Japan 2012

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Japan has to have a general election, constitutionally, on or before 30 August 2013; knowing Japan it's very likely that the election will be at the earliest about a year from now, but it's still worthwhile starting a thread for it, I think, because trends in Japanese politics frequently take kind of a while to get going and then do not change particularly easily except with a change in Prime Ministers.

Currently the ruling party is the Democratic Party of Japan, which was formed from dissidents from the formerly-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (which is actually conservative, or rather almost Right-Hegelian in character) and various centrist or social-liberal reformist parties claiming to be the ideological heirs of the liberalizing Taisho Era between the world wars about fifteen years ago. It was swept into power in the 2009 election after fifty-five years of the Liberal Democratic Party being the largest party in the Diet, which it controlled for all but two of those years (those two were in the early nineties when Japan was ruled by a fractious eight-party alliance called the Eight-Party Alliance after the LDP lost an outright majority in the 1993 election). The Prime Minister, Noda Yoshihiko, has been in power since late last summer, when he replaced Kan Naoto, who in turn replaced Hatoyama Yukio (the guy who actually won the last election) the year before that. There's a pattern of these men steadily losing popularity from initial heights.

The DPJ actually does have several substantive accomplishments to its name, such as introducing subsidies for young families, abolishing state high school tuition fees, restoring support for single mothers (which was remarkable in a socially very normative country like Japan), extending unemployment insurance, introducing free services for low-income disabled people, and banning age discrimination in the provision of medical care. However, the first two DPJ Prime Ministers were actively terrible at messaging, and Noda seems to view not messaging very much at all as a source of some kind of personal pride. He's lost a lot of support because of this but he is still retaining better approvals than either of his predecessors were by the end. Noda was Kan's Minister of Finance and Hatoyama's Senior Vice Minister of Finance. Before that he was an apparently very diligent but not especially interesting back-bencher and directed public relations for the DPJ in its early years, which is interesting considering his current dislike of press conferences and spin (then again, public relations for the DPJ during its early years sucked, so maybe it's not that surprising). He's very highly respected and something of a center-left technocrat; he comes from a distinctly impoverished background, which is even more unusual for Japanese politicians than it is in most countries. One of my professors is a big supporter of his.

The leader of the LDP, which is perceived to have won the last upper house elections two years ago on points even though it didn't actually gain all that many seats, is Tanigaki Sadakazu, who was Minister of Finance for the popular rightist reformer Koizumi Jun'ichirō, the last Japanese Prime Minister to serve more than a year or so, from 2003 to 2006, and Minister of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport under Koizumi's centrist LDP successor Fukuda Yasuo in 2008. Before that he worked in food safety and for a bunch of government commissions. He was considered a moderate at that time but has transformed into a notably right-wing demagogue, even by Japanese standards. At one point Kan offered him a grand coalition for some inexplicable reason, even though the DPJ has never at any point in the past three years not commanded a large majority in the House of Representatives and has not lost its plurality in the House of Councillors. Tanigaki is popular with a certain segment of the population but he's not as able to deflect controversy as Koizumi was. He reminds me more of Abe Shinzō, but I could be off-base on that.

Noda is from Chiba, a formerly rural rice-farming prefecture east of Tokyo that has been undergoing an ambiguous economic restructuring since Japan's largest airport was built there from the sixties to the eighties (it took that long because of civil unrest over its construction). The DPJ is strong in areas like this, east and north of the Tokyo--Kitakyushu built-up core megalopolis, particularly on Hokkaido, in the inland parts of Tohoku, and in the less-urbanized, or not-quite-as-urbanized, parts of the Kanto Plain (although the latter is a traditionally right-leaning area and DPJ inroads into it are rather recent). It's also strong in Nagoya and parts of Osaka.

Tanigaki is from Kyoto, the old capital of Japan and still the site of most of Japan's traditionally important imperial and religious institutions and the driver of most of the country's high culture (not popular or mass culture). The LDP is strong in the traditional, not-quite-as-urban western part of Japan and in the parts of the built-up megalopolis where the DPJ isn't (sometimes even where it is; Tokyo and Osaka, the two largest cities, are actually quite swingy). It was also once able to gain votes in Tohoku, but if it campaigned against the government there this time it would probably be seen as immensely crass, since it would be campaigning against the government's 'earthquake record'. It still might win back parts of Tohoku without putting much into it, but most of north-eastern Japan does genuinely have seemed to have shifted to the left.

Even though the DPJ Prime Ministers all seem to end up pretty unpopular, there's little to no desire to replace Noda, who's much more stable personally and professionally than Hatoyama or Kan, and there's not much enthusiasm among the voters about getting the LDP back either. They've been trading extremely narrow polling leads for a while and the 'No party' (i.e. either abstention or pure swing voters) line in the polls has been inching up into the high forties. Of course, a lot of this will probably change when the campaign actually starts. Both party leaders actually really suck at campaigning, since Noda is a shy technocrat and Tanigaki is a demagogue whom nobody seems to actually like, but the spin machines that get set to motion in Japanese general elections are often pretty spectacular.

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More to come on minor parties and the Japanese voting system when I have time.

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Thank you very much, Smid. We'll continue with an explanation of Japan's quasi-MMP system and small profiles of such parties as New Komeito, the political arm of the influential Nichiren sect of Japanese Buddhism with an ethos kind of like a Buddhist equivalent of the Christian Democratic parties of Europe; the Japanese Communist Party, one of the saner and more respectable such left in the world; Your Party, a very new libertarian reformist outfit led by LDP breakaways; and the Happiness Realization Party, the political arm of the Happy Science 'new religious movement' (i.e. cult that doesn't appear to be actively dangerous) and lately major international political allies of one Mr Herman Cain!

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MINOR PARTIES

The main minor parties of interest are New Komeito (tl note: Komeito means Justice Party), the Japanese Communist Party, the Kizuna Party, the Social Democratic Party, Your Party, People's New Party/New Party Nippon (technically two parties, but treated essentially like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), the New Party Daichi--True Democrats, the Sunrise Party of Japan, the New Renaissance Party,  and the Happiness Realization Party.

New Komeito was founded by members of the Nichiren Buddhist group Soka Gakkai International and is often thought of as its political arm despite the leadership and finances being independent (as is required by the constitutional separation of church and state, which applies to everything except the Imperial House, where the current High Priestess of Ise and head of the Association of Shinto Shrines is the Emperor's kid sister). It's center-right, a traditional coalition partner of the Liberal Democratic Party, and generally perceived as fairly transparent and non-corrupt (or less corrupt), at least historically. They've been the third party for a while now.

The Communists are moderate (for communists) and actually apathetic-to-vaguely-supportive of the Imperial House, whose existence they formerly opposed. They are very left-wing but committed to operating within a Japanese cultural context and were never very strongly associated with the Eastern Bloc. They have some popularity in lower-income suburbs, are committed to running competent women candidates in a strongly male-dominated political culture, and are the fourth-largest party in the Diet, but can be argued to not really stand for as much as they used to.

The Kizuna Party is a small liberal party that was founded earlier this year by DPJ breakaways for reasons that I don't really understand very well yet. They're the closest anybody here would get to being left-liberal or liberal in the modern American sense.

The Social Democratic Party is a successor to the formerly strong (as in, official opposition for about half a century) Socialist Party of Japan and kind of an adjunct to the Democratic Party, from which it is ideologically indistinguishable. Such constituency as it has is mainly bleeding hearts who don't want to vote Communist.

YP, PNP, and NPN are all to varying degrees right-wing parties (the first ostensibly libertarian and reformist, the other two populist) formed by LDP breakaways after some of Koizumi's more controversial decisions. They actually enjoy pretty good relationships with the left-leaning parties because of their iconoclasm relative to the mainstream Japanese right.

New Party Daichi--True Democrats are a ragtag bunch of misfits who got themselves expelled from other parties, led by a Hokkaido regionalist and former crooked LDP functionary called Suzuki Muneo who just got out of prison about six months ago. I like these guys a lot. They don't seem to stand for much beyond being a halfway-house to rehabilitate (or try to rehabilitate) their careers and reputations, but these True Democrats are a true underdog story.

New Renaissance and Sunrise are both somewhat scary, very small groups of right-wingers. New Renaissance is ostensibly neoliberal, and Sunrise is backed by the current Governor of Tokyo, which for anybody who knows anything about Japanese politics should say it all. For those who don't, Governor Ishihara is basically a Japanese Jan Brewer with pretensions to intellectualism because he wrote some misogynistic novels way back in the fifties.

The Happiness Realization Party is like New Komeito except for a cult called Happy Science, and some of their leaders recently met with Herman Cain.

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Nice informative overview

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Seriously, how many different PMs have they had since 1980? 20?

Since Koizumi left in 2006 they've had 6 PMs. 

Yes, Kan was the first since then to serve more than a year. He lasted fourteen months! It's to be hoped Noda can actually serve in three (three!) calendar years, if not more considering what an ass Tanigaki is. Unless LDP replaces Tanigaki before the election...

They actually have had exactly twenty since 1980, inclusive.

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I thought I'd bump this thread because of Ozawa Ichiro's recent behavior. He's the leader of a new 51-seat (I think) block that just broke from the DPJ today. It's not an official party yet but it's going to be; not clear what it's going to be called or what its ostensible platform is going to be, since Ozawa has no apparent beliefs or standards.

The Noda Government still has a majority but it's much more tenuous than anybody thought it was likely to get, something like 241/479 in the House of Representatives for the DPJ itself and 254/479 or so counting the SDP, PNP, NPN, and NPD 'allies' (such as they are).

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I thought I'd bump this thread because of Ozawa Ichiro's recent behavior. He's the leader of a new 51-seat (I think) block that just broke from the DPJ today. It's not an official party yet but it's going to be; not clear what it's going to be called or what its ostensible platform is going to be, since Ozawa has no apparent beliefs or standards.

The Noda Government still has a majority but it's much more tenuous than anybody thought it was likely to get, something like 241/479 in the House of Representatives for the DPJ itself and 254/479 or so counting the SDP, PNP, NPN, and NPD 'allies' (such as they are).

I'm kind of surprised the numbers of his new block are that low. I'd at least expect all 57 DJP members he whipped into voting against the government's big consumption tax increase to leave; at most I'd expect the up to 140 or so who supported his candidates for DJP leadership to join him.

The thing is, Noda isn't terribly popular (to an extent for entirely legitimate reasons, even though I'm about as sympathetic towards him as one can be under the circumstances) and not all of the people who were comfortable with following Ozawa into a situation that created an intraparty crisis in the ruling coalition are comfortable joining him in what looks to be an attempt to bring down the DPJ government outright for his own perceived gain. The Kaieda people from the most recent party leadership election I'm not so sure about, but Kaieda Banri's simply a lot more likable and honest than most people in Japanese politics even if his views are kind of nonsensical and awful (hence a lot of the Kaieda people probably genuinely are Kaieda people rather than Ozawa people), and if I had to guess I'd imagine he's probably regretting his support for Ozawa during the legal problems last year right about now.

Ozawa started from a place of a lot of goodwill within the membership of the DPJ but he's pissed it away even quicker than he did in the LDP twenty years ago. He makes his old mentor Tanaka Kakuei look comparatively aboveboard and on the level.

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Update: Ozawa is now the head of 'People's Livelihood First: The Path of Independents', with 37 members of the House of Representatives.

Not only was he not able even to keep all of the people who initially defected with him several days ago, at least four or five of those people have since returned to the DPJ.

Party standings in the lower house (ruling party in bold, parties that to a greater or lesser extent are considered allied with the ruling party in italics):

Democratic Party of Japan ('Third Way', big-tent, could be considered Labour Right-esque in some systems): 250 (with the 'Independent Club')
Liberal Democratic Party (conservative, almost Right-Hegelian, big-tent): 120 (with the 'Assembly of Independents')
People's Livelihood First (Ozawa Ichiro appreciation life): 37 (aka the 'Path of Independents'. Noticing a theme?)
New Kōmeitō (Nichiren Buddhist, religious conservatives in the Japanese context, center-right, allied with the LDP): 21
Japanese Communist Party ('Eurocommunist' except it's not Europe): 9
Kizuna Party (left-liberal, anti-consumption tax and anti-Trans-Pacific Partnership): 9
Social Democratic Party ('Third Way' and more committedly so than the DPJ): 6 (with the 'Citizens' League')
Your Party (neoliberal): 5
People's New Party (populist, socially conservative but allied with the DPJ): 4
New Party Daichi – True Democrats (ragtag bunch of misfits): 3
Sunrise Party of Japan (nationalist in a somewhat worrying way): 2
New Party Nippon (centrist, the 'Nippon' in English is insistent terminology): 1
Tax Cuts Japan (tax cuts for Japan): 1

Speaker and Vice-Speaker: 2
Independents: 9

The government and its allies such as they are now have a notional majority of 266-213 out of 479 members (there's one vacancy, I'm not sure where), counting the Speaker and Vice-Speaker since Japan to the best of my knowledge uses Speaker Denison's rule. Unclear how many of those 266 would defect and vote to bring down Noda if the rubber hit the road, considering how much open backstabbing there is within Japanese political parties relative to other Westminster systems.

The notional majority was 320-160 after the last general election.

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That's unfortunately quite likely. Look at the success of Ishihara, for instance. He's a former LDP minister of some description but he's definitely positioned himself as a 'protest vote' at various points, even though to all outside observers he's about as Establishment as it's conceivably possible to be in Japan without having had a man with a corncob pipe throw him in the clinker when he was young. This is a man who's openly contemplated the eternal mystery of why women past their childbearing years bother to stay alive and he's in his fourth term as Governor of Tokyo, because he's not outright incompetent and voting for a total far-right lunatic, while not the best way to register one's displeasure with the main parties and their shenanigans, certainly isn't the worst.

Taking out the 'No party' and redistributing the rest of the polling numbers doesn't strike me as particularly useful, although it's undeniable that there's a lot of discontent with the DPJ. People don't really want the LDP back either. It remains to be seen how Ozawa Ichiro Appreciation Life will affect this. Japan polls pretty sparingly and it's kind of all over the place. Personally I'd prefer an LDP government even though I really kind of despise Tanigaki Sadakazu. If it's depressingly impossible for a non-LDP government to get reelected it's best that Ozawa stay as far away from anywhere he can do damage as possible.

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But KinKi region is quite large

Insert canned laughter here, right?

This is why we usually call the region in question 'Kansai'.

Recent events are a little irritating to me as a supporter of such a left as Japan has (and also somebody who wanted to be in Japan for the next election next summer!), but certainly not entirely surprising, and it's probable that the Goddamn LDP will be in power again. The most we can hope out of such an incidence is no [Inks]ing Trans-Pacific Parternship, and that is a big maybe.

I'm in agreement with Mikado on the subject of Hashimoto. Stylistically he's rather like a non-senescent, Osakan Ishihara and I think that's his game plan. Both of Japan's largest cities being run by far-right nutjobs doesn't sit especially well with me but it's better than them having national power. It's easy to underestimate how insane someone like Hashimoto really is and while that can a good way to entrench yourself locally in Japan it's not a usual route to national power, especially if it involves aligning oneself with Ozawa.

Also, Article 9 has quite a bit of traction in the Japanese public. I'm not sure of any polling numbers but at least a very large segment of Japan rightly sees its pacifist constitution as a national treasure, regardless of the circumstances of its imposition. The political will is for loosening of relations with the United States, not a return to the days of a standing Imperial Army.

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I prefer 関西 by analogy to 関東, and that's what I've been taught by my Japanese instructors as well.

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The old "Socialists" changed their name to DPJ.

The etiology of the DPJ isn't anywhere near as simple as that.

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Re: The first article, regarding Noda apparently thinking direct election of the Prime Minister is a good idea or makes any sense: NO. Seriously, just no.

Re: The second article: Ugh, these people are just horrible, aren't they?

Re: The third article: Of course, it's Iwate. Lovely place but Ozawa's little playground politically.

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That's my hope. The worst case scenario is a more annoying repeat of 1993-6 with even less getting done.

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That's my hope. The worst case scenario is a more annoying repeat of 1993-6 with even less getting done.

Even back in 2006-2008 there were all kinds of talks/rumors of realignements where significant parts of the "reform" wings of LDP and DPJ would merge into a new party.  DPJ's landslide victory in 2009 ended such talks.  I think we might be entering into another period (like 1993-6) where there will be significant political realignment. This will be a political version of the Sengoku period of the 1500s (or 戦国時代) In theory this benifits Ozawa but he is not the same Ozawa of the 1990s. Local power brokers like Hashimoto I think will benifit due to disappointment with national parties.  I personally like Your Party, I think it has a lot of potential but not sure it will come out a winner in all this.

It's not the realignment in general that I have a problem with. I even think that, unlike in many other purportedly homogeneous countries, things like regionalization could be very good ideas in the particular Japanese context, even if it would give people like Ishihara more power within their own little fiefdoms; Tohoku and Chugoku, for example, simply do not face the same issues that Tokyo and Osaka and Nagoya do. In this respect and in some others relating to proposed structural reforms I'm certainly with people like Hashimoto and groups like Your Party. It's just that, everywhere else, these specific people are so incredibly awful that I really don't want them staying in power for very long, past the period of the realignment itself. Hashimoto isn't as despicable as Ozawa or Ishihara but that's setting the bar so low as to bury it in the ground. Remember that this is the man who's explicitly said that public employees don't have human rights.

I like the Kizuna Party, but I'm doubtful about their ability to benefit from any of this.

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So Kizuna has apparently allied with Ozawa Ichiro Appreciation Life. Quite frankly, I'm hugely disappointed. They're hitching their wagon to a moron.

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So Kizuna has apparently allied with Ozawa Ichiro Appreciation Life. Quite frankly, I'm hugely disappointed. They're hitching their wagon to a moron.

Well, Kizuna broke from DPJ over the consumption tax issue, the same reason Ozawa broke with DPJ.

I know. It makes sense politically, they just seem like horrible judges of character. If I were them I would have tried to cobble together a coalition with some of the other very small parties.

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Let's play a game!

WHO SAID IT: HASHIMOTO OR STALIN?

We think that a powerful and vigorous movement is impossible without differences — 'true conformity' is possible only in the cemetery.

I want each of you to see yourself as a person who now has no personal privacy and no fundamental human rights.

''No' to cutting off weak people. 'No' to widening disparity. 'No' to competition' —  these sweet words are really dangerous. We will stop this evil trend.

Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.

When you approach cockroaches, they dash off even though they have no eyes on their back. They have a great sense of crisis and we have to share the same sense of crisis.

The precondition of our national character is our blood.

This leads to the conclusion, it is time to finish retreating. Not one step back!

The Jews are not a nation!

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Wiki says that the DPJ and LDP have agreed to a snap election in January once a VAT increase is passed. Any news on that?

First I've heard of it, but I'm unsurprised. My guess would be that there's a feeling in the two establishment parties to get this over with and give the various insurgent groups as little time as possible to really organize and get good candidate recruitment going. Personally, I welcome this, not because I like the DPJ and LDP very much but because Ozawa Ichiro Appreciation Life, the Hashists, and their ilk, with the possible exception of this new Greens Japan outfit, which apparently isn't going to contest anything until the upper house election next July, are just awful.

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Any result that keeps the green/anti-restart nutjobs out of power is okay with me and luckily, that seems like every conceivable result.

I feel the same way about the socially far-right/anti-Article 9 nutjobs, so I share most of your opinion on this.

Increasingly I think that Japan needs to start thinking seriously about what its post-demographic-apocalypse self might look like. There will be suffering at the level of the postwar for at least a few years at that point but I think there are, to borrow a phrase from Herman Kahn, several tragic but distinguishable post-crash environments.

I'll be rooting for Noda despite my disapprobation for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, both because somebody who's actually from Japan whose opinions I trust and respect likes him a lot and because his general policy program is to my mind better than Tanigaki's in most areas.

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I don't think Japanese demographics are as bad as everyone says.

I mean, they're bad, but they're not outside of the Asian norm. The birth rate has even recovered to 1.4, which makes Japan the best nation in East Asia (compare to .89 for Taiwan, 1.18 for Mainland China, and 1.21 for South Korea).

The birthrate has recovered somewhat? Oh, thank you, knowing that is helpful to my perspective on Japan and its future (having an informed perspective on such is important for me, since I'm an academic East Asianist, albeit one with an early-modern focus).

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I support it on pacifist principle, but you're right, it's more just a nice sentiment to have in a Constitution than something that has a huge impact on relevant types of policy.

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Probably a straight DPJ vote for me if I were Japanese, unless there was a moderate, non-flaky JCP or SDP candidate in the offing or something.

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That being said, my homeboy is wonderful.

Who is he and what's he like?

Aforementioned person I trust's district member is apparently one Hosoda Hiroyuki from the LDP.

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SDP and then Komeito. Huh, not really what I was expecting for second. DPJ and Your Party were both considerably higher than the LDP.

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The bunraku thing?

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My understanding is that, as koenkai has said, Tanigaki is much more likely to lose any leadership challenge at this point, before an election, than to win one. The DPJ also might have a leadership election coming up, but among people who still support the DPJ after events of the past few months Noda seems to retain some measure of popularity and respect.

The Japanese media seems to think that Noda will not call elections just yet, and may in fact try to govern Japan through an opposition boycott of the Diet for the next...however long. Days, weeks. I hope not months.

I've always personally rather liked Abe for some reason, even though I don't agree with the bulk of his political positions even in the Japanese context.

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Factional crap again? Cause he's about to lead them back to power so presumably it isn't a performance problem.

It kind of is, in that he's about to lead them back to power through lack of any other options, not because there's anything remotely impressive about him or his leadership.

It is also factional crap, though. This is the Diet of Japan after all.