Change Japan Can Believe In: The Significance of the August Election
By Ian Kumekawa
In late August, Japanese voters staidly cast the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party out of power. The election was marked with few protests, and after the results were in and a landslide victory for the opposition secured, there was nothing resembling the jubilant celebration seen after Election Day in America. Yet this restrained demeanor hardly captures the landmark importance of the victory of the center-left Japan Democratic Party (JDP), which laid the groundwork for a revitalization of Japanese society.
In America, there is a tendency to idealize Japan. Indeed, there is often an assumption of economic prosperity, of modern convenience, of global partnership, of tried democratic procedures; in short, a well-oiled system that has been thriving and growing from the end of the Second World War.
Yet on closer inspection, things have not been rosy in Japan for much of the past two decades. It has been losing more and more of its revenue from exports to developing economies such as those of South Korea and China, its banking system has proved woefully inadequate to deal effectively with the challenges of the recent financial crisis, the country’s social welfare net has enormous holes, and its politics have been plagued with cronyism and corruption.
To a large extent, the nation’s progress has been impeded by a stifling bureaucracy and a knee-jerk resistance to change which must be linked to the five-decade long rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which steadily became increasingly conservative and unobligated to form coalitions or to initiate reform.
The ousted Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had exercised nearly complete control over Japanese politics since its inception in 1955. Because of the disproportionate electoral value of rural areas, the LDP was able to maintain control of the country by enacting tariffs and subsides in an effort to win the support of rice farmers. With the countryside as a base, the LDP won over big business by expanding their policies of protectionism to large firms which boomed during the sixties and seventies.
With both the rice farmers and national big business squarely satisfied, the LDP had neither the incentive nor the desire to change the status quo. It is little wonder that Japanese politics became increasingly ethically murky as well as top-heavy in recent decades. Eager political aspirants would have to be vetted by a system that rewarded loyalty, bureaucracy, and thinking well inside the established box.
August’s power shift has great potential to fundamentally change the way business is conducted in Japan. The overwhelming victory of JDP, which won 308 out of 480 seats in the Diet, Japan’s lower house, provides the new government under Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who currently enjoys a 71 percent approval rating, with a clear mandate for change. On the top of the list of priorities is to trim the enormous corps of civil servants, who along with the ousted LDP are seen as culpable for the country’s massive stagnation. This paring may also help reduce Japan’s herculean $9-trillion national debt.
Predictably and laudably, the new center-left government also has plans for a variety of social reforms. Hatoyama has spoken of revamping the social security network as well as creating incentives for raising children in an effort to counteract the dramatic aging of the Japanese population.
Additionally, Hatoyama is the first Prime Minister to have publically addressed the issue of Japanese atrocities committed against Koreans and Chinese in the first part of the 20th century. Indeed these statements mark a shift in Japanese foreign policy that will likely be characterized by more open dialogues between Japan and its neighbors as well as an increased diplomatic independence from the United States. Japan is scheduled to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan in next year, and may seek a leadership position among developed countries in the fight to reduce carbon emissions.
These characteristically leftist proposals can only be seen as a welcome change to the immobility that characterized the late LDP years. The results of last month’s election give credence to the notion that Japan is moving towards a political system characterized by legitimate competition. In any case, the potential for this scenario and the recent turn to the left have invigorated Japan profoundly.