Raw Japan

Are Japan’s rookie lawmakers being treated like kids?

Name tags on their chairs so their “teachers” can take attendance; instructions on how to greet their elders politely; orders to turn up on time.

Rookie lawmakers in Japan’s ruling Democratic Party are, critics say, being treated like first-grade students instead of a talent pool the government can draw on to tackle tough policy problems from a bulging debt to strained ties with Washington.

Political mastermind Ichiro Ozawa’s strict control of the 141 new lawmakers swept into office by the Democratic Party of Japan’s (DPJ) huge August election victory that ousted their long-dominant rival has cast a spotlight on the paradoxical power of the man many credit with engineering the historic win.

Fears that Ozawa, who bolted the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 1993 and spent the following years plotting its overthrow, would pull the strings in Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s government have simmered since he took over as the Democrats’ No. 2 after their stunning win at the polls.

His grip on the party grabbed fresh attention recently when he scuppered a plan to draft 14 first-term lawmakers for a new task force set up to identify wasteful projects that can be cut from the national budget, an urgent chore now that Japan’s public debt looks set to exceed 200 percent of its GDP this year.

“Why is Ozawa doing this? Because for him, political power means numbers and numbers mean elections, so the Democrats need to keep the seats they won and to get ready for the next election now,” said political commentator Hirotaka Futatsuki.

“But taken to an extreme, the result would be that all the new lawmakers have to do is raise their hands to pass laws.”

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.

Japan two-party system — long in arriving

Observers of Japanese politics who have long thought the country was ripe for a real two-party system are watching Sunday’s election with a dual sense of incredulity — surprise that it has taken so long to oust the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and surprise that it finally looks like happening.

Media surveys show the decade-old opposition Democratic Party is set to win the poll for parliament’s powerful lower house – and probably by a landslide, ushering in party leader Yukio Hatoyama at the head of a government pledged to spend more on consumers and workers than the companies that benefited most from LDP policies.

That would be only the second time the LDP has lost its grip on government since it was founded in 1955.

“Every one I talk to has that feeling — they aren’t sure it’s really going to happen because they thought it would happen before,” said Steven Reed, a political scientist at Chuo University who has been analysing Japanese politics for decades. “A lot of people predicted based on hope, and that’s not a particularly good variable for predictions.”

Those with long memories can’t help but recall the only other time the LDP lost power, when heavyweight Ichiro Ozawa and dozens of other lawmakers bolted the party in 1993 and voted in favour of a no-confidence motion against then-premier Kiichi Miyazawa, triggering a political quake that led to the formation of a multiparty, anti-LDP coalition under the telegenic Morihiro Hosokawa.

Hosokawa entranced a public more accustomed to staid, dark-suited and often inarticulate leaders with his media-savvy ways — striding before cameras at an international leaders’ summit with a white scarf around his neck, using a teleprompter at news conferences — and promising to cut the bureaucratic red-tape that critics said was strangling the world’s second-biggest economy.

Nippon or Nihon?

What’s in a name? A lot, according to one Japanese lawmaker, who’s appalled by his country’s schizophrenia over how to pronounce the two ideographs rendered in English as “Japan”.

“What is the formal name of this country? Overseas, it is called ‘Japan’, but Japanese people say both ‘Nihon’ and ‘Nippon’,” opposition parliament member Tetsundo Iwakuni told me.

“There’s no other country that doesn’t standardise its own name.”

Seeking clarification, Iwakuni asked the government what the official view was, only to be told there wasn’t one.

Consistency is indeed lacking when it comes to how to read the two characters, whose literal meaning is “origin of the sun’.

The Japanese language is written with “kanji” ideographs — Chinese characters that symbolise an idea but can have varying pronunciations — and two phonetic scripts.

Bank notes and stamps are imprinted with “Nippon” in the Western alphabet, but the governor of the Bank of Japan, who’s in charge of money, calls himself the head of ”Nihon Ginko”.