Raw Japan

from Global News Journal:

Japan’s “political deflation”

"Political deflation" - that's how one quipster described the woes besetting Japan's political sphere as support for both the new ruling party and its main conservative rival slips on concerns that neither side is capable of steering an economy plagued by falling prices, decades of lacklustre growth and a fast-ageing, shrinking population.

Six months after the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) swept to power  for the first time in a landslide election win that ended more than 50 years of almost unbroken rule by the conservative Liberal Democrats, support for Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's government is only about half the exuberant 70 percent level enjoyed when he took office.

Pundits are predicting the DPJ will have trouble winning an outright majority in an election, expected to be held in July, for parliament's less powerful upper house. The Democrats need a majority to break loose of a tiny coalition partner -- outspoken banking minister Shizuka Kamei's People's New Party  -- as well as another small partner, the Social Democrats, so they can avoid policy squabbles and pass bills smoothly. An outright ruling bloc loss threatens parliamentary deadlock.

A survey published in the Nikkei business daily on Monday showed support for Hatoyama's cabinet has slid seven points to 36 percent and support for the DPJ  is down eight points at 33 percent.

Providing some comfort -- albeit cold -- for the struggling Democrats is the fact that the ousted Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is faring even worse. Even before last year's election, former financial services minister Yoshimi Watanabe had bolted the party to form the small pro-reform Your Party, and since that defeat several other lawmakers have defected while some still in the LDP are publicly criticising their uncharismatic leader, Sadakazu Tanigaki, and mulling creating rival forces.

The LDP internal strife isn't playing well with voters, who may be disappointed with the Democrats but appear to have little appetite for a comeback by the Liberal Democrats. Support for the LDP in the Nikkei poll dipped one point to 23 percent, while that for Your Party, by contrast, doubled  to 8 percent.

I really don’t want much for Christmas

“I want to give dreams and hopes to the Japanese people,” Hatoyama told reporters on Christmas Eve when asked what “Hatoyama Santa Claus” wants to give the public this year, Japanese media said.

Hours later, Hatoyama apologised for the indictment of his former aides, who were charged over falsifying political funding records to make cash funneled from Hatoyama’s own family fortune look like donations from individuals.

In a related scandal, the prime minister came under fire for receiving 15 million yen a month over the last seven years, or  a total of 1.26 billion yen, from his wealthy mother, a daughter of the founder of tyre maker Bridgestone Corp. The premier has repeatedly said he was not aware of receiving such cash from his mother said he would pay as much as 600 million yen in gift taxes if that was deemed necessary.

So when a reporter asked what he wants from Santa Claus, Hatoyama only said, “I have been told that I have been given too much.”

I guess no Christmas present for the Japanese prime minister this year then — not even a jump in his sagging poll ratings.

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Issei Kato

Church attacks shake Kansai

In the minds of many people, religious rivalry could occasionally be expected to  spill over into violence in places as diverse as the occupied West Bank or Glasgow’s ‘Old Firm’ football derby.

Japan’s Kansai region, home to the world’s most renowned Zen gardens and some of the country’s finest cuisine, on the other hand, is not generally seen as a tinderbox of religious tension.

But over the last year a series of mysterious attacks on Protestant churches and other facilities have roiled the area, leaving many churchgoers shaken and perplexed.

There have been over 50 such incidents in the last 12 months, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported, all involving fire extinguishers being thrown through the windows of Protestant premises when nobody was inside. Although there haven’t been any injuries, NHK news last week showed parishioners saying the attacks were shocking and unsettling.

Perhaps the most unnerving element of the incidents is that nobody seems to have any idea who’s carrying them out, or why. Although the fact that no attacks on Catholic or Buddhist premises have been recorded has given rise to speculation that religion is likely to be a factor in the events.

The Asahi quoted a professor of criminal psychology at a university in Kansai saying the relatively large area in which the attacks have occurred suggests they are the work of more than one person, adding to fears in the Protestant community that this is not simply the work of a lone perpetrator.

Friends with issues

They may be on first-name terms, but Barack’s discussions with Yukio during his 24-hour stay in Tokyo have left unresolved a feud over a U.S. military base and deeper questions about the future.

They agreed to review the five decade-old U.S.-Japan alliance as both countries adapt to China’s rising regional and global clout, and they agreed to resolve as soon as possible a dispute over the U.S. Marines Futenma airbase on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa.

But President Obama and Prime Minister Hatoyama remain at odds over how to resolve the feud over Futenma – located in the middle of a city whose residents are sick of the noise and worried about the danger of accidents. 

Obama made clear he wants Tokyo to implement a 2006 deal under which Futenma would be closed and replaced with a facility on a less crowded part of the island. The agreement was part of a broader realignment of the 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan, including a shift of up to 8,000 Marines to the U.S. territory of Guam.

But Hatoyama said that comments during the August campaign that vaulted his party  to power had raised the hopes of Okinawa residents who want the base off the island.

High-level talks could begin as early as next week, reviving the headache the leaders played down at their summit before an APEC meeting in Singapore.

They can’t let the base row drag on. The victory of an anti-base candidate in a local mayoral election in Okinawa in January would make it even harder to agree to implement the deal, even with some changes.

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.

Punching puppets offer election action

Attack advertising is in its infancy and Japanese election debates are staid affairs between men in suits who take their turns to speak and don’t get angry.

The election on Sunday is a battle between the heavyweight LDP and the up-and-coming Democrats, who have a big lead in the polls, but the only big punches you’ll see thrown are among tiny finger dolls on a puppet stage.

Japan prefers consensus in its politics and has been ruled by the same party for most of the last  half-century, so what can a puppeteer do to appear topical without boring his audience?

Mitsuaki Tsuyuki at the “Lucky Laugh Theatre” in Tokyo has turned to Punch and Judy, reducing Prime Minister Taro Aso and opposition leader Yukio Hatoyama to a couple of bat-swinging midgets a few inches tall.

It seems to be working, as puppet show audiences warm to the election.

“The leaders are really fighting fiercely at this point in time… both here and there,” 63-year-old Sayako Suzuki, who brought her friend to the 500 yen ($5) show.

Others said they agreed the puppet theatrics were pretty realistic, in a country where scandals have robbed politicians of respect.

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.” 

The new face of Koizumi

One in five politicians in the Japanese parliament is the child or grandchild of a politician, reinforcing a longstanding practice of influential political families handing power down to the next generation.

But voter criticism has been mounting ahead of the Aug. 30 election — especially in Yokosuka, a port city southwest of Tokyo, where former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has passed his seat on to his 28-year-old second son, Shinjiro Koizumi.

Shinjiro has worked at a Washington think tank and served as an aide to his father, after graduating from a private university near Tokyo and obtaining a masters degree from New York’s Columbia University.

That makes him the fourth generation of the family in a row to enter politics. His grandad and great grandad were cabinet ministers.

“I know there is opposition to hereditary politics that I must overcome and even though they may think family politics may not be good, I ask all voters just to back me,” argues Shinjiro Koizumi, as he campaigns for the upcoming Aug. 30 election that the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) looks likely to lose.

Critics say the political dynasties discourage the best and brightest from entering politics, potentially depriving Japan of the top-notch leadership it needs to confront deep-seated problems. They argue it gives dynastic candidates an unfair advantage in organisation, funding and recognition.