Glyn Ford thinks Japan could finally be about to reject the right-wing party which has ruled the country for decades
JAPAN’S Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda had been in office for less than 12 months, yet his resignation in September 2008 did not surprise anyone. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party now seems to be facing a bleak future as everything it touches turns to dust.
Last year, it was revealed that it had lost 50 million records of pension contributions from 20 million people. This year, the LPD forgot to seek the renewal of the petroleum tax in due time, thus giving the country’s motorists a four week-tax holiday after parliament’s opposition-controlled upper house refused to roll over and vote for its renewal immediately.
It has gone from bad to worse. In June, last year, Fukuda’s predecessor, Shinzo Abe, was so unpopular that the LDP lost the upper house elections to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). For the first time the DPJ, with the support of the tiny Japanese Communist Party and the even tinier Japanese Socialist Party, could and did block LDP legislation, forcing the LDP in the lower house to overturn these votes by carrying bills a second time with a two-thirds majority, which – fortunately for the party – it had following then leader Junichiro Koizumi’s landslide victory in 2005.
But since that time, electoral dissatisfaction has not been limited to the opinion polls. Last April, a lower house by-election saw a conservative seat in Yamaguchi Prefecture fall to the DPJ with a majority of 21,934. DPJ leaders believe they are on the threshold of power, since the next general election can only be postponed until September 2009 at the latest.
Japan’s post-war politics consisted of an uneven contest between right and left. The LDP, with money, media and muscle on its side, wiped the floor with its opponents at four-yearly intervals. The
JSP divided into a variety of left-wing factions owing allegiances to Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang. It was all made easier by an electoral system from hell: multi-member constituencies with a single non-transferable vote and gerrymandered against urban areas where up to five times more votes were required to elect an MP than in the LDP-voting countryside.
This electoral edifice began to crumble in the early 1990s along with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, which coincided with the first signs that all was not well at the heart of Japan’s economic miracle. The economy stuttered and then ground to a halt, as nepotism, bureaucracy and corruption finally strangled innovation, enterprise and a work ethic that would have put the average Protestant to shame. The result was a decade of swirling political realignment on the centre-left. As new parties came and went – the New Frontier Party and the Taiyo Party, the Japan New Party and the New Party Sakigake – in 1998, the DPJ finally emerged from this political kaleidoscope.
The DPJ is an uneasy coalition of former populist and progressive factions of the LDP, the former Democratic Socialist Party and a large chunk of the now rump JSP. Its current leader, Ichiro Ozawa, is a self-confident nationalist whose book, Blueprint for a New Japan, appealed for Japan to become a “normal country” that would deploy troops abroad and engage in peace-making operations.
Ideologically, Ozawa is a liberal. The party’s general secretary, Yukyo Hatoyama, would not be out of place in the Socialist International. Some others among the party’s leading lights are even further to the left, with 23 DPJ MPs in the upper house effectively sponsored by the Japanese trade union confederation, RENGO.
The DPJ looks increasingly well placed for the next general election. It is taking a lead on in the campaign to increase the minimum wage and address the plight of the irregular workers who now make up a third of the country’s workforce. It has been aided by an apparent willingness to come to some sort of electoral arrangement with the JSP and would almost certainly embrace the socialists in a coalition, if that were deemed necessary to win power.
Japan’s Communist Party is more of a problem. It would be unacceptable, even unthinkable, for the DPJ to be seen negotiating with this unreformed party stranded ideologically in the wastes of the Cold War, even if the JCP’s membership is increasing by 1,000 a month. This boom is reflected in the recent revival in popularity of the 1929 left-wing work of Kobayashi Tajiki, Kanikosen. Yet the communists could probably be relied on to support a DPJ government from outside the cabinet in any crucial vote – anything to break the political logjam.
The JCP has abandoned its principle of contesting each and every election and now picks and chooses its fights. When it opted not to field a candidate in the Yamaguchi by-election, it virtually assured the DPJ of victory. Eighty-five per cent of its voters from 2005 switched to the DPJ. At the next general election, the DPJ could play a decisive role if it decides to not to contest some key constituencies. But that would constitute a significant sacrifice. Failure to stand in constituencies will lose the DPJ seats in the proportional representation section of the election.
However, the beleaguered LDP still has a last card to play. Traditionally, a change of leader has given the LDP an electoral bounce. New Prime Minister Taro Aso, a hardline nationalist, was educated at Stanford University and the London School of Economics. He is that rarity, a Roman Catholic in a country of Buddhist-lite believers. A foreign minister under Koizumi, this flamboyant conservative is also a fan of manga comics and cartoons. He defeated the Arabic-speaking Yuriko Koike, who was educated at the American University in Cairo. Originally elected for the opposition Japan New Party in 1992 and generally seen as close to former prime minister Koizumi, she crossed the floor to join the LDP in 2003 and served briefly in 2007 as minister of defence under Abe.
After Aso became the LDP’s third leader in a year, there were arguments for putting together a quick populist policy package and calling a snap general election. However, it now seems that an election has been shelved until next year, another victim of the global financial crisis.
DPJ leader Ozawa is sounding increasingly confident. He is reported as having said: “The final battle has begun. The autumn of elections – the autumn to change the government – is coming.”
Glyn Ford is Labour MEP for South-West England and Gibraltar. He recently returned from Japan where he was part of a Party of European Socialists’ dialogue with the DPJ, JSP and RENGO
