Aso has put Nakagawa Shoichi, previously from Ministry of Agriculture, in charge of the Finance Ministry and the Financial Services Agency, combining both at a time of financial crisis and when the whole point of establishing the Agency was to extricate it from MOF control. That’s only one problem. Nakagawa is a well known alcoholic.
Combining the responsibilities of both the Ministry of Finance and the Financial Services Agency is a step backwards from 1998 reforms that separated the two in order to clean up the non-performing loans from Japan’s last financial crisis.
Aso, whose grandfather was Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru, has appointed children of two other former PMs, Obuchi Yuko and Nakasone Fumio – both with little experience. Obuchi is 34 and has a one year old child, symbolically perfect for her role as Minister in charge of dealing with the low birth rate. Nakasone is Foreign Minister where he’ll bring the same hawkish credentials that his father had as PM, but with no foreign policy experience.
Aso’s strong and expected win allowed him to choose his own cabinet. For once a Japanese PM seemed not to be hostage to the internal LDP factions, evidenced from his only giving two posts to the largest faction, the Machimura Faction, which has 88 members and three posts to the Ibuki Faction, which only has 28 members.
He rewarded friends and supporters in what is a cabinet made up of nationalists and revisionists, perfect for Aso who may be more constrained in his hawkish remarks for once now that he’s in power. The Ibuki Faction is considered the most right-wing faction within the governing LDP.
Maybe this is just a brief comic interlude in Japanese politics. A general election could be called as early as next month – making it the shortest tenured cabinet in Japanese history. Taro Aso was given a poison chalice in the leadership at such a difficult time for the LDP and he seems to be doing everything he can to not only lose the election but to seriously undermine the credibility of the LDP.
Shiro, I thoroughly enjoyed your post about Taro Aso’s new cabinet choices. While Taro Aso seems to have challenged the LDP to do a better job in his speech to the Diet, he choices seem hardly be live up to that rhetoric. Your post further leads me to the conclusion, that despite his energetic profile and his family’s political history, that Aso will be incapable of solving the political problems facing Japan. These problems of course include a rapidly aging population, a large government debt, ineffective government monitoring of the food industry, as well as the threat of a recession. His criticism of the LDP for failing to solve these problems was warranted. However, his cabinet appointments seem to make a mockery of his speech and make him appear a hypocrite. Particularly his choice of Hatoyama, known as the “Angel of Death”, as Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications seems to be a bad decision giving the current rice scandal. Furthermore, I was shocked to read in The Economist, that Nakagawa Shoichi, when called upon by a reporter form the The Economist, was found, “in erratic form, with his shirt unbuttoned to the waist.” Such a choice for Finance Minister during a global financial crisis seems to be asking for public backlash. Given Taro’s recent speech, do you think that it is possible that Taro Aso may be trying to force reform on the LDP by basically engineering electoral defeat in the upcoming election? Does he feel that perhaps, like Koizumi, that perhaps the only way to effectively “fix” Japan and its current problems the LDP grip on power must be broken, and the electoral system opened to true competition? Perhaps a multi-party system and the political competition it brings is necessary to produce policy that will be able to move Japan into the future.
Cole, you say “Taro Aso may be trying to force reform on the LDP by basically engineering electoral defeat in the upcoming election?” and that he is similar to Koizumi in breaking down LDP structures in order to reform. This is contrary to everything that is Aso. He’s not a reformer and is different to Abe and even further away from Koizumi. Everything I read about him and his past (including, and maybe especially, his father and grandfather) points to him wanting to keep the status quo. Besides, this is a man who really wanted to be PM and he’s not going to sacrifice himself now and bring down his own party… the only reason I think he talks about ‘change’ is because it seems to be working for Ozawa and the DPJ (and is a pretty popular theme in politics these days). Japan does need change but I don’t think Aso will be the one to lead on this – he may be forced into it due to circumstances (we’ve seen he can change from a self-styled hawk to show a dovish side on foreign policy (Japan Times, p.2, Sept 23)).