In this edition of TPR News, we look at fallout from the suicide of former Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Toshikatsu Matsuoka, his replacement, efforts to get two stopgap pension reform bills through the Diet, Abe’s falling public approval ratings, a slew of mixed economic reports, and the story behind Japan’s recent success in the Miss Universe pageants.

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Politics

The suicide of Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Toshikatsu Matsuoka delivered a fresh shock to the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which has seen its approval ratings head downward again after having experienced a bounceback in April.

Following Matsuoka’s death, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appointed Norihiko Akagi as his replacement. Akagi, a graduate of the University of Tokyo, member of the Liberal Democratic Party and six-time Lower House seat-holder, officially took the position at an attestation ceremony conducted at the Imperial Palace on Friday afternoon. Akagi has previously served as a bureaucrat in the Agriculture Ministry and as deputy director general of the then Defense Agency during the administration of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Akagi will be charged with pushing for agriculture reform and representing Japan at the World Trade Organization.

Concerning the announcement, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki told reporters:

We asked the prime minister to appoint a successor quickly so the vacuum in the farm ministry would not affect the administration. The public have been paying attention to the problem of politics and money, and we asked the prime minister to keep this in mind when he picked a new minister.

In an effort to show signs of better governance, Akagi has hinted that one of his first projects as Agriculture Minister may be to abolish the scandal tainted organization known as J-Green, which has shady financial and bid-rigging ties to former Minister Matsuoka. At his firest press conference, Akagi told reporters:

It’s unforgivable that an entity issuing tenders [for public projects] was involved in bid-rigging. We can’t allow an organization involved in such a serious scandal to remain in existence…The prime minister told me to review the organization thoroughly. I told relevant officials to consider abolishing the organization…We’ll have to discuss the future of the organization’s employees and its projects.

Back to approval ratings: a Kyodo poll published on Saturday shows that the approval rating for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet has plunged to 35.8 percent, down 11.8 percentage points from mid-May. This is a record low for the Cabinet in the Kyodo poll. The disapproval rate came to 48.7 percent, up 10.5 points from the previous poll. According to Kyodo, 69.5 percent of respondents said Abe has not taken responsibility for appointing Matsuoka in the first place, because Matsuoka never provided any clear-cut accounts about the scandals. The results also showed that 72.3 percent believe Matsuoka’s suicide will affect Abe’s management of the government and the outcome of July’s Upper House election.

A Nikkei poll released on may 29 showed similar results. According to the Nikkei data, 41% of respondents support the current administration, a fall of 12% from April. This figure is also a record low. The Nikkei attributes Abe’s low poll numbers to public anger over pensions, cronyism, and a return to the “downward spiral that had engulfed his government since he took office last September.”

Finally, an opinion poll released by the Asahi Shimbun on Tuesday showed support for the Cabinet plunging 8 percentage points to 36 percent, for yet another record low. The percentage of respondents who said that they did not support the cabinet increased from 36 to 42 percent. The previous poll was conducted on May 19 and 20. According to the paper:

…[R]ecent revelations about 50 million pension accounts for which the rightful beneficiary is unknown apparently caused the support rate to slide again below the nonsupport rate.

As Kana Inagaki of the Associated Press points out:

Abe has also focused almost exclusively on foreign policy and issues such as promoting patriotism in schools and revising the pacifist constitution - while polls show the public is much more interested in bread-and-butter issues like pensions.

Speaking of pensions, the ruling parties were able to pass a pair of bills concerning problems with the pension system early Friday morning. Speaking to reports after the session ended around 1:30am, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters, “‘We must tackle this speedily amid concerns among the public about the pension system. I am confident that our measures will undoubtedly ease the public’s concerns.”

As deliberations carried on into the small hours, the DPJ’s Akira Nagatsuma spent nearly two hours filibustering on why the largest opposition party had submitted a no-confidence motion against Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa, saying:

It’s the usual government reaction. Without disclosing the truth nor clarifying who’s responsible, it presented a partial solution aimed at making people wrongly believe that everything can be solved. The government must stop cheating the public.

Ultimately, with opposition efforts to block the bill’s passage amidst calls for further deliberation failing, the governing bloc passed its hastily-written bills, which does away with the five-year limit for pensioners to retroactively claim benefits they were not paid as a result of the blunders at the Social Insurance Agency. Whether or not passage of the bills will help fend off mounting public concerns about the pension issue ahead of the July upper-house election remains to be seen. Both bills move on to the Upper House, where deliberations are set to begin on Monday.

A bill designed to prohibit “amakudari,” or the practice of retired bureaucrats landing high-paying jobs in industries they once regulated, is expected to be passed by the lower house as early as this coming Thursday, according to the Nikkei’s Saturday morning edition. TPR will have more details on this legislation as deliberations progress.

Business and the Economy

Bank of Japan policy board member Kiyohiko Nishimura, who is considered a close ally of BOJ Governor Toshihiko Fukui, told a group of business leaders in Hokkaido that he expects consumer prices to begin rising “from the latter half of [the] current fiscal year.” Nishimura also expressed confidence that the current economic expansion is set to continue for some time, and he said that he expects wages to rise as the labor market tightens.

However, recent data from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare showed that Japan’s wages to corporate employees fell 0.7 percent in April from a year earlier, for the fifth consecutive month of decline. Many economy watchers find it difficult to believe that average wages in Japan will increase as the retiring mass of highly-paid baby boomers are replaced by lower-paid young workers and recent university graduates over the coming few years.

The Ministry of Trade, Economy and Industry reported that industrial production in Japan was down 0.1% in April compared to April 2006. The Ministry blamed the drop on lower manufacturing of cars and trucks as well as flat-panel displays and other electronics components. Most analysts had predicted a slight rise in production. It was the second consecutive drop, after a fall of 0.3% in March. The Ministry, however, is holding high expectations for the coming months: It said that manufacturers surveyed expect output to rise 1.8% in May and 1.4% in June.

Data from the Japan Automobile Manufacturer’s Association showed that production of new vehicles dropped for the second straight month, declining 3.8% in April compared to the same month last year. At the same time, Japan’s exports of cars, trucks and buses rose 2.3% in April from a year earlier, for the 21st consecutive monthly rise. On the other hand, exports to the United States declined for the first time in 27 months. In all, 484,702 vehicles were shipped to foreign shores, with Toyota leading the charge in overseas shipments.

Rumors abound that HMV is set to sell its Japan-based operations, possibly to the firm Culture Convenience Club (CCC), which runs the Tsutaya video rental chain. In 2005, CCC bought out Virgin Megastores Japan. Record labels are nervous about the idea of CCC buying HMV, since that would give CCC about 35 percent of Japan’s retail-music market. According to the Yomiuri:

If you’ve ever wondered why the steps leading up to the HMV Shibuya store from Center-gai are always wet, that’s because (according to a reliable source) the building’s landlord pays a lady of advanced years to empty buckets of water on said steps 10 or so times a day. Why? Because otherwise knots of high-school girls and other Center-gai denizens will sit on the steps and block access to the store as they text-message each other and do their makeup.

Society

A recent Slate article entitled “Why So Many Suicides in Japan?” is bound to draw the adoration and ire of self-appointed Japan experts in the blogosphere. Slate’s Christopher Beam points out that Japan is not setting any records in the suicide department: “Hungary, Estonia, and Latvia, among others, have more suicides per capita than Japan.”

On Saturday, a wooden boat carrying four North Korean defectors landed in Aomori Prefecture in northern Japan. The four are believed to be a husband and wife, along with their two sons. They have said that they are from North Korea and that they intended to travel to South Korea in order to seek asylum. The family was carrying a bottle of what appeared to be poison, which they said they would drink in the event that they were captured by agents of the North Korean government. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said that Japan would protect their human rights, and South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min Soon indicated Seoul is willing to accept them.

On Saturday, the Japanese consulate general in Vladivostok told Kyodo News that a Japanese fishing boat with a crew of 17 was seized by a Russian patrol boat in waters east of the Kamchatka Peninsula. No other details are currently available.

At the close of the International Whaling Commission’s annual conference in Anchorage, Alaska, Japan’s top delegate, Akira Nakamae announced, “There is a real possibility we will review at a fundamental level our role in the IWC and this would include withdrawing.” Nakamae went on to say that Japan may form an alternative whaling commission along with other “like-minded” nations.

Japan’s delegation was upset that its offer to give up on plans to hunt 50 humpback whales in the South Pacific in exchange for coastal whaling rights was turned down. Japan argued that four of its coastal communities should have the same whaling rights that are currently afforded to indigenous communities such as Native Alaskans. Several anti-whaling nations asserted that the plan would not do enough to protect whales.

Japan withdrew its bid to host the annual IWC talks in Yokohama in 2009.

On Monday (Japan time), Japan’s Riyo Mori was named Miss Universe 2007. Mori is the second Japanese woman to win the competition, following Akiko Kojima’s victory in 1959. With Vegas odds on Mori listed at 150/1, bookmakers the world over celebrated along with Japan as the announcement that Miss Brazil was the runner-up left Mori as the last woman standing. Soon after Mori ’s crowning, several blogs and websites began publishing a story entitled “Did Miss Universe Riyo Mori Have Plastic Surgery?”

The untold story of Japan’s recent success in the Miss Universe competition lies with the efforts of the Miss Universe Japan director, Ines Ligron. Since taking control of the program in 1997, Ligron has coached Miyako Miyazaki and Chibana Kurara to second place finishes, and finally hit the bulls eye with Riyo Mori’s victory last week. On her blog, Ligron documents the fascinating social scene surrounding the Miss Universe competition: Visiting the Hamptons, meeting Donald Trump, dinner at Nobu, meeting executives from MTV, and staying with “Riyo and Rachel, the gorgeous Miss USA in the guest room inside their fabulous apartment in Manhattan.” Naturally, crass rumors have it that Japanese contestants have been doing well in the Miss Universe competition due to pageant owner Donald Trump’s ambitions to enter the Tokyo property development market.

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