Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW@ADFA
In the week before Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, observers quipped that Prime Minister Kan needed a major disaster to rescue his administration. Well, he got one, at a terrible price to his nation, and it certainly took the immediate heat off his administration — coming from members of his own party as well as from the opposition.
The crisis will either sink or save the Kan government, which is now on the brink of a full-blown nuclear emergency. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW@ADFA
The Australia-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations are the first real test of the Kan government’s new trade policy of ‘opening up Japan’ and a chance for it to show that it means business when it comes to agricultural trade liberalisation and economic reform.
However, if progress — or lack of it — in the new round of Australia-Japan negotiations is any guide to how successfully Japan’s revamped trade policy is being implemented, then it is difficult to be optimistic about a major breakthrough on Japan’s agricultural market access issues any time soon. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW@ADFA
Prime Minister Kan Naoto has successfully eliminated one major obstacle to Japan’s participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in his recent cabinet reshuffle. Kan has removed Trade Minister Ohata Akihiro and replaced him with Banri Kaieda. Not only is Kaieda’s vocal support for the TPP in line with Kan’s position, but also removed is Ohata’s opposition to opening up the Japanese agricultural sector, which was undercutting Kan’s leadership.
With Banri Kaieda at the helm of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Prime Minister Kan’s government has more chance of a breakthrough on Japanese trade policy, particularly with respect to opening Japan’s agricultural markets. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW at ADFA
We now know, courtesy of Wikileaks, that the assessment of Japan’s DPJ, at the highest levels of the US government, was that it was ‘completely different’ from the LDP.
At first, this appeared to be the case. It was not just the Futenma debacle, although that was bad enough. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgam, ADFA@UNSW
The Japanese cabinet decided its FTA trade policy on 9th November. The ‘Basic Policy on Comprehensive Economic Partnerships’ also refers to the ‘Trans-Pacific Partnership’ (TPP), stating ‘…it is necessary to act through gathering further information, and Japan, while moving expeditiously to improve domestic environment, will commence consultations with the TPP member countries’.
It took precisely one day for Japan’s farmers’ organisation (Nokyo, or JA) to respond. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW@ADFA
Can we expect Japan to dump agricultural protection as it prepares to enter negotiations on a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and to host APEC? Only by dint of strong prime ministerial leadership capable of overcoming rising opposition from agricultural groups and pro-agriculture politicians within his own party and government.
In many respects the DPJ administration is still playing with the same deck of cards as previous LDP governments. Japan has had a change of party in power and now has the policy instruments in place to facilitate agricultural trade liberalisation with the introduction of direct income subsidies for farmers. However, the same old obstacles to progress are all too visibly in evidence. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, ADFA@UNSW
Japan’s new DPJ government initially set out to rebalance Japan’s relations between the United States and Asia by emphasising a more independent Asia-oriented diplomacy with an East Asian Community as the centrepiece.
Japanese rhetoric about the alliance has also changed: There was more talk of an ‘equal’ alliance and a security stance ‘equidistant’ between the United States and China. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, ADFA@UNSW
The dispute over Japan’s temporary detention of a Chinese fishing boat captain accused of colliding with two Japanese coastguard vessels in the territorial waters of the Senkaku Islands reveals the very shallow level of goodwill between China and Japan.
China’s official response to Japan’s actions was initially confined to action in diplomatic, cultural and economic realms, but the Chinese also threatened additional retaliatory measures if the Chinese fishing boat captain was not released immediately and unconditionally. Now that the release has occurred, China’s next move is unclear. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW@ADFA
On September 14, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) faces a choice between two leaders from the same party who represent radically different ideals and policies. The repercussions of this choice will be felt throughout Japan in terms of the trajectory in which its political system develops and the course in which its economy tracks in the medium term.
The differences in the policies of the two candidates – Prime Minister Kan and former DPJ Secretary-General Ozawa Ichiro – are clear. Ozawa supports a continuation of the DPJ’s big spending policies under the slogan of ‘putting people’s lives first’ and is hammering the DPJ’s anti-bureaucracy and decentralisation themes. In this respect he is staying true to the DPJ’s original 2009 manifesto. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW@ADFA
Japanese politics is heading for a showdown on 14th September when the ruling Democratic Party of Japan decides its next leader and prime minister. The contenders are the present incumbent, Prime Minister Kan Naoto, and the secretary-general in the previous Hatoyama administration, Ozawa Ichirō. If Ozawa is successful, Japan will have had three prime ministers in a little over three months.
The media have been waiting breathlessly for Ozawa’s decision on whether or not he would run for the DPJ leadership. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW@ADFA
What prime minister would try to sell a tax rise to voters one month in advance of a general election? What prime minister would disregard the advice of his party’s chief electoral strategist who had previously delivered stunning victories to his party in two general elections? What prime minister would sacrifice a vital majority in a house of parliament for the sake of his tax-rise policy? The answer? Japan’s Prime Minister Kan. Not only was the timing of the issue mishandled – the election should have been held after the fact, not before it – but Kan’s dithering on the details of the tax rise during the campaign was redolent of Hatoyama’s fumbling of the Futenma base issue.
Kan took his eye off the ball, which was to secure an outright majority in the Upper House. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW@ADFA
Prime Minister Kan’s first policy speech to the Diet on 11 June utilises the core concept in the Hatoyama administration’s New Growth Strategy. Both documents refer to the ‘third way’ as the government’s fundamental approach to revitalising the economy.
The language of the two documents is almost identical. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW@ADFA
Japan’s DPJ government has been on the hunt for funds to finance its campaign promises, the flipside of its mission to eliminate wasteful government expenditure. Last November, the first round of the Government Revitalisation Unit’s (GRU) screening process, which examined ministries’ spending requests for the fiscal 2010 budget, was disappointing. It yielded only an extra ¥690 billion in budgetary savings, a mere drop in the ocean of the final fiscal outlay of ¥92.3 trillion.
Accordingly, the DPJ played up other positives, emphasising the GRU’s role in achieving procedural as well as fiscal objectives, such as establishing greater openness, transparency and accountability in the bureaucracy. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW@ADFA
The Hatoyama government has loudly trumpeted its commitment to cut public works (PW) spending, encapsulated in its manifesto slogan ‘from concrete to people’.
According to the Ministry of Finance (MOF), the 2010 PW budget firstly involves a large-scale reduction in PW spending in line with the ‘from concrete to people’ pledge; secondly it implements expenditure cuts reflecting the Government Revitalisation Unit’s (GRU) budget-screening process; and thirdly, it aims to respond appropriately to local needs with a view to establishing regional sovereignty. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW@ADFA
The Hatoyama administration’s handling of the road toll issue is illustrative of its handling of policy issues in general and the nature of the policy-making process under the current DPJ government.
Firstly, the dual structure of party-government policy-making remains entrenched. The DPJ is supposed to stay out of policy-making, but constant intervention by Secretary-General Ozawa is maintaining an LDP-style dual structure of party-cabinet government and is blocking the transition to a cabinet-centred system, which was the DPJ plan. Instead of the LDP’s PARC, the power of the party in policy-making is concentrated in Ozawa’s hands. Read more…
