Posted on 09/11/2005 1:46:18 PM PDT by Lessismore
On the surface, most elections are about personalities, false promises and special interests. But Japan's general election Sept. 11 is about a deeper historical reconciliation -- the effort to resolve differences between the country's cultural and behavioral preferences, and the organizational practices put in place by the Occupation forces after 1945. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has dispatched his loyal followers into the provinces of Japan to crush once and for all the postwar dominance of the Japanese bureaucracy.
As everything indicates, this is a highly personalized effort by the Koizumi family of politicians to resolve the leadership struggle between politicians and bureaucrats that was created 60 years ago by a flawed Occupation-era policy.
It should be remembered that the Occupation was designed to put political control in the hands of Japan's people and limit the role of political leaders. In America, the bureaucracy was weak and what the politicians did not control was left to the marketplace, state government and private enterprise.
To accomplish its political objectives in Japan, the Occupation was forced to operate through the existing Japanese bureaucracy, making it the dominant force in policymaking for decades after the war. Politicians have been fighting to restore their position ever since.
The Koizumi dynasty has been particularly focused on the post office. Koizumi's grandfather, Matajiro Koizumi, was once a minister of posts, and Prime Minister Koizumi has pushed for postal reform since he was posts minister in 1992.
With the weakening of the Japanese economy in the mid-1990s, Japanese politicians, including Koizumi, have moved aggressively to dismantle bureaucratic control of the government. This process is documented in recent political reforms -- the consolidation of government ministries, new ethics laws for bureaucrats, the appointment of politicians as vice ministers in ministries, the elimination of high-level bureaucratic positions and the elimination of lucrative postretirement posts for bureaucrats.
The issue of postal service reform, however, is an excuse and not the real reason for Koizumi's dissolution of Parliament on Aug. 8. The real goal of Koizumi in pushing postal reform is to strengthen the control of the prime minister's office over the government finances needed to fund mounting public debt.
In particular, Koizumi, who has close ties to the banking community and the Ministry of Finance, is very concerned with retaining postal funds for financing his growing level of deficit spending. The Finance Ministry, which subsidized the failing banking structure, is Koizumi's only protected bureaucratic power base. And this is one reason that so many of the new Liberal Democratic Party candidates he has fielded in this election are former Finance Ministry officials.
The postal reform being fought over at present is not about privatization or efficiency. The Japanese phrase for privatization used in the current election, mineika, is not about real privatization; it is about who will control the postal savings funds. In English, the purest sense of privatization means the transfer of assets or service delivery from government to the private sector. The upcoming election is about who will control the huge assets of the Japanese postal system -- the politicians or the semi-independent 250,000 postal workers.
Not surprisingly, over the years Japanese politicians and bureaucrats have agreed on one thing -- to restrain the privatization of government financial resources and to resist capitalist fundamentalism and market economics.
Deregulation, privatization, free-trade agreements and new economic openings have all been resisted by both bureaucrats and politicians who represent domestic special-interest groups (agriculture, construction, medical associations, postal workers, etc.).
Japan has 774 trillion yen of central- and local-government debt, the highest in the world. Japan Post holds a quarter of the nation's bonds (44 percent of its 350 trillion yen in assets). This year 34.4 trillion yen in new government bonds will be needed to fund public spending and public works projects needed to fill the economic gap attributed to low consumption spending and a weak private sector.
For a decade, Japan's government-driven economic recovery has relied on excessive and inefficient government public spending, financed in part by postal savings funds. Controlling postal funds is one way of avoiding a government debt meltdown.
Phase I of postal reform was completed in April 2001, with the creation of the current semi-independent postal corporation, which could operate outside direct political control. Before 2001, the Ministry of Finance managed and lent postal funds for off-budget projects. The 2001 reform put private-sector managers in charge of postal financial resources.
Many have argued that the current postal corporation has operated well -- that it has improved investment controls, diversified investments, introduced an incentive-based employment system and improved customer service. It is internally financed and gets no tax funds. The post office is also still the only financial facility in Japan that will accept overseas credit cards.
Phase II of postal reform, as proposed by Koizumi, has a double agenda: It would reduce the control of postal employees and pull a large portion of the postal deposits back under the control of the Japanese Ministry of Finance to purchase government bonds and finance public projects.
Postal privatization under Koizumi's plan, as detailed in election materials, would be completed by 2017, with access to mail-delivery service by private firms prohibited. The postal corporation would be broken up into four units: post offices, mail delivery, postal savings, and postal insurance.
Facts speak for themselves. This election is about further reducing bureaucratic havens and reinforcing the government's weak financial base by ensuring Finance Ministry solvency. Koizumi's postal reform, if successful, will give him and the Liberal Democratic Party greater control over the economic levers of government and solidify the power base for future generations of politicians.
On one level, an electoral victory for Koizumi will right the political wrongs of Occupation head Gen. Douglas MacArthur, but at another level it continues the old Japanese power game of state-controlled economics.
The Koizumi administration, often characterized as authoritarian and arrogant, reflects the growing centralization and strengthening of Japan's political power elite. Koizumi's neoconservative shock troops want a new constitution and a stronger military.
This new Japan appears likely to be more confrontational with its neighbors, especially China, and to be unwilling to express feelings of guilt over its prewar past. Increasing the power of the politicians and securing control over the financial resources to fund Japan's growing debt is what the Sept. 11 election is really all about.
Ronald A. Morse is CEO of Japan Entertainment & Gaming Associates.
Let em build all the ships they want. We need friends at sea.
$3.3 Trillion is a lot to follow.
"Flawed" Shmawed. Pure, unadulterated hindsight bull%$#%$.
Were there alternatives? Sure. Were any of them "perfect"? No. Would any of their imperfections have led to those alternatives to be characterized, in time, as "flawed"? Definately, if, as in the case of the plan that was put in place, the people of Japan and their democratic leaders did not improve on the initial set up; which they ahd all the democratic freedom to do. The only flaw has been with Japanese leaders.
Why didn't Japanese leaders unseat the bureaucracy sooner? Because, it's the economy stupid, and until the financial breakdown that led to Koizuma's first administration, Japan's economy had kept the people happy with things just as they were.
Whenever reporters or historians use the term "flawed" to describe some past event or action, be careful. Usually they are viewing things completely in hindsight and with little context to the circumstances of the time or the consequences of alternative actions at the time. They are great at telling you why some historical action was "flawed", but cannot tell you how "flawed" any of the alternatives may have become.
Whenever authors represent themselves as something substantially different than reality, also be careful. From above:
Ronald A. Morse is CEO of Japan Entertainment & Gaming Associates.If you follow that, you will also find he is chairman of something called the "Las Vegas World Affairs Council" and was previously affiliated with the "Economic Strategy Institute" in Washington, D.C. Following that will give you this brief bio (but not up-to-date) from us-japan.org
MORSE, Ronald A. Dr.Or this, from the "Japan Policy Research Institute"
b. 1938, US citizen
Terasaki Professor of Japanese Studies
University of California, Los Angeles
(snip)
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Adjunct Professor, International Business, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, 1993-present; Visiting Fellow, East-West Center, 1993; Visiting Scholar, Institute for Posts and Telecommunications Policy, 1992; Executive Vice President, Economic Strategy Institute, 1990-91; Development Officer, Library of Congress, 1988-90; Director, Asia Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1981-88; Strategic Assessments, US Department of Energy, 1980-81; Japan Analyst, US Department of State, 1977-80; Trade Team, US Department of Defense, 1974-77.
RONALD A. MORSE is the Tokyo Foundation Professor of Japan Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is also a Director and US Representative of the Sangikyo Corporation of Japan and the Chairman of the Las Vegas World Affairs Council. Morse is also a member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan.From 2100-2004, Morse was the Paul I. Terasaki Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA). From 1996 to 2001, he was Professor of Economics and Business Administration at Reitaku University in Tokyo, Japan.
In 1998, while living in Tokyo, he was appointed to an advisory committee of the Japanese government’s Economic Planning Agency. Since 1993, when he was a visiting fellow at the Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications Institute, he has followed wireless telecommunications issues and been a consultant to American telecommunication firms entering the Japanese market.
Morse is a well-known commentator on U.S-Asian affairs and the creator of the “Morse Target--a Guide to Washington's Movers and Shakers on Japan.” He is also the author or editor of over 20 books including: a reader on economic strategies, Powernomics: Economics and Strategy After the Cold War (1991); a guide to U.S. government statistical sources, DATA: Where It Is and How To Get It (1993); and an internet-based textbook, The Theory and Practice of American Politics Today (1999, in Japanese). In January 2002, he published Unconditional Success: American Security Policy Toward Japan and Tokyo’s Options (in Japanese), a book on the Bush administration’s Japan policy.
Morse was in Washington, D.C. for nearly two decades. He joined the Department of Defense in 1974 and in 1977 moved to the Department of State, where he covered Japanese domestic politics and foreign relations. Later at the Department of Energy (1980-1981), he worked on the Middle East and subsequently published several books on Asian and Middle East energy issues
From 1981 to 1988, Morse was Development Director and Director of the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a presidential memorial in Washington D.C. From 1988 to 1990, he served as a special assistant for policy to the Librarian of Congress and established the Library of Congress fundraising office.
From 1990 to 1991, he helped establish and was executive vice president of the Economic Strategy Institute. From 1994 to 1996, Morse was the director of international fundraising (focused on China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan) for the University of Maryland, College Park.
Morse has a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, in Chinese studies. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1974. His dissertation focused on Japanese folklore studies. At that time, he also translated into English and published the literary classic of Kunio Yanagita, The Legends of Tono, a collection of folk tales and legends.
E-mail: ron@ramorse.com
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