MORE ON MORI (read that out loud, fast)


  Given his rep as a shadowy figure in the backrooms of party politics,
it should come as no surprise that "Shinkiro" is also a Neanderthal
with policy expertise that extends no further than the use of pork
barrel politics to line stream beds with concrete - and his own pockets
with cash.

  Speaking of "pork barrel", he's built like one, at 175cm and 100kg;
the media here take delight in specifying that his chest is 113cm, his
waist 114cm, and his "hip" measurement 123cm.  OK, maybe not a barrel -
maybe a big pear.

  Mori hails from lovely Neagari (a half-hour drive from Lovely Nango),
His grandfather was headman in that municipality's previous incarnation
as Shimo-no-e Village, and his father won nine consecutive (unopposed)
"elections" as mayor of Neagari, sitting from 1953 until his death in
1989.  That was typical, since this type of post is usually held for
life in this end of Japan, and always by a member of the ruling party.

  One quick example of what having Mori in the Diet has done for us;
nobody will ride it, but he's pushing the construction of a Shinkansen
train line through this area (which already has completely adequate
train service that is enjoying declining ridership).  This when the
Shinkansen is so obsolete (the first one ran in 1960) that they're
building a maglev replacement between the major metropolitan centers,
and when the farmers, Mori's own core constituents, oppose it (because
it will violate lots of their holy rice paddies).

  After all, doling out agrisubsidies and blocking imports of fruit and
vegetables is good for votes (since there has been no redistricting to
reflect the shift in population to the cities, one vote in Lovely Nango
is worth between six and nine in Tokyo or Osaka for electing a
representative to the Diet), but pouring concrete at (future) taxpayer
expense is good for massive kickbacks of cash into one's own pockets.
Besides, a traffic light here and timely completion of some minor road
work that has languished for years there can buy back any farm votes
the concrete scheme would otherwise lose.

  OK, another one, a bit more distinctive than the standard pork barrel
scheme. The national government operates a string of universities
(themselves a future topic here, I'm sure), one of which is located in
Kanazawa (the nearest city to Lovely Nango that you can find on a map).
At Mr. Mori's behest, a plan was enacted to move the entire university
campus from the former castle grounds that had always been its home to
a location in the mountains an inconvenient distance from the city.

  Simply another concrete-pouring scheme to benefit Mr. Mori's friends
in the construction biz?  No, this one gets better:  he and some of his
buddies bought up some unused hillsides for a song - and then he got to
decide, as government Construction Minister, how much the taxpayers
should be soaked for premium university-building land.  This type of
thing is standard fare in Japan (for example, when local officials
decide to promote construction of a nuclear power plant), but Mr. Mori
is well-known as standing out even in this crowd.

  Another common practice among the ruling class here is to conceal or
simply fail to report large portions of one's personal wealth, through
such dodges as putting stock in a spouse's or secretary's name (one of
the things that contributed to the stress blamed for Mr. Obuchi's
stroke was a scam involving telephone-company shares issued in the name
of a dead supporter and held by his personal secretary; the stress came
when the supporter's widow, who was not in on the con, went to court to
get the shares as part of her husband's estate).

  Bearing this in mind, Mr. Mori's declared 1998 personal worth was
nearly three billion yen, or over 25,000,000 US dollars.  Yes, that's
over 100 years' salary for a President of the United States.  Apart
from a few years as a journeyman reporter on a construction-industry
newspaper before entering the Diet 10 terms and 30 years ago, Mr. Mori
has never worked (officially, anyway) for anybody but the taxpayers. 

  Nice work if you can get it.

  OK, so if this guy is distinguishable from other pork-meisters in the
same party only by the depths of his concentration on paving the whole
country in grey gold, how, you ask, did he get to be Prime Minister?

  Simple - it was his turn.

  The JiMinTo ("Liberal Democratic Party", described by those familiar
with both it and Voltaire as "neither liberal, nor democratic, nor a
party") has perfected, over decades of one-party rule, a system by
which one rises through its leadership ranks by two methods.  One is of
course filching and wangling big wads of cash (there are no personal
checks in Japan, precisely because the government is run by means of
under-the-table payoffs nobody wants traced) and then putting them
where they will do the crook -er- politico the most good.  Mr. Mori
qualifies eminently for the job by this measurement.

  The other is simply living long enough.  Seniority is established
when one begins one's rise, and this is the reason that factions some-
times splinter off from the "LDP", only to be reabsorbed later (i.e.,
some guy decides he doesn't want to wait his turn, and tries to parlay
his and his followers' aid or mischief as an "opposition pary" into a
better position in the lineup when he comes back; the one doing this at
the moment is Ichiro Ozawa, another of the headaches that got too much
for Mr. Obuchi).

  The post of Party Secretary is the acknowledged "on deck" position,
and Mori was in it when Obuchi decided to test Japan's new procedures
for determining brain death for himself.  (Or, to put it another way,
to give new meaning to his old nickname of "cold pizza".)

  So, a couple of meetings were held in smoke-filled hotel rooms during
the two-day period when the government concealed from the nation the
fact that the Prime Minister was in a coma, and presto! - Mori's in.

  Parliamentary democracy at work - Japanese "parliamentary democracy".