policy

From the Economist, Bad Blood:

Mr Ozawa occupies an unparalleled position in Japanese politics. As architect of the DPJ’s historic victory in elections last August, the party believes it owes him a debt of gratitude, and needs him to manage a big win in upper-house elections this summer. Yet he is also widely seen as a dark presence, whose role hardly squares with the DPJ’s vows to make Japanese politics more open. All requests to DPJ lawmakers for public-spending projects are channelled through him, and he often appears to put the party’s interests before those of the government. Recently, he has flaunted his authority by taking more than 100 DPJ lawmakers on an official trip to China, and inviting them to a banquet at his home on New Year’s Day. Increasingly, the “shadow shogun”, as he is known, is stepping into the limelight.

Yup. Read the rest of the article. The economist rightly notes that Fujii's withdrawal was probably not about health issues, but about struggling with Ozawa. 

A recent editorial at the Daily Yomiuri begins this way:

Without progress in the fields of science and technology, new industries will stagnate, which may put this nation on the road to decline. How then should the government bolster science and technology--a key source of national strength.

An editorial that starts out this way is already on the wrong foot. Ask yourself this, what is it that everyone needs but doesn't have right now? Does anyone really know? The free market is a place where various producers compete to answer this question, and the one that answers it best succeeds. 

Can the government really compete with the free market in determining what we really need? There's a name for this and it's called central planning. Over half a century ago, the famous Austrian economist F. A. Hayek recognized the following:

 Today it is almost heresy to suggest that scientific knowledge is not the sum of all knowledge. But a little reflection will show that there is beyond question a body of very important but unorganized knowledge which cannot possibly be called scientific in the sense of knowledge of general rules: the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place. It is with respect to this that practically every individual has some advantage over all others because he possesses unique information of which beneficial use might be made, but of which use can be made only if the decisions depending on it are left to him or are made with his active coöperation. 

He goes on in his essay to discuss how the free market, and the price system acting as a means of communicating information, will always succeed far better than a centrally planned economy. The editors of the Daily Yomiuri would be wise to read his essay.

There's an interesting entry at Observing Japan regarding the current brouhaha over the Futenma issue. The author states in the article:

I am hesitant to declare this situation a crisis for the alliance because the Hatoyama government may already be moving in the direction of accommodation: Hatoyama has said that all options are on the table (including the agreement on hand), and has indicated that his government's plan will be forthcoming as early as next week. Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya has concluded that relocating Futenma's operations to Kadena is not an option. After visiting Guam, Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi — perhaps the leading defender of the status quo in the cabinet — concluded that relocating Futenma to Guam is not doable. The Hatoyama government is running out of alternatives to the 2006 agreement. Even the Social Democrats may be coming around: a senior member of her own party criticized SDPJ leader Fukushima Mizuho for suggesting that she could pull her party out of the government over the Futenma issue.

To me this merely shows how difficult it really is to change things. However, the author of article seems to see the problem mostly as a lack of leadership:

Hatoyama seems to have some idea of where he wants to take Japan, but he seems to have little idea how to go about it. Hatoyama strikes me as too much of a dreamer and not enough of a strategist.

I suppose. However, I see the problem as Hatoyama only having various vague slogans that he holds to, not any real ideology or philosophy. He's a politician after all. The DPJ won as a protest vote against the LDP. They made a lot of pie in the sky promises, but they didn't offer much more than that did they? You hear a lot about how they are shaking up the bureaucrats, but how many bureaucrats have been fired so far? Any? I imagine even here there will be back tracking.

By the way the comments at the article cited above are well worth reading.

 According to Ikeda Noburo, whom I sort of kind of quote this morning, during the election campaign, Hatoyama himself actually stated explicitly he supported some type of moratorium on loan payments by small to medium size businesses. I don't know if Ikeda is serious or attempting irony, but he asks rhetorically if the ordeal could lead to a resignation of the entire administration. You can read his brief post here (in Japanese). There's also a youtube video there showing Hatoyama make the remarks during the campaign.

I'll take full responsibility for the following comments, however it should be noted I am merely paraphrasing Ikeda Nobuo's blog post on the matter plus adding a few gratuitous comments myself. That is the following is way too loose and far from the original to be called a translation, but it's something like that:

While Ozawa and Hatoyama were out of town, Shizuka Kamei escalated things by upping the ante on his bid to have a moratorium on loan payments for small to middle size companies. He basically said that he should be dismissed if Hatoyama doesn't support the idea. He is being bold because he knows that the DPJ need his vote (and his tiny party's vote) in the upper house because the DPJ lack a complete majority there. The implications of the 10/25 upper house supplemental election are very important. If the DPJ can obtain the two vacant seats in that election, they perhaps can put together an alliance minus Shizuka Kamei and his party, and still have a majority. Then Shizuka Kamei can be dismissed from his post. Shizuka Kamei shooting off his mouth on TV causes people to doubt the unity of the Hatoyama's cabinet. Hatoyama and Ozawa need to work together to first shut down Kamei's loud mouth, then win the supplemental election so Kamei can be dismissed.

If it were only so easy. We'll see. Gosh, how I dislike politics.

This is just kind of weird. From the Daily Yomiuri:

The new administration to be led by Democratic Party of Japan President Yukio Hatoyama likely will be a "science" cabinet, as those who will serve as its pillars all come from science backgrounds. Having a cabinet lineup with so many science university graduates is unprecedented, making Hatoyama's administration, which will begin as early as Wednesday, the first so-called science cabinet in Japan's postwar history.

Does this mean they will be effective rational planners? I wonder if any of them have read F. A. Hayek's "the Errors of Constructivism". Anyway, I suppose no one has to worry because Ozawa is really the one in charge anyway ... wait ... did I just say that?

From Merriam-Webster:

• Main Entry: neo·con·ser·va·tive
• Pronunciation: \ˌnē-ō-kən-ˈsər-və-tiv\
• Function: noun
• Date: 1952
1 : a former liberal espousing political conservatism
2 : a conservative who advocates the assertive promotion of democracy and United States national interest in international affairs including through military means

Well, here we go. It's not certain yet, but it looks like the (neo)conservatives might start getting on the anti-Afghanistan war bandwagon. Why? Because they're suddenly antiwar ... of course not. Because it's now Obama's war.

This is so pathetic. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm antiwar. I'm anti-state (at least in a conservative, classical liberal sense.) But it now seems that influential conservative, Tony Blankley, now sees the light on Afghanistan. (He's a neoconservative as per Merrian-Webster's number 2 definition above.)

First, how did Tony Blankley feel about George Bush's war in Iraq. Well as late as ... uh ... last year, he was defending it as a means of putting evil terrorists in their place. He said (bold is mine):

I have been told that by U.S. government experts I trust. But that is an old fact. What Osama bin Laden famously said about recruitment is also true: People follow the strong horse. And the new fact is that as we are winning in Iraq, as we are killing al-Qaida fighters and other Islamist terrorists there by the truckload (along with other insurgent opponents of the Iraqi government we support with our blood and wealth), we are proving to be the strong horse after all and can expect to see a reduced attraction for young men to join the Islamist terrorist ranks.

If that's not bad enough, read the entire article, Was Iraq Worth It?

Okay, so going over to another country and killing those who defy you is good, because it shows how macho you are and keeps them from even thinking about coming to your country. Okay. Right. Check. I mean, as recent as last year, he even thought Vietnam was good, here's what he said in the same article above:

Shortly after the fall of Soviet Communism, I had dinner with a then-recently former senior Red army general. He told me that the Soviets were astounded and impressed by the fact that we were prepared to fight and lose 50,000 men in Vietnam, when the Soviets never thought we even had a strategic interest there. They thus calculated that they'd better be careful with the United States. What might we do, they thought, if our interests really were threatened?

Wow. How about them Americans, eh? They don't f___ around. Mess with them buddy, and pow! Okay, now that was an editorial written while George Bush was still president just last year.

Now that our president is Barack Hussein Obama II. And now that this Democrat president wants a more aggressive policy in Afghanistan, how does Tony Blankley feel about that? Well, it's like Vietnam!

Oh, so you mean we need to go over there and kick a bunch of butt, right?

Ah, no. Vietnam was a tragedy, stupid, and that's what's going to happen in Afghanistan. At least that's what Tony Blankley is saying today. Who knows what he'll be saying tomorrow?

I'm with Lew Rockwell on this:

Tony, repeat after me: “One, two, three, four, We don’t want your f___ war. Five, six, seven, eight, Organize and smash the state.”

Asahi has a new poll in this mornings paper.

The DPJ maintain their stunning lead. When people are asked which party they will vote for 40% say DPJ, while only 21% say LDP.

Some other interesting numbers. When people are asked which party do you support, the winner is no one. In other words, 34% of respondents don't express preference for either party, the DPJ are second with 32%, and the LDP come in third with 20%.

On Aso's support rate, it continues to be abysmal. 65% of respondents don't support him, while only 19% do support him.

Let's see. When asked how interested/concerned they were in the upcoming election, 49% said very much so. 38% said pretty much so. While 12% said not so much so. And 1% said not at all.

When asked who they would like to have in charge, 49% of respondents said they'd like to see a DPJ government, while only 21% would like to see an LDP government.

When asked how aware and how significant each party's manifesto would be in making a decision to vote, about 27% said it was very significant, while 54% said it was pretty significant. 15% said it was not so significant, while 3% said it wasn't significant at all.

I'm pretty sure I'm reading the following correctly, but it surprises me a bit, so maybe I'm not reading it right. Okay, as I read it, 55% don't really care about (value) the DPJ's plan to pay 26,000 yen per month per child to parents. 33% of respondents are interested (value it). (In Japanese respondents are asked "評価しますか". The answers being "評価します" or "評価しません"). Likewise, 67% don't seem very interested in making the highway system completely free, while 23% are. (Again, "評価しますか".)

I guess I am reading the above correctly, because when asked about how people felt about each party's respective manifesto, 83% of the people expressed a great deal of unease for *both* the LDP's and the DPJ's manifesto. People were asked about each separately, but the number was the same regardless.

In general one gets the sense that there is a general unease with both parities, but the DPJ will win mostly as a vote against the LDP and Aso. I guess this is nothing new ...

Update: I was looking at the actual poll results not the related front page article. However, the related article is online. Check it out here.

Jun Okumura at GlobalTalk 21 seems to come out in support of the government program that pays nikkei with special visas to leave and not come back indefinitely. Here's specifically what he says:

The government payoff in exchange for a ban of indefinite duration from Japanese soil is the other side of the coin, an option—the choice is up to the immigrants. I would go along, probably support, a cooling-off period of definite duration, but the ban is not permanent, as the report claims. Of course there is a good chance that the “indefinite” may end up being “permanent” if the Japanese economy continues to underperform. That is why many of those immigrants are sticking it out.

If you'd like to read with more context, then the entire article is, Is Japan Trying to Kick out Some of the Paltry Number of Immigrants?

I stated the following in the comment section:

Consider, if I am a Nikkei living in Japan and having difficultly finding work, one option might be to go back to Brazil (or Peru or wherever) and work there. Now if I have money to do so, I can maintain my visa in Japan, and return to Japan at a later time (via a reentry permit).

Think about it. As difficult as it might be to believe, for some of these Nikkei, Japan is now their home. They have friends, contacts, a community. Leaving that isn't easy, but at least they have the right to return. How much is the right worth? I doubt its something you want to put a price tag on.

Now, what if I am down and out and don't have the money for a plane ticket home. Well, I decide I'll just have to hunker down and do my best in Japan. But then the government steps in and says, hey buddy -- that's no problem, we'll give you the money. But there's a catch ... you can't come back (until we say so) ...

That is, the program has nothing whatsoever to do with *helping* some Brazilians go "home", but only with giving them money to leave. Basically a bribe to get them out of the country. This is far from being humanitarian and is actually quite cold and callous.

It sends a strong message that those being bribed are not desired in the country. This, of course, is the exact opposite of the message they probably got when they were enticed into the country. The government is clearly of two faces here.

Are you saying this is all okay? The principled thing for the government to do would be either nothing, or to have further extended some type of aid to help people in these communities. The ticket home program stinks to high heaven. You don't pay residents to leave the country anymore than you pay *citizens* to leave the country. It's just not done. I doubt the program will be much of a success, and it will rightly be seen outside of Japan as more evidence of the Japanese government's xenophobic outlook.

I am optimistic that at least in this area the DPJ might be able to show a more enlightened policy. But I won't hold my breath.

 According to today's Nihon Keizai Shimbun the DPJ now have 40% support rate versus a 30% support rate for the LDP. This may not sound high, but from what I've seen in the past this is actually really, really high.

I remember before the 2007 upper house election being surprised at seeing the DPJ with 29% versus the LDP with 23%. So while a lot can happen in the almost 38 or so days left, this is an amazing lead. Not only that but the the Prime Minister's support rate is also quite abysmal at about 20% with a whopping 71% disapproval rate.

I also tend to think the media is giving the DPJ a huge boost by really playing up the idea that this is a two party race. (Of course the reality would be a lot more complicated ...)

Here are some other interesting numbers. When asked in a poll who they thought would be the most appropriate prime minister for Japan after the election, 9% chose the current Prime Minister Aso, 28% chose the DPJ's leader Hatoyama, while 57% said neither. That's a fairly intelligent electorate if you ask me.

Nevertheless, when asked which party would be most appropriate to form the next government, 12% chose the LDP, 29% chose the DPJ, and 42% said that a coalition would be best. Wow. The majority of people want a grand coalition? Give me a new poll! Or perhaps that means people really don't like either party so much ...

An abbreviated form of the article referred to here can be found online here.