 2005 as part of Koizumi’s plans to eliminate a major source of wasteful spending, reform of the special account was put off as too politically volatile at the time.

The idea was proposed by CEFP Minister Ota as a way to boost Abe’s falling approval ratings. Both Shiozaki and Abe approved of the policy, and Abe in particular thought that reforming a tax that’s been in place since 1954 would be a good way to showcase his policy of moving beyond the postwar era. But Shiozaki had absolutely no experience as a liaison charged with building consensus within the LDP. Abe announced that he intended to reform the special account for highways, including the gasoline tax, at a meeting of the CEFP and then left the rest to Shiozaki. But his overtures to some of his political allies hit a snag, since the gasoline tax, at 3 trillion-yen per year in collected revenues, is a major source of funding for road construction, probably the biggest source of pork-barrel spending in Japan (and therefore the basis of many politicians’ support). They suggested he try to reform an auto tax that is charged on the weight of the automobile, since there is no legal basis for the funds to be set aside for road construction. He called Seko for help, but Seko, who’s a PR expert not a well-connected politician, thought it was too late to move forward with the policy as Abe outlined it since no one would go along with a complete separation of the gas tax from the special account. A trip to the LDP’s top upper house member Mikio Aoki was similarly unsuccessful: “The upper house won’t take responsibility if it doesn’t come in a form that builds necessary roads.”

In the end, Shiozaki had to rely on Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Advisor Atsuo Saka, whom Abe reportedly “loathes” but can’t technically replace. Shiozaki met with Saka along with Finance Minister Koji Omi and Transportation Minister (and former Komeito President) Tetsuzo Fuyushiba. Saka, sensing an opportunity, suggested a compromise: agree to free up only 1.8 trillion yen of the gasoline tax and put off the debate on sweeping reform. Saka was more than happy to play consensus-builder, but the newspapers excoriated both Shiozaki and Abe, saying that the development was a “loss” for kantei-led politics and a blow to the reform agenda.

Now, I don’t think all the administration’s mishaps are Shiozaki’s fault — Abe’s executive secretary Inoue, Sec Gen Nakagawa, Seko, and others have all had trouble working together and made their own mistakes — but it could be that replacing him with someone less headstrong might help ease tensions.
Continue reading Shiozaki out, Takenaka in? Who’s to blame for Abe’s sputtering?

Cheney, Abe reaffirm blah blah blah BORING!

Put these two men in a room together and magic happens:
cheney1_m.jpg

And please, read on to learn of this historic meeting of the minds!

Abe, Cheney Reaffirm Unity On Abduction Issue, Iraq

TOKYO (Kyodo)–Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney agreed Wednesday to boost the bilateral alliance and cooperate to resolve the issue of North Korea’s past abductions of Japanese citizens as a common matter of the two nations.

Cheney expressed U.S. understanding over Japan’s policy of not offering energy aid to North Korea due to the abduction issue, while Abe gave reassurances over Tokyo’s support for U.S. efforts in Iraq and its commitments to promoting missile defense and U.S. military realignment, Japanese officials told reporters.

OK, I’m asleep now. I fell asleep just reading this article. Could there be a less relevant visit to Japan by an American leader? I mean, sure Cheney isn’t going for no reason at all, but he and his staff are just decidedly disinterested in making his visit media-friendly. I guess we can wait and see if Cheney is trying to get anything concrete out of Japan in terms of Iraq support, or if he focused more on easing so-called “tensions” in the security alliance that are so slight as to be almost figments of the media’s imagination in their struggle to wrap some narrative around this dull, dull official visit.

My own theory on why Cheney’s there: he’s actually trying to reaffirm US-Japan unity in the six-party negotiations amid accusations that the US is pressuring Japan to back off on its insistence that North Korea make progress in resolving the issue of NK abductions of Japanese citizens before Japan provides NK with any aid. Cheney will be meeting with the parents of abductee Yokota Megumi tomorrow, which will probably be the highlight of media coverage on the Japanese side. Meanwhile, the American media-consuming public will be subject to images of Cheney strolling off the plane and addressing a crowd of adoring troops on the USS Kittyhawk. And conveniently enough, the Scooter Libby trial is about to end, so some attention can be deflected from the torrent of negative press the trial has given Cheney and his shady attempts to manipulate the media. Or more likely still, the longer Cheney’s out of the country, the longer he can avoid answering questions about Libby etc. Thankfully, Cheney will return to his now-famous undisclosed location after the trip is over.

Highlights from the Diet — Lower House Finance Committee, Feb 12-16 2007

Not even 3 weeks into the new Diet Session, and the Asahi has already dismissed the Diet debate as “disappointing.” I don’t know which debates they’re watching. Sure, the DPJ has elected to try and deflect attention away from the political fund scandal (since party president Ozawa has the same problem), but so far I’ve seen lots of interesting stuff:

Lower House Budget Comittee:

1. Kokumin Shinto president (and ousted LDP heavy) Shizuka Kamei made a flamboyant splash onto the scene with his first appearance asking questions in this committee in 6 years, this time as an opposition member. Though he “never in his wildest dreams thought” he would be questioning Shinzo Abe from the opposition, he went on to praise the PM as someone with good policies — if only he’d express them (here he is talking about the more hawkish attitudes Abe was famous for before he gained the premiership – strong rhetoric about territorial disputes etc). He pleaded with Abe to back away from Koizumi style winner take all politics (such as economic reforms that supposedly work for America’s national interest) and work to really make Japan better. But the most explosive of his comments came when he started questioning Abe on the appropriateness of the relationship between the LDP and its coalition partner, the Soka Gakkai-backed Komeito. Though he said he has nothing against “new religions,” even saying that both he and Abe have enjoyed the benefits of spiritual guidance, he accused the LDP of providing too much electoral support to the Komeito and passing an education bill that suits Soka Gakkai’s interests. After the Komeito demanded Kamei retract his assertion that the Komeito “supports the Iraq war,” Kamei stood by it and offered to engage in a public debate with the Komeito at Tokyo Dome. “They could even mobilize all the Soka Gakkai members.” I’m praying the Komeito takes him up on the offer.
(excerpts from the exchange here, video excerpt here)

2. The Socialist Democratic Party’s Nobuto Hosaka is closely pursuing the facts on a scandal involving improprieties over government-sponsored events (including faked town meetings), the management for most of which was contracted out to advertising giant Dentsu. At the Feb 14 meeting of the committee Hosaka questioned Supreme Court officials about the facts involving the recent incident in which people were paid to attend public forums on the Supreme Court’s new lay judge system (more info on the triangle of shadiness here). It turns out that the Supreme Court had very likely assigned Dentsu and others involved to begin promotion of the events before a contract had been signed between the government and Dentsu, the contractor charged with managing the events. How does Hosaka know this? After reviewing materials that he requested from the Supreme Court, he found that the contracts and estimates with Dentsu for all the events was dated the day before the kickoff even in Fukuoka. If there had been no agreement between Dentsu and the government before then, that would have given Dentsu less than 24 hours to pick regional newspapers to subcontract the management/promotion of the events, and then book venues/panelists, attract participants. But of course that’s not what happened. Promotional posters for the events were on bulletin boards long before that, the venues were booked ahead of time, and the attendance was healthy throughout (thanks to “gratitude payments”). Even more suspicious, the amounts charged in the invoices submitted by Dentsu to the government are identical to the amounts listed in the contracts and estimates.

All this despite the fact that (on paper at least) Dentsu was selected to manage the events after winning a “project competition,” which is a way for the government to add a form of competition to the awarding of no-bid contracts while avoiding the cumbersome government procurement process. Hosaka alleges that the dates on these contracts/estimates are fraudulent and created as an afterthough (a “sakanobori keiyaku” or “backdated contract”). This practice was typical of the fraudulent town meetings as well, Hosaka notes, and is in violation of the Public Account Law.

3. Prime Minister Abe isn’t a big fan of the New York Times. During a back and forth with the premier, DPJ member Arai quoted a recent NYT piece authored by Norimitsu Onishi that gave some sympathetic coverage of the recently bankrupted town of Yubari in Hokkaido prefecture. Arai was trying to argue that the national government needs to take more responsibility over the city’s bankruptcy (it is currently insisting that the town drastically restructure to pay off its bond obligations). Abe called the piece “insufficiently researched” because it neglected to note that the Yubari government hid its dire financial situation improperly and even gave city officials bigger bonuses in the year before the situation came to light. No press coverage of this exchange yet that I have seen.

omi-20070213k0000e010090000p_size6.jpg4. Finance Minister Koji Omi got slammed by Sumio Mabuchi (DPJ) over a slightly scandalous situation: Omi’s daughter accompanied the minister at meetings that he attended as an observer to establish his pet project, the Okinawa Institute for Science and Technology. Omi explained that she was there to help interpret the meetings and that she received no payment for her attendance. However, the problem with this, according to Mabuchi, is that a) Part of her hotel expenses as well as fees for meals and receptions were paid for with public funds, and b) If he really needs a translator he should hire a professional.

Now, this might not sound like a big deal, but I found Omi’s reaction to be pretty interesting. First of all, his primary excuse for bringing his daughter was one of the classic linguistic copouts: he claimed that his “hearing” abilities weren’t up to snuff, and since the meetings were all conducted in English, he brought his capable daughter along to help. This is despite his reputation for having “perfect English” at least according to US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Second, Omi felt that Mabuchi was being “rude” for insinuating that Omi was being shady when he’s been working “with great ambition” to make this project happen for the good of the country. Working for the good of the country is one thing, using your status and public funds to take your daughter on a business trip to meet influential people is quite another. (Stories on this topic: Asahi, Yomiuri, Mainichi, quotes from the exchange via TBS here).