Japan


	May 14, 2002	atimes.com

Japan

Japan's new star rises from the (crow's) ashes
By Richard Hanson

TOKYO - Shintaro Ishihara, Tokyo's outspoken 69-year-old governor and idol of Japan's political right wing, delivers when he declares war. Ask any crow.

Last year, Ishihara took aim at the noisy, aggressive and hungry black birds - some 30,000 of them - that plague metropolitan Tokyo's streets and parks. As pundits described this battle, the governor, a post he was elected to in 1999, "raved" against the crow menace and deployed the full powers of his government. Special patrols set out to trap them and destroy nests, and orders were issued to deny the birds their major source of sustenance (garbage collections set out earlier in the morning). Crows were denied the legal protection normally afforded wild animals. Ishihara even suggested, in his outspoken way, baking "crow pies".

This is the veteran former bete noire of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), who in recent weeks has been mentioned frequently as plotting a return to national politics. More specifically, Ishihara has been snooping around the territory of his former party (he ran in Tokyo as an independent having quit his Lower House LDP Diet seat in 1995).

The target "crow" in this case is Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, whose once giddy high-flying ratings in the polls have nose dived in recent months after a series of scandals and the on-going economic malaise. Koizumi was supported by more than 80 percent of those polled a year ago when elected president of the LDP, thereby assuming the premier's post. Ratings now show support hovering around 45 percent.

Poll results aside, Koizumi's oft-repeated promises to push hard on reform plans have widened a rift between his government and powerful forces in the ruling party. LDP hardliners oppose Koizumi's top-priority personal crusades, such as privatization of the patronage-laden postal system, and other icons of LDP vested interests. Most of those have to do with construction and other politically protected enterprises. Bad blood between the LDP and Koizumi last month deteriorated into an exchange in which the prime minister said that either the LDP would crush him or he would crush the LDP.

This row quickly brought out that other predator-scavenger, the buzzards that circle Nagatacho, Japan's national political feeding ground (Capitol Hill). There were soon stories circulating in the press of a restaurant meeting between elderly bigwigs in the LDP and Governor Ishihara (the title is used to distinguish Shintaro from his 44-year-old son, LDP Diet member Nobuteru Ishihara, Koizumi's cabinet Minister for Administrative and Regulatory Reform).

According to those familiar with the meeting, the main subject was whether Governor Ishihara would run for the Diet and form a new political party. The governor's four-year term ends next April. The prime minister must be selected from among Diet members. Such plans would of course require a general election to be declared by Koizumi.

The theory is that Governor Ishihara is the only public figure at the moment who seems to enjoy strong public support for the job he is doing. According to the Asahi Shimbun, in April his approval rate climbed to 78 percent. Men and women heavily support him, which is not unusual because of his nationalist appeal from conservative men and his sex appeal among women. Ishihara is also a popular writer and his dead brother was a very popular actor.

Respondents were less than enthusiastic concerning the governor's knee-jerk, race-related views regarding non-Japanese. China and the Koreas despise the man's penchant for historic amnesia and other offensive statements. Regarding the governor's future, a majority said that they wanted him to stay on for a second term as governor, where he has been praised for works beyond crow-baiting. A strikingly small 18 percent said that he should return to national politics and seek the prime minister's job. On the bright side, only 11 percent want him to quit being governor.

Governor Ishihara was cool to the overtures from his supporters in the LDP and other LDP-supportive parties, which are always in danger of splitting along vested-interest battle lines in any election contest. So far, under the Koizumi administration, the electoral score has been split. In the Koizumi boom times, local elections, with the help of the premier, produced a string of impressive victories. The results of the most recent local Sunday elections have been mixed.

Koizumi's post-election honeymoon has faded. This has not exactly convinced Governor Ishihara to lay all of his trump cards, if any, on the table at the moment. He is not at all convinced that those who are pushing him to jump into the fray are credible enough in what influence they can muster. This forced him to roll out only sketchy outlines on his secret strategy to return to the national political stage. Previously, he had not even revealed this much on the Sunday morning talk shows on which he has become a regular guest since sniffing the political winds.

A return to national politics is still being described in the national press as an event that could "shake the foundations of the nation's power center to the foundations". The writer of those sentiments sums up one pervading view of the current dilemma facing Japanese politics. "Love him or hate him, [Governor] Ishihara is one of only a few politicians who can present his ideas on Japan's politics and history in lucid terms," writes Katsuyuki Nakagawachi, a deputy editor on political news at Nihon Keizai Shimbun. "If he ever returns to national politics, he might help fight the sense of powerlessness that currently pervades Nagatacho." This said about a man who is perhaps best known outside Japan for declaring more than a decade ago in a book that Japan should be a country that could say "No" - mainly to the United States - in foreign policy and other matters of national destiny. That book, The Japan That Can Say No, raised eyebrows in and out of Japan. A US government intelligence agency went so far as to translate and widely circulate the book. Keep in mind, this was at the height of Japan's trade and other frictions with its number one ally, the US.

But back to Governor Ishihara's political game plan. This part may seem a bit contradictory. Governor Ishihara had by early May most certainly made his impression on Japan and the international media. Here, in some form or other, was a Japanese who might just be stirring the sort of nationalistic or racist sentiments that shocked most voters in France when Jean-Marie Le Pen became the (eventually unsuccesful) runoff candidate in the presidential election earlier this month.

Off base as they may be, comparisons are easy to make. Strange bedfellows get caught in the same net. There are no doubt a large undisclosed number of less obnoxious pigeons and pigeon nests destroyed - collateral damage - in Governor Ishihara's crow war. The governor also decided to surprise Japan with a prominent interview in the Asahi Shimbun, thecountry's largest liberal-leaning national newspaper. The story appeared as front page news as Japanese returned to work from a long Golden Week holiday.

The thrust was as follows: Ishihara said that he had every intention of running for re-election as governor in April of next year. "I have said from the beginning that I plan to serve two terms. My stand has not changed." Political insiders have said that Ishihara intends to form a new party and even take a shot at the prime minister's post. But he said in the interview "that would be too much trouble". Some analysts say that the Asahi Shimbun interview was just another clever ploy on his return to national politics. This may be true. He has certainly not ruled out any possible options. And he is a popular governor, so it makes political sense.

This oblique approach to handing down the true intentions of a man viewed as a Messiah figure by true right-wing camp followers may confuse some. A savior must work in strange ways, however, whether the disciples like it or not. But it is a little like asking who wants to swallow crow pie?

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