Raw Japan

Watching the giants fall

Some elections count more than others, and never more than when a longstanding dominant party is sent packing. I’ve been lucky enough to witness turning points in four countries on two continents.

France, India, Italy, now Japan — all have rejected one-party dominance for the rough and tumble of alternating majorities. In each case, I was fortunate to behold history.

Japan’s election on Sunday marked the end of an era that started not long after World War Two and saw Japan rise from the ashes of defeat to a global economic power. Japan’s revival took root in an iron triangle locking the Liberal Democratic Party, bureaucrats and Japanese industry.

Now the LDP is tasting the same bitter fruit as paramount parties in other countries whose voters decided a few decades in power for one party were enough. The circumstances in each country were different, but the democratic impulse was similar and the result much the same.

In 1981 Francois Mitterand became the first leftist president of France since the Fifth Republic was created in 1957. I watched as ecstatic French voters poured into the streets after Mitterrand’s victory. France then trembled as this imperious socialist did the impossible by sharing power with his Gaullist rivals.

The Indian National Congress spearheaded that nation’s independence movement and then became the dominant political party led by the Nehru-Gandhi family. Eventually corruption allegations caught up with Congress and it had to yield power first to Hindu nationalists, then to a coalition of upstart leftists and regional parties.

I remember the sight of chastened ex-Congress leader P.V. Narasimha Rao standing in the dock in a Delhi court accused of corruption charges, for which he was later acquitted.

Seven election words to watch for

Here is a quick tutorial on seven words you might find helpful to follow the Japanese election on Sunday.

どぶ板選挙 （Dobuita Senkyo) means a grassroots election campaign.  The term became popular to illustrate how veteran lawmakers from the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), struggling in the campaign and worried about losing their previously safe seats, have been running around in their constituency to meet as many voters in person as possible. ”Dobuita” means wooden boards laid across a ditch to cover and “senkyo” means election. So the term suggests that candidates visit voters door-to-door, walking on the “dobuita” to enter homes. But the Japanese election law forbids candidates to visit individual houses during the official campaign period.

ねじれ国会 (Nejire Kokkai) means twisted parliament. The term has become a buzzword since the opposition Democrats and their allies won the control of the less powerful upper house of parliament in 2007, allowing them to delay bills and jamming up the government’s policy plans.

だるま (Daruma). Japanese use daruma dolls, which are usually bright red and shaped like a human head, to seek luck for everything from passing exams, finding love, to winning elections.  The tradition is for election candidates to paint in one eye and then if they win, paint in the other.  Sales of daruma dolls have risen as candidates seek a little help ahead of the election.

小沢チルドレ ン (Ozawa children): This expression comes from “Koizumi children”, a term for candidates picked by charismatic former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi four years ago to run against his party rivals who opposed his postal reforms.  Former Democrats leader Ichiro Ozawa, who in charge of the party’s election campaign strategy, has created his own “Ozawa children” (or Ozawa girls) by sending young, often female, candidates to run against veteran, LDP lawmakers.

政権選択 (Seiken Sentaku): Many Japanese media outlets have called this election an election of “seiken sentaku”, which literally means choosing a government. If you think about it, every election is about choosing a new government but the term reflects how hard it has been to even think about an opposition victory in past elections in Japan.

Net noodle-slinging heats up before election

“Be nice to kids too,” shouts a kid with his hand raised.

“OK, OK. Here, I’ll give you 26,000 yen worth of toppings,” responds the ramen chef who looks suspiciously like Japan’s opposition Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama, as he sprinkles more toppings on a bowl of noodles.

With Japan’s long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party at risk of losing power for only the second time in more than a half-century in an election on Sunday, the party is stepping up its campaign against the opposition with a new series of Internet attack ads – a rarity in a country that has leaned towards the polite and boring in election tactics.

Dripping with puns, one cartoon commercial viewable on YouTube zeroes in on what the LDP insists are impossible promises by the rival Democrats in their campaign platform, or manifesto, as the opposition prefers to call it.

The bowl of ramen is called the “boastful manifesto noodles” and the toppings – added one after the other as customers complain about the taste – represent pledges made by the Democrats, such as a 26,000 yen monthly child allowance.

By the time the chef is finished, a worried-looking woman notes the noodle dish is completely different from what she anticipated.

But a nonchalant chef assures her it’s been like this from the start – prompting a shocked gasp.

Aso flags LDP conservativism

To some people a national flag is little more than a piece of cloth, while to others it is a sacred symbol that embodies a country’s ideals. It was the latter that Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso apparently tried to score some easy points with this week in the run-up to the Aug. 30 election that voter surveys show his Liberal Democratic Party party is likely to lose.

In a televised debate, Aso accused the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan of defacing the national flag, commonly known locally as the Hinomaru or “sun circle”,  at a gathering for one of its candidates in southern Japan this month.

“My supporters told me that the Democratic Party cut up national flags and attached them to make a flag of the DPJ’s symbol,” Aso said. “I don’t want to believe it. Cutting up the national flag would be a very sad, unforgivable act.”  

Aso, who bows to the flag before speaking at news conferences, has been increasingly appealing to the LDP’s conservative base, saying the Democrats cannot protect the country with its weak security and socialist policies and using the word “conservative” more often in his speeches.

He has also recently criticised the Democrats for not displaying the Japanese flag at its headquarters. He said this was probably because of support from the leftist teachers’ union, a group anathema to conservatives. 

Indeed, seemingly looking to get maximum mileage out of the issue during this week’s debate, Aso commented that: “The most important thing is how much a party leader loves the country.” 

And DPJ chief Yukio Hatoyama took Aso’s comments on the chin: “If anyone had done such a disgraceful thing (tampered with the flag), I would deeply apologise.” 

Ruling party takes off gloves, irking opposition

Japan’s conservative ruling party,  torn  by internal feuds and facing a possible loss in an Aug. 30 poll, is making attacks on the opposition Democratic Party of a sort rare in a country where many have had an allergy to Western-style negative campaigns.

The strategy — portraying the novice Democrats as weak on security and profligate on spending –  prompted a harsh reply from the opposition,  who polls show have their best-ever chance of defeating unpopular Prime Minister Taro Aso’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the election,  ending its more than half a century of nearly unbroken rule.

“It is natural for there to be healthy criticism and debate about policies, but the stance of the LDP, which is stressing partial, biased information and is not engaging in serious debate, is extremely regrettable and sad,” opposition Democratic Party Secretary-General Katsuya Okada told a news conference.

On Wednesday, the LDP ran a full-page newspaper ad with a big, bold-faced headline declaring: “The Future of Japan in ins Danger.” The party is also running an animated cartoon on its website portraying Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama as a smooth-taking suitor wooing a woman with fuzzy promises. 

The LDP has also charged the Democrats with being under the thumb of the leftist teachers’ union, a group anathema to conservatives.

“It’s an old political trick, although new in Japan,” Sophia University professor Koichi Nakano told me.

“The question is whether it will come out as desperate and unseemly, or convince some undecided voters. It’s not clear because we’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Japan’s election allergy on the Internet

Tech-savvy Japan is home to many high-tech companies and more than 70 percent of its people use the Internet. But politics on the Web falls far behind.

Both politicians and voters can be found online. Lawmakers have their own blogs and channels on sites such as niconico and youtube, and political parties such as the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and main opposition Democratic Party of Japan have websites.  A couple of politicians are even tweeting on ”Twitter“.

But now that the election looks set to be called for late August, Japanese politics will fall off the ‘Net, rather than ramping up in volume like it does in other countries.

Japan’s 59-year-old election law bans campaigns using visual images that can reach large numbers of readers during an election campaign. While written in the age of posters and pamphlets, the law has been interpreted as preventing Internet advertising.

Opposition lawmaker Seiji Ohsaka is one of the “tweeting” politicians but he has been told he must stop for the 12 days of official campaigning ahead of the election.

“With Twitter, I can send out information in a short, small, and compact way… It’s possible for those that do not seriously face politics on a regular basis to touch on it in a casual way,” Ohsaka told me, after sending 50 tweets during a debate between the prime minister and opposition leader in parliament.

Unpopular PM to voters: “No-one’s perfect”

For the crowd waiting for Prime Minister Taro Aso to show up for a campaign speech in Ome on the western edge of Tokyo, it was a bit like watching the warm-up acts before the main attraction.

Aso picked ruling party candidate Akinobu Nomura’s home district of Ome  to kick off a campaign for the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election, the results of which are likely to affect the unpopular 68-year-old premier’s chances of keeping his own job ahead of a nationwide poll expected next month.

With the PM’s cavalcade stuck in traffic, Nomura and his other backers had to amuse the crowd for more than an hour under cloudy skies. The local man filled some of the time by inviting photographers to snap him shaking hands with his wife, who had earlier shyly delivered a speech, for what he said was the first time ever. Then he took to listing up his contributions to the local community.

Nomura  also went out of his way to assure listeners that he really appreciated Aso’s personal appearance — really! He’d been flooded with calls from reporters asking if he wouldn’t have preferred that Aso stay away, he said, before enjoining the media to report his next words faithfully: “I welcome Prime Minister Aso’s coming here from the bottom of my heart.” 

When a smiling, waving Aso finally showed up to the obvious relief of Nomura and others standing atop a green and white campaign truck, he first acknowledged that Ome was a long way from central Tokyo, where he spends most of his time. ”It really is far, isn’t it?” Aso said. ”But this feels better than being under a kind of house arrest in the prime minister’s official residence,” he added, prompting chuckles from some supporters.

Aso then launched into a speech touting the long-ruling LDP’s efforts to boost Japan’s sagging economy, attacking the opposition Democratic Party for inexperience, irresponsible promises and a funding scandal, and pleading with voters to stick with those they know rather than risk something new.