From Brad Mayer:
Again, I want to emphasize over and over what never gets mention in almost all commentaries: This is not just another election in "just another" imperialist country. Japan's fate is very much OUR fate here in America, like no other country. That is the reason to closely follow this election as if were ocurring in our country. Because, in a way, it is.
There is a reason the Beltway foriegn policy establishment consistently describes relations with Japan as the single most important one in the world for them.
More specific comments below:
>
> On 2005/09/12, at 22:17, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> So it looks like Koizumi kicked ass in the Japanese election. If,
>> as John Mage wrote mage140805.html> a month ago, "his noxious blend of neoliberalism
>> and nationalist jingoism will be put to a test," the noxious blend
>> has passed with flying colors. What happened?
>
> The opposition, Minshuto, is basically supporting the privatization
> of the postal services, but they want to do that in a different way.
>
> Since Koizumi called the election a "yes or no to the privatization"
> it was extremely hard for Minshuto to get a strong and convincing
> discourse on time. They managed to shift the interest to the pension/
> china-korea/irak-SD Forces issues but not in time and not thouroughly
> enough to be considered credible.
Generally the Minshuto is not held as a credible opposition since it is well known as a recomposition of traditional political elements, mostly out of the "old" LDP. Why buy the copy when you can have the real thing? The Minshuto has had years to establish that credibility, but as this election shows, the mass political terrain is too unstable and only grows more volatile.
>
> Koizumi kicked out of the party _all_ the representant who had
> opposed the bill in the lower house, they either formed new parties
> (New Party Nation/ New Party Japan, no comment on the choice of
> names...) or ran on their own (former Post minister Mrs Noda for ex,
> reelected).
The interesting question now is, can the Koizumi-led faction consolidate anthing out of this volatility? An _open_ question still.
Koizumi has announced that he will retire form the Prime Ministership next Sept. Much of this result rides on Koizumi's personal charisma and political acumem (I had said before that Koizumi is one of the sharpest of the reactionary politicians on the world scene, sharper that Rove, much less Blair.
Who will hold it together afterwards?
>
> Meanwhile Komeito (the political branch of the SokaGakkai) gathered
> support with a simple message (identical to the LPD's) "Don't stop
> the reforms!/Support LPD"
I forgot to mention their uncertain fate. Below
>
> Koizumi has managed to rally the undecided and the urbanites. The
> first because they could for once understand the over simplified
> discourse served to them (the apolitical 20-40 class, who's had no
> modern history class ever for most of them): "either you respect the
> party rule or you quit" / "the reform is about avoiding deficits in
> the postal services in years from now" / "the reform is the key to
> all other reforms" blablablablablabla. The second because in the
> urban areas the economy seems to be goining slightly better and
> Koizumi gets all the credit.
Yes, there is the potential for a real recovery and upswing in the business cycle right now. But they'll have to stay on good terms with China more than the US, from now on, if they want to keep it that way. (Japan's trade with China now exceeds that with the US, for the first time) But that is the exact opposite of the Koizumi faction's political orientation. Problem.
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200509120229.html
> Koizumi also managed to have a few charismatic figures as new
> candidates in key places. Some of them made it, some of them failed
> locally but eventually got their seat through the proportinal system.
> Funny thing is that Social-Democrats (SDP-opposition) got an extra
> seat (total 7) because LPD ran out of candidates to fill their last
> winning seat...
>
> The big winner is LPD (296/+84), other "winners" are SDP (7/+2), New
> Party Nation (4 out of 4 ex LPD runaways) JPC (9/+0), the big looser
> is Minshuto (113/-64), the other looser is Komeito (31/-3), the non
> affiliated LPD runaways (14 out of 31 candidates), New Party Japan (1
> out of 3 LPD runaways, I think one was from Minshuto though), 5
> unaffiliated were elected, categorized in opposition.
>
> Of course the upper house is still free to refuse to support Koizumi,
> but they lack support in the lower house now since a lot of their
> supporters are gone.
>
> In the rural areas Minshuto has managed a few stunts, like sending a
> representant from Kagawa (where I live) where only LPD representant
> have ever been elected. I think the sheer number of seats hides 2 facts:
>
> 1) Komeito has been instrumental in getting LPD representants to the
> Diet. They even pay the price of their success since LPD does not
> need Komeito now to have a majority (296/480 for LPD, 327/480 with
> Komeito) I wonder how that will play when issues related to Yasukuni/
> the peace constitution and other touchy things will be dealt with by
> the hard right that supports Koizumi.
No, I think Koizumi faction will not dump Komeito, because in non-Komeito districts Soka Gakkai is commanded to vote for the LDP.
More generally, Komeito/Soka Gakkai is the solid anchor of mindless support around which the otherwise anomalic, disassociated mass swarms (in the literal Durkheimian sense and definition of the word = Lack of Regulation / Breakdown of Norms).
> 2) Minshuto has lost a lot, but like in my very rural area, new
> candidates had very good scores even though they were totally unknown
> a month before. They need to get some political momentum to make it
> the next time. Just like some of the local LPD candidates in urban
> areas lost because they relied too much on their name and not enough
> on the policies they were supporting (running the election the
> traditional way), rural areas of Japan are slowly seeing a shift to
> "policy" politics where the name of the candidate will matter less
> than what (s)he supports.
>
> My totally uninformed bet is that the new government will do a few
> spectacular things before the new kids in town get tired of party
> politics. Plus the upper house may not be 100% conciliant, although
> the mood right now is not at rebelling against the will of the
> people, but that won't last long, since a lot of commentators are
> positively horified at the idea that LPD can now do whatever it wants
> pretty much.
Nobody in the Japanese ruling class is in the habit of paying any attention to "the will of the people". The commentators are horrified that Koizumi faction may run roughshod over _their_ special interests.
It has not been noted that the turnout has not been all that impressive: http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200509120131.html
Turnout was 55.65 percent as of 7:30 p.m. Sunday, 3.76 percentage points over the corresponding figure for the November 2003 Lower House election.
The reading largely reflected pre-election public opinion polls that showed a high number of eligible voters intended to cast their ballots.
Overall turnout in the single-seat districts for the last Lower House election was the second lowest on record at 59.86 percent, only slightly higher than the 59.65 percent recorded in the 1996 election.
-------------- And ironies of ironies, the single seat winner take all system actually works against a second "loyal opposition" party in a relatively homogeneous country like Japan, where the "winner" tends to "take all" everywhere all at once. Serves them right.
>
> Koizumi has managed a wonderful political trick, the thing that
> Chirac attempted in 95 and that miserably failed... If the timing had
> been different, Minshuto would not have lost that much. Nobody really
> cared about the "reform" (whatever that really means) before Koizumi
> made a show of it.
I agree with the last sentence. Few Japanese undersood Koizumi's obsession with postal bank privatization, because the real reason could never be explained in public: That what is likely the largest single horde of public cash on earth, this great piggy bank created by decades of frugal obachans stashing their savings away evey week, must be busted open - "liberated", if you will - and emptied into the the global stream of finance that will eventually make its way..
..to Wall Street and America's war coffers.
Where there they will truly celebrate tonight.
>
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