In this edition of TPR News: Fukuda’s approval ratings are down; the gas tax expires; BOJ to get a head; administrative reform weak; trouble with Australia; the best companies in Japan - in general and for women; Nintendo on top again; US Sailor charged with murder; Yasukuni hits theaters, or does it?; and liquor at your door.

Politics

Things are still looking grim for Prime Minister Fukuda and his Cabinet. According to a survey by the right-leaning Sankei Shimbun, the Prime Minister’s approval rating has fallen to 23.8% as his disapproval rating has risen to 59%. This doesn’t necessarily mean the opposition Democratic Party is looking any better, though. As the fight over the renewal of the temporary gasoline tax grinds on, 63.9% of respondents approved of Fukuda’s proposal to place gas tax revenue in general funds, thus nullifying one of the DPJ’s most convincing reasons for opposition to the extension of the three-decade old “temporary” levy - the breaking up of the Tanakaist dorozoku, or “road tribe”, that has long used gas tax-funded patronage to keep power and influence.
As expected, the DPJ held off from voting on budget-related bills and the gas tax expired on March 31st, causing gasoline prices to drop by about 24 yen. While the DPJ leadership sees this as a victory, others in the party worry that such stances are giving them the appearance of being a “party of defiance,” especially as the Prime Minister had acceded to one of their main demands and a plank in the party’s platform - adding gas tax money to general revenue.

As the expiration became a sure thing, Fukuda said, “The regions will end up with a revenue shortage and industry will stagnate. I wonder if the DPJ will really do this and ignore the regions. There’s still room to discuss this matter.”

Appearing to be holding out despite getting what they wanted, the DPJ have altered their goal to the permanent abolition of the levy, with Secretary General Yukio Hatoyama saying, “Many citizens are hoping for the abolition of the provisional tax rate. We’ve fought unyieldingly on this issue and are finally seeing the fruits of our efforts materialize.”

As the dorozoku steadfastly oppose the gast tax’s use for anything other than further road construction, some DPJ members see acceptance of Fukuda’s proposal as a strong strategic move for their party. As one back-bencher said: “If DPJ President Ichiro Ozawa accepts the prime minister’s proposal unconditionally at a meeting of party leaders, it would split the LDP and allow the DPJ to realize its policies. It would kill two birds with one stone.”

Without an agreement with the Prime Minister, the DPJ’s success is likely to be short-lived. Fukuda said the expiration of the gas tax would cost the government 2.6 trillion yen in lost tax revenue and said the LDP supermajority in the Lower House would pass an extension to the tax again by the end of the month.

The Prime Minister also invoked environmental concerns, set to be at the center of July’s G8 Summit in Toyako, Hokkaido, asking, “Are we allowed to encourage emissions of carbon dioxide by making gasoline cheaper?”

In the other issue dominating the ordinary Diet session, the LDP has come around to the view that having someone at the head of the Bank of Japan - in this case newly-approved Deputy Governor-cum-acting Governor Masaaki Shirakawa - means that the Bank is not without a leader, as they have been asserting for the past few weeks. Apparently having learned a lesson by putting forth two successive nominees for the Governorship without consulting the opposition or listening to opposition concerns, the LDP has engaged the opposition camp in informal discussions with an eye to formally nominating Shirakawa as the new Governor of the Bank of Japan.

Speaking to reporters, Yukio Hatoyama said the DPJ had approved Shirakawa as Deputy Governor and would thus not be able to oppose him as Governor. The DPJ leadership has been insisting on discipline in its motley crew throughout the process, suspending Yoshitake Kimata, the sole DPJ member who voted to approve Toshiro Muto as BOJ Governor, for one month.
Should Shirakawa be approved, Hiroshi Watanabe, a former vice finance minister for international affairs and current special adviser to the Japan Center for International Finance, would be nominated to fill his vacated Deputy Governorship.

The Government hopes to have a new Governor appointed before the G7 financial chiefs’ meeting in Washington on April 11th.

In one last standoff between the LDP and DPJ (at least for this edition of TPR News), an administrative reform plan, a weak tea version of the reforms sought by Administrative Reform Minister Yoshimi Watanabe, was approved by the LDP office of administrative reform on Thursday and by the Cabinet on Friday.

Instead of a Cabinet-level agency directing personnel appointments at ministries and post-retirement job placement and a ban on direct contact between bureaucrats and politicians, ministries will continue to control their own personnel appointments and amakudari, I mean job placement, and the new agency will merely advise. Contact between pols and bureaucrats will probably continue without change as bureaucrats will need only ministry approval to have direct contact with politicians.

The bill is headed to the Diet, where its future is uncertain as the DPJ, which controls the Upper House, has said it opposes the bill for its failure to address the underlying problems that have led to the pension records fiasco, the Defense Agency procurement scandal, the various bid-rigging scandals, and other forms of corruption, incompetence, and collusion.

Business and the Economy

As Japan gets set to resume 15-month-old free trade talks with Australia later this month, Australia’s Agriculture Minister, Tony Burke, met with Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries Masatoshi Wakabayashi and said, “We absolutely cannot agree to the exclusions Japan is putting forward.”

Japan has resisted making liberalization offers on wheat, beef, dairy, sugar, and rice, which are Australia’s main agricultural exports. As new Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd appears to be stepping away from Japan in favor of a central relationship with China, Burke told Wakabayashi the Rudd Government would go without a free trade agreement rather than sign one that omitted agricultural products.

According to a Nikkei forecast, combined net profit at Japan’s six biggest banks is estimated to have dropped over 40% for the year to March 2008. Aggregate group profit at Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Mizuho Financial Group, Mitsui Sumitomo Financial Group, Resona Holdings, Chuo Mitsui Trust Holdings, and Sumitomo Trust and Banking are estimated to have fallen from 2.8 trillion yen last year to 1.5 trillion yen for the fiscal year that ended on March 31st, the lowest earnings in three years.

The banks’ subprime losses are thought to total up to 800 billion yen. Three of the banks - Mizuho, Mitsubishi, and Mitsui Sumitomo - will have to write down the value of their shareholdings. Those writedowns could reach 100 billion yen as the Nikkei average dropped 27% in the past year.

Although the Statistics Bureau’s website has changed, household spending did not in February. After seeing increases of 2.2% in December and 3.6% in January, it appears that households may have tightened their belts a bit in the face of rising prices and did not open their wallets so freely in February. According to the Statistics Bureau, spending at households with two or more people came to 275,827, which was unchanged against a year ago. Income at households with a salaried worker as head of household came to 476,282 yen, which was down 0.1% from a year ago, while spending at workers’ households was at 298,539 yen, up 1.4% from last year.

Are you a woman working in Japan? If so, you’ve probably heard that your chances of progressing beyond looking cute in a uniform and making tea are a bit better at foreign firms. Well, Nikkei Woman magazine thinks so, too.

Topping the list in Nikkei Woman’s survey of the best companies for women to work at were the Japanese arms of Proctor & Gamble, at number one, and IBM, at number two. P&G was praised for having a high number of women in managerial positions. IBM ranked highly due to its opportunities for women, including training women for managerial positions.

Japanese firm Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., now known by its more famous brand name, Panasonic, ranked third.

The ranking shows a big change from 20 years ago, when retailers Seiyu and Takashimaya topped the list.

Also highly considered, although for different reasons, is Toyota, which ranked eighth in Forbes‘ list of the world’s top corporations. Toyota rose from 12th last year and was the highest-ranked of the seven Japanese firms in the top 100. The list was topped by British bank HSBC Holdings, which replaced last year’s number one, Citigroup. American firms General Electric and Bank of America came in second and third, respectively.

The other Japanese companies in the top 100 were Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, 35th, NTT, 65th, Honda Motor Co., 68th, Mizuho Financial Group, 71st, Mitsui Sumitomo Financial Group, 82nd, and Nissan Motor Co., 96th.

Nintendo’s popular Wii and Nintendo DS - the best selling video game hardware item of fiscal 2007, now have company at the top in the form of Wii Fit, the best-selling video game software item.

According to Enterbrain, Nintendo led the video game industry to 3.8% growth last year, bringing sales to 676.9 billion yen - the highest on record. Wii Fit, with sales of 1.76 million units, was at the head of a pack of Nintendo and Nintendo-affiliated software items that took nine of the top ten sales spots. Square Enix Co.’s Dragon Quest IV was the only outsider on the list, at number eight.

Nintendo DS and DS Lite dominated the hardware side (or “pwned” the competition, for those of you just joining us through a Google search for video game-related terms) with combined sales of 6.34 million units, taking first place for the third year in a row.

Sony Computer Entertainment’s PlayStation Portable sold only 3.42 million units.

Nintendo’s Wii sold 3.74 million units, as compared to a paltry 1.19 million for Sony’s PlayStation 3.

Oh, Microsoft’s Xbox 360? Is that still around? Not in Japan. 230,000 units. (True “pwnage”. I think. I’m not really sure. The last video game I played was Excitebike.)

Society

After initially being sentenced to deportation in 2004 by the Tokyo District Court, the Tokyo High Court decided in 2007 that a foreign married couple, who have both long since overstayed their visas, and their Japan-born child, deserved a little more sympathy from immigration. Mr. Taksin, the husband, is a Turkish Kurd, and his wife, Ms. Beltran, is from the Philippines. The couple has a 7-year-old daughter named Zilan. The Tokyo High Court’s 2004 decision was to punish the overstaying couple by sending Taksin to Turkey and Beltran and Zilan to the Philippines. Instead the family will be granted special residency status in Japan. The November 2007 decision by the High Court surprised many as the Justice Ministry is usually allowed to maintain a hardline stance on issues related to immigration policy and the granting of refugee status. Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama defended his decision to allow the family to stay by invoking “humanitarian considerations”.

After all the uproar surrounding the alleged rape of an Okinawan junior high school girl earlier this year, a Navy seaman has admitted to murdering a taxi driver near Yokosuka naval base in Kanagawa prefecture. Killed in the attack was 61-year-old Masaaki Takahashi. The attacker, 22-year-old Olatunbosun Ugbogu, jabbed a knife into the left side of the driver’s neck after his credit card didn’t work in the car’s card reader on the night of March 19th. Investigators are still trying to determine whether or not there was a disagreement about the cost of the ride which reportedly started at JR Shinagawa station in Tokyo. It was noted, however, that no money was missing from Takahashi’s car when his body was discovered. Ugbogu was recently handed over to Japanese police in a preindictment agreement with US Naval authorities. The Navy was very cooperative during the investigation into the murder and Ugbogu’s possible involvement. DNA samples were provided by the US military at the request of police investigators, and this case marks only the fifth time since 1995 that a serviceman was handed over to police before being indicted. Alcohol consumption and travel by US military personnel stationed at the Yokosuka Naval base has been restricted in reaction to the murder. At the time of the murder, Ugbogu was actually already in trouble with the US Navy as he had deserted his ship on March 8th. That fact has caused Japanese authorities to ask for notification when any military servicemen or women go AWOL. Currently, the US military is not obliged to report deserters to the Japanese government or police. Meanwhile, down in Okinawa, the offspring of military personnel have been up to no good as well. And again, taxi drivers were targeted. Several teenagers have been arrested in connection with a couple of robberies in March of this year. In both cases the teens made off with several thousand yen in cash after robbing the drivers. In the second case, the driver was beaten.

The documentary Yasukuni hasn’t even hit theaters yet, but it’s already created quite a stir. Several theaters in Tokyo have canceled screenings of the controversial film by Chinese director Yi Ling due to the noisy street demonstrations that would likely occur when right-wing groups gather their sound trucks near movie theaters. Some are worried that political pressure might also be playing a part in the cancellations. Yasukuni shrine, the peaceful site in Tokyo where the souls of the war dead (including war criminals) are paid homage to, is the focus of the film. The contentious nature of the content caused several lawmakers to ask to be able to see the film ahead of its official release. The Mass Media Information and Culture Union responded by saying:

“This is an unusual situation in which political pressure and hindrance by rightwing groups is about to thwart film screenings and a movie is about to be crushed. It’s absolutely unforgivable.”

One cinema in Osaka, however, has come out and publicly stated that it would screen the film as scheduled at the beginning of May. The Seventh Art Theater has said that it received many requests from local citizens to screen the film as it was necessary for debate and preservation of the freedom of expression.

We here at TPR are always looking out for you. To wit: Booze juggernaut Kakuyasu, whose wonderful pink shops have been spreading faster than the cedar pollen that plagues Tokyo, bringing cheap booze to your door all over the capital and beyond, is set to see some competition from 7-Eleven. The convenience store chain is preparing to increase the offerings on its retail site from 3,500 to 5,000 items, 4,000 of which will be alcoholic beverages, including 1,200 varieties of sake, 1,000 different wines, and 900 kinds of shochu.

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