A True Villain?!
This is an excerpt and translated from a monthly political journal Gekkan Nippon July 2013 issue.
A True Picture of Heizo Takenaka
Minoru Sasaki, journalist
Heizo Takenaka as Seeker of Regulatory Reform in the Field of Labor
NIPPON: In your book Shijo to kenryoku [Markets and Power] (Kodansha),
you focus on depicting the real Heizo Takenaka. The book is full of suggestions
for people who wonder just how it was that neoliberalism came to be introduced
to Japan.
SASAKI: Takenaka said at the first meeting of the Industrial
Competitiveness Council (ICC) on January 23, 2013, that “there is no magic wand
for growth strategy; regulatory reform that gives corporations freedom and
makes them more muscular is the first element of growth strategy.” The
following day, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proclaimed the necessity of regulatory
reform using a manner of speaking that followed Takenaka’s statement almost to
the letter. It was a scene that was symbolic of the closeness between Prime
Minister Abe and Takenaka.
Takenaka had played a major role during the years of
the Koizumi administrations. He was subsequently the subject of various
criticisms, and during the years of the Democratic Party of Japan
administration it seemed for a moment that he might have become a has-been.
However, he survived, was picked up by Prime Minister Abe, and is now the
leading neoliberal ideologist.
NIPPON: Regulatory reforms in
the field of labor, such as easing regulations on dismissal, are being debated
in the ICC and the Council for Regulatory Reform (CRF). Isn’t there an element
of blatant pork-barrel politics to this?
The Koizumi administration took decisive action on
regulatory reform in the labor field and brought about an expansion of the
market for staffing businesses. After the curtains came down on that
administration, Takenaka was brought in by the founder of the temporary
staffing service Pasona Group, Yasuyuki Nanbu, to be a special advisor to the
group. In 2009 Takenaka was made Pasona’s chairman.
SASAKI: There is no mistaking the fact that Takenaka brought along
his interests in regulatory reform for the field of labor. In a conversation
with Rakuten Chairman and CEO Hiroshi Mikitani (Bungei Shunju, April 2013), Takenaka said the following: “The fact
is that healthy competition does not exist even in the labor market. Owing to a
singular judgment that the Tokyo High Court handed down in 1979, Japan’s
regular company employees are the most protected in the world.”
NIPPON: Isn’t it odd in itself
that the chairman of the Pasona Group is arguing about regulatory reform in the
labor field?
SASAKI: It is quite odd. However, the mass media only gives
Takenaka’s title as that of “Keio University professor” and fails to take up
the conflict-of-interest issue. They should also include his title of “Pasona
Group chairman” from the outset. Before discussing the pros and cons of a
particular argument, the ICC and the CRF should make an issue of the fact that
their members are too heavily weighted in the direction of businesspeople and
economists.
NIPPON: It would appear that a
section of the elite passes around jobs in the government, major corporations,
and academia in the name of an interchange of personnel between the public and
private sectors—a phenomenon known as the “revolving door” in the United States—and
runs the nation for the benefit of certain powers.
SASAKI: There was an Academy Award–winning documentary film called Inside Job (2010; Charles Ferguson,
director) that attracted much attention. It depicted the collusive relationship
between economists and the financial world in the United States. Japan appears
to be attempting to emulate, in an even more distorted form, this “revolving
door,” which one might even call a pathology in American society.
The fact that there are fewer and fewer politicians who
have no bias toward any particular business theory and are capable of making
fair and informed comments from the perspective of the public as a whole is
also a big issue.
US Influence: The Close Relationship between Takenaka and Calder
NIPPON: The appointment of an
economist like Takenaka as a cabinet minister to spearhead the adoption of
neoliberalism was made possible by the backing of the United States, wasn’t it?
You have reconstructed the things that were happening around Takenaka when the
Koizumi administration was launched and written in particular detail about the
role of Kent Calder.
SASAKI: The relationship with Calder goes back to when Takenaka was
in his twenties. Calder himself describes them as “close friends.” Calder
studied Japan’s political economy under Edwin Reischauer and earned his Ph.D.
in 1979. He chose to focus his doctoral research on treasury investments and
loans. While collecting materials in Japan, he got to know Takenaka, who at the
time was working at the Japan Development Bank. The pair gradually grew close. In
1997 Calder became special advisor to the US ambassador to Japan, in which post
he provided his services to Ambassadors Walter Mondale, Thomas Foley, and
Howard Baker. He served at the US Embassy until the summer of 2001, after which
he returned to the United States. He was involved with Japan policy in the Bush
administration when the Koizumi administration, which took office that April, was
getting underway. Calder not only stressed the importance of “Minister Takenaka”
in a Koizumi administration to Ambassador Baker and senior officials in the
Bush administration but even passed on information that he had given to Baker
to Takenaka.
NIPPON: The role that Calder
played was important for Takenaka in creating his special place in the Koizumi
administration.
SASAKI: The fact that Takenaka was able to wield such great power
within the Koizumi administration cannot be understood without addressing the
three-way ties between Takenaka, Junichiro Koizumi, and the Bush
administration. For example, Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the President’s Council
of Economic Advisors, gave his strong support to Takenaka in October 2002 when Takenaka
put together his “Takenaka plan” for the handling of bad debts.
NIPPON: The fact that Calder was
already arguing in 1993 that making use of Japan’s postal savings was connected
to stimulating the global economy is deeply interesting.
SASAKI: At the end of 1992 the Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS) suggested in a proposal to the new Clinton administration
that the United States and Japan should consult about joint projects for worker
training, care for the elderly, and infrastructure construction by mass transit
entities and the like. They indicated that Japan’s postal savings could be used
to provide the financing for those infrastructure projects.
In an article that appeared in the US magazine International Economist (May–June 1993), Calder wrote in his conclusion that the massive amounts of capital in postal savings would likely turn out to be “Japan’s final trump card.” Furthermore, according to an article by journalist Takao Toshikawa in the magazine Shukan Posuto (October 15, 1993), Calder had a conversation with then Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa a week before Hosokawa’s summit meeting with President Bill Clinton.
NIPPON: Many parts of the
Koizumi administration’s postal privatization efforts are opaque. As you have
indicated, the institutional design for postal privatization appeared on the
surface to have been determined as a result of discussions in the Council on
Economy and Fiscal Policy (CEFP), but in actual fact it was arranged by a “guerrilla
band” put together by Takenaka.
SASAKI: “Guerrilla band” is the name given by Takenaka himself. In
essence, a small and obscure group of people handled the institutional design
of privatization. As yet it remains unclear as to whether or not there were
people with interests at stake among those “guerrillas.” There were some
efforts to track down how regulatory reform under the Koizumi administration
was linked to certain interests, such as with the general assignment of the Kampo
no Yado inns to Orix Real Estate Corporation, but those criticisms were
consigned to oblivion. Once again with the Abe administration, Takenaka and
scholars linked to him are flying the banner of regulatory reform.
Government Administrations Infiltrated by the “Takenaka
Network”
NIPPON: In Shijo to kenryoku, the image of Takenaka promoting neoliberal
policies to the next government is depicted repeatedly. Whatever administration
is put together, that sort of thing appears like an effort in line with US
inclinations toward getting Japan to adopt the policy it wants.
SASAKI: In 2001, when he was serving as a brain for Prime Minister Yoshiro
Mori, Takenaka had also proposed to Yukio Hatoyama that Hatoyama’s Democratic
Party of Japan, which at the time was in opposition, create its own brain
trust. Just before the Koizumi administration took office, Takenaka put
together a team of lecturers, including Japan Center for Economic Research
President Naohiro Yashiro, to provide Koizumi with an intensive series of policy
talks. In short, Takenaka had made the preparations that would enable him to
maintain his pipeline to the inner circles of government regardless of who
wound up in charge.
Just before the Liberal Democratic Party’s presidential election in September 2006, which decided Koizumi’s successor, Takenaka presided over a study session for Abe, who was a candidate. The experts who participated in the session included Hiroko Ota and Naohiro Yashiro, both of whom had supported Takenaka in the CEFP, as well as the economist Robert Feldman. Exactly as had been the case when he had approached Koizumi, Takenaka tried to corral Abe, who was a candidate to succeed Koizumi as prime minister, and provide guidance on policy. Having won the LDP presidential election, Abe selected Ota to be minister of state for economic and fiscal policy while installing Yashiro as a private-sector member of the CEFP. Takenaka had been successful in getting his “Takenaka network” into the administration.
NIPPON: At the time of last year’s
House of Representatives election, Takenaka chaired the Japan Restoration Party’s
candidate selection committee. When the Abe administration took office, he was
installed as a member of the Industrial Competitiveness Council. One senses his
intention to get whatever government took office to adopt a neoliberal line.
There needs to be more debate about the US influence on Japanese economic
policy.
SASAKI: At long last, the matter of American influence on Japanese policy is being openly discussed. I think this is also the flipside of Japan becoming relatively unimportant to the United States. Takenaka knows full well just how effective the American card can be when it comes to demonstrating influence in a government administration. However, the question is whether or not it will work as effectively now as it did during the Koizumi years. Of course, there is no mistaking the fact that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which America is spearheading, is going to provide a tailwind for the adoption of neoliberal policies.
(Interview and editing by Mr. Takahiko Tsubouchi, editor-in-chief, Gekkan
Nippon, a monthly political journal published in Tokyo, Japan)
« Taiwan Identity | トップページ | To overcome deflated economic policies »
この記事へのコメントは終了しました。
« Taiwan Identity | トップページ | To overcome deflated economic policies »
コメント