Raw Japan

from Global News Journal:

Japan voters seek change, may get chaos

Five years ago, Japanese voters seeking change from stale politics and a stagnant economy backed maverick leader Junichiro Koizumi's calls for reform, handing his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) a huge win in an election for parliament's powerful lower house.

Two years, several scandals and one incompetent prime minister later, they dealt the same LDP a stinging setback in a 2007  upper house election, creating a "Twisted Parliament" where the upper chamber could stall bills and delay policies.

The gridlock toppled the LDP's Shinzo Abe and his successor,  each after about a year in office, and finally last summer the same electorate -- still longing for something new and better -- swept the novice Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) to power, ending more than half a century of almost non-stop LDP rule and ejecting  Taro Aso from the PM's seat. The DPJ, voters hoped, would make good on promises to change how Japan was governed, ending bureaucratic control of policies, and somehow ensuring that Japan emerged from two decades of the doldrums.

Now, after less than a year  of chaotic policymaking,  indecisive leadership and more scandals under DPJ premier  Yukio Hatoyama, followed by sudden talk of a sales tax hike from former grassroots activist Naoto Kan, who took over when Hatoyama suddenly quit,  frustrated voters did it again.

On Sunday, they delivered a harsh rebuke to the DPJ and a tiny ally, depriving them of an upper house majority and setting the stage for another bout of deadlock as Japan struggles to engineer growth in a fast-ageing society and curb a gigantic public debt.

"Voters were not trying to create political confusion, but that is the result," said independent political analyst Hirotaka Futatsuki, adding that calls for a snap lower house election that might not solve anything would grow. No lower house poll need be held until 2013.

Scenarios abound for possible ways out of the political bind.

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.”

Historic win in Japan. Now what?

Historic is usually a word that makes my skin crawl when I see it in the news. Journalists are prone to overuse it, so when I saw it in our election stories I had to stop myself deleting it — because this election truly is historic.

The Liberal Democratic Party had never lost an election since its founding in 1955. Even when it lost power for a few months in 1993/94, it was because of LDP lawmakers defecting rather than an election loss.

So the Democratic Party, under prime minister-elect Yukio Hatoyama, has a huge mandate. What will he do with it?

It’s clear that the last two elections were votes for a change to the old system where the ruling LDP, big business and bureaucrats ruled the place. Remember the 2005 LDP landslide was led by Junichiro Koizumi running on the destruction of his own party’s pork-barrel history.

The question is whether voters also rejected deregulation in the wake of the financial crisis and slumping exports that put large numbers of unprotected contract workers out of work.

The Yomiuri newspaper, Japan’s biggest seller, certainly subscribed to that view in its editorial on Monday. Along with the undisputed argument that voters were disgusted with the LDP’s failures, it said the defeat “was brought about by the collapse of its structural reforms that went too far”.

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.

A storm brewing

I watched Japan’s election returns from the rocky Pacific, with the satellite TV reception suprisingly crisp on a ferry heading south.

A typhoon is headed towards mainland Japan and travel and other ways of life have been caught up in its headwinds, while the impact of the apparently changing political climate has only just begun.

Northern Hokkaido, once a stronghold of the Liberal Democratic Party with never-ending highway, tunnel and bridge projects as testament, deserted the long-ruling party with all but three seats going to the Democratic Party, including prime minister-elect Yukio Hatoyama.

LDP losers in Hokkaido included former foreign minister Nobutaka Machimura, head of the party’s largest faction, Tsutomu Takebe, a Koizumi Cabinet loyalist, and former finance Shoichi Nakagawa, whose family had represented the middle of the vast prefecture for almost half a century and whose struggles were chronicled last week in this blog.

In Tohoku, the northern part of Japan’s biggest island, Honshu, and the home of Democrat founder and former leader Ichiro Ozawa, the beating was also fierce, if not quite as emphatic, as the LDP took 9 seats and the Democrats 26.

“Tohoku is generally conservative, with farmers supporting the LDP’s policies. But before the election their attitude had changed,” said Masaki Hara, a retired Sendai resident, who joined me watching results, along with many other captive ferry passengers, some of whom had lost interest in the Yomiuri Giants game on a competing TV screen.

Elections, obstructions and duct tape

When you pack scores of journalists into a room and they’re all trying to listen to, photograph, and film one person – like the head of a political party – it’s easy to get blocked by the people and things in front of you.

For a photographer, this is the kiss of death. It means not getting a picture. Next, your phone rings with an angry editor on the other end - a brief conversation is followed by a lengthy period of woe and despair. For this and other reasons, photographers go to great lengths to get a good photo position.

For Sunday’s Democratic Party of Japan election event, the first photographers arrived at 2 a.m. for an event that wasn’t expected to start until almost 8 p.m. – 16 hours later. Well before any big event photographers make a land grab vying for the best possible real-estate.

At popular events, once you’re in position it can be difficult to get out again with all the other photographers around. Waiting is just part of the job. Photographers also usually come armed with rolls of duct tape to mark out territory, stickers to place on chairs and tables, and ladders to see over those pesky tall people.

On the other hand, sometimes a little bit of obstruction can make a very interesting picture. Flags, people, and video cameras can be useful objects to “frame” a picture in order to concentrate the viewer’s eye on the subject.

Japan voters debate change

Japanese voters debated change as they participated in an election on Sunday that looks set to give the opposition Democratic Party of Japan a historic victory over the Liberal Democratic Party that has ruled for most of the past 50 years.

Reuters reporters fanned out across Tokyo to talk to voters, and here’s what some of those at polling stations had to say:

“I would like to see a change from the long years of the Liberal Democratic Party. I hope it will change,” said 48-year-old Juri Sasao, who with her husband said they voted for the Democratic Party.

“It seemed like it was time for a political change. Until now the LDP has been in power but things have not gotten better under their rule. So now it seems like time for a party change and for Japan to undertake a new challenge,” said Hideki Kawano, a 59-year-old factory worker who voted for the Democrats.

“It seems like the Democrats are just saying what the people want to hear, but I’m not sure they can follow through on these promises. I think we need to give the LDP four more years to see their policies take effect before making a change,” said Taku Yamada, a 30-year-old health care industry worker who voted for the LDP.

“It’s taken a long time for this to happen. I voted for the Democrats because of the payouts for children. And I think the government should change this time,” said 39-year-old Atsushi Misu from Yokohama, south of Tokyo, who was at a polling station with his wife and two young boys.

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.

No Obama moment in Japan

Opinion polls show the opposition Democratic Party of Japan is set for a runaway victory in Sunday’s general election, but voters are showing none of the enthusiasm that swept Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency last year.

When I talked to more than a dozen voters in a small town near Hiroshima, western Japan,  they were interested in the election and had a lot to say about it. And most were looking for change — but not with a great deal of fervour.

Perhaps that’s because I was in Higashihiroshima, a conservative rural area surrounded by rice fields and known for its sake. The district has always voted for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that has ruled Japan for all but 10 months during the past half century.

The voters were also well aware of the raft of challenges, such as growing social welfare costs, facing a new government, and seemed to have low expectations for the Democrats.

“We can go back to the old way if the Democratic party fails,” 69-year-old Hiroaki Yamashita told me.

Still, they were pondering a once-unthinkable Democratic Party victory, not due to any wild enthusiam for the opposition Democrats but more so because they were fed up with the LDP.

Make mine a milk

Japan’s far north, once home to pet projects of scions of the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, looks set to become an even hotter bed of opposition Democratic Party success in this weekend’s Japanese election capped, if polls and analysts are correct, by a local son becoming the nation’s next prime minister.

But while the country decides whether opposition leader Yukio Hatoyama will become premier, voters in Hokkaido will also decide the fate of a certain disgraced former finance, trade and farms minister who is battling for his political life.

Shoichi Nakagawa, who last graced this blog when his antics at February’s G8 finance ministers’ summit in Rome prompted his resignation from the cabinet, is trailing his 36-year-old DPJ rival, Tomohiro Ishikawa, for a seat his family has held for nearly half a century, according to the local Tokachi Mainichi newspaper on  Wednesday.

Nakagawa, once a rising star in the LDP — and still a relatively young hand in the party at 56 — quit the cabinet after having to deny he was was drunk at the summit, which an often replayed video of his departing news conference did little to support, undermining his already weak ally, Prime Minister Taro Aso.

His departure speech cited “careless health management”, which has morphed into potential careless career management, as the LDP prepares for a likely lashing on Sunday.

In the last election in 2005, Nakagawa won his seat by about 23,000 votes, but judging from newspapers and the ample Nakagawa posters in the city of Obihiro this week, confidence is lacking in Hokkaido’s 11th District this time around.

Nakagawa, like DPJ chief Hatoyama, followed a family line into politics, but his entry after a Tokyo upbringing stemmed from the suicide of his then 57-year-old father, a former farms minister who locals say is still revered among the prefecture’s politically strong agricultural community.