In this edition of TPR News: Prime Minister Fukuda resigns, Taro Aso declares his candidacy for the post, LDP reformers consider Yuriko Koike, DPJ President Ichiro Ozawa officially declares for reelection in a race that will be uncontested, a new third party, the Reform Club, is formed, more Russian rikishi and an Australian rugby player are busted for pot smoking, police begin videotaping some confessions, and much, much more.

Politics

The big news, of course, is that Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda announced his resignation at 9:30 p.m. on Monday night.

Fukuda said he had come to the conclusion that a new leader would be more able to pass contentious legislation in the upcoming extraordinary Diet session and deal with the opposition camp that had locked horns with the ruling camp and forced the LDP-New Komeito coalition to fifty-nine bills through using its Lower House supermajority.

Of his decision, Fukuda said, “When taking into consideration that the lives of the public come first, we must not create a political vacuum by political horse-trading. On this occasion, we must promote policies with a new lineup — that is my conclusion and I have decided today to resign.”

Immediately after his announcement, the DPJ-led opposition called his decision “irresponsible” and Kyodo found much the same response in many man-on-the-street interviews. Lower House Speaker Yohei Kono, in Hiroshima for a meeting of G8 Lower House Speakers, joined the public in expressing surprise, telling reporters he had no advance warning of Fukuda’s decision.

Business leaders also joined the parade of people denouncing the decision is irresponsible, with an unnamed Keidanren official telling Kyodo that the second consecutive abrupt resignation by a Prime Minister showed that it was perhaps time for a transfer of power to the opposition and out of the hands of the LDP.

Some business leaders were upset that Fukuda left without achieving any of the fiscal, medical, or pension reform for which the public had been clamoring since before he took office. For his part, the outgoing Prime Minister said the DPJ caused “a lot of trouble for me in the divided Diet” and cited the scandals that popped up, saying, “Honestly speaking, ever since the beginning, piles of problems like political funds, pension records, hepatitis C and the Defense Ministry scandals emerged one after another. I was swamped trying to resolve such issues.”

Much like his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, Fukuda left shortly before the start of the extraordinary Diet session and shortly after reshuffling his Cabinet in an attempt to shore up waning public approval, a gambit that worked only briefly, as the Cabinet’s approval ratings dropped back down into the 20s amid the continued perception of weak leadership and a political fund reporting scandal involving new Farm Minister Seiichi Ota of the same type that swirled around successive Farm Ministers, and other Cabinet members, in the Abe administration.

As expected, Fukuda’s rival in last year’s LDP presidential election, current LDP Secretary General Taro Aso, immediately threw his hat in the ring, a toss given extra oomph by the recent endorsement of LDP kingmaker Yoshiro Mori, himself once the least popular Prime Minister in modern history.

LDP General Council Chairman Takashi Sasagawa, though, said he hoped for an open, vigorously contested election on September 22nd, saying the LDP would “not act like a certain other party,” and thus jumping on the opportunity to take a swipe at the rival DPJ, who is set to reelect current party President Ichiro Ozawa, unopposed, on September 21st.

While the smart money at this point is on Aso, who was the runner-up in both the 2006 and 2007 elections, heads a faction in the LDP, and has widespread recognition and a certain degree of popularity among the public, there is a solid list of potential challengers, including Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism Minister and 2006 third-place presidential candidate Sadakazu Tanigaki; former Defense Minister (albeit briefly) and Koizumi acolyte Yuriko Koike, widely considered the most likely candidate to become Japan’s first female Prime Minister; State Minister for Consumer Affairs Seiko Noda; State Minister for Economic and Fiscal Policy Kaoru Yosano; and LDP Policy Research Council Chairman Nobuteru Ishihara.

Of that list, though, Yosano has endorsed Aso and none other than Aso have openly declared an intention to run.

Should Aso become Prime Minister, he is expected to part ways with Fukuda’s fiscally conservative core Cabinet and pursue an expansion of the two trillion yen economic stimulus package on which he recently worked the Prime Minister. Last month, Aso said that balancing the budget in the nation with the world’s largest public debt - at least 160% - should be put off until at least 2011 and that government spending was needed to spur economic growth.

Some economists agree, with some now saying that Japan may have slipped into a recession as early as the fourth quarter of 2007, with many saying that dramatic spending cuts in pursuit of a balanced budget in the next few years could push the economy even further down the road to recession.

While that may make Aso sound like one of the LDP’s Tanakaist dinosaurs, he’s not. His ascension to the big chair would bring a wing of the party neither part of Fukuda’s old guard nor Abe’s younger ideologues to the fore. He stands in a position that could be difficult - not conservative enough to get the old guard enthusiastically behind him, but enough of an LDP conservative to worry the reformist disciples of Koizumi, who might throw their support to Yuriko Koike. Former LDP Secretary General Hidenao Nakagawa, a prominent and senior member of the large Machimura faction, has appeared to be supporting a Koike candidacy, meeting with her and joining her in saying that the party needs a vigorous policy debate.

Fukuda’s departure took a number of local LDP chapters by surprise and many are turning to preliminary balloting of rank-and-file party members, who don’t always get their votes counted, to decide whom to back - a step that could be tricky as Aso is the only openly declared candidate with less a week to go before the September 10th start of the twelve-day campaign.

The chapters want to unite behind a candidate so as to avoid any surprises (the winner of LDP presidential contests never being in doubt once the campaign starts) and to be sure to back the winner while still putting on the appearance of an openly contested campaign, so they can flog the DPJ leadership for convincing party President Ozawa’s rivals to stand down in the name of unity.

Local LDP chapters are, of course, also concerned about the public’s image of their party in the wake of Fukuda’s sudden and “irresponsible” resignation.

Representatives of local chapters will make up 26.7% of the vote on September 22nd, with each of the 47 prefectural chapters getting three votes to cast. 304 members of the Lower House and 83 members of the Upper House make up the party’s electoral body, making the total number of votes 528.

Fukuoka’s chapter, unsurprisingly, has come out in favor of Aso, who would be the first Prime Minister from the prefecture since Koki Hirota, who was in office from March 1936 to January 1937. Aso would also be Japan’s first Catholic Prime Minister and the first former Olympian to be Prime Minister - he represented Japan in shooting at the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal.

As we mentioned just a few moments ago, Ichiro Ozawa is getting ready to claim his third term at the helm of the DPJ in an almost certainly uncontested election on September 21st, and he made the necessary official announcement on Monday, saying, “We have to put a stop to the government of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito as soon as possible.”

While Acting President Naoto Kan, Secretary General Yukio Hatoyama, and Upper House Caucus Chairman Azuma Koshiishi will have no trouble collecting the necessary score of recommendations that will allow Ozawa to start his campaign on September 8th, the trio are expected to be sure to collect recommendations from all of the party’s factions in order to maintain the party unity Ozawa’s uncontested incumbency is supposed to engender.

On Tuesday, in the wake of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s resignation, Ozawa called on the opposition to take power from the ruling camp.

At a hastily convened meeting of party leadership, Ozawa said the DPJ should call for an immediate snap election on the grounds that it had been understood that the inevitable election would take place under the next Cabinet. Speaking on the fairly safe assumption that Taro Aso would soon head the LDP, Ozawa said Aso would be an easy opponent to defeat in a general election.

DPJ member and Chairman of the Diet Affairs Committe Kenji Yamaoka said the start of the extraordinary session would be pushed back to September 25th, putting it after the DPJ’s presidential election on September 21st and the LDP’s on the following day.

In a story we reported last week, some opponents of Ichiro Ozawa have left the DPJ and joined with independents to form a new party.

Kaikaku Kurabu, or Reform Club, announced its existence on Friday, despite being one member short of the legal minimum for the formation of a new party, DPJ Upper House member Yumiko Himei having backed out of her decision to join the new party. That leaves DPJ members Hideo Watanabe and Yasuhiro Oe and independents Shinpei Matsushita and Hiroyuki Arai as the party’s only four members. The Reform Club will still not be the smallest presence in the Diet, though. That honor belongs to the New Party Nippon, to which Hiroyuki Arai once belonged, which now has only one seat in the Diet.

If the nascent party can convince more DPJ members to leave their party, the Reform Club can be officially registered, thus allowing it to receive subsidies.

Society

A man in Osaka was found not guilty of groping charges this week.

The alleged groping took place about 15 months ago on a morning rush hour Osaka Loop Line train. Two high school girls claimed that he used his elbow to touch one of the girl’s breats, and then grabbed the other young lady’s backside.

Justice Hiroyuki Nakagawa decided that it was possible that the contact was accidental considering the number of people on the train at the time.

Prosecutors had asked for six months of hard time for the 31-year-old company employee.

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On Tuesday, the National Police Agency announced that it had begun videotaping interrogations conducted by the Chiba Prefectural Police on a trial basis, as part of the preparations for the lay judge system set to begin next year.

The case (yes, there’s only one) in which the new system is being tested is for a crime committed in Chiba in August. While police would not release details of the crime in question, it was serious enough to be subject to the lay judge system.

One 20-minute session of questioning was recorded (yes, only one), in which a police officer read a statement to the suspect and asked him to corroborate the details.

Similar tests are due to take place in Osaka, Kanagawa, and Saitama.
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More non-Japanese sportsmen have found themselves in hot water for smoking marijuana. Yesterday, Russian sumo wrestling brothers Roho and Hakurozan tested positive for the drug. No word yet on how quickly they will be sitting in a jail cell. In similar news, a professional rugby player, Simon Kasprowicz, also submitted to a drug test at a police station in Azabu recently. The Australian Top League rugby player was picked up by police in Roppongi and brought to a police station last week but was allowed to leave after undergoing a urine test.

It was reported in the Australian media that a warrant was later issued for his arrest, but the player in question was already back in Australia by that time, and his family has denied that a warrant was ever issued.

This follows hot on the heels of news last month that sumo wrestler Wakanoho, a Russian national, got himself detained, and quickly banned from sumo, for allegedly breaking the Narcotics Control Law. His wallet was apparently found in Roppongi with a joint tucked inside it. Japan employs medieval punitive measures for pot smokers, and those found guilty of possession or use can wind up in jail.

Note to non-Japanese in Roppongi: don’t carry any controlled substances on your person as the authorities are pretty well convinced that you’re using and/or dealing it.

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Dismayed that kids in his neck of the woods are below average in their scoring on standardized tests, Osaka governor Toru Hashimoto has requested that the various municipal boards of education report average scores in their respective school districts. The prefectural board of education had initially refused to pass Hashimoto’s request on to the municipalities but has since reversed its decision.

This is apparently the first time that a prefecture has asked its boards of education to disclose such information to the public.

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Our regular listeners will have noticed that this edition of TPR News was without the usual Business and the Economy section. Never fear! It was left out this time only because of the great length of the Politics section, due to interesting recent events, and will be back next time.

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