TOKYO, Dec. 2, 2020—After the 4.2 percent year-to-year growth of 2010 — the knee-jerk spike from the 2008 world economic crisis, Japan’s GDP has been meandering with less than 1 percent growth, and the slumber’s key cause can be traced to re-regulation disguised as deregulation and structural reform. And the men that promote the stifling re-regulation policy are the current prime minister and his predecessor, Yoshihide Suga and Shinzo Abe, both acting on the advise of Japan’s super conman.
In Abe’s closing period as the Japanese leader earlier in 2020, the man who has been working behind the scene as their policy brain came back to the political theater forefront. On Dec. 1, 2020, Heizo Takenaka, a 69-year-old ‘professor’ of Toyo University, proudly attended Suga’s economic growth policy strategy council meeting, acting like he’s the chair, and Suga his protege.
The scene was no surprise. What made Suga to succeed Abe as prime minister owed much to Heizo, who as the minister of internal affairs and communications in 2005, plucked Suga from political party obscurity as deputy minister. Ever since then, Suga has been looking up to Heizo for policy ideas, which Suga proposed for Abe’s consumption. Heizo had to be in the dark over the past decade for a flood of scandals for his involvement, such as committing fraud to a Toyota Motor-affiliated housing maker, acquisition of McDonald’s Japan shares before the company’s IPO, appearing on ads of a failed private bank’s affiliate, and having been serving as the chair of Pasona Corp., a manpower intro company while being an academic. These were the reason why he had kept quiet over the past 10 years.
But Heizo began straddling both Abe and Suga since early 2020, when the Japanese economy plummeted in response to the Covid-19 crisis.l Suga, who is known for the dearth of bright ideas, sought Heizo’s help, and Takenaka gave him one immediately: the ‘Go To Travel’ tourism campaign to support travel-related businesses, from airlines to hotels by giving deep discounts to tourists. Suga proffered to idea to Abe, and Abe took it and introduced it immediately.
With Suga as prime minister, Takenaka has reemerged to the political theater spotlight. At the center of the duo’s policy are the lowering of smart phone user costs (near-term) and a Tokyo financial hub scheme (long-term).
Heizo is a man who already makes sure that whatever he does gets him financial rewards. The smart phone cost reduction idea is aimed at atrophying Masayoshi Son’s Softbank Corp., which operates Yahoo internet/smart phone services, while backing Hiroshi Mikitani’s Rakuten phone company. Rakuten is trying to become a fourth major carrier after NTT DoCoMo, KDDI au services, and Yahoo, but it has been struggling. Mikitani is planning to buy the Seiyu retail and supermarket chain for his strategy to field more real Rakuten phone stores than current mostly virtual stores. Japan deregulated telecom and broadcasting over the past two decades but Suga’s policy is to re-regulate the industries as Takenaka recommends by threatening that his administration won’t issue license for the ‘platinum band’ for the 5G telecom service unless the carriers observe government protocols.
Takenaka also is working as intermediary between Suga and Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike in their effort to keep the Go To Travel campaign, which is at the center of public criticism for spreading Covid-19 viruses.
Over more than the past decade after Takenaka stood at the political theater front row, contrary to what former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi’s deregulation aspirations, the country has been in the re-regulation mode. ‘Taking apart and reassembling — but with different parts and components’ is Takenaka’s strategy. It’s how Japan’s labor market has experienced. The labor reform that began in the mid-2000 overhauled how Japanese workers work. When the dust settled around 2015 or so, the average Japanese found that they have become poorer. It was because the labor reform has severely sapped Japan’s productivity and creativity — perhaps irreversibly.
While in office as minister Takenaka split the Japan Post into four entities. The outcome is inconvenience on the part of the public and the long-term uncertainty about the security of postal savings and postal insurance monies — the world’s largest bloc of long-term consumer money.
This can be confirmed by the fact that after 2010, Japan’s real GDP growth has been barely above 1 percent.
Having implemented the labor reform, Heizo made people poorer but his friend, Pasona’s Yasuyuki Nambu, super-rich. Pasona’s stock price, which had been fluctuating slightly above 500 yen began crawling higher after 2015 and now is near 2000. The company has become a de facto owner of the entire Shodo-to Islands in Shikoku.
Except Suga, who is from the northern province of Akita, the players are mostly from the greater Osaka region called Kansei. Takenaka, who is 69, is from Wakayama; Mikitani, from Kobe; Koike, Kobe; and Nambu, Kobe. They all are over 50 years old, the eldest being Takenaka. Takenaka and Mikitani also are graduates of Hitotsubashi University, a prestigious school. They are set to form alliances and groupings over the coming months to do more, possibly to pull down the Japanese economy further.
Takenaka is a man of ‘slick words and double tongue misleading Japan as an evangelist of liberalism… He’s not a scholar, politician or business executive,’ wrote Masahiko Fujiwara in the December issue of Bunsei Shunju magazine.
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