Nagata-cho vs. Kasumigaseki [永田町ＶＳ霞が関]

Kodansha, 2007, 253 pages, ISBN：978-4-06-214042-3, 1500 yen

This book is about the complicated relations between politicians in Nagata-cho, where the Diet building is located, and bureaucrats in Kasumiga-seki, where most government ministries are situated. It is work that is interesting more because of who wrote it rather than for the subject itself.

Yoichi Masuzoe was the  Minister of Welfare and Labor [August 2007 to August 2009] and served in Prime Minister Taro Aso’s last cabinet,  before it lost power to the administration of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. Masuzoe held the same position under two previous prime ministers, Shinzo Abe and Yasuo Fukuda. Despite his junior rank in the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) delegation in the House of Councillors, or Upper House, having only been elected in 2001, he was appointed in 2006 as chairman of the LDP’s Upper House Policy Council (Seisaku Shingikai). This was unusual since the chairmanship usually goes to a veteran skilled in negotiating not only within the LDP but with the opposition parties. Masuzoe and the Lower House chair of the counterpart council, Seimu Chosakai, controlled drafting and revisions of legislations by all parties and ministries, every one of which has a vested interest in expanding their power.

Yoichi Masuzoe belongs to no faction but is backed by several senior LDP leaders, some of whom contemplated selecting him as a contender to the enormously popular Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (2001 to 2006). Born in 1948 in Fukuoka Prefecture, he graduated from Tokyo University Faculty of Law with a major in political science. He was a research fellow at the University of Paris International Relations Institute and the University of Geneva Graduate Institute of International Studies.

Returning to Japan, he taught French politics and diplomacy at Tokyo University. In the 1980’s, he left Tokyo University after criticizing its bureaucratic attitude toward education, and became a television commentator. In 1999, he ran against novelist/politician Shintaro
Ishihara in the Tokyo gubernatorial election and lost but garnered 840,000 votes. In 2001, he got elected to the Upper House with 1.58 million votes. In 2007 he was re-elected to the Upper House.

Masuzoe became prominent through his best-selling book on caring for his ailing mother who had developed Alzheimer’s disease before she passed away. His association with this led to his appointment as the Minister of Welfare and Labor in the Abe cabinet. The ministry he presided over had serious difficulties in tracking the records of pension recipients as well as other administrative problems. Masuzoe was often on television defending or criticizing his own ministry and explaining the issues as he saw them. He is a colourful character with a big ego to match and once owned prize-winning race horses. He is the author of many books, was divorced twice and married three times, and has a tendency to use strong words in public, often stirring controversy.

This book, however, shows still another side of him: He is a policy wonk. He attends numerous policy study group meetings, prepares for questioning in the Diet hearings by intense discussion with research staff and plays tough games with bureaucrats. He tells readers about the ins and outs of how legislation is drafted, goes through the revisions process, looks at who wants the revisions, how compromise is reached, and other factors that shape the end result.

Masuzoe argues that the LDP has gone through profound changes after the Koizumi reforms. Earlier, the Japanese political system ran like this; at the top of the LDP policy formation sat the Policy Research Council chairman in the Lower House. Under the council were many “bukai” or committees. Committee members were backed by bureaucrats and business executives, each pushing his or her own agenda. The business community donated campaign funds and organized votes; the bureaucracy provided knowledge and information on issues. In return, the Diet members who specialized in various industries, called “Zoku Giin” (tribe legislators), protected the interest of the business and the bureaucracy by winning beneficial budgets.

Masuzoe points out that the prevailing assumption was that Japan’s economy would continue to expand. After the” Lost Ten Years” in the 1990’s, the political map suddenly changed as economic growth plunged. Unable to accept drastic budget cuts and streamlining the system,
Japan’s deficit kept growing.

At this critical time, Koizumi appeared as a ruthless budget cutter. He streamlined the bureaucracy by establishing a group free of business and bureaucratic influence, which was the Economic and Finance Policy Advisory Council headed by Dr. Heizo Takenaka. Masuzoe gives high marks to Koizumi’s policy, although he admits that Koizumi tended to ignore the Diet–not an orthodox way to run a parliamentary system.

The era of high economic growth, the role of the Diet members merely winning battles on budget for interest groups, and reliance on the bureaucracy to shape policy is over, Masuzoe asserts. He criticizes Diet members who do not spend enough time on legislative activity and
declares that those not steeped in policy debate will become obsolete and forced off the political map soon.

However, he is a realist as well. He does not promote the idea of legislative initiative in drafting bills as the benchmark of a successful record, arguing that bills not going through vigorous scrutiny and “nemawashi” negotiations among all interest groups fail to get passed in the Diet. He contends, instead, that Diet members take the initiative in forming policy by utilizing the bureaucracy’s resources without succumbing to their own agenda.

Similarly he does not dismiss the role of “Zoku Giin.” He argues that these members are knowledgeable on issues and skilled in the legislative process. Therefore they should be a valuable asset if their attachments to special interest groups can be reined in.

Masuzoe proposes that each party have its own think tank, modelled after the Council on Foreign Relations, American Enterprise Institute, and Heritage Foundation. He says the LDP Policy and Research Council’s committees each have research staff who are well informed. In the Upper House, the LDP has its own think tank that assists the members in drafting legislation.

Masuzoe believes that to improve as policy organizations, the LDP and opposition parties need to take turns in running the country, a surprising view from someone who when he wrote the book was a member of the governing LDP rather than a vanquished opposition party. He asserts that by 2007 the long reign by the LDP had led to incestuous relations between Nagata-cho and Kasumiga-seki. A principle of competition by policies, not special interests, should prevail in an ideal political world. Now the LDP are the opposition, it will be intriguing to follow Masuzoe’s political path to see if he is serious in this argument.

A different version of this review first appeared on the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) Japan-US Discussion Forum and is reproduced with permission.

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