Newsletter No. 689
News-Analysis
July 30, 2007

 

UPPER HOUSE ELECTIONS -- A SHARP CHECK TO JAPAN’S RIGHTWARD DRIFT

The Japanese public has decisively repudiated the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)-New Komeito coalition and handed a major victory to the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). This newsletter will review the results of the election, and then make a tentative analysis of its meaning both for the Japanese political world in general, and Japan’s policies in the Islamic world more specifically.

Since the establishment of the “1955 system” the LDP has always been the largest single political party in both houses of the Diet -- even during the period in 1993 when a motley coalition of opposition parties pushed them temporarily out of power. Today that has changed: The DPJ now has more seats in the Upper House than even the LDP and New Komeito combined.

Let’s take a look at the new balance in the House of Councillors:

242 -- Total Number of Seats in Upper House:

109 -- Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)
83 -- Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)
20 -- New Komeito
7 -- Japanese Communist Party (JCP)
5 -- Social Democratic Party (SDP)
4 -- People’s New Party (PNP)
1 -- New Party Nippon (NPN)
13 -- Independent candidates

One point that is immediately striking is that Japan now appears closer to a genuine two-party system than perhaps ever before. Unlike the old LDP-Socialist Party rivalry of the 1960s and 1970s, now the second party, the DPJ, has a real chance to eventually dethrone the LDP and govern on its own. The reason is that the other, smaller opposition parties were completely unable to benefit from the unpopularity of the Abe administration. Most of them actually lost seats in this election. Frankly, the futures of all of the smaller parties are looking rather dark. It appears that many of them will be crushed between the two major parties, the LDP and the DPJ.

Let’s now examine each of the parties individually:

Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ): In sharp contrast to their crushing defeat in the lower house elections in September 2005, the results of this election could hardly have been better for the DPJ. They have defeated the LDP head on, emerged as the largest party in the upper house, and pushed all their tiny opposition rivals into the shade. Their numbers in the House of Councillors have now advanced from 81 to 109 seats.

Clearly, the DPJ has a tremendous chance to completely overthrow the LDP in the next lower house election and put their own leader in the office of prime minister. But there are, of course, dangers as well. Should they aggressively make it impossible for the LDP to govern in order to provoke early elections? Or should they play it more low-key and just seek the opportunities that may present themselves? Either strategy has its risks.

The massive victory should help to heal some of the ideological divisions within the party because both the left and right wings are hungry to taste power and know that they need to stick together to achieve that. They have also just received a major inflow of new blood that may help party unity in the short term.

The biggest immediate problem that the DPJ may have relates to the health of leader Ichiro Ozawa. Having guided his party to a historic victory, Ozawa was nowhere to be found on election night. He must be in pretty bad shape to have not put in some kind of appearance. Is Ozawa going to lead his party to the Promised Land without being able to enter it himself? The possibility is definitely there.

If so, is there another person in the DPJ who can effectively lead the party if Ozawa drops out?

Liberal Democratic Party (LDP): Even as the crushing results of the elections were still being tallied -- dropping from 110 seats to 83 seats -- Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a television appearance and asserted that he would be continuing in office. He said that he would “take seriously” the opinions of the DPJ, but that he “must push ahead with reforms and continue to fulfill my responsibilities as prime minister.” He also insisted that his ideas were “not wrong” and that the Japanese people -- in their secret hearts or something -- agreed with the basic thrust of his policies. He looked shell-shocked and even teary-eyed, but in substance it was a pretty arrogant performance. He didn’t really admit any fault at all rather than “failing to gain the understanding” of the people.

Most of the LDP leaders quickly stated that Abe should remain as prime minister, but it is not yet clear if that is really going to happen. LDP Secretary-General Hidenao Nakagawa fell on his sword and turned in his resignation. LDP House of Councillors caucus chief Mikio Aoki (who is a truly crucial powerbroker) is probably also out. More heads are likely to roll in the coming weeks.

In recent years, the LDP has been a more coherent and unified party than it ever was in the late 20th century. Ideological conservatives now form the real backbone of the party, and moderates and liberals have become small, non-mainstream elements. A crucial looming question is how these LDP moderates and liberals are going to react to this crushing defeat. It would seem that they would have much more leverage than previously for two reasons. First, it was the conservative mainstream that led the party into its disaster and their own internal criticisms may get a wider hearing. Secondly, to maintain its grip on power and to override upper house resistance, almost every LDP member will be needed to vote positively on bills proposed by the party leaders.

The most ominous sign for Shinzo Abe must have been this comment by former Defense Agency chief Shigeru Ishiba: “Prime Minister Abe should quit. If he doesn't, the LDP will be finished.”

Ishiba is a hard right ideologue, not a moderate or a liberal by any stretch. He is one of the people that you would expect to be standing behind Abe together with the party leaders. Clearly, though, Ishiba is perceptive enough to realize that the LDP must make radical changes in order to recover before the next lower house election.

Even if Abe is forced to resign, the problem is that there are not too many great LDP leaders waiting in the wings to replace him. Taro Aso would be the conventional choice, but most people realize that he’s not the answer to the LDP’s problem. Yasuo Fukuda and Sadakazu Tanigaki are the leading candidates of the moderate camp. Both of them would be superior to Abe in terms of substance and competency, but the problem is that neither of them has demonstrated the kind of charisma and popular touch that would be needed to really turn things around for the LDP. The most radical options would be either to promote some attractive, media-savvy junior member of the party into the leadership post, or else to drag Junichiro Koizumi out of retirement and plead with him to once again save them from themselves.

New Komeito: They have been very loyal allies to the LDP for some years even though it is not clear how much they have actually affected national policy. Supposedly a pacifist party, they have in fact been enablers for the LDP rightwingers to carry out their agenda of remilitarization. Their main interest is to protect the Soka Gakkai empire, and that’s just what they have done. In practice, they are opportunists who will run with the top dog. While the LDP is still in power, they will probably support them. If the LDP is crushed again in the next election, then look for this alliance of convenience to dissolve.

New Komeito relies on a religiously-motivated political machine. They are unlikely to either get much bigger or much smaller than they are now unless something happens to the Soka Gakkai organization behind them. At any rate, in this election they saw their representation in the upper house drop from 23 seats to 20 seats.

Japanese Communist Party (JCP): The general public was disgusted with the ruling LDP, handed them a major loss, and still the JCP saw its representation drop from 9 seats to 7 seats. The lesson that they should be drawing from this is that the small parties are unlikely to make major gains in the near future, and that some kind of reform of their party is long overdue.

Will they get the message? Don’t hold your breath. The JCP are just as inflexible in their own way as are the rightwing conservatives clustered around Shinzo Abe.

The one positive thing about the JCP, however, is that they sometimes bring issues to public attention that might otherwise be lost. A good example is their recent expose about the SDF’s collection of data on anti-war groups (see Shingetsu Newsletter No. 640).

However, it would be much better if they accompanied these important exposes with a realistic political strategy that could actually challenge the right. Getting rid of the name “communist” would be an excellent start in that direction.

Social Democratic Party (SDP): Like the JCP, this little leftwing party also failed to capitalize and dropped from 6 to 5 seats. Honestly, I wish that the SDP would disband and join either a reformed leftist coalition with the JCP or, even better, merge into the DPJ which badly needs more female faces in its senior positions.

The message of the SDP is too important to languish in a tiny party that has about zero chance of ever recapturing its former position as a formidable opposition party.

People’s New Party (PNP): This collection of old LDP anti-reformers held steady at 4 seats. They managed to gain some notoriety during the campaign for running former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori as one of their candidates. This party won’t be around very long as they really have no distinct identity, and are led by dinosaurs. They will probably join either the DPJ or fold themselves back into the LDP before too many years have passed.

New Party Nippon (NPN): The lamest of the lame parties. Originally created as a refuge for a small group of anti-Koizumi LDP rebels who didn’t want to join the PNP or run independently, it has now transformed into the personal political party of former Nagano Governor Yasuo Tanaka. Appropriately, Tanaka won his own seat and that’s it. Tanaka has his good qualities, but some of his recent efforts seem vaguely pathetic. He’s not really going to have any impact unless he joins a larger and more credible outfit.

General Thoughts on the Election Results

I am well aware that the reasons I oppose Shinzo Abe are not exactly the same reasons why he failed so miserably in this election. I oppose Abe because I see him as a dangerous ideologue trying to pull Japan in a direction that I fundamentally reject and believe to be against the larger interests of both Japan and international peace more generally. I understand clearly what he wants to accomplish and I don’t want to see him succeed.

However, the Japanese public did not reject the LDP on these grounds. They do not actively oppose Abe’s policies in the way that I do. Rather, the reason they handed him this massive defeat is mainly because they sensed (correctly) that Abe does not really share their priorities. The majority of Japanese public could care less about assertiveness in foreign policy or theological discussions on the importance of patriotism education in the schools. They are much more worried about the quality of their daily lives and the security of their financial futures. To Abe these are mundane issues compared to his dreams about vanquishing enemies like North Korea and recreating a proud and well-armed Japan. This disparity in political priorities, combined with the apparent corruption and incompetence of his cabinet, is what led to this election fiasco.

I invite you to reread what I wrote about Shinzo Abe in Shingetsu Newsletter No. 391 in September 2006 when he first took office. Most of the wise men were then singing Abe’s praises talking about his great popularity and his destiny to transform Japan in a reign lasting five or six years. The Golden Boy of the Right was then being crowned by venerable Japanologists as the leader of “the new generation in Heisei Japan” and the like. Meanwhile, I was saying things like this:

“It is far from clear that Abe’s alleged popularity is something built to last... Once the Japanese public gets a better look at him, they may not like what they find... Abe and his fellows have a very clear ideological agenda that they are now getting ready to push. Will the Japanese public simply defer to their priorities? Or will they quickly lose patience with a prime minister who doesn’t really care about the same things that they do?... As you can see, I am by no means sure that Shinzo Abe will survive as prime minister through 2007. He may be headed for a spectacular failure.”

At present, Shinzo Abe is still prime minister, and he may yet be able to scrape by and survive. That remains to be seen. My point here is that Abe’s failure was predictable. I know so because I basically predicted it myself. If Abe is forced to resign before the end of the year then my wizardry will appear complete.

Aside from the issues of Abe and the LDP, there is one more thought that I’d like to offer here: the Japanese political system has become much more volatile than it was in the past. In September 2005 the LDP succeeded in a crushing victory. Less than two years later they fell in a crushing defeat. There was nothing subtle about either event.

I attribute this volatility to three factors. First, the electoral reforms introduced in the era of the Hosokawa administration are showing their true effects. As was broadly envisioned at the time, a competitive two-party system is beginning to emerge. The most important aspect of this was the emphasis on the single-seat constituency system. Second, party loyalty and most party organizations have become very weak. Most voters are now willing to float between parties and make up their minds at the last minute. No party can win an election entirely based upon safe, loyal votes these days. Thirdly, Japanese voters don’t have much of a fixed point of view and tend to make their political decisions emotionally. If they like Koizumi’s cool style, they’ll hand a huge victory to the LDP. If they don’t trust Abe, they’ll hand a huge victory to someone else. The point is that things can now move very fast in the Japanese political system -- for better or for worse.

The Upper House Election and Japanese-Islamic Relations

Whether Abe survives or falls, this election has sharply checked the rightward drift in Tokyo. Since 9.11 the Japanese right has been in the driver’s seat. The opposition parties were too weak to really matter, and the LDP’s own moderates and liberals were pushed to the fringes. Now that is no longer the case.

The political contest inside Japan is just beginning, and that will consume a lot of the government’s attention. SDF deployments around the world are no longer going to be so easy, or seem like such a priority. The right will now have to compromise with the moderates in order to move policy forward. This will make the whole process slower and will produce policies which are more cautious and non-committal.

My own opinion is that some of the more negative aspects of Japan’s current policies in the Islamic world will now be curtailed. I expect that the moderates will do a better job steering Japan than the right has done. The main danger, however, is that Tokyo will simply become paralyzed and unable to make any decisions at all.

Truth be told, the new situation in Tokyo looks almost identical to the current situation in Washington: A fading rightwing leader who has to deal with a mostly-hostile parliament but can still lean on a coterie of committed ideological allies -- but all the while fearing the results of the next election.