NOTES ON CURRENT JAPANESE POLITICS: LUNCH WITH LOWER HOUSE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 SAPPORO 000032 SIPDIS SIPDIS STATE FOR EAP/J E.O. 12958: DECL: 4/30/2018 TAGS: JA SUBJECT: NOTES ON CURRENT JAPANESE POLITICS: LUNCH WITH LOWER HOUSE MEMBER MUNEO SUZUKI AND AIDE AKIRA MIYANO CLASSIFIED BY: Donna Welton, Consul General, U.S. Consulate General Sapporo, State. REASON: 1.4 (b),(d) Infamously brazen lawmaker Muneo Suzuki and aide Akira Miyano (his money man),took time to share with us their view of the state of politics in Japan during a late April Diet break visit to the home district in Hokkaido. A former Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker, Suzuki was forced out of the party in 2002 after a series of scandals even the big tent LDP couldn't countenance. He returned to the Diet in 2005 on his own party ticket (Shinto Daichi or "New Party Big Earth"). Out on bail, Suzuki is still hugely popular in Hokkaido, but his power to influence the political scene may wane if his final appeal to the Supreme Court fails and he has to return to jail. With nothing to lose, Suzuki was even more frank than usual on the vagaries of Japanese politics. Here's a summary of the monologue: #1: The Near Future, "Nejire" and More Coalition Government The Democratic Party of Japan cannot take over the Government in the upcoming Lower House election, no matter what the timing. Because the DPJ can secure 150 seats at most in the individual districts, for a total of probably 200 with proportional seats (there are 480 total seats in the Lower House),the LDP will continue to govern for the near future, forming a coalition with smaller parties (Kokumin Shinto, the Hiranuma group, and Shinto Daichi.) It is up to the Komeito Party if it wants to stay in the coalition or not, but that alliance probably will not last. Koizumi will not return this soon to be prime minister, although he is quite popular. [Career pork barrel politician Suzuki] has trouble understanding how Koizumi, who drastically reduced the public works infusions that kep the Hokkaido economy afloat, can still be popular here. Locally, the Japan Communist Party will concentrate its campaign efforts to garner votes for a proportional seat in Hokkaido. Similar to the recent Yamaguchi by-election, about half of the JCP supporters are likely to vote for DPJ candidates. Among Komeito supporters, there is an internal struggle going on over whether it is beneficial for the party to continue to ally itself with the LDP. (This is not lost on the LDP.) The next election is expected to be a difficult one for the Komeito. But this next coalition government won't break the political stalemate ("nejire"),with the Upper House remaining in DPJ hands. #2: Political Realignment? Not for Now Real political realignment will only happen after three more Upper House elections, over the next eight years. (Half of the Upper House is up for election each time.) Koizumi probably wants to wait the current situation out, and will come back when change [in his favor] is possible. As always, "realignment" will be a matter of shifting existing groups of personal networks; politicos rule, not ideology. The DPJ Maehara group, openly critical of Ichiro Ozawa, for example, will likely partner up with some split of the LDP. There are no real ideological conflicts between LDP members and DPJ members, or any other Diet members except those from the JCP and the Social Democratic Party. #3: The Next Lower House Election Should be in October The Diet will be dissolved in September, followed by a Lower House election in October. Although Prime Minister Fukuda and former Prime Minister Abe are members of the same faction (Machimura),they do not get along. One of the reasons for the fall election timing is that Fukuda wants to remain in power longer than Abe and he will not step down a day earlier than the length of his predecessor's term in office. Also, the LDP does not want to hold an election after the U.S. presidential election, presuming that the global appeal of change if the Democrats win will negatively impact on the LDP. ("We're in the Republican brotherhood.") #4: Who Will be the Next Prime Minister? Only Mori Knows Kiro Mori [who apparently makes all these decisions for the LDP] does not get along well with Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura. Although Machimura wanted to run for the LDP presidency last time, he could not gather the necessary twenty party members to support him, lacking Mori's cooperation. Although they are members of different factions, Mori gets along well with LDP Secretary General Bunmei Ibuki ("a politician with good political sense") and Makoto Koga, Election Strategy SAPPORO 00000032 002 OF 003 Council Chairman. Koga supports policy chief Sadakazu Tanigaki as a future Prime Minister. Unfortunately, Tanigaki has zero charisma ("lacks political color") and it is difficult for the voters to understand him. Yuriko Koike is often talked about as a candidate for Prime Minister, but she doesn't stand a chance. Her political networks are too shallow because she has moved between parties too many times and she has the image of someone "with no political beliefs of her own." She is very good about reading the immediate politial situation in front of her but she lacks the ability to work for the future. Taro Aso and Toshihiro Nikai also are in well with Mori, but if Aso misses his chance this time, he will be too old for subsequent tries. In the last LDP presidential election, Mori supported Fukuda, of course, but a surprising number [like Suzuki] supported Aso, especially in Hokkaido, partly because they do not care for Fukuda and wanted him to know that, even as Prime Minister, he has to work for their support. #5: Counting the Districts in Hokkaido Young Taizo Sugimura could run in District 8 (Southern Hokkaido) and solve the stand-off with the Hokkaido LDP chapter who wants to put up local son Gaku Hasegawa in Sapporo, but so far Sugimura isn't backing down. But it really doesn't matter because neither of them can beat DPJ leader and former Hokkaido governor Takahiro Yokomichi. This is his last election and he will get a lot of sympathy vote. [Suzuki] will not support LDP members who favor urban constituencies over rural development. But it is also hard to support DPJ members who want to cut taxes that fund road construction and maintenance. #6: Young Politicians are Not What They Used to Be It is hard to recruit young people into politics. Party loyalty is fungible, too. Young politicians who want to run on the LDP ticket but do not win the LDP party endorsement just go over to the DPJ, and vice versa. Not a single potential statesman among them. Unlike now, the old mid-sized electoral district system improved the quality of politicians as there had to be debate not only between the parties but also among candidates from the same party. #7: ~and on the Subject of Bureaucrats and Politicians Regarding the Bank of Japan governorship, they should have put up Eisuke Sakakibara. He was the best choice acceptable to both parties. Actually, Ozawa started off unopposed to the Ministry of Finance candidate, Toshiro Muto, but reconsidered at the last minute given negative public opinion and existing DPJ policy opposing the "amakudari" system (giving retiring senior bureaucrats high profile positions in quasi-government institutions and the private sector.) It was a big mistake to leave the initial negotiations to former MOF vice minister Jiro Saito, although he is close to Ozawa, and his counterpart Yasuda, also a former MOF vice minister who was a secretary to Fukuda's father. Although Koizumi is known as a man who fought against the bureaucrats, in fact he is the one who made them stronger, particularly the Ministry of Finance. Koizumi's postal reform was something that the MOF wanted to do in the first place. So the MOF supported him. Fukuda supports the MOF in the same way -- to his detriment as the Bank of Japan fiasco showed. Koizumi opposed the amakudari system, but he looked the other way on the Ministry of Finance. #8: Come to Think of It, Koizumi was Pretty Savvy in Some Ways The LDP suffers from the way the Japanese media are structured. All the major companies own both print and broadcast media and there is no diversity of coverage. Yomiuri, Asahi, Nikkei, Sankei, Mainichi, etc. all have their own TV stations. If you are subject to their criticism, it comes at you from all directions. Japanese young people, though, read the sports dailies more than any other newspapers. Koizumi (or his secretary Iijima) used these papers to get his policy across to younger voters and boost his popularity. He was always on page 2. Fukuda does not do this, "he is too clean." SAPPORO 00000032 003 OF 003 #9: Foreign Policy Lacks Vision Japan has lost the opportunity to solve the Northern Territories issue by sticking to its all or none stance. [This statement was followed by a very long, predictable riff on the miserable "nasakenai" stupidity of former Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka.] Nakagawa and Machimura are strongly one-sided against China. They lack a sense of balance in foreign policy. And no one at any level of government can keep any intelligence matter or information confidential. They tell everything to the press. Listener's Comment: Although he has greatly benefitted from his own personal appeal to the voters, Suzuki doesn't see political change as coming from the ballot box any time soon. In his experience, Japan has a two-party system -- only the two parties aren't the LDP and the DPJ, they're the bureaucrats and the mainstream politicians. Public opinion is merely tangential to the process. Japanese politics as usual. WELTON