Suga-free Diet: Japan’s next leader

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping. The charismatic pastors of megachurches often preach that faith will bring material rewards, so handing money over to the church is in essence an investment. But in Nigeria, it's hard to know what belongs to the church and what belongs to the pastor. And the long slow rise in popularity of good old fashioned vinyl records became a spike more recently. But factories depress them and now even the actual vinyl itself are in woefully short supply, and that is hitting smaller bands particularly hard. First up though, Today Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, or ldp, held its leadership runoff election. The last round was between two former foreign ministers, Kishida Fumio and Kono Taro. Mr. Kishida came out on top. The LDP has dominated Japanese politics since its founding in the 1950s, so the party's new president will be the country's new prime minister when Suga Yoshihide steps down. In his victory speech, Mr. Kishida said that from today I will with all of my energy get straight to work. How and where he will channel that Energy, though, is still something of an open question, as is how much the electorate will support him.

This year's election for the presidency was more unpredictable than most. Heading into the vote today, there was some genuine uncertainty about who would emerge the victor.

Noah Snyder is the Economist's Tokyo bureau chief.

But this kind of free for all uncertain circus, like for the LDP at least election campaign, I think really masked or distracted from a deeper and more worrying trend in Japanese politics, namely growing voter apathy and disillusionment from the political process.

And given that apathy, how do you think it is that Mr. Kishida came out on top?

The dynamics of this election were a bit complicated, but let's unpack them. Kono Taro, former foreign and defense Minister, was the favorite in public polls and the favorite amongst younger Diet members in the LDP who saw him as potentially a more transformative figure and who also, crucially, might help them keep their jobs in elections that are looming in later this fall. Pono san, however, is unpopular amongst the party's old guard, and they see him as sort of unreliable, uncontrollable. He has a reputation for being a bit of a maverick, so he won the vote of the rank and file in the first round of the party's election. But he didn't win enough support amongst his colleagues to win the election outright, so it went into a second round runoff there. Kishida's support from within the party really proved decisive. It is, I think, a result that reflects the enduring strength of the LDP's establishment and is in some ways a kind of rebuke of public opinion.

So who is Mr. Kishida, though? What kind of leader can we expect him to be?

Well, politics is a family business for Mr. Kishida. Both of his father and his grandfather were parliamentarians in the Diet slower house. His biggest job before this was as Foreign Minister in the cabinet of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. In Japanese political circles, he's kind of known for being an affable colleague, but a bit of a dull personality.

And when he does take office, what are the big challenges that he faces?

Well, he takes over from Suga Yoshihide, who has been Prime Minister for all of a year. Suga's handling of the COVID 19 pandemic and sort of his perceived lack of leadership really brought him down. So Kishida's first task is to regain public trust by providing a clear plan for sort of how Japan is going to emerge from the pandemic. He faces slightly more favorable timing than Suga did. Japan's Daily caseload is shrinking and the government is planning to lift some restrictions on movement just this week. But he needs to present a plan that shows leadership to the public. Beyond that, of course, he faces deeper challenges. Japan's population is aging and shrinking and there are long term economic challenges that come with that. He also has some work to do to build on some policy legacies that Suga left behind. For example, pledged to make Japan reach net zero by 2050. And finally, he will have to sort of maintain this more active and constructive posture that Japan has been playing regionally and internationally, in particular on trade.

What has he actually said about tackling all of these challenges?

Kishida kind of presents himself as an empathetic leader. He talks about listening to voters and wanting to sort of move from division to collaboration. And his vision for the country is pretty fuzzy. During the campaign this year, he sought to sort of appeal to all corners of the party to present himself as kind of a compromise figure, which proved to be a winning strategy. But it doesn't give us much clarity in terms of where he thinks Japan ought to go. He has described himself as the dove to Mr. Abe's hawk in the past, but this time around he sounded sort of tougher notes on China in an attempt to appease the party's right wing. He's promised more stimulus to counter the fallout from the pandemic. But at the same time, he's also nod to some of the concerns of fiscal hawks who still worry about Japan's rising public debt load. The main thrust of his campaign was the idea that Japan needs a sort of new model of capitalism that would focus more on fighting economic inequality. But he's offered few details about how that would look in practice.

And what does Mr. Kishida's election mean, do you think, for Japan's role in the world?

Well, neither Kishida nor any of the other LDP presidential candidates really departed radically from the basic sort of framework set out by former Prime Minister Abe. There's strong support for Japan's alliance with America. There are increasing worries about Chinese expansionism and aggression. And there is an ongoing attempt to shore up Japan's position both by building up its own defense capacities and by building networks with others in the region. And Kishida is on board with that. But I think the real risk in terms of Japan's role in the world is that Kishida proves to be a weak and perhaps short lived prime minister, and that Japan, rather than playing an active role internationally, succumbs to domestic infighting.

You mentioned that Japanese voters have quite a bit of apathy, of disillusionment. What effects do you think this election will have on that?

Well, again, I do think the outcome is a testament to the enduring strength of the LDP establishment and their kind of disregard for broader public opinion. It's, you know, entirely possible that that might motivate more voters to come out and cast protest votes in the Diet elections that are due later this fall. But given the enduring weakness of the Japanese opposition parties, the LDP's grip on power remains pretty secure. It probably heralds a shift towards the more sort of traditional, bureaucratic, technocratic type of Japanese government. Predictable kind of consensus driven, incremental type change. And again, I worry that that will only deepen this sense of apathy and disillusion, especially amongst younger voters.

Noah, thanks very much for joining us.

Thank you very much for having me.

For more analysis like this from our international network of correspondents, take out a subscription to the Economist. Get a great introductory deal@Equality.com IntelligenceOffer the link is in the show Notes.

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About half of Nigerians are Muslim, with most of the remaining fraction being Christians. In many churches, the services have congregants reaching for the heavens. In the largest of them though, the megachurches attendees are more likely to be reaching for their wallets.

These churches are first and foremost just vast in a huge number of seats and some up to 100,000.

Kinley Salmon is an Africa correspondent for the Economist.

The car parks at these churches resemble something like you would see in other countries at sports stadiums.

Somebody rejoice in the presence of the.

Lord this morning, give him a shout of praise and inside it's a quite performative celebratory atmosphere. People leap to their feet in praise. That's Some of what the pastor says. At times there is music, there are cameras on booms that sweep down to broadcast the whole thing to people watching online. It's really quite an extraordinary event. And along with plenty of teachings of Christ, amongst the Bible verses are mingled requests for money.

I want you to look at the.

Screen and follow the instructions correctly.

The Lord loves a cheerful giver. And as you present, your people are.

Reminded, as I was when I attended, that they could part with a cash there in person by dropping it into collection buckets or in. In fact by check. And we were told who to make it out to or indeed online.

Please package your offerings and label them correctly.

And if you are giving a check.

You are writing a check, please write.

It in favor of.

So it's a not terribly subtle request for cash is very common in these churches.

And what then happens to that cash?

The implicit and sometimes rather explicit promise is that those donations will in fact come back to worshipers in riches for them. Personally. Preachers espouse the idea that faith brings material rewards that can be in the form of job offers or more commonly in financial windfalls, hard cash. But to sort of benefit from this largesse that will somehow apparently come to people, believers are expected to make these quite generous donations to the church. Millionaire pastors sort of hint that their own wealth, which is very obvious, often is evidence of their piety, that it's a mark of their holiness. Just how rich those individual pastors are.

You say millionaire pastors. I mean, isn't this money going into the church?

Experts point to the lavish lifestyles of these holy leaders and argue that there really isn't much of a line between what belongs to the pastor and what belongs to the church. And these churches also often have many sub branches, both across Nigeria and sometimes across the world. And the pastors of those smaller churches that are under these megachurches also seem to be expected to bring in cash to the church, although it's really put quite so bluntly as that. But those who fail to deliver that cash can find Christian forgiveness in pretty short supply. In July, a pastor in a branch of Winners Chapel said he was sacked for failing to raise enough cash. Winners Chapel said it was that he didn't attract a larger flock.

It's sort of a strange mix then, Christian values with this kind of amassing of wealth.

Well, that's right. It does seem a little incongruous at times. But, you know, the top brass of these mega churches interpret biblical teachings perhaps a little differently. Differently to some people. Leaders like Bishop David Oyedepo zip around in private jets. He's even dismissed a report that claimed he was worth $150 million as an insult, saying that that figure was too small. I mean, in short, he practices the prosperity he preaches and combines the power of the pulpit with really very slick corporate marketing.

And prosperity that comes just from involvement in the church?

Well, a lot of it, but not all. Some holy men, we could say, have earthly business interests as well. These range from construction companies, holiday parks, to satellite broadcasting channels in the US and the uk. Others have online shops which proudly boast they accept payment in 120 currencies. Bishop Oyedepo's church has a 10,500 acre campus called Kannan Land, which has a bottled water factory, a bank and a petrol station as well, of course, as a palatial home for the bishop. And then several Nigerian churches also own universities.

Universities, like seminaries, you mean?

Well, actually, no. More just like straight up universities and parents like these typical universities, partly because many of Nigeria's public universities are pretty mediocre. These church universities, they boast of their facilities, which are often quite impressive, and their results. You know, one called Covenant in Khanan land claims that 98% of graduates land jobs or employ people themselves within two years of graduating. But there's often a pretty blurry line between megachurches and their businesses. And that matters for tax reasons, because churches themselves aren't taxed. But in theory, their businesses are. The trouble, though, is that figuring out exactly where churches end and their businesses begin is pretty difficult.

So high prices, the promise of riches, possibly questionable tax structures. This has sort of a familiar smell to it.

Well, critics say that the logic of prosperity churches like this is similar in fact to that of Ponzi schemes, but with the added advantage that when people do not get rich, pastors can promise that their riches will come in the next life. And you might expect protests about some of this to come from intellectual institutions like universities. But critics point out that in many cases, universities themselves have bought into the church's view of the world. One person I spoke to points out that the logic of these prosperity churches is pretty dominant in quite a bit of Nigerian society. Some professors prefer to put pastor professor on their business card because they see being a pastor as perhaps more valued in the eyes of society than being a professor. All of this can rather end up in a country like Nigeria, where more than 80 million people live on less than $1.90 a day, with congregants getting poorer and poorer while pastors get richer and richer.

Kenley, thanks very much for joining us.

Thanks for having.

There's a massive glut of albums coming from big names this year. ABBA fans will delight in their new offering, Voyage.

I still have faith in you.

Elton John's the Lockdown Sessions is due in October, As is future past from duran duran. But you'll find it hard to get your hands on a good old fashioned vinyl record from these artists, and even harder to get LPs by lesser known musicians.

All of the world's record pressing plants are basically running completely flat out.

Daniel Knowles is an international correspondent with the Economist.

Vinyl records have been coming back for about a decade now, and with the pandemic they've really soared. And the record pressing plants just can't keep up with the demand.

Why is that though? Why can't the industry just make more records?

Well, there aren't that many places left where you can get a record pressed. A lot of the plants closed in the 1990s and the kind of first decade of the 2000s. And then there's this new problem that's emerged this past month, which is that there's a shortage of PVC too.

Wait, how does PVC figure in?

So PVC is the chemical polyvinyl chloride, which is the vinyl and vinyl. And it's used for lots of things in construction and medical supplies and cars, but it's also used to make the records that's just as lazy. Problems there just isn't very much around, especially the kind of coloured vinyl that people want to make their records with.

Why isn't there enough of that?

Then there was a huge hurricane, Hurricane Ida in the United States, which knocked out roughly 60% of the capacity. Pretty much all of this stuff is made in the Gulf States of the United States. It's a byproduct of the, the petroleum industry.

And so that leaves bands high and dry if they want to get their records out on vinyl.

So I spoke to a heavy metal band from London called Green Lung, And they produced their new album the end of last year, last December. And they've been basically waiting since to get it pressed. They were planning on launching in September and they still haven't kind of got the vinyl. They're expecting 5,000 copies to be impressed. So I spoke to their lead singer, Tom Templar, who says, you know, it's actually really important to their kind of business model.

We're a heavy metal band. So basically we're one of those genres where people still see vinyl as the sort of God format And I'm going to tell you now, it is killing me how long I've been sitting on these songs and waiting for people to hear them. And I know it's been killing the fans, too.

So another person I spoke to was Dirk Van der Heuvel of Groove Records, which is a big distributor of dance records in Chicago. And he basically said part of the problem is that all the major labels are kind of now using up what capacity there is in the industry. So you have Taylor Swift's new record Evermore, which massively sold, and reprints of Fleetwood Max Rumors. And he kind of thinks that they're basically hogging the presses.

But we are in an era where most listening happens online. Is a shortage of vinyl really that big an issue for the industry more widely?

Well, it is for smaller bands especially. Streaming does generate money, but it does so over a long timeline. Vinyl generates money now. So if you take that away, it makes it very difficult for bands just.

To kind of keep going without selling vinyl. There's no way we would have been able to go on and put the money up front to go and do a big European tour or fly over to the States. So a lot of the sort of future of the band is wrapped up in still in selling physical releases, at least in the scene that we're in, you know, vinyl. Vinyl is the key.

And Tom, that we just heard there from Green Lung, dare I ask when I'll be able to get my hands on their record?

They've got a date now. Their album comes out on October 22. The trouble is you won't be able to get hold of it because it's already completely sold out. So you'll just have to to hope that they can get a second pressing and maybe it will be a bit faster than the first one.

Daniel, thanks very much for joining us.

Thanks, Jason.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, leave us a rating and a review and see you back here tomorrow.