Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
On Friday, Fukushima Mizuho, the head of the Social Democratic Party of Japan, refused to bow to the prime minister’s decision to accept a modified version of the 2006 realignment agreement, forcing the prime minister to dismiss her from her position as minister responsible for consumer affairs.
Not surprisingly, on Sunday the SDPJ decided that it would leave the coalition, although it suggested that electoral cooperation in the upcoming upper house election is still possible. Read more…
Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
It may have taken a few months longer than I expected, but it appears that the Hatoyama government may have finally accommodated itself to the 2006 agreement on the realignment of US forces. The US and Japanese governments have reached an understanding regarding the future of Futenma following Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Tokyo.
The latest bilateral agreement largely reaffirms the 2006 roadmap: the Hatoyama government has agreed to the construction of a new runway somewhere in the vicinity of Camp Schwab at Henoko Bay, with the details regarding the precise location and the method of construction to be decided by President Obama’s visit to Japan in autumn. Read more…
Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
On Thursday, Masuzoe Yoichi, former minister of health, labor, and welfare and the most popular politician in Japan, will inform the LDP that he is exiting the party. On Friday, he will announce the formation of his own party (for now, the Masuzoe New Party), which is projected to have enough members to clear the five-member minimum to be considered a party and be eligible for public election funds. Whether and how many LDP members will follow Masuzoe out remains to be seen, but if Masuzoe has decided to exercise his exit option instead of trying to reform the LDP from within, who among the LDP’s reformists will continue to try to force the party’s leadership to change its way?
Masuzoe’s decision comes after the LDP virtually dared Masuzoe to leave: at a meeting of LDP Diet members last week, several members suggested that if Masuzoe isn’t willing to work with the executive he should leave.
Read more…
Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
Writing on the nuclear summit, Al Kamen, who pens a Beltway gossip column in the Washington Post, had the following to say about Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama:
By far the biggest loser of the extravaganza was the hapless and (in the opinion of some Obama administration officials) increasingly loopy Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. He reportedly requested but got no bilat. The only consolation prize was that he got an ‘unofficial’ meeting during Monday night’s working dinner. Maybe somewhere between the main course and dessert? Read more…
Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio returned home to Japan Wednesday after attending the Nuclear summit in Washington hosted by US President Barack Obama. Whatever significance the summit had for Obama’s diplomatic agenda, as far as US-Japan relations are concerned it was overshadowed by Futenma. Hatoyama’s self-imposed deadline of resolving the dispute by May is approaching, and there are few signs that his government will be able to reach a conclusion that satisfies the US and local communities in Okinawa by the end of next month. Indeed, on the eve of Hatoyama’s trip the government announced that it would be holding off on opening working-level talks with the US because it did not yet have a plan to present.
It is safe to say in terms of the process, the Hatoyama government’s approach to Futenma has failed. What explains the Hatoyama government’s disastrous performance on the Futenma issue? Read more…
Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
Michael Cucek has already pondered Yosano Kaoru’s thinking behind his strange alliance with arch-revisionist Hiranuma Takeo – which has resulted in a party that will supposedly be called Stand Up Japan! – but there’s another factor beyond the electoral factors considered by Cucek.
The alliance is a marriage of convenience in policy terms for both Yosano and Hiranuma. Read more…
Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
On Saturday, Yosano Kaoru, onetime contender for the LDP presidency and the Aso cabinet’s second finance minister, met with LDP President Tanigaki Sadakazu and filed notice that he will leave the party from next week. Sonoda Hiroyuki, Yosano’s ally who was forced to resign as a deputy secretary-general last month over criticism of Tanigaki, is expected to follow Yosano out of the party soon.
Both are said to be considering joining up with Hiranuma Takeo, the postal rebel who refused to rejoin the LDP with other erstwhile rebels in 2006. Read more…
Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
Writing at The National Interest Online, the Cato Institute’s Ted Galen Carpenter points to a ‘dual uneasiness’ in Australia, that ‘is creating an incentive for Canberra to hedge its bets and become, ever so quietly, more independent regarding security issues and capabilities.’
Change a few of the proper nouns and this article could be a fair account of the direction that Japanese foreign policy will trend in the years to come. Read more…
Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
Watching the shambles that the Hatoyama government has become, I went back into the archives and found the post I wrote on the occasion of Hatoyama Yukio’s being selected as DPJ president in May 2009.
Called ‘The DPJ bets on Hatoyama,’ I stressed the risk associated with choosing Hatoyama to succeed Ozawa Ichiro, noting in particular Hatoyama’s history of indecisive leadership, poor decision-making skills, and over-reliance on those around him for guidance. Read more…
Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
‘Nowadays the members of Parliament, with the exception of the few cabinet members (and a few insurgents), are normally nothing better than well-disciplined “yes” men,’ lamented Max Weber in Politics as a Vocation.
‘With us, in the Reichstag, one used at least to take care of one’s correspondence on his desk, thus indicating that one was active in the weal of the country. Such gestures are not demanded in England; the member of Parliament must only vote, not commit party treason. He must appear when the whips call him, and do what the cabinet or the leader of the opposition orders.’ Read more…
Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
In different ways, two articles published in Western media outlets this week suggest the emergence of a new narrative concerning Japan in elite circles in the United States. One might call that narrative the ‘losing Japan’ narrative, reminiscent of the idea — propagated by newsman Henry Luce — that the United States, or rather, the Democratic Party ‘lost’ China when the Communists won the Chinese Civil War. This narrative suggests that the United States is ‘losing’ Japan to China, raising a call to arms that unless the US government acts expeditiously it could let the DPJ-led government lead Japan into China’s embrace.
The first is the now infamous editorial in the Washington Post on Fujita Yukihisa, the DPJ upper house member best known for his doubts about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Read more…
Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
Within a week of the formation of the first Bolshevik government, Leon Trotsky, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, went to the foreign ministry and forced the staff to open safes containing secret treaties that the Tsarist government had made with the Allied powers over the course of World War I, treaties that for the most part concerned how the Allies would divide up the territorial spoils of war.
‘Abolition of secret diplomacy,’ wrote Trotsky, ‘is the first essential of an honorable, popular, and really democratic foreign policy.’ Read more…
Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
When the Hosokawa government — with Ozawa Ichiro, then secretary-general of one of the leading parties of the eight-party coalition backing the government — passed electoral reform in 1994, one of the arguments made then and ever since by Japanese politicians (and American political scientists) was that the new mixed single-member district/proportional representation electoral system would produce a British-style two-party system that would complement the British-style administrative and political reforms desired by Ozawa and other politicians.
In other words, the Japanese political system should favor the existence of a second large party to challenge the DPJ, if not the LDP then an LDP-like successor party. Read more…
Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
On Wednesday, Ubukata Yukio, the deputy secretary-general, Tanaka Makiko, Koizumi Junichiro’s controversial foreign minister who joined the DPJ last year, and other DPJ Diet members proposed to Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio and DPJ secretary-general Ozawa Ichiro that the party establish a new policy research arm to replace the policy research council that closed shop when the DPJ took power in September.
Once again showing that whatever the DPJ-led government’s shortcomings, it is entirely serious about centralising policy-making in the cabinet and neutering the ruling party, both Hatoyama and Ozawa were quick to reject the proposal. Read more…
Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
The Hatoyama government’s campaign to revitalize Japan’s bilateral relationships in Asia continues, with Okada Katsuya’s visiting South Korea for the first time as foreign minister for meetings with President Lee and other senior officials.
While Americans are focused on celebrating what is being called the fiftieth anniversary of the US-Japan alliance this year, a more significant anniversary this year may be the 100th anniversary of Japan’s annexation of Korea. Read more…
