Presidential Election Part 1

It’s time to write about the presidential election. Not the one in South Korea — if you are reading this blog, you want to know about the one at Jinja Honchō (神社本庁). I will actually be writing about the whole “Green Leaves Meeting” (青葉会議) which is the big meeting of the Oversight Council (評議員会) and associated committees that Jinja Honchō has every May. This year’s meeting was extended by a day, because they anticipated it taking a while. And it did. So much so that I think I will need two posts to cover it.

Results first. Revd Takatsukasa (鷹司) was re-elected as chairman and Revd Tanaka (田中) was re-elected as president. If you are a bit surprised by that… well, you are not the only one. (If you are not a bit surprised by that, read over the posts with the Disputed Presidency tag, because these posts will make a lot more sense with a bit of background.)

This year’s meeting was the one at which a new Oversight Council takes office, and elects new directors for Jinja Honchō. That means that, after the opening formalities, the first order of business was to elect the chairman of the Oversight Council. In the past, this has been part of the opening formalities.

Not this time.

The nominating committee had recommended Revd Nishitakatsuji (西高辻), who was one of the leading members of the Ashihara (芦原) faction, for the post of chairman. This immediately drew objections, with a councillor saying that they were uncomfortable appointing someone who had “ignored the will of the Council”. Another councillor backed this up, saying that someone who had been formally censured by the Board of Directors was not suitable for the role. Revd Ashihara then defended himself, but people were not convinced. Two more councillors then supported the objection.

At this point, the chair of the nominating committee announced their nominations. (I am assuming that this information had leaked, because otherwise the order of actions here makes no sense.) When Revd Tanaka asked whether there were objections, a lot of people said that there were.

One councillor asked what the discussion in the nominating committee had been like, and what happened if most councillors disagreed. The secretariat left the first question to committee members, but said that the chairman (and vice chairmen and so on) needed to be approved by the Oversight Council, so that they were just candidates at this point.

A member of the nominating committee then said that he had thought it was out of the question to nominate Revd Nishitakatsuji. Another councillor then suggested that since the vote was close in the nominating committee, and there were still voices of opposition, the Oversight Council should vote.

At this point three people opposed a vote. One said that this had always gone through on the nod before, without letting anyone speak against it, and asked why this time was different. Another said that the nominating committee had been appointed unanimously, so the Council should just accept their decision. A third said that Japan was a democracy, and so in line with that they should ignore minor differences and just accept the committee’s result without voting. (Yes, this is “democracy with Japanese characteristics”.)

The secretariat then said that there had been close votes in the nominating committee in the past, but no-one had objected, so the recommendations had simply been accepted. This time, there had been objections, so there was a debate, in line with the rules of democracy.

Revd Tanaka then brought the motion forward again, and while there were people shouting both for and against, he judged that the people who did not object were shouting louder, and thus ruled that the nominations had been accepted. (This might sound less sinister if I hadn’t watched the second season of Andor quite so recently.)

Revd Nishitakatsuji then took over the job of chairing, and (at this point, outgoing) President Tanaka delivered his speech summarising Jinja Honchō’s plans for next year. The budget motions were then presented, and a councillor asked a question about a lawyer being placed on retainer. (He had been the lawyer for the Tanaka faction.) The answer was that he was retained to give legal advice in his speciality. After the content of the budget had been explained, it was, as is standard, handed over to a special subcommittee for detailed consideration. This was scheduled for the following day.

One thing to note here is that, by judging that the people who did not object to the nominations were shouting more loudly, Revd Tanaka supported the appointment of one of the main members of the faction that had been opposed to him as Oversight Council chairman.

And that is a good point at which to break between posts.